Revealed: The current state of social media in SA

Yesterday, new data revealed the latest social media numbers in South Africa and of course Facebook is still leading as the country’s number one social media platform. In South Africa, the use of social media has grown a huge amount in the past year, especially Facebook; it is also proving to be quite successful for marketers! Statistics show the click-through rate on the site has grown from 48% in 2013 to 64% this year.

Some of the other bigger winners beneath Facebook are YouTube, Twitter and MXit with LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+ close behind.  The two social media platforms that increased their user bases the most since last year are YouTube and Instagram, with YouTube increasing by 53% and Instagram increasing by 65% and guess what the most-used hashtag in the country is #CapeTown!

One of the biggest losers is shown to be our good old, home grown social media network MXIt, despite the fact that MXit’s thunder seems to have been stolen over the past few years it still has 4.9 million active users every month in South Africa. On Average a MXit user will log on five times a day and spend 105 minutes per day on the social media.

 Another declining social media platform is Pinterest, there is a massive drop from 910 000 users in 2013 to 840 000 users this year, that’s a downfall of about 70 000 users! Surprisingly the most popular user on Pinterest from South Africa has a massive global following of 800 000 people, so don’t forget about Pinterest just yet!

But at this stage Facebook is still the king of all the social media platforms with 11.8 million users, that’s 22% of the country’s population, pretty impressive right!  

Take a look at World Wide Worx’ latest social media statistics for South Africa:

Social Media Stats
Facebook	11.8 million
YouTube	7.2 million
Twitter	6.6 million
Mxit	4.9 million
LinkedIn	3.8 million
Instagram	1.1 million
Pinterest	840 000
Google+	Unknown

If you’re looking for a company to help you with branding and social media solutions, The Computer Guyz have offices located in Centurion and Cape Town and are your best bet. You don’t have to struggle to figure out how the social media scene works, they offer solutions to help you create your brand and get noticed quickly.

Written By: Christine Romans

Copy Writer at The Computer Guyz Cape Town