[Sponsored by YouScan] After analyzing over 1 billion social media posts, YouScan’s team has validated several trends that marketers should be aware of in 2022 to understand their audiences better. The study focuses on the broad interests and behavior of the social media audience. The research team examined both text and visual mentions to see the whole picture and get the most accurate results and actionable insights.
What kinds of content are popular on social media, and which topics are more engaging? Which brands and industries are frequently mentioned? Keep reading to find the answers to this and other questions.
Most popular types of content and topics on social media
According to YouScan’s research, the majority of social media posts are personal (43.5%), followed by professional content (5.4%) and news (3.6%). But what exactly did users talk about?
Politics was the most discussed topic, accounting for 2% of all analyzed conversations. Gaming and health come in second with 1% each. Food, incidents, and celebrities each received about 0.6%.
When analyzing the most popular social networks, it turned out that users tend to interact more with dynamic content (video, reels, GIFs, etc.) rather than with static ones (photos, drawings, illustrations).
Here is a breakdown of the most engaging content by platform:
- Instagram: video, with 0.6 ER*
- TikTok: video + caption, with 7.49 ER
- Twitter: images, with 7.0 ER
- Facebook: video, with 53.8 ER
- YouTube: video + caption, with 24.56 ER
*ER – engagement rate
The overall trend is that visuals are the present and future of social media. Even the previously “text-only” Twitter is being flooded with images, which are gaining more traction than texts. Now is an intriguing time to keep an eye on Twitter and its evolution since Elon Musk purchased the platform.
Twitter, by the way, sticks out among social networks since it is the only one with a negative net sentiment rate – 17,62 (the ratio between positive and negative mentions). With an index of 82, Instagram is the most positive social media platform, while Facebook and TikTok are nearly equal to 50.
Industry-based insights based on visual data
Meanwhile, the most prevalent types are advertising, photo captions, and screenshots when it comes to images. Why ads, you might ask? The reason for this is the growing amount of influencer and brand collaborations, which may one day surpass traditional advertisements. Since hashtags like #ad, #gifted, #partnership, and others are required in many countries, social listening tools can identify paid material and distinguish it from user-generated content.
Besides extensive content statistics, YouScan also used its image recognition capabilities to analyze visual data in detail and find industry-specific insights. Having such information at their disposal helps brands compare their mentions to the competition or the industry in which they operate. Typically, the volume of pictures featuring a brand is proportional to its share of voice and customer brand awareness.
For example, the team examined the three largest industries to determine which company logos were most frequently photographed. Mercedes-Benz was the most popular in the automotive industry, Apple among electronics brands, and Nike in sportswear.
Why brands should analyze social media data and how to do it
With the growing volume of content on social media, marketers are looking for ways to extract customer data from it. But how exactly does it work?
In general, the two fundamental processes in social media intelligence are data collection and data analysis.
YouScan allows users to monitor various social networks, including those with lots of images, such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. The software can track posts that have the brand name (or another query) in the text caption as well as photos that include the brand logo (in this case, text caption is optional).
Why is that important for brands? Frequently, pictures provide much more information compared to text. Knowing what exactly is portrayed in images allows marketers to access valuable insights and analyze typical consumption patterns (which might be rather unusual and unexpected). The ability to track images, particularly those including the company logo, enables marketers to identify and resolve problems rapidly, see how products are used in real life, and find inspiration in user-generated content.
