Social Media – Age and Gender Keep Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest at the Top

As more and more social media networks emerge, they don’t simply launch and hope for the most visitors. They need to be targeted and fill an unmet need with their audience. Ongoing engagement has never been more important in order to keep users coming back. The biggest differentiators are gender and age. Coupled with those 2 factors, is the technology behind the social tool. Is the Social App easy to use? Does it have a evident need to exist for that gender or age group? For example, Snapchat is popular with millennials because it is “instant,” and teens are instant. Also, because the App requires a little more tech savvy, a 50 yr old may not want to invest the time to learn – I’m the exception 🙂 .

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According to BI Intelligence and PEW Internet, the gender and age differences breaks out as follows:

  • Pinterest has tremendous reach among women. Among US female internet users, 42% reported being on Pinterest in Pew’s late-2014 survey, compared to only 13% of men.
  • Instagram has become the most important and most-used social network for US teens. 32% of US teenagers cited it as their most important social network, compared to only 14% saying that of Facebook.
  • Snapchat, Vine, and Tumblr had by far the most youthful user bases of the social networks we looked at. 45% of Snapchat’s adult users are between 18 and 24, followed by Vine (28%) and Tumblr (28%), according to comScore.
  • LinkedIn enjoys high adoption among highly educated and high-income users. LinkedIn is used by 44% of Americans with income of $75,000 or more, according to Pew.
  • Messaging apps also have become more broadly popular, but still skew young: 7% of all people in the US aged 12 and older use WhatsApp, according to the Edison Research and Triton Digital survey.
  • The aging of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Pinterest is more apparent than ever. That’s especially true of Facebook: Less than two-fifths of Facebook’s adult user base in the US is aged 18 to 34, according to comScore.

 

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In the US, while gender, income, and education have little impact on whether or not someone uses social media, these factors do have a big impact on which social networks people opt to use. Many top social networks – including Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram – have a strong skew toward female users. Women in the US are more likely to use Facebook than men by about 11%, Pinterest by 29%, and Instagram by 7%, according to Pew. But Twitter and LinkedIn continue to attract a mostly male audience. 

There are more channels to compete with social media that would take males away from Facebook and Pinterest, like YouTube or Reddit. While this isn’t considered social media, at the end of the day, it’s the content that draws peoples attention, not necessarily the platform.

Some fun Facts – 2015

Top 10 Most Popular Social Networking Sites as derived from our eBizMBA Rank which is a continually updated average of each website’s Alexa Global Traffic Rank, and U.S. Traffic Rank from both Compete and Quantcast.

top 10 sm 082215

Facebook Statistics and Facts

  • Each day on Facebook, there are 350 million photos uploaded; 45 billion “Like” buttons clicked; and 10 billion messages sent. (The Wonder of Tech)
  • In an average month, 1.28 billion users are active on Facebook. (Convince & Convert)
  • In the United States, average click-through rate (CTR) for Facebook advertising increased by better than 50% last year, from .09% to .14%. But the average Facebook CTR in the U.K. is nearly twice that, at 0.27%. (Convince & Convert)

Twitter Facts

  • Twitter drives just over 1% of all website traffic. While that’s considerably less than Facebook or Pinterest, it’s more visits than are driven by StumbleUpon, Reddit, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn–combined. (Shareaholic)
  • There are 500 million tweets a day
  • Twitter is where millennials turn for business and financial information as well as sports. (Heidi Cohen)

LinkedIn Statistics and Facts

  • 91% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content. (TopRank)
  • There are 3 million active job listings on Linkedin
  • 50% of Linkedin members visit via the mobile app

Pinterest Facts

  • Women account for 69% of all users but 92% of all pins on Pinterest. (Ber|Art)
  • Pinterest accounts for 25% of all retail website referral traffic. (Ber|Art)
  • Pinterest is where millennials shop. (Heidi Cohen)

Is Social Media a drug? Watch video to find out.

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