Author: Franz Malten Buemann

As the world becomes increasingly digital, marketing efforts are also effectively shifted from traditional channels to online platforms.  Email marketing, in particular, has been a go-to strategy for marketers looking to reach their audience cost-effectively and efficiently. However, with the rise of voice assistants, a new form of email marketing is emerging: voice-based email marketing.…
The post The Rise of Voice-Based Email Marketing: Opportunities and Challenges for Brands appeared first on Benchmark Email.

As a #marketing marketing professional, I would like to share my experiences with #GoogleBard, which I had the chance to use during the Beta process. First of all, Bard’s strongest point against #chatgpt is that it uses real-time data. It looks like #Bard will be at the top when it comes to accessing accurate information and daily work. I think you need to write the prompts more carefully since it is in beta phase. Make sure you clearly state your request. It was a weak feature of ChatGPT that it was repetitive in creative text, we see this much less on the Bard side. Bard, which I think will go to much better places over time, is a strong teammate you can use 😊 submitted by /u/Dinazzor [link] [comments]

We put this tool together to help you automate media production. Processing video 8prui8cxu8xa1… submitted by /u/james_daily2 [link] [comments]

In 2019, we introduced sabbaticals at Buffer. The concept is to reward long-tenured teammates and invite them to take a well-earned break from work. Most professionals have to leave their jobs to take a break longer than a typical one- or two-week vacation. Sabbaticals allow teammates to take that break and return to Buffer, refreshed and recharged. This is one of our most cherished benefits for this reason. When a teammate reaches five years with us, they are eligible to take this fully-paid six-week sabbatical from their work, which they can use for travel, a side project, or simply for rest and family time. It starts as a six-week break, but if teammates delay their sabbatical by a year or two, then they can add another week to the break per year delayed, with the sabbatical capped at eight weeks total. But what happens when someone on the team is eligible for a sabbatical but they don’t get to use it before their chapter at Buffer comes to an end? Maybe they find a new role that’s a better fit, or maybe it wasn’t working out at Buffer and they are let go. What happens to their sabbatical time? We’ve decided to pay out earned sabbatical time to any teammate who has an unused sabbatical. This initially started in 2021, when we started paying out earned sabbatical time on top of severance pay if a teammate was let go. We recently introduced a new element to this — now we pay out earned sabbatical time even if a teammate leaves voluntarily. Here’s more about why we’re paying out sabbaticals, what it looks like, and even what it costs.  Why we’re paying out sabbaticalsThe short answer is that it feels like the right thing to do.Sabbaticals are earned by teammates who have been on the team for five years — a long tenure in the tech world! And it represents a big chunk of a career. The sabbatical is a special benefit for that reason; it’s currently the only “perk” that applies only to our long-tenured teammates. (Every other benefit we offer kicks in within the first month of a new teammate joining.)It didn’t feel right to have someone move on from Buffer having earned that benefit without being able to enjoy it. Um, sabbaticals sound rad! Why would someone delay it?You may be wondering why we would need to pay out a sabbatical. Why wouldn’t teammates take their sabbaticals right at the five-year mark? There are two reasons: A teammate might delay their sabbatical past the five-year mark because of personal choice. It may fall over a winter and they’d rather take the time off in the summer, for example. Or it may not be a convenient time for a teammate for other personal reasons. Some folks try to align their sabbaticals with their partner’s work schedules, or their kids’ school schedules.Alternatively, a teammate may have delayed their sabbatical because the five-year mark was not convenient for Buffer. We are still a small team, so we ask area teams to arrange their schedules such that only one teammate is out on sabbatical at a time. We also ask those who are planning sabbaticals to organize around any family leaves that may be coming up within the area-level team as well. After all, family leaves cannot be delayed!All that to say, there are various reasons why someone who is at six- or seven-years tenured may not have taken a sabbatical. We don’t want teammates who choose to leave to lose this well-earned thank-you from Buffer. The benefits of paying out sabbaticalsThere are two benefits we’ve seen with this new approach. First, it rewards and honors long-tenured teammates who choose to leave without taking their sabbatical. Sometimes teammates leave the workforce for personal reasons, or perhaps they get a professional opportunity that they can’t turn down. In any case, we are now happy to give this as a final thank-you for all of the hard work and years spent building Buffer.Secondly, this also allows teammates to resign and move on instead of taking their sabbatical on their way out. Sabbaticals are meant to be a season of rest for a teammate who plans to return to their role refreshed. We believe in this deeply, but it does require some sacrifices from their teammates who take on the extra work. If a teammate resigns shortly after sabbatical, the team is forced to begin the process to hire their replacement or reorganize work many weeks later than they could have begun that process, if they had known it was not temporary. It’s a kindness for a teammate to simply resign instead of delaying that work. This policy allows teammates to do just that without losing this benefit. How sabbatical pay works in practice“Sabbatical pay” is the full amount of what a teammate would have earned during their six to eight week sabbatical. This includes the teammate’s base salary, their dependent grant, and for some of our longest tenured teammates, an extra salary boost that some chose in lieu of more stock options. (You can see our full salary formula on our salaries page.) When teammates leave Buffer for any reason without using their earned sabbatical, we include this full sabbatical pay as part of their final paycheck. What does it cost to pay out sabbaticals?This is a financial undertaking, of course. Over the last few years we’ve paid out four sabbaticals, and the average sabbatical payout is $32,000. But we believe it’s the best thing we can do to generously honor our tenured teammates who choose to move on from Buffer, as well as to support the rest of the team who plan to stay. However, we’ve found that we don’t need to explicitly budget for paying out sabbaticals. As our head of Finance explained it to me, the ongoing cost of that salary falls away on their last day, so we are fronting their pay for a few months. Even if we backfill the role in a few months, it ends up being a net zero budget impact.All in all, this allows us to stay true to our values and reward people who have invested a significant portion of their careers into Buffer.

Artificial intelligence will change how businesses operate. At this point, that statement won’t surprise you.
In fact, AI’s impact on the workplace is already happening.
62% of business leaders have already invested in AI and automation tools for their employees, according to our State of Artificial Intelligence survey.
What’s more, 65% of survey respondents believe AI innovations will be comparable to the industrial revolution.
At its core, this means one big thing for the future of business: Marketing, sales, and service professionals now have more time to work on complex, higher-impact work. AI enables creativity and innovation to supersede tedious and redundant tasks.
Hours spent drafting professional emails, creating marketing reports, coding, and much more will be replaced by time spent on deeper work: work that better enables you to learn about your email readers, strategize based on pre-synthesized data, and plan stronger web or product experiences for your customers.
But how, specifically, will you see AI impact businesses in 2023? Here are just a few ways AI’s already changing the workplace, according to our State of AI survey of 1,350 U.S. professionals.

How AI Will Revolutionize the Future of Business, According to HubSpot’s CMO
1. AI will enable you to obsess over your customers.
At Inbound 2022, we discussed the crisis of disconnection facing businesses today. Many SMBs are trying to find new ways to connect with customers in a hybrid world and rely on cobbled-point solutions that don’t reliably connect their customer data in an efficient, streamlined way.
AI is one of the most compelling solutions to the crisis of disconnection when it comes to understanding our customers.
Business leaders agree. Our research found a whopping 63% of business professionals feel that AI already helps their employees understand their customers better.
AI can help you pull data from disparate sources into one single source of truth and glean unique insights about your customers that you otherwise might’ve missed.
But most importantly, it gives you the time to obsess over your customers again.
It gives your sales team time to genuinely connect with customers and work with them to identify how your products can solve for their unique needs.
It gives your support team the ability to focus on complex customer challenges rather than being bogged down by tickets that could be answered by a chatbot.
And it gives your leaders the insights they need to make more high-impact, powerful decisions that align with what matters most to your customers.

2. AI will automate data analysis for better decision-making.
One of the most time-consuming aspects of any leader’s job is wrangling the right data. It can take hours for a business leader, analyst, or marketer to analyze customer data and uncover meaningful insights, leaving less time to actually use it to make critical decisions. Not to mention, a manual data analysis process is inherently prone to human error.
Fortunately, predictive analytics — which uses machine learning algorithms, data mining, and statistical techniques to analyze large amounts of data and make powerful predictions about future trends or behaviors — can help streamline and supercharge your analytics processes.
There are three main benefits to leveraging AI for data analysis:

AI algorithms can discover patterns that might not be obvious to humans.
AI can learn from your data and improve its predictions over time.
You don’t have to do it yourself.

Smarter data ultimately means a more personalized customer experience. Truly understanding your customer data helps you improve how you engage with each individual prospect.
Additionally, predictive analytics can help each organization expand its reach. Sales leaders, for instance, can leverage AI-based insights to formulate reports, develop key account strategies, and build more powerful forecasts on their pipelines.
Among the leaders we surveyed, one-fourth reported the biggest benefit of AI is its ability to enable their employees to make better data-driven decisions.
My bet? The best leaders of the near future will see AI as an indispensable part of their reporting and analytics processes.

3. AI will reduce business costs and improve efficiency.
In today’s difficult economic climate, business leaders need to do more with less.
There are innumerable ways AI can help your business save money – 28% of business leaders have already found that AI helps their company cut costs.
For one, it will help automate time-consuming, manual tasks. For instance, many customer support reps need to spend extensive time responding to recurring questions from customers. By leveraging AI, you can automate responses to commonly asked questions, which frees up your support reps for more complex issues.
A full 91% of customer support reps who use AI say that chatbots already effectively respond to customer service requests.
Additionally, you can leverage AI for predictive maintenance. Run or work at a business that uses lots of equipment or machinery? AI can help businesses predict equipment failures so you can schedule maintenance before a breakdown, minimizing repair costs. Dealing with inventory issues? AI could help predict when or if inventory is running high or low to help prevent excess storage costs or other business waste.
Ultimately, AI will improve efficiencies across the business – all while enhancing the customer experience. On average, AI already saves the average employee 2.5 hours per day.
With all that extra time, your business and employees can scale a stronger human connection.
4. Business leaders will invest in new hires specifically trained in AI.
So the question on everyone’s mind is: Is AI going to steal my job?
The short answer: no. AI is more likely to optimize the impact of existing roles and create room for additional hiring opportunities.
On Google Trends, the term “prompt engineer” — which was practically non-existent at the start of 2023 — has risen rapidly, hitting peak popularity in early April.
Image Source
And our AI survey found that 66% of business leaders have already hired a new employee specifically to help with leveraging and implementing AI.
This number will only increase.
At HubSpot, we’ve created dedicated task forces across departments with the specific purpose of identifying how we should implement AI into our current processes across the organization.
Other businesses will do the same — either identifying internal employees who can focus on AI for their business, or hiring new AI experts or consultants to fill that need.
5. AI can help businesses detect fraud.
Another benefit of AI? It will make fraud detection easier for businesses of all sizes.
In 2022, 65% of businesses were victims of fraudulent attacks or attempts.
Fraud can be detrimental financially and legally for any business. Fraud is also increasingly challenging to detect as it becomes more sophisticated.
In 2023, businesses will increasingly leverage AI tools to detect and deter fraudulent activity. AI can point out anomalies in data, such as unusual spending behavior, which helps your employees identify potential fraudsters.
Additionally, AI can use data to make predictions on the likelihood that a particular transaction is fraudulent. Over time, AI algorithms will become better at detecting fraudulent activity, such as suspicious logins, odd transactions based on consumer behavior, or identity theft.

6. AI will help businesses build better products.
In the future, we’ll also begin to see business leaders leverage AI to uncover new product opportunities.
For instance, software engineers can use AI tools to sift through feedback, engagement, or other product usage data to determine which features they should improve on an existing product, or discover new product ideas based on gaps in their offerings.
But it goes beyond that. AI algorithms can also help you design your product.
Yep – you heard that right. AI will be able to analyze data on customer usage patterns, feedback, and preferences to provide you with invaluable insights necessary to create more user-friendly, engaging, effective products for your customers.
It will also help you speed up the product development process start-to-finish with rapid prototyping. AI algorithms can seamlessly and instantly provide different design options, so your team can quickly identify the most promising option and iterate in real-time.
Preparing for an Era of AI Disruption
AI is poised to disrupt virtually every industry. But it’s not something we need to fear.
The key to long-term growth and success is to evolve quickly with AI and accept it’s here to stay.
In the early stages of AI, you’ll want to remain focused on your highest priorities, and how your business can get the most out of AI. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can use AI on a tactical level, or get more original data in our State of AI Series, dive into our AI learning path, or download the offer below.

In 2023, having the right data can make or break your brand. But, for good reason, consumer data is harder than ever to get.
As data privacy regulations continue to tighten and third-party data channels are phased out, just 29% of consumers say they trust brands with their data.
While businesses should want the data of prospects and customers to be protected, some of the excess analytics that companies once used to pinpoint behaviors and preferences of target audiences will become inaccessible as we enter a more privacy-first world.

Today, more than ever, it’s up to brands to gain consumer trust, especially if they want to access the customer data needed to create effective and personalized experiences.
But – how do you do that when over half of consumers flat-out decline to share their data?
To help you build a data-gathering process that is effective, while also taking data safety and brand trust into account, we asked 600+ consumers what brands will need to do to make them feel more comfortable with sharing personal data.
How to Earn Trust When Gathering Data
Offering people control over their data, transparency into how it’s being used, and keeping data secure are all key to encouraging consumers to share data.
At the center of all of these considerations is building trust with consumers. Our survey found that 78% of people are more likely to share their data with a company they trust and 65% say trust is the determining factor in whether or not they choose to share personal information.
On top of that, 78% of consumers say they are more likely to buy from a company they trust with their data.
So let’s take a deeper dive into six steps you can take or consider in building trust with consumers (while still fulfilling your data needs). We’ll also look at the top incentives you can offer people for their data to create a mutually beneficial exchange.
1. Give Consumers the Power to Delete Their Data from Your Records
73% of consumers say they should have complete control over how companies use their data.
But right now, once they consent to sharing their data, consumers are mostly powerless to get it back. By letting consumers easily delete their personal data from your brand’s database at any time, you allow them to maintain a sense of ownership.
Empowering consumers in this way also allows them to hold companies accountable. If people decide they no longer support a brand or are concerned about how their data is being used, they can get it back in a flash.
With 46% of consumers saying this level of control would make them more comfortable sharing data with a company, it could significantly boost trust between the two parties.
2. Give Consumers the Choice to Opt-in (and Out)
The second way to make consumers comfortable with sharing data also comes back to control. All you have to do is ask whether or not consumers want to share their data.
Not only does it build trust, but you’ll also improve your data quality by collecting data from people who actually want to give it to you.
3. Emphasize How Data is Securely Stored
Another major concern consumers have with sharing data revolves around how securely it is stored. Especially when it comes to making purchases with credit cards or sharing sensitive personal data, it’s only natural to wonder what could go wrong if there was a breach.
Brands that can demonstrate their commitment to safeguarding consumer data will gain trust with their customers. By prioritizing data security, you create a trustworthy and safe environment that reassures consumers when it comes to sharing their personal information.
4. Clearly Explain How You Plan to Use Each Data Point
Another major concern consumers have is not knowing how their data is used. Without that knowledge, they can’t make an informed decision on whether or not to consent to it, so why would they?
41% of consumers say transparency on how their data is used will make them more likely to share it.
Especially if you’re using that data to benefit the consumer by improving your product or making their experience on your website more personalized, you should communicate that when asking for data.
Struggling to explain why you need a specific data point? This could mean you might not need it and can eliminate one of the data-gathering tasks from your process, and more importantly, avoid worrying consumers by asking them for way too much unnecessary information.
5. Explicitly Pledge to Never Sell Consumers’ Personal Data
At HubSpot, we don’t condone the selling of data and encourage you to build your own contact lists and data samples, especially when the data could be used by sales reps, email marketers or other entities that could make unwanted contact with your consumer.
Many consumers are very concerned about their data being resold to other companies. Suddenly they’re being bombarded with ads, phone calls, and emails from people they don’t know selling products they don’t want.
If you are or aren’t selling consumer data, make that explicitly clear. They should ideally know exactly where their data is going and be able to decline giving it if it could be sold to companies they might not know.
Additionally, if you’ll share data with ANYONE that isn’t part of your immediate company, note which companies the data could be shared with or link to a deeper page or document that goes into deeper transparency about which companies the data will be used by.
6. Comply with Government Regulations (and Flaunt it)
Some countries have strict laws about collecting data from users, and 36% of consumers say it would make them feel more comfortable to know that brands are complying with these regulations.
While some states in the US have enacted data privacy laws, there isn’t a nationwide equivalent to the EU’s GDPR. If you’re complying with data privacy laws in your country or state, make sure to flaunt it so consumers know their privacy is protected.
For example, HubSpot has an entire section of its site devoted to GDPR resources and information about how its tools should be used to create GDPR-compliant data-gathering and tracking strategies.

7. Offer Incentives for Sharing Data
Sharing data with a company can feel very one-sided. Making it a mutually beneficial exchange can help your data quality and build trust with your customers.
We asked consumers about what would incentivize them to share data. Here’s what we found:

Unsurprisingly, money is most preferred with 33% of consumers saying monetary compensation would encourage them to trade their data. This isn’t that shocking as these consumers were paid a small sum of money to give their very thoughts for this post.
Other than money, 28% say discounts or free trials can sway them. Coupons, gift cards, and store credits can all be great ways to reward customers for giving you valuable information.
If you’re a marketer who relies on data to better cater experiences to your loyal customers, you might be in luck with many of them. One in four consumers say they might be more likely to share their data for a more convenient shopping experience and 19% would be interested in sharing it for a more personalized experience.
You can also make trading personal data mutually beneficial by offering valuable content, like access to a blog or newsletter, in exchange for an email address. We discovered that 17% of consumers would be interested in that trade.
Despite all that, 32% of consumers refuse to be swayed, saying none of these would make them more likely to share data – though the tips we went over above could help address that.
The Future of Data Privacy
When it comes to the future of data privacy, all signs point to transparency, ownership, and trust.
With 74% of consumers in our survey saying that data privacy is a human right, creating a mutually beneficial exchange is key to gathering data from your audience and building an effective first-party data strategy.
Check out our 2023 Consumer Trends Report for more insights on topics ranging from data privacy to shopping habits, the impact of the recession, and the metaverse.
Disclaimer: This blog post is not legal advice for your company to use in complying with EU data privacy laws like the GDPR or state-by-state data privacy regulations. Instead, it provides background information to help you better understand the GDPR and existing regulations. This information is not the same as legal advice, where an attorney applies the law to your specific circumstances, so we insist that you consult an attorney if you’d like advice on your interpretation of this information or its accuracy.
In a nutshell, you may not rely on this as legal advice, or as a recommendation of any particular legal understanding.

If you’ve been on social media lately, you know shopping has taken center stage on most platforms.
But, social commerce a controversial topic — some people love it, others are exhausted by product placements everywhere. And, in our latest research, we discovered that people don’t trust the social media apps they use daily to handle their purchases.

How Consumers Feel About Social Media Shopping
For starters, just 41% of social media users feel comfortable buying products directly on social apps, and only 37% trust platforms with their card info.
And when it comes to the products sold directly on social platforms, just 21% of social media users view them as high-quality.

Still, around one in five social media users buy on social media regularly, and 75% of those shoppers say they’re satisfied with their latest purchase.

So why are people so suspicious of social shopping? Let’s take a look at the biggest concerns consumers have with shopping on social, how you can address them, and which platforms are most trusted for shopping.
The Biggest Social Shopping Concerns
By far, the biggest concern of consumers is that companies selling products directly on social media aren’t legitimate or could be scamming customers.
As mentioned above, suspicions regarding the quality of the product and sharing card information with social platforms also play a huge role.

On top of that, one-third of social media users are concerned that their purchase will never be delivered, and the same amount worry about the item will not be as described when and if they do get it.
What Can Social Sellers Do to Build Trust?
1. Make and Stand By Customer Promises
First, directly address common consumer objections or concerns by promising and following through on guarantees like:

a set, transparent, and explainable shipping speed
Refunds and/or replacement warranties
Customer service availability (ideally on multiple channels)

While this step is a foundational standard that most businesses should follow, the promises above won’t be enough to gain full trust, especially if you’re a brand selling exclusively on social.
2. Build Community
The next step is to foster a trusting community with your audience.
You can do this by responding to their comments or questions, addressing concerns in review responses, and asking your community for feedback. You should also aim to build content strategies fueled with funny, relatable, and valuable posts that are relevant to your prospects andd show the humanity behind your brand, without making the content feel like an ad.
For example, if you sell peanut butter, make a poll on your story about crunchy vs. smooth to end the debate once and for all. Or create a short video chock-full of fun facts about peanuts: (Did you know astronaut Alan Shepard once brought a peanut to the moon and back?).
Encourage Customer Engagement and UGC
Time and time again, research has shown that word of mouth, recommendations from loved ones, and product reviews from trusted, or relatable, sources can drive consumers through their buyer’s journey. And, this makes sense: Are you more likely to trust a random website selling your a product, or a friend who already used that same item?
With this in mind, encourage happy customers to provide positive reviews or user-generated content to build social proof that your product is legitimate and customers are satisfied with it.
Similarly, try working with small influencers with niche, tight-knit communities related to your product – their stamp of approval can help bridge the trust gap.
Zone in on the Right Channels
When it comes to social selling you also have to consider the platform you’re using, because they aren’t all equally equipped for social commerce just yet, and different audiences are looking for different things.
For example, products you prioritize selling on Facebook, where the demographic skews older, might be different from products you’d sell on a Gen-Z-heavy platform like TikTok. Like content preferences, consumers also trust certain platforms to a different extent – especially when giving personal or credit card information.
Next, let’s take a look at the platform consumers trust most for shopping.
Most Trusted Social Shopping Platforms
Facebook has the most trusted social shopping platform, according to 38% of social users. YouTube comes in 2nd place (17%), followed by Instagram (14%).

Though not exactly the same as social shopping (where you buy directly in the app), it’s important to remember that people have been buying things through Facebook Marketplace for a while now, while shopping experiences on other platforms are much newer and have catching up to do. So, now, with Facebook Shops, it feels much more natural to start using your credit card to purchase items on a platform that’s already built robust shopping experiences with Marketplace.
One interesting thing to note is that Facebook and Instagram (both owned by Meta) have the same in-app shopping technology and platform, while one is adapted for Facebook, Instagram’s is adapted to Instagram features, Instagram business pages, and UX. However, Instagram has far less trust than Facebook.
Why could this be? We aren’t sure, but one guess could be the age, trust, and sheer size of Facebook – which Instagram could likely catch up to. It will be interesting to see if Instagram ultimately gains more shopping trust due to its growing age, credibility, and product purchasing features in the coming years. So
Channels with the Best Social Shopping Experience
We also asked social media users, which platform has the best in-app shopping experience, and Instagram (despite its lack in consumer trust) came out on top with 30% of the vote, followed by Facebook (29%), and TikTok (15%).

This makes sense as Instagram has been a leader in the social shopping space, though it seems users are somewhat skeptical of the quality of the products being sold on the app. While shopping features and product placements were a key part of Instagram’s cultural and UX evolution, platforms like Faccebook and YouTube started with a focus on content and user experience – and eventually worked shopping in.
What’s Next for Social Shopping?
The good news is social shopping is still evolving, so there’s plenty of time to build trust with social media users.
For more insights, check out our Social Media Trends Report or the full Consumer Trends Report.
And if you’re setting up shop on Instagram, head over to the Instagram Shopping Report for a deeper dive into selling on the app and which tools offer the best ROI.
Lastly, for overall coverage on the latest social media trends and tips from experts in the social marketing industry, download our full Social Media Report below.

 
Have you ever been hypnotized by social media? According to our recent Consumer Trends survey, users of it spend an average of three hours a day there.
It’s easy to fall into a social media trap, filled with endless distraction. One minute you’re checking a DM and the next thing you know you’ve spent an hour watching videos of corgis playing fetch.
But, it does make you wonder what consumers actually do while spending all that time on social media. And — as a marketer — you’re likely going a step further by asking: “What’s my target audience doing on there?”

Why Consumers Use (& Love) Social Media
Before asking social media users what the heck they’re doing on social media all day, we asked them to choose the top three reasons they log on in the first place.
And considering the average social media user spends three hours a day on their platforms of choice, it’s no surprise that they log on to do a bit of everything there:

In digging deeper, we determined the top three reasons users log on to each major social media platform:

While Facebook and Instagram are mainly used to share content from our lives and keep up with family, users turn to TikTok and YouTube for entertainment, education, and inspiration. We also have Twitter and LinkedIn, the only platforms that are primarily used to keep up with news and trends.
With that in mind, we can dive a little deeper into the top reasons people use each of these platforms.
What Social Media Users Do on Each Platform
Facebook users primarily keep up with loved ones — but also like to share media on their feeds.
Facebook — used by 69% of U.S. adults is the most popular social media app on our list.
Two in three Facebook users are on it to keep up with friends and family, 43% use it to share pictures and videos, and 26% go to Facebook simply for entertainment. About one in five lean on Facebook for news or trends, as well as to learn new things.
YouTube users seek out entertainment, education, and inspirational content.
YouTube is the second most popular social media platform, used by 57% of U.S. adults. Edutainment thrives on YouTube – the top reasons people visit are to find entertaining content, learn new things, find inspiration, and keep up with news and trends. About one in five YouTubers use the app to keep up with brands and products.

Instagrammers share multimedia content while keeping up with friends, family, and celebrities.
45% of American adults use Instagram, and the top uses are to share pictures/videos (38%), to keep up with friends and family (33%), follow celebrities and influencers (27%), find entertaining content (27%), and keep up with brands/products (24%).

TikTok users watch a mix of entertaining, educational, and inspirational content.
Just about one in three U.S. adults are on TikTok, but this shoots up to 62% when we look at Gen Z.
Overall, TikTok’s used much like YouTube – for entertainment, education, and inspiration. 23% use TikTok to keep up with celebs/influencers and 21% use it to share their own content. About one in five TikTokers go to the platform to follow brands/products, while the same amount use it to keep up with news and trends.

Twitter users crave news, entertainment, and celebrity content.
Twitter stands out as the only platform where keeping up with news and cultural trends is the #1 reason people use the app. Finding entertaining content (27%), keeping up with celebrities (26%), and learning new things (23%) are also top reasons for Twitter usage.

LinkedIn users surf feeds for education, industry news, and brand updates.
As the only social media platform on this list geared towards professionals, it’s no surprise that the top reason people use LinkedIn is to learn new things. About 1 in 4 LinkedIn users also log on to keep up with news or trends, brands and their products, and their network of friends and family.

More Social Media Trends
Looking for more social trends? Check out HubSpot’s Social Media Trends 2023 Report blog pos, or the full PDF version below. In this content, we dig into data from 1,200+ social media marketers as well as key insights comparing marketer data to our bi-annual Consumer Trends Report.