New research from Track Maven reveals that engagement on the four major social networks — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn — is down on nearly all four platforms.

group of people talking in social network

Engagement overall decreased on Instagram by 25.85%, on Facebook by 8.27%, and on LinkedIn by 7.6%. Surprisingly, engagement is up on Twitter by 1.08%.

Because of its recent introduction of business profiles and its new ranking algorithm, Instagram is showing significantly more engagement than even Facebook, the leading social network. It remains to be seen if this high volume of engagement will continue as both businesses and private users get used to Instagram’s changes.

Not surprisingly, most engagement on Instagram and Twitter occurs in the music and entertainment industries. Most Facebook engagement occurs in the entertainment and sports industry, likely because Facebook has upped its efforts to become a sports center in the past few months. On LinkedIn, luxury goods brands saw the most engagement, a surprising finding considering the other social networks’ results.

This research should tell the marketer two important things about social media. The first is that different audiences use different social networks. For example, the person interacting with a jewelry brand on LinkedIn is unlikely to be liking music posts on Instagram.

The second takeaway is that businesses need to hone in on the social network on which their customer base spends the majority of its time. Social media is just another way for the business to meet the customer’s needs, and that can only happen if the business knows where to find the customer.