Web and Social Media Trends in 2021 So far

Clients and colleagues have been asking a lot of questions about their online audiences and their behavior lately!

Is there a summer slump going on? 😴 Are people online as much as they were last year, or are they taking more summer vacations than usual, since we finally (finally!) can? 😎 Is social still worth our time right now? 🤔

We dug into some recent research to get helpful insights on how people are using the Internet so far in 2021, as we get closer to a post-pandemic reality. We also wanted to know whether social is still the magical attention-grabber it was during the height of the pandemic, or if folks are a bit tired of Tweeting and liking and sharing and scrolling and tapping.

In terms of website traffic, Hubspot very helpfully released an analysis of >100k businesses and their traffic just this week, looking at how things have changed as we’ve entered the summer months. They found that:

• “Business leaders are expecting sharper dips as more consumers travel or unplug. They're also dealing with frequent HR requests from employees who've been waiting months to take vacations

• So far in 2021, global website traffic is dipping across almost all industries and segments. The only industry that isn't slumping is Leisure and Hospitality, which saw a whopping 17.72% traffic increase between April and June of 2021.

• Businesses could still see dips in later summer months due to consumers continuing to travel, employee vacations, or teams feeling less pressured to close deals at the beginning of a new quarter.”

So that tells us that fewer people are browsing online right now… and at least partly because they feel like the pandemic’s over. (It’s not, but, for those of us that are vaccinated, it’s at least a little easier to go outside!) You might see that reflected in your website analytics.

But here’s an interesting tidbit courtesy of Hootsuite’s latest Global Statshot Report: While people might be spending less time online, they’re actually spending more time on social:

• “Despite the drop in overall internet time, people say that they’ve been spending more time using social media.

• GWI’s most recent survey found that people spent roughly two minutes longer on social platforms each day over the past three months, compared to values for the previous quarter.

• People are now more than twice as likely to get their news from social media as they are to look for it in newspapers and magazines… However, people have significantly lower levels of trust in the news content that they find via social channels, compared to news in other kinds of media.”

We can see that people are still interested in connecting with each other and finding new information on their social channels, even a little bit more than they were in 2020. There might be a slight dip in your numbers over the summer if your particular audience tends to be on their social channels a bit less, but it shouldn’t be a drastic drop. (Look at your historical metrics from previous years to get an idea of what to expect!)

But the pandemic made 2020 a weird year. Vox did a deep-dive on this back in March, finding that, while social media use indeed went up dramatically since we had a lot more down time to fill, people complained more about social media or the toxicity and misinformation they encountered on these channels:

“2020 was a really bad year for misinformation, with fights over politics and lockdown measures and mask-wearing all playing out on social media, and making it an even more toxic environment. Conspiracy theories that proliferated on social media caused real-life harm and turned many people off from it.

But complaints and posts decrying social media aside, overall visits to all major social media sites have continued to grow since the onset of the pandemic, according to data from SimilarWeb, which found visits to major social sites still far above 2019 levels. Even if we don’t like it, we had nothing better to do…

Visits to TikTok’s website grew nearly 600 percent on average in 2020 compared to the year before, according to SimilarWeb. Meanwhile, visits to Instagram were up 43 percent, Twitter 36 percent, and 3 percent for Facebook, which is still impressive considering how massively popular the site already was. Average users now spend almost as much time per day on TikTok as they do on the No. 1 social site, Facebook, according to eMarketer data.”

While people might be scrolling on their channels a lot, they might not be liking what they see as much.

Are people still using social this much in 2021? Convince and Convert says…

• “Approximately 233 million Americans use social media in 2021. This is a slight increase over 2020. Overall, however, social media usage is only slightly higher in 2021 than 5 years ago.

• While Facebook is the most popular social network, the only demographic that saw an increase in users was the 55 and older age group. Every other age group saw a decline.

• In 2018, Twitter hit the lowest usage percentages across the board but since then, it has regained usage percentages. The popularity is equivalent or above the usages in 2016.”

What can we conclude from these fascinating studies? Number one, don’t quit your social! While 2021 had just a slight increase from the previous year, that still means a significant number of eyeballs are potentially viewing your content, so keep on keeping on. (Especially if you’re not trafficking in conspiracy theories and misinformation.)

But note those last two bullet points there about Facebook’s decline and Twitter’s growth. Unless your audience is on the older side, it might be time to rethink Facebook if you’re still trying to make it work. And don’t give up on Twitter just yet.

If you’ve got some time, read those reports above thoroughly! All this data can really help you refine your strategy and keep up with how social is evolving.