Mail.Ru Group has researched and compared the audiences of the most popular in Russia social networks- Odnoklassniki, Moi Mir, VKontakte, Facebook and Twitter.
The study touches upon the main demographic indicators, geography, identifies the similarities and differences in the behavior of users of social networks. To obtain the most objective results, data from TNS, comScore and Brand Analytics were used.
The most significant monthly audience is In contact with and classmates who visit more 52 and 42 million... users respectively. About 30 million... people come every month to My world, slightly less - in Facebook... Russian audience Twitter an order of magnitude less - 11.6 million.
The highest percentage of women is among Odnoklassniki users (56%) , and the highest percentage of men among Twitter users ( 47%).
The average user of Odnoklassniki spends on a social network twice the time the average VKontakte user (20 minutes versus 10). Hence the almost 2-fold advantage in the number of pages viewed in one month.
Users often have accounts on different social networks. Monthly audience Of my world most often overlaps with VKontakte (87%) and Classmates (80%). 68% users In contact with also visit Classmates.
Almost half of the audience Odnoklassniki (43%) lives in small towns with a population of up to 100 thousand people. The opposite situation is for FacebookandTwitter, 34% and 35% users who live in large settlements (more than 800 thousand people).
What are social media users writing about?
- About myself: 15-20% of the flow are messages about what they are doing, where they are, what they eat, think, and feel.
- Share and discuss news from the media: 40% posts are reposts to news, events, comments, discussions. During high-profile events, the number of discussions increases dramatically.
- They create the news themselves. This type of information is gaining momentum thanks to the development of mobile Internet access, cameras and video recorders.
- They are discussing goods, services, events.
- Post entertainment content: memes, cats, beautiful pictures, etc.
Less: discuss hobbies, publish creative works, advertise something, etc.
If you want to successfully promote goods and services on social networks, then first of all you need to get to know the visitors of the platform you are interested in. In this article, we will find out who is the target audience of Odnoklassniki, who have been in the top 10 most popular sites in Russia for several years now and hardly need an introduction.
"Age" social network - myth or reality?
The stereotype of the "age" "Odnoklassniki" can be compared to an annoying song that clings against desire. As a result, even people far from social networks believe that the audience of the Odnoklassniki website is “older” users. The vagueness of the wording “older” gives free rein to interpretations: “middle-aged people”, “those who are over 40” and even “retirees”. Let's try to understand the true state of affairs.
Probably, any stereotype has true grounds. This is also true of OK.ru. If you think about it, some information is already contained in the name itself: find those with whom you once studied at school (it is assumed that you graduated from school a long time ago, and connections of that time are not maintained). At the dawn of Odnoklassniki's existence, their “age” status was not a myth, but a reality, but this fully corresponded to the original concept of the site. According to 2008 data, the majority of OK users at that time were people between the ages of 25 and 34.
But one should not lose sight of the volatility that is inherent in the entire Internet and, in particular, social networks. “Odnoklassniki” is not a static and fossilized formation, they do not stand still, transform, evolve. Almost a decade has passed since their launch, and the statistics of 2008 seem, to put it mildly, irrelevant today. Experts note that modern Odnoklassniki strive to expand their audience at the expense of young people, without losing the proven “mature” segment.
This idea has every chance of finding a successful implementation, because OK.ru is an entertainment platform where everyone can find interesting content, as well as games, films or music to their liking. But only time will tell whether these efforts will lead to the desired result, but for now the audience of Odnoklassniki is distributed as follows: the majority of users (35%) are people of 25–35 years old, and women and men in this category are equally divided. But in other age groups, the ratio of women to men fluctuates:
According to other sources, Odnoklassniki is a pronounced “female” site (almost 70% of women versus 30% of men). In this regard, "female" and "family" content is constantly popular here.
It is important to take into account not only the gender and age characteristics of users, but also their geographical distribution, interests and much, much more. For example, the audience of the Odnoklassniki website is more “regional” in comparison with the metropolitan audience of Facebook or VKontakte.
A typical Odnoklassniki user - what is his temper?
Despite the many variables, it is quite possible to draw a certain average "portrait" of a visitor to Odnoklassniki.
The audience of Odnoklassniki is mainly focused on internal communication, that is, viewing profiles and exchanging messages. People are much less interested in the news feed. Users are not very picky about the quality of photo content and illustrations, but at the same time they love graphics and videos more than texts. This distinctive feature perception is fairly easy to take into account when adapting content to the platform, so ignoring it would be a gross mistake.
From a marketing point of view, the audience of the Odnoklassniki website is ideal for promoting the mass segment. Here are some characteristic features: high purchasing and user activity, low average check, active participation of users in contests, and a large number of marks for publications.
However, analysts do not advise marketers to “fly to the top” and be content with an average user image. There are an infinite number of nuances here, so clumsy methods of work are unlikely to be effective.
Presenting data from regular research active audience social networks in Russia for May 2017. The study includes data on social networks VKontakte, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, MoiMir and LiveJournal. The main focus is on the active (writing) audience, as we study social networks as a means of public communication and their influence on the formation of public opinion. The study presents data on the audience, age, gender and regional distribution of the authors of social networks in Russia.
Social media activity by source type
Number of "speakers" authors in May 2017 amounted to 38 million, they generated 670 million messages... The prevailing share of content is concentrated in social networks - 470 737 thousand publications, which is 70,2% of the total volume of mentions in social media, the share of microblogging is 11,7% of the total number of video resources - 10,8% .
Authors and posts
In the social network VKontakte for a month it was recorded 25 722 thousand authors and more 310 795 thousand messages... Instagram continued its growth trend - in May, the site recorded 7 143 thousand... active authors... There have been no significant changes in the volume of public content on the network - 71,733k messages... On Twitter - Published in a month 78,372K tweets from 1,171K authors... On Facebook 1 953 thousand authors and 53 413 thousand public messages.
Statistics for each social network
IN CONTACT WITH
Gender distribution in the network is traditional: 58.4% of authors are female, 41.6% are male. The main age group - 37% - are authors aged 25-34 years. The second largest group is 18-24 years old (25.7%).
As for the geographical distribution of VKontakte authors, the highest level of penetration remained for St. Petersburg - 44.9%, in second place is the Murmansk region (30.26%), in third - Moscow (28.43%).
The highest level of penetration was recorded in St. Petersburg - 13.66%, Moscow with 10.91% in second place, in third place - Sakhalin Region (10.14%).
Facebook has 1.9 million authors and 53.4 million posts. 58.9% of authors are female. FB authors are older than active VK contributors. In the prevailing age group (25-34), currently 37% of authors, the second largest group - 35-44, 30.6% of authors belong to it. Over 45 years old - 23.5% of authors.
Moscow ranks first in terms of regional penetration: 7.73% of Muscovites publish posts and comments on FB. At the same time, almost half of the authors of FB are residents of Moscow (953 417).
In terms of geo-penetration, St. Petersburg is again in first place (2.28%), in second - with a slight lag - Moscow (2%), in third - the Republic of Sakha (1.5%).
MY WORLD
The gender distribution is more even here than in other networks: just over half - 54.4% of the authors are female. In MyMir, only 8.7% of authors are under 25 years old. The largest group is 55 and older (34.9%). The share of groups 35-44 and 45-54 is 21.1% and 21.4%, respectively.
Moscow is the leader in terms of regional penetration - 0.25%. Sevastopol, Chelyabinsk region and St. Petersburg are slightly behind - 0.23%.
LIVEJOURNAL
LiveJournal has 81 thousand authors. Messages for May indexed slightly less than 3 million. 60.4% of the authors are male. 39.7% of authors aged 35 to 44 years - this is the main age group of LJ. 31% of authors are 25-34 years old. Another 17.8% are 45-54 years old.
Comparison of social networks by gender and age of authors
LiveJournal and Twitter are still the only sites dominated by male authors: 60.4% and 55.4%, respectively. VKontakte are the youngest authors. The main groups - 18-24 and 25-34 years old - received 25.7% and 37%, respectively. Authors of FB and LJ are as similar as possible in age groups: authors from 25 to 45 years old are active here, but the prevailing groups differ - on Facebook it is 25-34 (37%), and in LiveJournal - 35-44 (39.7%).
SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS
“The main trend is that social media is growing more actively outside of social networks,” says Natalia Sokolova, CEO of Brand Analytics. - In social media, there is a growing trend of user-generated content due to the onset of the era of mobile and smartphones, as well as due to new communication formats - messengers and story-format. Plus, we need to take into account the growth in media consumption due to the development of distribution of professional content in social media channels. ”
- Youtube. It firmly established itself as the main source of information for schoolchildren. But he didn't stop there. There is a noticeable increase in quality channels for all age groups and interests. Recall that last week Brand Analytics released a pilot YouTube blogger rating - the May top 20 in terms of engagement. The results can be found.
- Mobile. Mobility as the main trend on the Internet is also accelerated by social media - a smartphone is ideal for creating multi-format user content.
- Messengers. Telegram takes on a media and forum role - gaining strength channels from media and bloggers, public chats in active target groups. WhatsApp has taken over the place of people's everyday public chats. Viber is a “campaign” among young people and the task is to introduce e-commerce into instant messengers.
- Media. Mass media come to social media - the stake is placed on real-time distribution of content directly "into the hands" of users.
- UGC sites. Thematic platforms turned out to be the most convenient place for the exchange of user experience. Web 2.0 is alive and well.
- Storey format. The format of stories, which came from snapchat to almost all social networks, is gaining momentum and accumulates trends in video, life, mobile and ease of communication here and now. The fastest growing format.
- LiveJournal demonstrates not a landslide, but a steady decline in activity on the site itself, but still often acts as a source of information disseminated and consumed in social media outside of LiveJournal.
The full version of the study, including the rating of authors and groups of social networks, is presented in the presentation and is available for review and download at the link.
Reference:
Message - any open (public) post - in status, on the wall, in groups, in comments, etc. Messages in personal correspondence or in the “only for friends” mode are not counted.
Focused on an active (writing) audience. The publication presents data on the audience, age, gender and regional distribution of the authors of social networks in Russia. It also includes data on the most popular authors and groups of the most popular social networks.
Social media activity by source type
The number of "talking" authors in November 2016 was 35 million and who generated 698 million messages. 71.8% of all public content is accounted for by social networks (504,940 publications). Sources of video content (YouTube and Vimeo) are in second place - 12.7% of the total volume of public content, and Twitter moved to third place, its share was 8.7%.
IN CONTACT WITH
VKontakte has 13,278,000 active authors, in November they published 317,508,100 messages.
INSTAGRAM
Instagram has 4,645,700 active authors, with 78,185,400 posts posted in November.
FACEBOOK
In the Russian segment of Facebook there are 1,021,700 active authors, 50,909,500 messages were published in a month.
LIVEJOURNAL
LJ remains a platform for the production, but not the consumption of content. There are 196,200 active authors here, and 6,743,500 messages. Less than on other sites, but more viral and diverging far beyond the source.
Social media trends in Russia 2016
1. A significant increase in the activity of thematic ("club") forums and public channels in messengers.
2. The growth of video content and broadcasts in almost all social networks. The activity of the Russian segment of Youtube has increased. On Instagram, the share of videos averaged 7%, and among viral content - more than 50%. The most popular authors on VKontakte are video bloggers.
3. "VKontakte" and Instagram have launched "smart feeds" that determine the interests of users by their activity and adjust the news feed to them, similar to the Facebook feed. Such algorithms for the formation of a tape have intensified the effect of the "information bubble-shell", which closes people in their own beliefs.
4. Rapid growth in the activity of spambots. It is significant that the growth is noted at once in several social networks - LiveJournal, VKontakte, Facebook, and the subject of spam in them correlates.
5. The prevalence of social media over classical media in terms of the level of influence on public opinion. Brexit, elections in the USA, referendum in Italy - these are cases showing the decisions of large communities of people in opposition to the "official information" of the media.
6. FakeNews and the need to verify information for accuracy. The desired speed of issuing information for the media and social networks is so high that there is no time left to check the publications. In 2017, the industry must find a solution to counter this trend.
7. The Russian part of Facebook has become practically Moscow - 50% of the authors come from Moscow.
How the data was obtained:
Brand Analytics collects and indexes all public messages social networks in Russian, Tatar, Ukrainian, Kazakh and some other languages, as well as data from their authors.
To highlight data around the country for each social network, the percentage of geo-identification is taken into account: the number of posts with geographic data is divided by the percentage of posts with geo-data. Likewise for authors.
For determining geography: data was taken from the authors' profiles, message geotags, as well as message texts. Geo-dictionaries for all social networks are unique and expanded with all variants of spelling of toponyms, including "custom" ones.
For determining sex: taken from the authors' profiles and supplemented with gender data obtained by linguistic analysis of the author's first and last name.
For determining age: taken from author profiles.
Data on Odnoklassniki is not included, since the API of this social network does not allow conducting such research.
Basic research terms:
Message- any open (public) post - in status, on the wall, in groups, comments, etc. Messages in personal correspondence or in the “only for friends” mode are not counted.
Engagement Index(EI) is an indicator of the audience's reaction to the author's publications. It is calculated as the sum of comments, likes and reposts to all publications of the author for a month.
Today social networks are so firmly rooted in our lives that the composition of the five most popular social platforms practically does not change from year to year. However, the extent of penetration and use of these social networks differs depending on geography and demographic factors. Understanding these differences plays a big role when targeting a specific audience. When comparing the most popular social networks, it is important to pay attention not to the number of registered accounts, but to the number of active users. From the review, you will find out which social networks are growing faster than others, and which are now in decline.
Most popular social platforms
The chart, produced by analytical agency Statista, gives a clear idea of the number of active users (in millions) on the most popular social networks in the world. Leads Facebook list... This can hardly surprise anyone. Facebook has a large market share with over 2 billion active users. In January 2017, the giant's closest competitor was WhatsApp, which is also owned by Facebook. Then he was in second place. Today, YouTube is on the second line with 1.5 billion active users. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp come in third and fourth places, respectively.
They are followed by platforms, the majority of whose audience is located in the Asia-Pacific region. These are QQ, WeChat and Qzone (with over 600 million active users). This shows that there are a number of popular social media in the Asia-Pacific region. After them, we see a cluster of sites popular mainly in the West - Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter.
And what about Russia?
In Russia, the penetration of social networks is estimated at 47%; 67.8 million Russians have accounts in them. According to Statista, YouTube is the most active in Russia (63% of respondents), followed by VKontakte - 61%. The global leader Facebook is only on the fourth line with an indicator of 35%. Skype and WhatsApp dominate messengers (38% each).
Social networks that grow faster than others
Marketers usually don't spend a lot of time on SMM. What social network should you focus your efforts on? Twitter, which managed to reach an audience of 313 million users from 2010 to 2017, showed the slowest growth rates compared to its largest competitors Facebook, WhatsApp and China's WeChat. Founded in 2013, Instagram surpassed Twitter in terms of audience size by 2014.
New research from Statista found Twitter lagged far behind its rivals in 2017. It showed the lowest monthly active audience growth, which was only 23 million from Q3 2015 to Q3 2017. Facebook, meanwhile, grew by 461 million.
How users interact with brands on social media
Knowing how to behave and what publications to make in social media is also important, because it forms the image of your brand and, as a result, encourages users to buy your products or, on the contrary, unsubscribe from your groups. Social media is increasingly used as a platform for working with customers, where customers, existing and potential, want to get answers to their questions in real time. A chart from the Sprout Social report shows that 48% of users can be persuaded to buy by quickly answering questions in a group. 46% respond positively to promotions, and 42% can choose a brand product if its page contains educational content. 27% of surveyed users admitted that they would want to make a purchase if they were shown materials that usually remain behind the scenes.
Half of Sprout Social survey participants said they would unsubscribe from the brand community if they post annoying content there, and 27% said they would flag the brand and its page as spam and block it. This is why publishing relevant and engaging content that resonates with your target audience is so important to reach and engage your potential customers.
Social networks with the most active audience
An important factor that influences how much time we should devote to SMM on a particular social network is the level of audience engagement. Here again Facebook dominates, and also has the highest engagement by time, according to data collected by analyst comScore from a survey of a group of US consumers.
Facebook's success is amazing. In addition to the social network itself occupying the top spot, other platforms owned by the corporation also occupied the second and third places. Facebook Messenger's penetration rate is 47%, with Instagram following right behind it.
From the fresh data from Pew Internet, shown in the diagram below, we can see that Facebook is also leading in terms of the number of active audience per day. 76% of users go to the social network every day, on Instagram this figure is 51%. Only 42% of Twitter users check it daily, which is almost half of Facebook's.
The average daily duration of using social networks in the United States is 2 hours 1 minute, in Russia users spend a little more time on social media - 2 hours 19 minutes.
Engagement rates across different social media
Analytical marketing firm TrackMaven analyzed 51 million posts from various companies across 130 industries to find out which social media has the highest engagement rates. The results showed that Instagram is the absolute leader in terms of engagement per 1000 subscribers. This is so much higher than other social networks that I had to draw up a separate diagram to illustrate the difference between Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
As you can see in the second graph, Facebook is well ahead of Twitter and LinkedIn. The reason for this is largely because more posts are published on Twitter, because there is no algorithm here that allows you to show content to only a small part of the audience. Because of this, brands have to bombard their feeds with posts to break through the information noise. This, in turn, lowers the response rate to publications. Below is the average daily number of posts per account in three social networks.
General statistics of social media usage around the world
Every year, WeAreSocial updates its comprehensive statistical report, the Global Digital Report, which brings together useful data on social media around the world. From it you can find out how differently social platforms are used in different parts of the world. Surprisingly, Western countries are seriously lagging behind in terms of social media penetration.
Below are the main findings of the research.
- The number of Internet users in 2018 reached 4.021 billion people, which is 7 percent more compared to the data a year ago.
- The audience of social networks in 2018 totals 3.196 billion people, which is 13% higher than last year's figure.
- Number of users mobile phones is 5.135 billion people, which means plus 4% to the value of last year.
The numbers are growing rapidly, especially for active users of social networks with mobile devices- the penetration rate is 39%, which is 5% more than in 2017.
If we talk about the structure of web traffic depending on the type of device, then most of the traffic is generated by mobile users (52%, which is 4% higher than last year). Only 43% of all web pages are visited from desktops, which is 3% lower than last year's figure.
North, West and South Europe, as well as North America boast the most high level Internet penetration - 74% -94% of the total population use the World Wide Web. In Russia, 110 million people use the Internet - 76% of the total population.
The global social media audience has grown by 13% since January 2017. The fastest growing user base is in Saudi Arabia. Since January 2017, their number has increased by 32%, with a global average of 17%. Other countries with the highest growth rates are India, Indonesia and Ghana. The reason for the leap was the development of technology, which made it easier for the population to access social sites. The slowest growth of social networks was in the UAE, South Korea and Great Britain -<5%. В России пользователей соцсетей стало на 8 826 000 человек больше (+15% к прошлогоднему значению).
Since the largest proportion of users are on Facebook, it would be helpful to know how the content you post will perform on this social network and what features to use to increase its reach. According to the statistics of the social network, the average coverage of a publication is 10.7%, while organic posts have 8% (organic coverage in Russia is 11.3%), and for paid posts this value is 26.8% (27.4% in Russia) ... Organic and paid Facebook posts have huge potential. It is important to correctly target publications in order to receive high-quality leads.
You can get a more complete picture of the state of the global digital market in 2018 by studying our overview of the Internet 2017-2018 in the world and in Russia: statistics and trends, which we prepared based on the Global Digital 2018 study.
Popularity of social networks by country
The graph from the GlobalWebIndex report below, based on a survey of Internet users, perfectly reflects the popularity of various social networks by country. Indonesia, the Philippines, Mexico, India and Brazil are among the ten most active audiences for each of the social networks, and are significantly ahead of the US, UK and European countries.
Of the four social networks represented (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Google+), Russians are the most active users of the video service. Twitter and Google+ are relatively often used by only 20% of our compatriots, while Facebook is regularly viewed by just over 40%.
Demographic statistics of social media usage
As can be seen from the graph, a similar pattern of social media use is observed in different age groups. This suggests that social media has reached a stage of maturity where it can be used to reach all demographic groups, regardless of age and gender. The exceptions are Instagram and Tumblr, with a younger audience.
Social media audience engagement strategies
According to a study by The State of Social 2018, 96% of brands have a presence on Facebook.
At the same time, only half of the respondents have a documented SMM strategy. Big business is a little more responsible in this matter than small companies (60% stated that they have such a document).
When it comes to the types of content brands publish, images, links, and copy are leading the way. While video posts tend to get the most engagement, video content only ranks fourth here. This is primarily due to the complexity of creating such materials.
At the end of 2017, Smart Insights, together with Clutch, conducted a survey among business representatives, in which they asked which of the social networks are of the greatest value to them. It turned out that among B2C companies, Facebook is considered the most effective (93% of respondents), and most B2B companies prefer LinkedIn (93%).
The value of social media for brands in 2018
- If you think that your target audience is not sitting on social networks, you are mistaken.
Through social networks, you can reach any audience, regardless of gender, age, social status. 98% of online consumers are registered on social networks, quite a large part of them are adults 55-64 years old.
- A third of all time on the Internet, people devote to social networks.
The average user spends 2 hours 15 minutes a day flipping through the feed and chatting on social platforms, while young people aged 16-24 spend almost three hours. If you do not consider SMM as a channel for attracting customers, then you voluntarily cede the attention of your target audience to competitors.
- Half of all social media users follow brand pages.
4 out of 10 Internet users follow their favorite companies' social media pages, and a quarter follow brands when they plan to buy something. People have a positive attitude towards such content, so an active social media presence is of great value for companies.
- Social media is the main source of information for consumers.
People aged 16-24 prefer to search for brand information on social media rather than search engines. A quarter of users in this age group admit that a large number of likes on a brand page can lead them to buy. In the 35-44 age group, 20% of the respondents stated the same. Social commerce can be considered one of the main channels for generating profit, which means that it is important to diversify efforts, and not rely on advertising alone.
- Watching videos is a favorite activity on social networks.
Facebook is the largest social network in terms of the number of users, but YouTube takes the first place in terms of traffic, and the reason is precisely in the video. Video posts receive the most active response, which is why leading brands are constantly posting videos on their pages.
In preparing the article, the following materials were used:
- Global Social Media Research Summary 2018 by Smart Insights
- Report The State of Social 2018 by Social Media Week
- The Biggest Social Media Trends Shaping 2018 article published on the GlobalWebIndex blog
- Social Networks Study: How social networks were used in 2017 by Metricool analytical agency
- Global Digital 2018 Report Pack by WeAreSocial analytical agency
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