Some readers have asked me to provide some specific numbers on social media instead of just saying that it works. I have mostly been running RewardMe these days so I don’t have time to do more research on that, but last year I found a few interesting numbers so I’ll post it here. They’re a bit old but pretty concrete and can be used in school reports or benchmarks. Hope this helps!
2. Forrester Research estimates social media marketing to grow at an annual rate of 34 percent – faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums.
Of course, social media is starting from a smaller base. Forrester estimates that $716 million will be spent on the medium this year, growing to $3.1 billion in 2014. At that point, social media will be a bigger marketing channel than both email and mobile, but still just a fraction of the size of search or display advertising ($31.6B and $16.9B, respectively).
Perhaps this will help people who reach this post again. Current as of August 2016, there are some great numbers in the report here: http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/.
Getting reliable numbers on social media is still today incredibly difficult to realize for many organisations.