14 essential stats from the latest UK social media research to help benchmark your planning

January 3, 2012

Whether you’re planning your tactical social media campaign or reengineering your business for the social consumer, social media research is invaluable in setting benchmarks.  They help you manage expectations, isolate priorities and best of all, define KPIs that set the evaluation bar.

But there is a dearth of UK and European focused research resources.  Apart from econsultancy’s marvellous internet stats compendium, it can be quite difficult to find individual studies without scouring Google for days!

So to make it easy, below are highlights of the latest social media research, with links to original studies. Better still, they are in 140 characters or less,  and very tweetable, if you fancy sharing a few insights.

1. During 2011 there were 228 billion UK Internet visits to websites and 28 billion hours spent online
Source: Experian Hitwise Dec 2011 https://bit.ly/uMRrri

2. 87% of UK businesses will invest more in social media in 2012
Source: Royal Bank Of Scotland (RBS), Dec 2011. Reported in The Scotsman https://bit.ly/th7heE

3. Almost two thirds (64%) of companies say they are now beyond the experimental phase compared to 54% a year ago
Source: econsultancy Nov 2011 https://bit.ly/to9Je7

4. Only 48% of UK companies use social media, compared to 72% in the US and 83% in China
Source: KPMG, May 2011 https://bit.ly/sD194p

5. Only 6% of business owners are monitoring social media to better understand their customers
Source: Sage UK Dec 2011 https://bit.ly/w0hXfS

6. 60% of organisations have not yet implemented internal social media training and governance models
Source: econsultancy Nov 2011 https://bit.ly/to9Je7

7. 25% of marketers regard social signals as ‘very important’ for search rankings, but 57% think it will be important in 3 years
Source: Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing Dec 2011 https://bit.ly/umrYAO

8. 43% of UK women agreed that they often find out about new breaking stories first via social networks; compared to 27% of men
Source: Ofcom Dec 2011 https://bit.ly/sIjKCm

And on the media front….

9. MySpace slips out of top 10 of leading social networks in UK
Source: Metro https://bit.ly/rGT5Pa

10. 60% of UK online population now use Facebook more than once a day
Source: YouGov Dec 2011 https://bit.ly/uAhCm3

11. 71% with a social networking profile visit a networking sites at least once a day; 20% visit 5 times a day or more
Source: Ofcom Dec 2011 https://bit.ly/sIjKCm

12. The Daily Mail and the Guardian websites are the most popular newspaper websites in Europe
Source: Ofcom Dec 2011 https://bit.ly/sIjKCm

13. 2.6m people joined the top 20 Facebook retail pages in the last 6 months
Source: eDigitalResearch Dec 2011 https://bit.ly/uLhLwH

And just because…

14. Nearly half (47 per cent) of teenage smartphone users admitted using or answering their handset in the bathroom or toilet
Source: Ofcom Dec 2010 https://bit.ly/sbkdwd

If you would like to keep up with the latest social media research and stats then please do follow us on twitter

Images with thanks to:
Image: jannoon028 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Image: Nutdanai Apikhomboonwaroot / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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