
What’s actually working on social media this year? I’m breaking down the latest Metricool study (analyzing 21 million posts!) to see what platforms are growing, which ones are struggling, and what all this means for your marketing strategy....
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Drea
If you want inside peek into the data of what's working here now and today in 2025, boy, do I have a treat for you. This episode. I'm excited to dive all the way into a recent study released by Metricool to give you the facts behind what actually is working here now and today. This is episode number 345 of the Mindful Marketing Podcast, where I'm helping you scroll less, connect more, and grow together. But first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio and the video, it is like Chef's Kiss magical, making the entire process so, so easy. Plus, I love their magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it. My resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today. The links in the show notes and make sure to use my code, DREA D R E A at checkout to get 15% off your membership. I'm geeking out in this episode because y'all know I love to look at the data. And especially when it comes to marketing, there's a lot of feelings involved, especially social media marketing. It's so gosh darn public that we feel like everyone's judging us. Okay. And we also feel like, am I the only one? Like, why isn't this working for me? Or where should I focus my attention? Because this person says it's this platform, that person says it's that platform. So we're going to get into the facts today of what's working, and that's why I love this study. Metro Cool is the tool that I recommend for social media scheduling and analytics. And I just love it. I just love it. Okay, so I will put the link to this study in the show notes as well, if you want to take a gander and a peek and a look for yourself. But just to frame where we are, this is not the first time they've done this study. And in fact, in previous episodes I've gone over the data. Also, side note, if you're watching the video, I'm looking at my screen a lot because I'm looking at the data. Okay, okay. So in this study, they looked at 20, 24 as a whole, and they looked at over 21 million posts across eight different platforms. LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, X, Instagram, YouTube. I'm missing one. Facebook ads. They looked at a lot of places and they studied the results of what is working and what is not, based on comparing the platforms to themselves and the posts to themselves as well. So it's a lot of data points that we're looking at, but specifically, Meta is dominating this data. So I do want to put that as a caveat. Instagram posts and Facebook posts and accounts tend to dominate a lot of the data. In fact, most of the data comes from those two places. Um, kind of in the middle of the road. We do have TikTok, LinkedIn and YouTube still have some pretty high results there. With the bottom of this study looking at X. Oh, Twitch is the one I forgot earlier in Pinterest. Um, so when we're looking at all of this, these data points, just keep in mind that Meta, Facebook, Instagram is dominating. Also, keep in mind threads isn't on here. There isn't a lot of data points from threads specifically. It's just the way that they share their data. It's not like that. Um, so I'm hoping in future studies, Met Pool includes threads in this data as well. And of course, some of the newer platforms like Blue sky or some of the TikTok competitors like Clapper or Eliminate aren't in this study as well. There's just not enough people on there for that to make sense. The other thing to note with this study is they kind of categorize things based on account size, which I really appreciate, because when we look at strategies and apply them to different accounts, a strategy that works for an account with 50,000 followers isn't going to be the same when you have 500 followers. Okay, so I do like that they broke it down into five different categories. Tiny accounts have less than 500 followers. Small accounts have between 500 and 2,000. Medium accounts have between 2,000 and 10,000. Big accounts are 10,000 to 50,000. And then huge accounts are over 50,000 followers. Okay, so they are looking at community size when it comes to some of these platforms. All right, so overall, in 2024, clicks on Pinterest did increase. This is Pinterest increased by 55%, which I found interesting on Twitch. Subscriptions decreased by 88%. That we'll see later that views still increase. But subscriptions, people subscribing to Twitch channels Drastically decreased last year, which is interesting. I think that's because of YouTube, which we'll see later. LinkedIn interactions increase increased on average by 99%. 99%. This is why I recently did the LinkedIn challenge. I'm all about, like I've been doing it for seven years. LinkedIn has consistently increased in the data showing. There's just a lot happening on that platform right now. X we saw a lot of decreases over the past year or two, but most interestingly, impressions have increased by half. 50%. Instagram, your post reach has increased by by 21%. Excuse me, Reels reach has decreased by 20%. So your regular post, we're talking like a static post or carousel post, has increased in reach. Reels has decreased, though we'll see later that reels still dominates as one of the most interactive post styles. Facebook post reach has decreased by 41% and Reels Reach has increased by 13%. Lastly, TikTok, or sorry, second to last TikTok, average watch time still has increased by 71%. Okay. Versus what it was in 2023. So TikTok, despite the threat of being banned, people are still watching it even more than they were the previous year. And then on YouTube, engagement specifically dislikes has gone up by 11%. Okay, so that was kind of like their highlight reel of. Here's what you can expect. Now let's get into the key metrics. The key metrics. So generally speaking, based on this data, the larger your audience, the better the results. So the more followers you have, the better results you will get in terms of views and engagement. That is still true based on this study. I will be curious to see though how this turns out with 2025's data because platforms like Meta specifically Adam Mosseri has shared that followers are becoming less and less important and we're looking at views as a metric of success. That being said, it seems like the algorithms are still favoring accounts who have more followers versus ones that don't. So the data is showing that, you know, if you want to reach more people, you kind of larger need a larger community, which, you know, it's a chicken in the egg scenario. But here we are. Okay, let's look at generationally. So a lot of people claim that, you know, baby boomers are not on social or Gen Zed is not on social. Sorry, Gen Z is not. Keep saying Zed, y'all. Because here in Canada we say Zed instead of Z. And my toddler, she's almost three, is correcting me whenever I say Z. Because I'm US born and raised, been in Canada for 10 years. But if I say, like, XYZ, she'll be like, no, mom, it's Zed. And I'm like, oh, okay. Excuse me. Anyways, Gen Z, Gen Z, whatever. They're on the socials. Okay, they're on the socials. But let's break it down by platform. I'm going to give you a few highlights here. Interestingly enough, Millennials, we are on all the social medias, and I'm not. I'm not surprised by it, but when I saw the data, I was like, oh, we're equally everywhere. Gen X is not far behind with that. With most of Gen X being on every platform, though they're not as. As fond of TikTok as well. Facebook still is the platform for baby boomers, but do not let anyone say that no one's on Facebook. Facebook is still the platform with the most people. So when we look at the data, you know Facebook has over 3 billion accounts, right? So when we look at the data, whenever someone says, oh, Facebook doesn't matter, it's like, okay, you're comparing 3 billion accounts though. So yes, engagement and post reach and things may be down, but like, if we look at the data, it's like, okay, so it's down compared to Facebook, but it's so much higher than other platforms. So keep that in mind. Also, interestingly, baby boomers are on LinkedIn, secondarily after Facebook. So if that is your target demo, Facebook and LinkedIn are great for baby boomers. Skip Twitch and skip TikTok. If you're a baby boomer, Gen X pretty much everywhere, though, mostly on Facebook and YouTube. Um, the platform that they're least on is Twitch, followed by TikTok. Millennials, we are everywhere. Almost equally as much, though, interestingly enough, I keep saying that because I find this data fascinating. LinkedIn, millennials. We're on the LinkedIn. It kind of makes sense because we're like most of the job force right now, aren't we? I don't know if I'm lying about that, but a lot on LinkedIn. But honestly, this is almost neck and neck with Facebook, Instagram and X. We're everywhere. Okay, Jin, Zed, mostly on Twitch, which is interesting. They're there. They have the least presence. Should I say that on Facebook? So Jin said, not really using Facebook that much. Not really using LinkedIn that much. Understandable. They like the Twitch, they like the TikTok, they like Instagram, they like YouTube, but not really anywhere else. Okay. So let's dive into the next one they have on here, which is growing your account. So if you want to grow your account and you have less than 500 followers, according to this study, the platform that you should be on is Instagram. So tiny accounts, less than 500 followers. See that? Most success on Instagram followed by YouTube. And I want to mention that because there's going to be a Trend here with YouTube in this entire report. So Instagram followed by YouTube. So keep that in mind if you're starting from scratch, if you're starting from scratch, you have less than 500 followers. Facebook is at the bottom of the list. Don't even try it. It's gonna be really hard to grow that account. Okay, so that's interesting. Okay, now generally speaking, for the rest of us, YouTube is the way to go. Okay, so looking at the rest of the accounts, like excluding small accounts, because small accounts, it's clearly Instagram, but looking at the rest counts, YouTube is the fastest way to grow subscribers, followers, whatever, by leaps and bounds over everyone else. It's followed by Instagram, followed by TikTok. Okay, they're not that far apart. 41% for YouTube, 39% for Instagram, 34% for TikTok. But YouTube is clearly the winner here. All of these platforms are highly focused on video. So just note that again, Facebook's at the bottom. Like even X is above Facebook right now as far in terms of follower. So keep that in mind. If you're looking to start a new strategy, you may want to consider YouTube or maybe even Instagram or maybe even TikTok. But YouTube is the fastest growing for all accounts. Now let's take a look at the accounts specifically and what you can expect as you're diving into growing your accounts and what the data is saying there. So first up, we're going to look at small accounts. So tiny and small accounts. If you have less than 2,000 followers, YouTube, the average impressions per follower has increased by over 600% for small accounts. So less than 2,000 followers. Less than 2,000 subscribers. Impressions per follower has increased quite significantly. From 2023 to 2024. We saw decreases on TikTok and massive decreases on Reels. So again the data is showing if you Want to Grow, YouTube is where it's at, followed by TikTok and Reels. If you have a mid size account. This particular example is looking at 2,000 to 50,000 followers. YouTube still has the highest average impressions per follower, again over 600%, followed by TikTok, followed by Reels specifically, but those are both showing decreases year over year, impressions per follower. So what that basically means is based on the number of followers you have, the impressions per follower is increasing on YouTube and it's decreasing everywhere else. So your content is more likely to be seen on YouTube. It's leading the way for visibility. But TikTok and Instagram Reels are positioned as another solid option. I'll put a little asterisk on this to say at the beginning of this year in 2025, Adam Mosseri said Instagram is kind of deprioritizing reels a little bit and focusing in on carousel posts. Okay, so the data for this next year is going to change based on how Instagram is kind of guiding their algorithm, even though this past data is showing that that's the case. So it'll be interesting to see that. I think it's. It's curious because Instagram is fighting so hard to be like the alternative for TikTok. But I've said here on this podcast before, and I'll say it again, YouTube is the clear choice for this. X LinkedIn and its Instagram stories are actually showing that if you grow more followers, the. The impressions on your post don't actually increase for those platforms. Okay. So you may see this as you're growing your LinkedIn followers, your ex followers, your Instagram followers. As you grow them, you may not see your stories, your. Your posts, your X posts necessarily grow as well. I thought that was interesting. All right, so we looked at followers and impressions. Now let's look at interactions and engagement, because we all know it's not about just people seeing our content. We want people to kind of have a reaction to it. We want them to signal to us that they're interested in some way. And engagement is oftentimes the best way to do this. So right now, interactions per follower, leading platform by leaps and bounds is YouTube still YouTube interactions per follower. And they're kind of lumping in a bunch of interactions here as well. But overall interactions per follower is increased, followed by TikTok. TikTok's not is kind of far behind. So, and this is looking at, sorry, accounts with less than 2000 followers for this specific data. Actually, no. Whether you have less than 2000, they broke it down in the study. So less than 2,000 or 2,000 to 50,000. Honestly, the data is not that different. YouTube is winning by leaps and bounds as far as engagement goes. It's just dominating with interaction. So especially accounts with larger followers. There's a significant advantage here on the average interaction per follower. Okay, so average interaction per follower massively increased on all platforms, specifically YouTube. The next in line is TikTok here. So it goes YouTube, TikTok. And then if you have a smaller account, it's LinkedIn, but if you have over 2,000 followers, it's Instagram reels. Okay, so what that tells me is, again, if you're starting from scratch, YouTube and TikTok are great for those interactions. Then LinkedIn or potentially Instagram reels here. Okay, don't worry about X. Facebook is very challenging right now. It's like consistently at the bottom of the list. We're not. Pinterest isn't even on this list, and neither is Twitch. Okay, so, yeah, it looks like X and Facebook reels are actually going backwards in terms of interactions here, which is wild. All right, next, let's look at engagement. Okay, so we looked at interactions, which they define as like, comment or share. And then engagement. Specifically engagement rate, we're looking at here, which is total interactions divided by reach. Okay, so we're not just looking at interactions by itself in a bubble. We're looking at engagement rate. So how many people watch this, this video versus how many people liked it or engaged with it? Engagement rate, I think, is important because it does take into account your community size. It does take an account your potential for engagement as well. Because oftentimes, you know, we see these videos, they go viral and all of that. But we don't necessarily want to have videos just randomly go viral with people actually not engaging with them. Okay. It's not just the views. It's how people interact with that post itself. Okay, so engagement rate, which platform saw increases, And I'm going to look at this is broken down into two categories. Again, if you have less than 2,000 followers, LinkedIn engagement rate has actually increased quite a bit by 14% since 2023. Followed by, surprisingly, Facebook posts. Facebook post engagement rate has increased if you have less than 2,000 followers. Okay. Now, if you have between 2,000 and 50,000 followers, LinkedIn engagement rate still is at the top there, followed by Facebook posts. But I want to mention Instagram reels here because that has also increased. So if you have an account between 250,000 followers. Sorry, 200,000 to 50,000 followers, those are the platforms to look at. On the bottom of the list for both of these is YouTube. So while YouTube, we're seeing the higher your community is, the more they interact, and we're seeing it's EAS to grow. Overall, it looks like people aren't as engaged on YouTube as they were in previous years. My theory behind this is YouTube TV. So a lot of people are watching YouTube now on bigger screens. And I think my theory again is that the, the community element of YouTube is actually not as big as it used to be. Like commenting and liking on YouTube videos used to be a bigger deal than it is now. A lot of people like to just watch, they like to just consume the video. And so I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing of engagement rate going down, but I did want to note that YouTube is on the bottom of this list like engagement rates. So the number of engagements you get per view has decreased year over year. All right, now let's talk about conversions. People click in, people taking action. Because it's not always just about visibility. We want people to take the next step. Now when we look at clicks, clicks per post, specifically LinkedIn, if you have an account less than 2,000 followers, LinkedIn, you're getting 23 clicks per post on average. And if you have 2,000 to 50,000 followers, you're getting 156 clicks per post on average. So LinkedIn is converting the most when it comes to clicks, followed by Facebook posts, followed by Pinterest. Okay, so I found that quite interesting that when we're thinking about, you know, attracting our community, YouTube, Instagram Reels and TikTok posts are dominating that category. When we think about converting though, LinkedIn, Facebook posts and Pinterest is dominating that category. I will say this though, this is me adding color to the facts here of this study. I have seen time and time again platforms like Pinterest drive the most traffic, right? When I look at the report surface level, I'm like, oh my gosh, look at all this beautiful traffic coming in from Pinterest. However, when you dig into the data deeper, the time on the page is shorter and then actions after that traffic lands on your page is almost non existent. So you do want to peel back the layers of your own data a little bit more and be a little bit critical about it. It so you know, Pinterest again, clicks for posts. You know you're getting more than other platforms. But how valuable are those clicks? Are they actually signing up for things on your website? Are they converting on page? Are they doing something on page? Also, Pinterest just tends to be so far at the top of people's buying decision. Like they're so early in the buying process that it can be challenging to make a decision based on Pinterest activity. Not saying don't do it. I'm just saying the data is harder to track. A few other so as I wrap up, I want to share a few other interesting things that they noted in this study. These aren't like interconnected ideas at all and I'm not going to share all of the things that they put kind of in the back half of the study. I just want to share the things that I think would be most interesting to you, dear Listener. Okay, Pinterest is an interesting platform because Pinterest actually seems to be having a little bit of a resurgence. I think I've shared this on here before, but my sister actually watches her videos on Pinterest. Like she'll send me Pinterest videos. I'm like, I saw this on TikTok like two months ago. But okay, cute. So there's a dedicated community over there. Over 500 million monthly active users on Pinterest, 42% are Gen Z. Okay, so largest segment of that platform is Gen Z. Keep in mind though, it just tends to be so early in the buying process. Okay, I mentioned Twitch earlier and how their subscriptions are down by 88%. But most interestingly is that there are more accounts on Twitch. So people are still signing up for Twitch accounts. They are still watching, they're just not subscribing. And this goes again into my prediction of in my predictions episode that I recorded what, like four months, five months ago now, is that subscribers and follower numbers aren't going to be as important in this next evolution of social media. People don't necessarily need to follow or subscribe to see your content because the algorithm is just going to serve it up to them anyway. So I think that's an interesting thing to note for Twitch. Specifically, also noted for Twitch, there's not as much content going out as well, so people aren't posting as frequently as they used to. Which I thought that was interesting. A couple significant Twitch live streamers have also just switched over to YouTube. So again, it feels like the writing is on the wall for YouTube. This feels like my sign, y'all. If my next episode is like my brand new YouTube strategy, you know what happened? I looked at the data and was like, let's, let's dive on in. All right. LinkedIn. LinkedIn data is just up across the board. Clicks up by 122%. Interactions, like I said earlier, up by 99%. Engagement up by 51%. Average impressions up by 33%. They're just having a winning year. So if LinkedIn is on your dream board, go for it, they also passed 1.5 billion profiles with about 310 million of them being active at least once a month. Okay. Interestingly though, posting frequency has gone down about 25% year over year. So posting less and getting more traction. Y'all know I'm on board. I'm on board. OX X, formerly known as Twitter. They're trying really hard to have a comeback and they're seeing some success. Impressions up by 50%. Clicks up by 30%, but engagements down by 30%. Okay, so not as much engagement, but they are seeing more clicks and more impressions. I think there's a lot of feelings about that platform. I know I for sure have one. Instagram. Oh, I love. I have such a love hate relationship with Instagram right now. But if you feel like your reach is all messed up, you're not alone. So Instagram has made this switch and actually the data is showing that they may have made their algorithmic switch earlier because posts, regular posts reaches up by 21%, but reels reach is down by 20%. So actually that to me looks like an like, if I, If I were to like, sneak peek on their algorithm code, I'd be like, I see it. There's. If I could read code. Anyways, it'll be interesting to see how that changes over the next year. I think they're just trying to balance out their algorithm a little bit and it makes sense for them to have a more balanced approach with posts versus reels. I really wish they would just combine everything already because it's annoying to have all these different types of places to post, but here we are. Also, if you feel like your engagement is down, the data is showing engagement is kind of down as far as comments and likes go. But when we look at other types of engagement, shares and saves are up by 6%. So take that for what you will. And this report is broken down by post versus reels again. So I'm trying to like, just glance and summarize for you, but read the full report. But they note here that if you were to decide between a post or a reel, reels are still offering better results when compared to posts. Reels still get 52% more views and 34% more interactions on average. Okay. I mean, use your own data. But reels are still getting more views and more interactions when compared to posts. Again, I think that will change over the year, but it'll be interesting to see. Stories just continues to drop. Impressions are down by 7%, reaches down by 7%. And posting frequency, people are posting Less frequency down by 33%. All right, let's take a look at Facebook. Just downward trends all around, but they're still like, they have so much impact on everything. With the most user, 3 billion. So, you know, Reels Reach is up by 13%, but everything else is down. Post reach, post frequency, real frequency. Even though the there is a decline, they still have so many users. And what I will say is this data on this report doesn't take groups into account. And the way my algorithm is, my whole Facebook feed is groups. That's just where I spend my time. So it kind of makes sense. I rarely see pages. I see some posts from people I follow personally, but most of my stuff is groups. Okay. TikTok, I know people are like, oh, TikTok is dying, but honestly reaches up by 70%. Watch time by by 71%. Engagement is down though, by 17%. So if you feel like your engagement is down, it's not you boo. Everyone is kind of experiencing the same thing. When we look at 2023 versus 2024, we're curious, we're curious over here to see what this ban will do. I love me some TikTok and I don't want it to disappear. So we'll, we'll see what happens. But you know, there's still one of the big guns in this world of social media platforms. With over 1 billion monthly active users, when compared to Instagram, TikTok impressions are increased by 84%. So that means if you post the same video on TikTok and Instagram, all things remaining equal, more people are going to see your TikTok video versus your Instagram reel. Okay, so I mean still post to both places, but keep in mind, you may see more traction on TikTok. I will say, with my data very anecdotally, YouTube shorts still continues to be the biggest contender here. And there's. This is my writing on the wall again. I should really focus in on YouTube, but YouTube is just up across the board. Speaking of, that's what's next on here. Views up by 8%, but dislikes oddly up by 11%. Engagement is down though, by 13% on that platform. Still a lot of people. 2.7 billion monthly active users. But being that it is a video platform, people engage with the platform a little bit differently than they would their Facebook or their, you know, threads or their Instagram. But according to Meta's Data, users watch 200 billion Reels per day. And right now, YouTube Shorts is growing. It's up to 30 billion daily plays okay, so 30 billion. Oh, sorry, 30 billion. That was 2021. It's 90 billion in 2024. So Instagram Reels still getting more daily views, but YouTube is, it's increasing for shorts. I still think people see YouTube as the long form content platform and even when you go to, you know, YouTube home screen, it's still promoting mostly the long form video. So that kind of makes sense. But again, I, I see shorts kind of having their, their day in the sun coming up very soon. I know my husband watches videos on YouTube shorts and again, he'll send them to me and I'm like, I saw this on TikTok two weeks ago, but good for you, YouTube shorts. Okay, that was a lot of data. As we wrap up, I do want to share some of their best practices at Metricool because I feel like they really do have a really good insight on a lot of the industry trends with this data and a lot of their things I agree with. So first they say niche all the way down. It looks like the accounts that stand out the most have a very specific niche. Very specific either style or trend or group of people that they go after. So in this report, for example, they're sharing a gardening account with 2.6 million followers on TikTok, and it's all about gardening. Okay, that's a niche. They have another one that's a crochet and knitting account all about that specific niche. Okay, so when you think about the accounts that are standing out their niche, they also create high value content. A high value content. People want to see examples, tips and tricks, give us the whole thing in the actual video. And I've been talking about this a lot because I think as business owners, sometimes we like to tease and tantalize because we want people to buy our thing, which is great and all, and there's a time and a place for that. But when we think about us as humans, how frustrating is it to watch a video where they're like, okay, we're going to share three tips on how to do this. Here's one. But for the other two, you have to go to our website like, okay, I'm scrolling, right? So we don't want to do that. We want our, our content to be a complete thought when it comes to its presentation in social media and in your marketing. Humor still going all the way up. Humor is especially for short form. Video seems to be the way to go. Even more serious. Putting that in air quotes. Serious accounts like car salesman's auto shop repair people like, we're Seeing that when they add the humor to their posts. Posts. We love it. We. We. We share it. We like it. And so that is still doing very well. And then if you find a formula that works, keep doing the formula. I keep seeing people do this. I personally have a really hard time with this. Like, I'm not. I don't. I don't like to be super repetitive, but when you see a formula that works. So, for example, I'm thinking of the TikTok food critic, Keith Lee. Oh, my God. I just told, like, my mind totally blanked on his name. Anyways, when I think about Keith Lee and, like, his style of video, he landed on something that just works. And so he does that repetitively, like the framing, the way that he edits. Yes, he goes to different locations to critique his food, but, like, as someone watching his videos, I know what to expect, and I look forward to his style of videos. And it really stands out to me. And I. Because of that, I'm more willing to watch beginning to end. And the algorithm loves video completion, so we want that beautiful video completion rate to be top of mind. But that's what works when it comes to creating content online, is having a formula that people kind of come to expect, and then they watch it time and time again. Let's see. I think they have two more things that I want to talk about in here. Um, one is my tried and true advice of, like, reposting to various accounts. They looked at this account called Pizzoart. Anyways, it's a pizza account. Pizza of art, I guess. It's just pizza. Anyways, they looked at a video posted on Instagram, got 1.8 million views. The same video on TikTok, 1.1 million views. Okay, so we're looking at Instagram versus TikTok. The exact same videos still getting millions and millions of views across both channels. So repost. Repost. And, yeah, repost again. All right, friends, that is the deep dive into the metricool 2025 social media study. I love the data. I hope you did, too. If you did send me a DM on Instagram, I also love a good voice note DM and say, oh, my gosh, that data was smexy. And although you came in here from the podcast, coming up next on the show, you know, I release these episodes every Tuesday, y'all, and it's just a lot of fun, and I hope you'll continue to join me. So next Tuesday, I have Trang Nova to come on. She's going to talk about. About speaking and presence. And especially if you're someone like me who's, like, very introverted and, like, put me in front of real people and, like, I don't know what to do with my hands and my pits are sweating. You'll want to come to this session. She even talks about how to translate that into online content as well. So that will be next Tuesday's episode. Also, if you're not in the mindful marketing lab, come on in and join us. We have stuff happening all the dang time. Like, for instance, next week we're having having Meg Case Bolt come in and do an SEO keyword research session for us, which, again, if YouTube is your thing, you'll want to come to Meg session. She just did an audit for me, and my top YouTube video has 55,000 views. Okay, this is my. Y'all are experiencing it here on the podcast for the first time. This is my sign to get all the way serious about YouTube. Anyways, she didn't audit and she did keyword research for me. So I have all these lists of key keywords that I can do to create my YouTube videos. And so it's been so helpful, I just sit down and record them. And so that's what I need to do next. If you want that magic of Meg's brain, come to this session. It's only for lab members. Go to onlinedre.com lab and come on in and join us and get all the perks of unlimited strategy support courses and workbooks and training materials and custom GPTs and all of it. All of it. I'll see you in the lab. I'll see you on the podcast next week. That's all for today. Bye for now.
The Mindful Marketing Podcast: Episode Summary
Title: The Data Behind Social Media Success in 2025
Host: Andréa Jones
Release Date: February 18, 2025
In episode 345 of The Mindful Marketing Podcast, host Andréa Jones delves into a comprehensive study conducted by Metricool, focusing on the latest data that reveals what strategies are driving social media success in 2025. Andréa emphasizes her passion for data-driven marketing, aiming to provide listeners with factual insights to navigate the ever-evolving social media landscape.
Notable Quote:
“I love to look at the data. And especially when it comes to marketing, there's a lot of feelings involved, especially social media marketing.”
— Andréa Jones [02:30]
Andréa begins by summarizing Metricool's extensive analysis, which examined over 21 million posts across eight platforms: LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and Pinterest. The study categorizes accounts based on follower counts, ranging from tiny (less than 500) to huge (over 50,000 followers), providing a nuanced understanding of how different strategies perform at various scales.
Key Highlights:
Notable Quote:
“Meta, Facebook, Instagram is dominating. And just keep in mind that Threads isn't on here...”
— Andréa Jones [05:20]
The study breaks down social media usage by generational cohorts, dispelling common myths about platform preferences:
Notable Quote:
“Facebook still is the platform for baby boomers, but do not let anyone say that no one's on Facebook.”
— Andréa Jones [12:45]
Andréa discusses optimal growth strategies based on account size:
Notable Quote:
“YouTube is clearly the winner here. All of these platforms are highly focused on video.”
— Andréa Jones [15:30]
Engagement metrics reveal how audiences interact with content differently across platforms:
Notable Quote:
“YouTube is still dominating with interaction, especially accounts with larger followers.”
— Andréa Jones [22:10]
Conversion rates, measured by clicks per post, highlight platforms that effectively drive user action:
Notable Quote:
“LinkedIn is converting the most when it comes to clicks, followed by Facebook posts, followed by Pinterest.”
— Andréa Jones [30:05]
Andréa offers detailed observations on each platform's performance:
Notable Quote:
“Reels are still offering better results compared to posts, with 52% more views and 34% more interactions on average.”
— Andréa Jones [38:50]
Drawing from the study, Andréa shares actionable strategies to enhance social media performance:
Niche Down: Focus on specific topics or audiences to stand out. Example: A gardening account with 2.6 million TikTok followers.
Create High-Value Content: Deliver complete and actionable content without redirecting users elsewhere.
Incorporate Humor: Especially effective in short-form videos to increase shares and likes.
Maintain Consistent Formulas: Develop recognizable content patterns that keep audiences engaged and coming back.
Repurpose Content: Efficiently use successful content across multiple platforms to maximize reach.
Notable Quote:
“Humor is especially for short-form. Video seems to be the way to go.”
— Andréa Jones [45:15]
Andréa wraps up the episode by reflecting on the study's insights and teasing upcoming content:
Notable Quote:
“If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today.”
— Andréa Jones [01:15:30]
YouTube is the Leading Platform for Growth: Especially for accounts with significant follower counts, offering superior impressions and interactions.
LinkedIn and Facebook are Prime for Conversions: Effective for driving actionable clicks, particularly within professional and older demographics.
Niche Content and High-Value Posts Drive Engagement: Specialized content coupled with comprehensive, actionable information fosters higher audience interaction.
Adapt to Platform Trends: Stay informed about algorithm changes and user behavior shifts to optimize content strategy effectively.
This episode serves as a crucial guide for marketers aiming to refine their social media strategies in 2025. By leveraging Metricool's data-driven insights, Andréa equips listeners with the knowledge to prioritize platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn, while also highlighting the importance of niche content and high-value engagement. As social media continues to evolve, staying informed and adaptable remains key to sustained marketing success.