Social Media Usage Overview

Before delving into the different ways that social media has begun to be used within film and television for promotional purposes I thought that first a brief overview of social media platforms usage would be beneficial. In order to better understand the new promotional possibilities and the scope of audience size that social media opens the door to you need to have a basic understanding of social media usage across the globe. 

Simon Kemp, of 'we are social' carried out a survey of social media usage in the early months of 2014. This information provides an up-to-date image of the number of people from different regions using social media. This is turn shows us the prospective audience size of film and television online advertising. 

This first infographic represents the global use of social media platforms. The regions that are most important to the future discussions of this blog are North America, Western Europe, Central & Eastern Europe, Oceania, and finally East Asia. These are the regions where American and British television and film are most commonly watched and thus more likely to be discussed on social media platforms. 

This second infographic represents social media usage in \Western Europe in numerical form. The total 293 million active social media users across Western Europe accounts for around 40% of the population of the region. When it comes to trying to promote a film or television project having an online presence with the possibility of reaching an audience accumulating to 40% of an entire regions population undoubtedly is deserving of the time and effort to do so. 

 These figures represent the usage of all social media platforms but more in-depth figures and information can be found in the full 'we are social' article and presentation, which can be found here. 

Advertisers must keep in track with this modern and well connected world by allowing their companies and brands to be more social too. When once a company would instill good experiences to their customers thus leading them to tell all their friends and boost the companies image through word-of-mouth, there is now the possibility to do so through word-of-mouse. 

Word-of-mouse is well represented in this infographic; It illustrates the many platforms that information, such as an advertisement, can be shared through on the wide spectrum of social media and the internet. 


Sources and Further Reading
http://wearesocial.net/blog/2014/02/social-digital-mobile-europe-2014/
http://rozczochraany.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/social-media-z-czym-to-sie-je.html