Here are six findings from our 2023 social media review – High Five 2023. You can read our full social media report here.
Finding 1: For celebrities Instagram rules! In the celebrity world all of the ten leading accounts we track have grown by at least 5% this year on Instagram, and 7 out of our 10 leading accounts have grown by at least 5% on Facebook (and it was the celebrities who did grow, while the companies didn’t.)
Finding 2: Twitter/x is stagnant. Only 3 out of our 10 leading accounts have grown by more than 5% and one of those was Elon Musk who went from 108million followers last year to 163.5 million this year. Its hard not to conclude that the Musk take over of Twitter/X has not been good for it in terms of followers.
Finding 3: LinkedIn is seeing great growth for charities. All of our ten leading charity account we track have grown by more than 5% - all of them. In contrast one grew by more than 5% on Facebook (Greenpeace) and one on Twitter (RSPB). Instagram saw growth of more than 5% in four cases (Greenpeace, RSPB, English Heritage and Woodland Trust). YouTube saw growth of more than 5% in six out of the ten leading charities we survey.
Finding 4: Facebook is the workhorse* of charity social media. When we look at how a number of charities compare followers on different social media (BHF, WWF-UK, Mind, Children in Need and the Female Lead) all of them except the Female Lead have the most followers on Facebook. That sounds like a statement of the obvious but the footballer Ronaldo has three times more followers on Instagram than Facebook, and Messi has twice as many on Instagram. So in other sectors its not so clear cut.
Finding 5: The Female Lead remains an incredible charity on social media. If there is a single phenomenal charity on social media, it would be the Female Lead for us. 4 million followers on LinkedIn, 2.4 million followers on Instagram and now 1 million followers on Tiktok. Given its turnover is less than £1million last time we looked its incredible
Finding 6: Charities are still not thriving on TikTok. Despite TikTok’s amazing growth and usage charities don’t seem to have found their mojo on Tiktok. We will be doing a separate analysis of TikTok in February.
* No horses were harmed in the writing of this