Marketing Online: Behavior Of Internet And Social Media Consumers 2021

7 min readMar 3, 2021

New blog post update on marketing online, this is the repost from my blog suebunthot.com.

Are you the one who uses the internet as a platform to sell your product or making a profit out of your business?

Or maybe you are the one who wants to start your business and pave the way for your success using the digital platforms.

Welcome to the new episode of the internet marketing insight!

This article started with the question,

“What is it that people use the internet for?” “Why they want to use the internet in the first place?”

And “how they use it?”

Without looking at the data (research-based), you might probably guess of the why(s) already by looking at yourself, why do you use the internet in the first place?

And one thing to remind of is that we, as an individual, have more than one reasons to use the internet. That becomes good news for people who want to do business and offer services/products online. Because that means we have more opportunities to explore. It can also be anything, any niche that you enjoy doing! Does that sound great?

Definitely, yes!

In this post, I am giving full credit to SIMON KEMP, the author writing this insightful article on datareportal.com. All the pictures and data on this post are from DIGITAL 2021: GLOBAL OVERVIEW REPORT, follow the link if you want to read a full report.

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Select the topic you want to jump into as follows:

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Personal experience of why I use the internet

( click here to skip to the main content of this article)

So, looking at myself why I used the internet in the first place. (1) I wanted to find a community of meeting the like-mind people. That means the main reason is social media.

I started my first account to join the yoga community around 5–6 years back (now my account is inactive, to be honest).

Then I had a specific account for gardening which is the so-called seasonal account. Because I could not keep it active all year. I do gardening as the season allows me to do (plus living in Europe, your gardening season starts every spring until the next winter. My gardening account actives during these months only) And it is one of my hobbies. (Not a career, that’s why it’s a seasonal thing I enjoy.)

Other than that I use the internet for researching whatever comes to my mind at the time. I know this happens to every one of us. A person can have many interests. And we do not know many things. That’s why the search engine is always number one after all of the internet tools these days. Plus, the online library like Wikipedia is a huge resource of knowledge and the how-to industry where people can find everything out of it even with something we think we could not find it.

Anyway, those are some individual reasons why I use the internet for. You also have your reasons.

But today we will take a look at the bigger picture.

Why do people use the internet?

What are their interests go?

These are the questions to keep asking for people who want to start an online business and build your brand.

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Before we start to look at why people use the internet for.

You should see this information. Because this is the reason why you should start marketing your service/product/brand online.

Why you should start marketing your service/product/brand online

Population: the world’s population (January 2021) is at 7.83 billion. It is growing by 1 percent per year, which means that the global has more than 80 million new people since the start of 2020.
More than half of the world’s population (67%, 5.22 billion people) use a mobile phone today. That means more room to grow!
But only a little more than half of the world’s population (60%, 4.66 billion people) use the internet.
However, social media keeps growing more than 13% among internet users. (53% of the world’s population, 4.20 billion use social media. If you compare the statistic, you can guess that people who use the internet at least have one social media account.)
And 99% of them access social media via mobile phone.

From here you may see that the biggest attention now is on social media platforms. And the key idea to take from here is that: if you want to make a service/product/message accessible to the most audiences. Your service/product should compatible on the mobile (not only look good on the computer).

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I mentioned this because I see many of the bloggers or people who write great articles on the website. It looks incredible and easy to read on the desktop screen but when it comes to the mobile screen, it looks awful. People do not feel comfortable reading or enjoy using it. They will leave.

If you’re a web developer, app developer. It’s a must to check as a user experience how audiences see and use the web/app on the mobile. Because this happened with my website as well. When I started this website, I built it on the desktop and the theme I use did not have a problem reading on the computer screen. But when I access my website through my phone, it was truly terrible. I immediately needed to change the theme.

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Top 10 reasons why people use the internet in 2021

Finding information
Socialization (stay in touch with friends and family)
Update with news & events
How-to researching
Entertainment (videos, shows, and movies)
Looking for inspiration or finding a new idea
Researching products & brands
Listening to music
Killing the time (no-purpose using, just general browsing.)
Education and study related-activities

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The above information is the general use of the internet.

Now we are focusing on social media.

Why do people use social media?

Is it only to stay in touch with family & friends?

As mentioned earlier one person usually has more than one social media accounts for a different reason, communities, and purposes.

The most-used social platforms

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Social media is a big part but we do not use it all day like we think, right?

On average we spend about 7 hours per day on the internet surfing
Half of the time (3h + 24m), people spend watching television, streaming, broadcast.
2h + 25m on social media
2h on reading
1h for listening to music, radio, podcast, and playing games

Top 10 reasons

Update with the news & events
Find entertaining content
Killing their free time
Stay in touch with family & friends
Share everyday life with others (photos and videos)
Research products to buy
Networking with other people
Following their friends’ activities (use social media because their friends use it)
Share my opinion
Meet new people

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If you are an entrepreneur or a business owner. Your attention would go to where the black label is.

But now we will focus on no.6 that people research products to buy. The next question is:

What products or services people would pay for when they purchase using the internet?

The result is:

№1 is fashion & beauty. Then follow by (2) traveling, (3) DIY/hobbies/toy, (4) electronics/physical media, (5) food & personal cares

But don’t forget that the behavior of spending money online also changed by the cause of COVID-19.

Statista reports that online revenues in the Travel, Mobility, and Accommodation category were decreased by more than 50% in 2020.
Whereas many other categories showed strong growth in eCommerce revenues in 2020 including food & personal care (+41%), fashion & beauty (+27), digital music(+26), DIY/hobbies/toy (+25), video games (+23), furniture (+20), and electronics/physical media (+18)

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Internet behaviors after COVID-19 pandemic

We have learned that the cause of COVID-19 changed the situation by increasing the use of the internet and especially social media. The question is the COVID-19 will not be forever, what would be the next movement or trend of how people use online digital platforms after the COVID-19 pandemic?

The author wrote another article in this series that people have plans to continue using digital platforms after the pandemic:

20% of users will continue watching more shows, films, and streamings
15% continue using spend longer time on social media & 16% on messengers
14% on music streaming
10% will be spending more time on mobile app & playing games
5.5% creating & uploading videos
4.2% listening to more podcasts

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Tips on building your brand or starting your marketing online

Before ending the article. The author, Simon Kemp gave us some tips on building your brand or starting your marketing online.

Look beyond platform user numbers, and ask yourself:
Who do I want to engage?
Why might they be using social media?
Which platform(s) will be most relevant to their motivations?
How can I use these channels to achieve my desired outcomes?
SIMON KEMP

Marketing works great when you specify your audience/customers.

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I highly recommended it!

Originally published at http://keedkien.wordpress.com on March 3, 2021.