2025 SOCIAL MEDIA
MARKETING
INDUSTRY REPORT
How Marketers Are Using
Social Media to Grow
Their Businesses
MAY 2025
BY MICHAEL A. STELZNER
Copyright 2025, Social Media Examiner
Letter from the author…
Hello, fellow marketer!
Welcome to our 17th annual report! This is the longest-running social media
marketing study—and yes, social media marketing is still changing.
This 43-page report contains easy-to-digest insights into how marketers are currently
using social media and their future plans.
If you're in charge of marketing your business, you'll want to closely examine the 50+
charts on the following pages. I'll reveal the "not-so-obvious" findings in this data-rich
content.
The report covers all of the major social platforms, organic and paid activities, video
marketing, and much more.
More than 1,400 of your fellow marketers provided the kinds of insights you won't find
elsewhere.
I hope you enjoy it! If you find value in this report, please let your peers know
about it.
You can find the original page for the report here:
https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/report2025/
All my best!
Michael A. Stelzner
Founder, Social Media Examiner
Host, Social Media Marketing podcast
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 2 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Table of contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY.....................................................................................................4
MAJOR FINDINGS ............................................................................................................5
MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETERS WANT ANSWERED...................6
BENEFITS OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING ........................................................................7
COMMONLY USED SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS ..............................................................13
THE MOST IMPORTANT SOCIAL PLATFORM FOR MARKETERS IS… ..................................17
THE RISE AND FALL OF SOCIAL PLATFORMS..................................................................19
ORGANIC SOCIAL PLANS...............................................................................................20
SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS MARKETERS WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT .......................27
TYPES OF CONTENT USED IN MARKETING .....................................................................28
THE MOST IMPORTANT CONTENT FOR MARKETERS IS… ...............................................29
REGULAR VIDEO USE BY PLATFORM ..............................................................................31
HOW WILL MARKETERS CHANGE THEIR FUTURE VIDEO MARKETING ACTIVITIES?............32
SOCIAL AD USE ............................................................................................................33
THE MOST VALUED SOCIAL AD PLATFORMS..................................................................34
SOCIAL AD TYPES MARKETERS WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT......................................35
HOW OFTEN DO MARKETERS USE GENERATIVE AI TOOLS? .............................................36
HOW LONG HAVE MARKETERS USED GENERATIVE AI TOOLS?.........................................37
GENERATIVE AI TASKS MARKETERS WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ...............................38
SURVEY PARTICIPANT DEMOGRAPHICS .........................................................................39
ABOUT MICHAEL A. STELZNER ......................................................................................43
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 3 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Executive summary
This study surveyed more than 1,400 marketers with the goal of understanding how
they're using social media to grow and promote their businesses. On the following
pages, you'll discover:
• Most important questions for marketers: The key concerns and questions
marketers are seeking answers to regarding their social media strategies.
• Social media marketing benefits: The various ways social media impacts
business outcomes and performance metrics.
• Platform usage and importance: Analysis of which platforms marketers are
currently using for exposure, sales, leads, traffic, and loyalty, and how platform
priorities are shifting over time.
• B2B vs. B2C platform preferences: Comparison of platform priorities and
strategies between business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C)
marketers.
• Future organic social plans: Forecasted changes in organic posting activities
across platforms in the next 12 months.
• Content types and importance: Analysis of different content formats used in
marketing and their relative value.
• Video marketing strategies: Examination of video usage patterns by platform
and future plans for video marketing activities.
• Social ad usage and value: Overview of advertising platform preferences and
perceived value of different ad platforms.
• Generative AI adoption: Analysis of AI tool usage, experience levels, and
desired applications among marketers.
• Social media platforms to learn: The platforms marketers are most interested
in learning more about.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 4 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Major findings
Here's a quick summary of some of our more interesting findings:
Platform importance shifting: Facebook continues its downward trend in importance,
while LinkedIn has gained significant ground, surpassing Instagram for the first time as
the second most important platform. For B2B marketers, LinkedIn is the dominant
platform (53% rank it most important) compared to Facebook (22%), while B2C
marketers still heavily favor Facebook (48%).
Video content dominates: Nearly half of marketers (46%) identify video as their most
important content type, significantly outranking written content (28%) and visual content
(23%). YouTube is the platform where most marketers (67%) plan to increase their
presence in the coming year.
Rapid generative AI adoption: A significant majority of marketers (69%) now use
generative AI tools either daily (45%) or weekly (24%), although 56% have less than a year
of experience with these tools or haven't started using them yet. Marketers are primarily
interested in using AI for content creation (70%), generating new ideas (67%), and
expanding existing concepts (66%).
Organic growth plans: Instagram (55%) and LinkedIn (61%) show the strongest growth
potential in organic marketing plans, while X/Twitter is experiencing the most
significant decline, with 14% of marketers planning to decrease their organic activities
there and 50% having no plans to use the platform at all.
TikTok showing mixed signals: While TikTok ranks highest for increasing business
exposure (78% of marketers report this benefit), marketers' adoption remains relatively
low at 27%, and 51% have no plans to use TikTok—an increase from 41% in 2024. This
suggests a growing divide between those finding success with the platform and those
avoiding it entirely.
Platform benefits align with experience: This study consistently shows that marketers
with more experience (8+ years) report significantly better results across all platforms
and metrics, including improved sales and increased exposure, leads generated, and
loyal fans developed. For example, 80% of marketers with 8+ years of experience report
improved sales, compared to just 16% of those with less than 12 months of experience.
The above summary is just a taste of what's in this report. On the following pages, you'll
find 50+ charts that visually convey some of our fascinating findings.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 5 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Most important question social media
marketers want answered
We asked marketers to select the single most important question they want answered
among a broad range of social media marketing questions. Here's what they said:
More than half of the marketers we surveyed want to know the best ways to generate
leads and improve sales.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 6 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Benefits of social media marketing
A significant 81% of all marketers we surveyed indicated that their social media efforts
have generated more exposure for their businesses. Increased traffic was the second
major benefit, with 71% reporting positive results. These benefits have remained in the
top two spots for the last 11 years.
Two questions naturally emerge from the above chart:
• Are marketers who've been using social media for years achieving better results?
• Which platforms contributed most to these benefits?
The following charts address these questions.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 7 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Improved sales: A large percentage of marketers find improved sales results with more
years of social media experience.
Facebook and Instagram contribute the most to sales for marketers.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 8 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Increased exposure: Most marketers who've been using social media marketing for 1
year or longer report it generates exposure for their businesses.
All of the major social platforms seem to have a big impact on exposure, but TikTok sits
at the top of the list.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 9 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Generated leads: This chart shows that marketers get more proficient at generating
leads via social platforms with more experience.
LinkedIn and Facebook generate the most leads for marketers.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 10 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Increased traffic: Those who've used social media for 1 year or longer reported
substantially better results driving traffic (54%+ reported benefits), compared to those
with less experience.
Facebook drives the most traffic for marketers.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 11 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Developed loyal fans: Building a loyal fanbase seems to be an advantage that improves
as marketers gain more years of experience.
Marketers declared Instagram and Facebook as the best platforms for developing loyal
fans.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 12 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Commonly used social media platforms
Facebook and Instagram are the top two platforms used by marketers. All other
platforms lag behind these top two.
NOTABLE CHANGES SINCE 2024
• X/Twitter dropped from 31% to 26%.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 13 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Platform use: Beginners vs. advanced marketers
Here's a close examination of the social channels that experienced social marketers are
using (the green bars = more than 10 years of experience) compared to those just
getting started (the blue bars = less than 12 months of experience).
New social marketers mostly focus on Facebook (66%) and Instagram (55%). The most
experienced marketers are highly diversified.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 14 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Platform use: B2C marketers
This chart shows that most B2C marketers are using Facebook and Instagram.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 15 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Platform use: B2B marketers
This chart shows that most B2B marketers use LinkedIn and Facebook.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 16 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
The most important social platform for
marketers is…
We asked marketers to select the single most important social platform for their
business. Because only one choice was allowed, the findings are revealing.
NOTABLE CHANGES SINCE 2024
• Facebook dropped from 44% to 37%.
• LinkedIn moved from 21% to 29%, securing the #2 spot.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 17 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
B2B vs. B2C
Notice the fascinating differences between B2B- and B2C-focused marketers.
Clearly, Facebook dominates the B2C space (48% of marketers select it as their #1
choice). However, for B2B marketers, LinkedIn grabs the most important slot, surpassing
Facebook.
For B2B marketers, Facebook and Instagram dropped from a combined share of 50% in
2024 to 40% in 2025.
B2B B2C
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 18 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
The rise and fall of social platforms
Here we show the top five social platforms that marketers deem most important over a
6-year period. Facebook continues its decline as LinkedIn is becoming far more
important, surpassing Instagram for the first time.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 19 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Organic social plans
We asked marketers how their organic posting activities will change over the next 12
months. Here's a breakdown by platform:
Future Facebook plans
Our research shows that 15% of marketers indicate they'll decrease their organic
marketing on Facebook over the next 12 months. Thirty-six percent of marketers plan
on increasing their Facebook organic activities. As shown earlier, Facebook is still the
most important social network for most marketers.
Thirty-one percent of B2B marketers plan on increasing Facebook organic activities,
compared to 44% of B2C.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 20 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Future Instagram plans
Our research shows a significant 55% of marketers plan on increasing their Instagram
organic activities over the next 12 months.
Fifty-one percent of B2B marketers plan on increasing Instagram organic activities,
compared to 60% of B2C.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 21 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Future YouTube plans
A significant 60% of marketers plan on increasing their YouTube organic activities over
the next 12 months, making it the top platform where marketers plan on doing more.
Note that on page 32, we asked this question differently and 67% of marketers indicated
they plan to increase their YouTube video marketing efforts.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 22 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Future LinkedIn plans
Almost two-thirds of marketers (61%) plan on increasing their LinkedIn organic activities
over the next 12 months.
Seventy-six percent of B2B marketers plan on increasing LinkedIn organic activities,
compared to 51% of B2C.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 23 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Future X/Twitter plans
Our research shows that 14% of marketers indicate they'll be decreasing their organic
marketing on X/Twitter. This is greater than for any other platform.
Fewer than one in five (17%) marketers plan on increasing their X/Twitter organic
activities over the next 12 months.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 24 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Future TikTok plans
Thirty percent of marketers plan on increasing their TikTok organic activities over the
next 12 months. A significant 51% of marketers have no plans to use TikTok—an
increase from 41% in 2024.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 25 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Future Threads plans
Only 18% of marketers plan on increasing their Threads organic activities over the next
12 months. A significant 64% of marketers have no plans to use Threads.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 26 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Social media platforms marketers want to
learn more about
We asked marketers to identify which social media platforms they want to learn more
about. Instagram held the top slot for the seventh year in a row. LinkedIn grew to 68%
from 63% in 2024.
B2C marketers are more interested in learning about Instagram (75% B2C vs. 61% B2B),
Facebook (64% B2C vs. 44% B2B), and TikTok (42% B2C vs. 34% B2B) than their B2B
counterparts. B2B marketers are far more interested in learning about LinkedIn (79% B2B
vs. 58% B2C).
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 27 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Types of content used in marketing
We decided to study the different types of content used by marketers.
Visual content and the written word are the top two content types used by 88% of
marketers.
Ninety-one percent of B2B marketers use written content, compared to 85% of B2C.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 28 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
The most important content for
marketers is…
We asked marketers to select the single most important form of content for their
marketing. Because only one choice was allowed, the findings are revealing.
Nearly half of marketers (46%) chose video as their most important type of content.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 29 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
B2B vs. B2C
Notice the fascinating differences between B2B- and B2C-focused marketers.
Clearly, video content holds strong across both audiences. However, written content
(36%) is far more important for B2B marketers than B2C marketers (21%).
B2B B2C
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 30 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Regular video use by platform
Instagram is the top platform (61%), followed by Facebook (56%) and YouTube (43%).
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 31 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
How will marketers change their future
video marketing activities?
We asked marketers to indicate how they'll change their video marketing use in the near
future. Respondents were asked to indicate whether they plan to increase, decrease,
remain the same, or not use various platforms in their video marketing.
Marketers mostly plan on increasing their use of YouTube video (67%), Instagram video
(63%), and LinkedIn video (54%).
Here's a breakdown by platform:
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 32 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Social ad use
We asked marketers to indicate how frequently they run ads on a variety of social
platforms (often, sometimes, or never).
The ad platform most used by marketers is Facebook (61%), followed by Instagram
(51%).
B2C marketers are more likely to use Facebook ads (68% B2C vs. 53% B2B) than their B2B
counterparts. B2B marketers are using more LinkedIn ads (39% B2B vs. 19% B2C).
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 33 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
The most valued social ad platforms
We asked marketers to select the single most important platform for social ads, and
they responded that Facebook is the most valued ad platform (41%).
It’s worth noting that 27% of marketers don't use social ads but instead rely on organic
social activities.
B2C marketers are more likely to value Facebook ads (48% B2C vs. 31% B2B) than their
B2B counterparts. B2B marketers place more value on LinkedIn ads (24% B2B vs. 4%
B2C).
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 34 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Social ad types marketers want to learn
more about
We asked marketers to identify which types of social ads they want to learn more about.
Instagram ads took first place at 57%, followed closely by Facebook ads at 56%.
B2C marketers are more interested in learning about Instagram ads (64% B2C vs. 49%
B2B) and Facebook ads (62% B2C vs. 49% B2B) than their B2B counterparts. B2B
marketers are far more interested in learning about LinkedIn ads (65% B2B vs. 47% B2C).
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 35 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
How often do marketers use generative
AI tools?
We defined generative AI as a type of artificial
intelligence that can create new content (i.e.,
text, images, music, or videos) by learning
from existing content. For example, ChatGPT
is a generative AI tool.
More than two in three marketers (69%) we
surveyed are using generative AI tools, either
every day or weekly. A significant 45% of
marketers use AI each day.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 36 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
How long have marketers used
generative AI tools?
A substantial 56% of marketers
have used generative AI tools for
less than a year or have not yet
used generative AI.
B2B marketers tend to have
more experience with generative
AI, with 31% having more than
18 months of experience
compared to only 21% of B2C
marketers.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 37 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Generative AI tasks marketers want to
learn more about
We asked marketers to indicate areas where they want to learn to apply generative AI to
specific tasks.
The top areas of interest included creating content (70%), coming up with new ideas
(67%), and expanding ideas (66%).
B2B marketers were far more interested in automating repetitive tasks (72%) vs B2C
marketers (62%).
Most marketers have little interest in using AI to assist in decision-making.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 38 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Survey participant demographics
We leveraged email to find participants for our survey. We conducted this survey in
January 2025 by emailing more than 245,000 marketers and asking them to participate.
After 4 weeks, we closed the survey with 1,435 participants. Here are the demographic
breakdowns:
Years using social media marketing
We asked participants how long they've been
using social media for marketing.
Fifty-five percent of marketers surveyed have
8 or more years of social media marketing
experience.
Is social media marketing your main job
responsibility?
Approximately half (48%) of marketers said
social media marketing was their full-time
responsibility.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 39 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Business size
The largest group that took the survey
works for small businesses of 2-10
employees (37%), followed by the self-
employed (26%).
Primary target audience
About half (54%) of survey participants
focus primarily on attracting consumers
(B2C) and the other 46% primarily target
businesses (B2B).
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 40 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Industry
Below are the different industries that survey participants work in.
Age of participants
Most survey participants (89%) were age
30 or older.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 41 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
Gender
Females outnumbered males, representing
67% of all participants.
Country
Most participants were based in the United States (59%), followed by Canada (6%), the
United Kingdom and Northern Ireland (5%), Australia (5%), and India (3%).
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 42 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
About Michael A. Stelzner
Michael Stelzner is the founder of Social Media Examiner and
author of the books Launch and Writing White Papers. He's also
the host of the Social Media Marketing podcast, the AI Explored
podcast, and the founder of Social Media Marketing World.
Follow Michael on X/Twitter: x.com/mike_stelzner or Facebook
facebook.com/stelzner/
About Social Media Examiner: The world's largest small business marketing resource,
Social Media Examiner helps millions of marketers discover how to better connect with
customers, drive traffic, generate awareness, and increase sales. Social Media Examiner
also hosts the largest social media marketing conference, Social Media Marketing World.
2025 Social Media Marketing SocialMediaExaminer.com Page 43 of 43
Industry Report © 2025 Social Media Examiner
