Transcription
I don't know about you, but this year has been a confusing one for me when it comes to social media strategy. The second I feel like I've got something figured out, it changes, or even better, the platform goes away, or, you know, a new one pops up. So in years, seasons, moments like this, I think it really is best to go to the experts, and one of those resources for me is Metricool.
Metricool is a social media scheduler. It's an analytics tool, but they also put out these really amazing reports and studies every so often. And I always find them to be so incredibly helpful at guiding my strategy. So today I want to go over their 2025 social media study. This is packed with information, and I'm going to tell you right now that I am not going to be going over all 95 pages of this, but I am going to show you some of the call outs, some of the highlights, some of the things that I've taking the most value from. So please be sure to click the link in the show notes to check out the full study for yourself. This is a really handy one to download. Keep it at your desk. Whenever a client has a question for you, whenever you are confused and need to benchmark, and also doing so is a great way to support this channel. Metricool is a sponsor of the Freelance Friday podcast. And as a reminder, you can always use my code Latosha to give any of their pro plans a try free for 30 days. I'll leave that link down below as well, but let's get into the study.
Okay. So first off, a little bit on the data set: they analyzed over 1.3 million accounts and 21 million posts. So quite a bit of data, much better than me just taking my five most recent posts and giving you, you know, analysis on them. They also break down the platforms that they analyzed—everything from Pinterest to Twitch, Instagram, X, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube—and the numbers of accounts and posts. It looks like the majority of the accounts and posts came from Instagram and Facebook and TikTok, but they've got a good sample size for all the platforms. Um, then they've also got a breakdown of the different account sizes, kind of how they categorize things: tiny is up to 500 followers, small 500 to 2000, medium 2000 to 10,000, big 50,000, and huge over 50,000. So just keep that in mind. Sometimes throughout this report, they kind of say, "Hey, small accounts do better when they do this," or "huge accounts do better when they do this." So that's kind of how they are categorizing those account sizes.
All right. So I really love this. They just start the study with a little at-a-glance of each of the platforms. They start with Pinterest, which I don't talk about very often. I honestly don't really know Pinterest that well, and I keep hearing content creators and freelancers talk about Pinterest. So maybe we need to do some testing this year. Let me know what you think, because clicks are up on Pinterest by 55 percent versus 2023, which is good news, right? If you are struggling to get traffic to your website, if maybe you are one of the people who are impacted by Google SEO changes, maybe you are a TikToker kind of looking to deepen your brand, maybe Pinterest could be a place for you.
The standout fact about Twitch, another platform we don't talk about a ton, subscriptions are down by quite a lot—by 88%. And I think this one is just one of those signs of the times for me, you know, Twitch, I think really, really blew up during 2020, 2021, 2022, when everyone was at home. And maybe we are just not interested in watching somebody live stream for hours on end anymore. But who knows?
LinkedIn had some huge, HUGE increases on their platform. Average interactions were up 99 percent on LinkedIn. You guys, I am always saying this to people: do not sleep on LinkedIn. Do not sleep on LinkedIn. I don't post on there very often, and whenever I do, I honestly always get like a client booking or a good connection coming through, you know, people, especially if you're in the business world, people who are on LinkedIn are decision makers in their company; they are professionals; they are looking for business solutions. And so if you're selling business solutions, I'm telling you, it's the place to be.
X impressions were up 50%. So, you know, I think we sometimes hear X is dying; it's, you know, no longer a thing. You hear about these advertisers leaving the platform and a lot of users leaving the platform, and that may very well be true, but impressions are still up on that platform. So I think whoever is choosing to stick around, maybe they're just curating a more like-minded, um, you know, cohort of people on that app that are actually engaging with each other and seeing each other's posts.
Instagram. We've got a love the split screen. If you're watching on YouTube, uh, if you're not watching on YouTube, by the way, you might want to, cause I'm screen sharing. Um, we've got a nice visual, a nice juxtaposition of up versus down, which sounds about right. Instagram is one of the most confusing platforms for me. Let's be honest. Post reach was up 21 percent in 2024 compared to 2023; reels reach was down 20%. This anecdotally feels very true for me. For me, it's still all about photo carousels, or even I did like a fun little Valentine's Day, like designed carousel; those things do really well. My reels tank, no matter what the topic is, no matter how good it is, I just can't get reels to work for me. And I hear the same from a lot of people, so I'm glad I'm not alone.
Facebook, interestingly, is the complete opposite. Post reach was down 41 percent on Facebook; reels reach, Facebook reels, were up 13%. So what does that tell me? Well, maybe I need to be reposting those reels that tanked on Instagram, repost them over to Facebook, perhaps. And this is something that I really love about Metricool as well, is that they have this reuse content feature. So if you did, let's say, schedule an Instagram reel through Metricool, you can click on it; you can click reuse, and you can choose to reuse it onto a different platform. So I could choose an old Instagram reel and post it on Facebook. You can also cross-post at the same time. So whenever you are uploading your reels or your posts or whatever, you can choose to post to Facebook or LinkedIn and X or whatever you want to do. So that's one of the big things that I love about scheduling through Metricool.
All right. And then TikTok average total watch time was up 71%. So people are still watching TikTok. And interesting stat for YouTube, they go a little bit more in depth on this later throughout the study, but YouTube dislikes were up by 11%. Interesting, right? My theory on that is actually that this comes from Shorts. I notice Shorts are kind of the only format that I consistently get a lot of dislikes on. I mean, I'll get the occasional dislike on a long-form YouTube video. To be honest, I don't really check them because they're not public anymore. Shorts, I always get like many, you know, many on every single short, and I have my theories on that. I think people don't like nuance in shorts; they're just kind of like, "Hey, hurry up, get to the point." I think the demographic who tends to watch shorts is a little bit younger, so maybe they're not as aligned of an audience for me. I think there's a lot of reasons, but um, yeah, that's an interesting one to think about.
Okay, so let's go through some of their key metrics. This is something that I found to be fascinating. They have this slide called "Where do small accounts grow most easily?" Easily. And then they also talk about which platforms are the easiest to grow on. And I know when I talk to clients, when I talk to folks in the industry, I am consistently told YouTube is the hardest platform to grow on, followed closely by Instagram. Instagram is dying; you know, everything's falling apart. And I'll be honest, I'm one of those people who have been like, "What the heck is going on with Instagram? Why are we even focusing on this anymore?" But the data, the data does not necessarily agree with those sentiments. This first slide shows the percentage of tiny accounts—so remember those like zero to 500 follower accounts—that moved up a category. So they moved up to small or, you know, large, huge, whatever. 59%, almost 60 percent of tiny accounts moved up—so they grew a follower tier last year—on Instagram; on YouTube, 55%; TikTok, 41%; Twitch, 27%; X, 18%; LinkedIn, 17%; and Facebook, 10%. So Facebook is the hardest platform to grow a follower base on, which that checks out for me.
So the next chart represents the percentage of accounts that have moved to a superior category—so from tiny to small, from medium to huge—compared to the previous study in each platform. So according to this, the easiest platform to grow on is YouTube at 41%, followed by Instagram at 39%, followed by TikTok at 34%. So listen, if I'm giving you advice, if you're starting social media today, if you're like, "I want to be a content creator, I want to be a social media manager," at whatever you want to do, my advice to you: choose one of those three. In most cases, there is nuance, okay? There is nuance, because if you are only going to be doing B2B sales, then I'm going to say definitely focus on LinkedIn, and so on and so forth, but you might as well at least repurpose your content onto YouTube then too, even if you're going to focus on LinkedIn or whatnot, because these are the three platforms where people are seeing the biggest increases in their follower base. That's just, that's just the data.
Now let's talk about "Where do accounts starting from scratch have the best chance to grow?" So this next slide, they analyzed reach based on impressions per follower for accounts with less than 2,000 followers. The data shows that these platforms stand out for offering the best reach and impressions per follower, making them fertile ground even for those starting from scratch. So YouTube is way at the top here. Again, I hear it all the time that YouTube is the hardest platform to grow on, and it is hard in that it is the most resource-heavy. I think, you know, there's a learning curve to posting YouTube videos; there's editing time; there's, you know, an SEO strategy, all of these things. However, what this is showing me is that everyone has a fair shot at YouTube, and I believe that to be true. I believe that your follower count doesn't matter so much. If you post a really good video and you have 500 followers, the algorithm will reward you, and vice versa. If you post a terrible video and you have a lot of followers, yeah, you're going to have your subscriber base come and watch it still, but you're not going to grow beyond that. And, um, TikTok reels, on the other hand, I think have more of that algorithmic kind of, you know, you hear about shadow banning, you hear about accounts being penalized for certain things, and it kind of like holds a grudge on you, if you will. These two platforms—YouTube, I think every video is a new opportunity. And even if you're small, you still have the chance to get a viral video or a video that performs really well.
So these are the platforms where accounts with less than 2,000 followers have a harder time gaining visibility: Instagram posts, X, and Twitch videos. Interesting that Instagram reels was on the other side for being a little bit easier to gain on. So we think of Instagram reels as discovery; we think of Instagram posts more as community, because again, what, at least what performs well for me and for a lot of my clients as well, is those more just like old-school Instagram carousels. You know, I'm posting, "Hey, here's my New Year's wrap-up," or I just posted about my new studio that I'm opening, and, you know, people enjoyed seeing that more personal side that, you know, professional career achievement, some random person isn't really going to care about that as much. Definitely not something like my New Year's, you know, goals or my trip to New York with my friends. So I think those posts are typically not a growth strategy; they're more of a community strategy.
Results are similar for accounts between 2,000 to 50,000 followers. Still, YouTube gives you the most impressions per follower. Let's talk about interactions. Another leader for YouTube, you guys, I'm telling you, I really think YouTube is such a huge opportunity for really anybody who wants to do it. If you want to learn more about YouTube, I highly recommend taking my free course. It's called "The Art of the Vlog," specifically for those of you who want to start with some of that more casual handheld, maybe shot on your iPhone type footage. I go through how I edit my weekly vlogs, which are my favorite to edit; I talk about some SEO strategy in there and how to grow a vlogging account. So I'm going to leave a link for that free course, 100 percent free, down below if you would like to check it out.
So this is for accounts under 2000 followers. They're seeing an average of 0.43 interactions per follower, which is pretty good. That's almost half. So if you have 2000 followers, you might see, I don't know, I'm doing quick math in my head, like seven or 800 interactions. TikTok is the next on the list, but it's quite a bit lower at 0.13. Then we got LinkedIn 0.05, and it's all downhill from there. And let's go on to engagement now.
Okay, so the platforms with the top engagement rates last year: LinkedIn, 14.78%. Can you imagine a 14.78 percent engagement rate on a platform like Instagram? It just doesn't happen. Like Instagram reels see a 5.62 percent engagement rate, and posts see 6.6%. YouTube is actually down at the bottom at 1.63%, which is quite interesting. How are interactions defined versus engagements? Okay, so it looks like the discrepancy there is that you can get a large number of total interactions, but not the same proportion as followers and impressions. So it's based on an engagement rate versus a total number of engagements.
Let's talk about clicks, because at the end of the day, this is what matters for a lot of us, is are we actually getting our audience returning them into a paying customer or returning them into a lead. LinkedIn leads the pack for accounts under 2000 followers. They see an average of 23.54 clicks per post; for larger accounts, 2000 to 50,000, they see 156 clicks per post. We can compare that to Facebook: 21 clicks and 130 clicks respectively. Then we've got Pinterest for 2000 followers or less; they're seeing an average of 4.5 clicks. And for the larger accounts, X is the next leader at 11 clicks per post, 11.8 to almost 12 clicks per post. So there you go. Like I was saying, you know, if you want to make bookings, if you want to make sales, if you want to book out your discovery calls, LinkedIn might be the answer for you. And then Facebook, I guess, obviously, again, there's nuance to that; make your decisions based on what your needs are, where your clients are, all of that, but good, good places to get started.
So I really loved this slide. They showed this ideal funnel slide, and I think this is what I always—I'm trying to communicate to people, but don't always do as eloquently as they have in this study. First off, we've got our impressions. That's where we need to start, right? We're a new brand. If we have a new service, we need to first get eyeballs on that new brand and new service, and the best platforms to do that: YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. So if you are a brand new brand, if you've got, you know, we haven't posted a lot of content yet, the recommendation is choose one of those four platforms to start with. Then when we go into interactions and engagements—so getting people to actually communicate with us, to have conversations—you want to focus on LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, or YouTube. Those are kind of where you're going to continue to nurture those audiences. And then where you're going to actually get those clicks is going to be X, Pinterest, LinkedIn, or Facebook. You know, that makes sense to me because for you, for me, YouTube is my biggest platform. I am not typically selling through YouTube though; I am typically funneling people over—what's not on here because it's not social media—but is an email list, you know, I'm saying, "Hey, join this, come to this class, do this for free." And then I'm selling through email, or I'm saying, "Follow me on Instagram or follow me on LinkedIn." And then you connect with me on LinkedIn, and that's where I'm posting about my offers; that's where I'm posting about work stuff, you know, so that does, that does track for me more or less.
I'm going to skip over some of these next slides because we've already been talking for quite a while. Like I said, this study is 96 pages. I highly, highly recommend you dig through this yourself because they kind of go through some breakdowns about each of the different platforms, really get nitty-gritty with it.
Now, something I did find really interesting—I know a lot of us are on Instagram and are interested in Instagram—so I want to cover this page. They did a deep dive into reels on Instagram, and they showed that indeed impressions were down, reach was down, interactions were down, and post frequency was down. Impressions were down 22%; reach was down 20 percent; and interactions were down 17%. However, comments and engagement were up a little bit, both by about 6%. And they also talk about how despite this shrinking performance, in absolute numbers, Reels still offer the best results compared to other formats: 52 percent more views and 34 percent more interactions on average if we compare that to posts, for example. So sometimes it can feel discouraging if, you know, you're not seeing the total numbers that you were last year, but it is important to note that they still are seeing overall better numbers than other formats, if that makes sense.
So yeah, stories also, frequency was down by a huge amount, 33%, and then because of that, impressions and reach were also down, and I don't know about you all, if you've heard this or experience this, but it seems like Instagram is rewarding a low number of story posts, which I find to be the oddest thing ever. If I post one single frame on an Instagram story, I'll get thousands of views on my story. If I post a story set of one, two, or three posts, which I used to do all the time, I see like crickets, you know, I might get a hundred story views. It's so wild. And so I think that phenomenon is really driving this number, or maybe this number is driving that phenomenon. You know, it's like, what, what comes first, chicken or the egg? Is it that the audiences are really preferring to click through almost TikTok style and see, okay, there's a post from LaTosha; there's a post from this brand; there's a post from this creator; there's a post from, you know, is it driven by user preference or is it driven by Instagram's agenda? You know, that is, I think that the thing to always think about when we talk about the algorithm, it's like really what we're seeing is what people are responding to. So maybe we need to think more about user behavior and less about the algorithm.
Let's keep scrolling; let's keep scrolling. I'll talk about YouTube a little bit because it is my baby. So views are up on YouTube. Again, I keep hearing from people like, "YouTube is over; you know, it's all about TikTok now." And I'm just like, "What?" Like, of course, for some people, YouTube doesn't make the most sense, and TikTok makes the most sense, or whatever, but like, there are still a lot of videos that are getting a lot of views, and I think probably Shorts influences this too, because we're seeing that kind of viral content style a lot. TikTok that are probably getting a lot of views as well, but overall views are up 8 percent on YouTube. Dislikes are also up though, like we mentioned, by 11%, and engagement is down by 13%. So something to keep in mind. I will say again, personally, that does track for me, the lowered engagement a little bit. They kind of annotate, "Could the dislikes be a way that users are trying to tell the algorithm that they don't like its recommendations?" That's an interesting insight. Um, who knows what exactly that means, but you know, something to, something to keep in mind.
So let's go over their best practices really quick. I really love that they kind of break things down because again, it's so much data; it's kind of like, okay, I learned all that. Now what can I put into action?
Here specifically? First tip they give is to focus on your niche. It's incredibly difficult to succeed with general content. You really need to specialize in more specific content. And they share some examples here.
They also talk about creating valuable content, you know, with a simple short-form video, sharing a simple and effective trick for your target audience, like how to clean a makeup sponge, for example, can be an online sensation. They talk about using humor, tip number three, keep it light. I would agree with this point more than probably anything, as I have found audiences are not wanting the same thing that they're wanting, you know, that they were wanting in 2021, 2022, where they wanted me to be like a professor and be very serious. People want to see a human side of you, whether that's a funny side, whether that's a more relatable personal side, because I think in a lot of ways, people are really just, you know, stressed out and, uh, they are going to the internet for a bit of escapism. So even if you are teaching like I do, or you're tackling a more serious subject matter, I think it's important to keep that human side and, you know, maybe inject a little bit of humor where you can.
This fourth example and tip that they give, they say, if it works, up the ante. So this is an example of a fish and chips restaurant that found this one particular format works really well for them. It looks like, you know, when are their servers or owners or whoever this may be, very similar camera angle, similar, even her hairdo is like the same in every single reel, and it works. So they continuously do that. And that is absolutely something I recommend. It can get a little, it's like, Oh my gosh, I'm sure she's tired of putting her hair up the exact same way, but it's working for them. For example, my podcast, right? People know what to expect when they see me sitting down with a microphone in front of this black wall, right? Continue doing what works, pull the lever on that.
And then they also talk about repurposing, which I already kind of mentioned. This is something I really love Metricool in particular for, is they have this ability to, you know, find posts that worked well and repost them to other platforms or just post to multiple platforms at the same time when you are uploading, which is amazing.
All right, so in summary, they share that video continues to be the star format. I don't think that's a surprise to anybody across platforms. Video is the way to go. Number two, growth and engagement require different strategies. So again, when we're thinking about attracting a new audience versus retaining an existing audience or nurturing an existing audience, we're going to have to think about different things. Number three, authenticity and value are the keys to reach more people. So again, we want to kind of get out of maybe that early 2020 mindset of always having to be the smartest person in the room and being super buttoned up and polished and maybe let our human side show a little bit more and, um, maybe be a little bit more funny, a little bit relatable, a little bit more lighthearted. I think that is what audiences are wanting today.
So let me know which part of this study was the most helpful or interesting to you by leaving me a comment, and please be sure to download the entire study. I'm going to leave a link for you down in the show notes. I'll also leave a link to try Metricool's platform free on any other pro plans for 30 days. You can use my code Latasha to do that. And I will also leave you a link to my free course, the art of the vlog, for anyone who is interested in giving YouTube a whirl. So thanks for sticking with me. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I will see you in the next one. Bye.