Meta Platforms Tops the Charts as 58.1% of Companies Use Social Media Marketing

Social media has emerged as a key marketing platform and a report from Datareportal shows that 58.1% of companies use at least one social media platform for marketing their product and services.

While Meta Platforms which is the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram leads the charge – surprisingly TikTok is a distant tenth on the list.

According to the report that’s titled “Digital 2023 April Global Statshot,” 21.5% of working professionals aged between 16 to 64 said that their company uses Facebook for social media marketing.

18.2% and 16.6% of the users respectively said that their companies use Instagram and WhatsApp for social media marketing.

All three top social media platforms are incidentally owned by Meta Platforms – which is incidentally the most valued social media company with a market cap of nearly $700 billion.

Cathie Wood of ARK Invest recently bought $47 million worth of Meta shares – the first time since 2021 when the growth-oriented fund manager bought the stock.

Wood has meanwhile faced flak for selling Nvidia shares before its massive rally that took its market cap beyond $1 trillion.

Meanwhile, Meta Platforms has shown signs of turnaround and after reporting a yearly fall in revenues for three straight quarters, it reported a 2.6% rise in its Q1 2023 revenues.

The company’s massive metaverse investments have however a sore point with many investors as the business segment lost $13.7 billion in 2022 – which was even wider than the $10.2 billion loss in 2021.

Meta Platforms Tops the List in Social Media Marketing

During their Q1 2023 earnings call in April, Meta Platforms said that Facebook has reached the milestone of 200 million daily active users (DAUs) in the US and Canada. In the previous quarter, Facebook’s global DAUs hit 2 billion.

However, the company’s growth has nearly plateaued – especially in the developed markets. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerburg also acknowledged the same last year.

Zuckerburg listed 2023 as the “year of efficiency” for Meta and as part of the exercise the company has laid off over a quarter of its workforce.

Tech layoffs have mounted this year and according to Layoffs.fyi, over 200,000 tech workers have lost their jobs in 2023.

Amazon leads the pack as the company has laid off 27,000 corporate employees amid the current slowdown.

Coming back to the social media marketing report, 13.6% of users said that their companies used YouTube for social media marketing while LinkedIn came second with 13.2%.

YouTube’s dismal showing looks like a surprise here as the platform reaches 2.5 billion users every month.

Only 10.9% of Companies Use Twitter for Marketing

10.9% of users said that their company uses Twitter for social media marketing. Twitter’s ad revenues have plummeted ever since Elon Musk took over the platform last year.

Musk’s antics have scared some advertisers away from the platform. The billionaire has been trying to steer Twitter from ad-based revenues to a subscription model – a pivot that hasn’t been quite successful.

Musk meanwhile alluded that ad revenues look the best course for Twitter and hired NBC Universal advertising executive Linda Yaccarino to lead Twitter.

During the shareholder meeting last month, Musk said, “I guess I should say ‘advertising is awesome and everyone should do it.”

Elon Musk said Tesla would finally advertise. It just dropped a video on Twitter — its first commercial? https://t.co/UWzXKh4zvl pic.twitter.com/d5S09QN4Uo

— Autoblog (@therealautoblog) May 23, 2023

He added that Tesla might also try advertising its cars – a major climb down from his earlier position.

While Twitter hasn’t disclosed its advertising revenues, Musk himself said that the company’s revenues are down by half amid an exodus of advertisers since he took over.

Less Than 4% of Companies Use TikTok for Social Media Marketing

Meanwhile, another surprising revelation from the social media marketing report was that only 3.8% of respondents said that their companies use TikTok for social media marketing.

The platform has around 1 billion users globally and both Meta Platforms and YouTube have admitted to a tough challenge from TikTok.

YouTube’s revenues incidentally have fallen on a yearly basis for the last three quarters. The company is focusing on “Shorts” to fend off the competition from TikTok.

Alphabet, which is YouTube’s parent company, is up about 38% so far in 2023. While it is slightly outperforming the Nasdaq 100, it is the worst-performing FAANG stock of the year.

However, Bill Ackman – the billionaire fund manager of Pershing Square – is backing the company and his fund bought 10.3 million Alphabet shares in the first quarter of 2023.

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