10 Reasons Why We Care about Social Media

By Katie Lehnen

You probably feel inundated by the social media wave from all angles.  Many of us use social networking in our personal lives, whether to keep in touch with friends and family across vast distances, or to connect with new friends.  We also use social media in a professional capacity, to promote businesses, post resumes, and network with current and potential employers.

Likewise, you have probably heard a great deal about social media from RPA in the past couple of years. Like us on Facebook!  Follow us on Twitter!  Read our blog!  You may wonder why we feel social media is such an important facet of RPA’s growth and success as an organization.  Below are just a handful of statistics that remind us how prevalent and salient social media is today, and why we should focus on mastering and harnessing social media as a tool for our professional and personal lives.

1. As of September 2013, 73% of online adults use social networking sites.[1]
2. Social is now the top Internet activity: Americans spend an average of 37 minutes daily on social media, a higher time-spend than any other major Internet activity, including email.[2]
3. If social media companies were countries: Followed by China, Facebook would be the world’s most populous country with over 1.1 billion users. Google Plus (693 million active users) would be third and Twitter (554 million users) would be fourth. That’s ahead both India and the U.S.[3]
4. Every second two new members join LinkedIn.[4]
5. 80 percent of companies use social media as a recruitment tool. Of those, 95 percent use LinkedIn.[5]
6. People in New York City received tweets about the August 2011 earthquake in Mineral, Virginia 30 seconds before they felt it.[6]
7. Twitter handles more search queries per month than Bing and Yahoo combined.[7]
8. People are spending 1 out of every 7 minutes on Facebook when online. Facebook users typically are spending 10.5 billion minutes (almost 20,000 years) on the social network. And, that’s excluding mobile devices.[8]
9. More than 40% of Americans log into Facebook each day.[9]
10. The average Facebook user creates 90 pieces of content including links, news stories, photo albums, notes, and videos each month.[10]

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[1] Source: http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheets/social-networking-fact-sheet/.

[2] Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-engagement-statistics-2013-12.

[3] Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/25-insane-social-media-facts/79645/.

[4] Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/belle-beth-cooper/10-surprising-social-medi_b_4325088.html.

[5] Source: http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/Resources/FunFacts.aspx.

[6] Source: http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/Resources/FunFacts.aspx.

[7] Source: http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/Resources/FunFacts.aspx.

[8] Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/25-insane-social-media-facts/79645/.

[9] Source: http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/Resources/FunFacts.aspx.

[10] Source: http://www.iacpsocialmedia.org/Resources/FunFacts.aspx.