A fact that will always reign true is that good marketing relies on the targeting of the right demographic. Sure, there are hundreds of other factors involved, but demographics are quite high on the list. With social media marketing being such a huge commodity today, Pew Internet, a company that conducts extensive internet market research projects, could not have chosen a better subject for their most recent report. The report, entitled, “Photos and Videos as Social Currency Online” provided insight past the common stereotypes of social networking sites, and showed just who was really using each network. The main focus of the study was to show what and how people were sharing photos and videos on social networks, but it was the actual demographic information that struck me as more important.
For Facebook, the report shows that 66% of all internet users admitted to using Facebook, out of a study of 1,005 people. 63% of men surveyed said they were Facebook users, and 70% of women surveyed said the same. For age groups, the highest percentage was 18-29 years old, at 83%. However, an interesting statistic is that 56% percent of respondents from ages 50-64 reported using Facebook on a regular basis.
Facebook showed the highest percentage of total internet users, with LinkedIn and Twitter trailing far behind it. LinkedIn had a user percentage of only 20%, while Twitter had even less with 16%. As could have been expected, 58% of LinkedIn users were those with incomes of $50,000-$75,000, meaning that LinkedIn remains the social network of the business world.
For Twitter user demographics, the most popular age group was just what I had expected it to be, and that is the age group from 18-29 with 27%. Compared to Facebook the number is quite low, which tells us that Facebook still stands tall in the realm of social media networks.
The majority of the study goes into detail on the impact of photo and video sharing on social networks. Since it is the main focus, here is an overview of their more important findings about social visual content sharing;
46% of internet users post original photos and videos online they have created themselves and 41% curate photos and videos they find elsewhere on the internet and post on image-sharing sites. Women are more likely than men to use Pinterest, while Instagram and Tumblr attract equal shares of men and women.
The study covered two of the more important subjects in today’s social media marketing world. The internet is being converted into one huge visual, with images and videos being the most popular forms of content out there right now. Also, it seems that Facebook is still the more popular choice of social network for internet users. It has been a fan favorite for a while and, despite some pretty close calls with Twitter, Facebook is still pretty much king. The numbers are constantly fluctuating, so it is sometimes hard to keep track, but for now, Pew Internet has provided us with a good idea of how market demographics are looking.
