Some 79 percent of U.S. 13- to 18-year-olds surveyed said they have a Snapchat account, more than any other type of social media. Of that age group, 73 percent have an Instagram account and just 57 percent say they are on Facebook.
Respondents had to choose only one social network they could keep if they were “trapped on a deserted island.” This time, 44 percent of teens picked Snapchat, ahead of Instagram (24 percent) and Facebook (14 percent). One year ago, for RBC’s same survey question, the percentage of teens who insisted on keeping Snapchat on a desert island led with 28 percent — suggesting the app is still growing in necessity/popularity among young people.
Throw in LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and region specific social networks like Vkontakte and Sina Weibo and WeChat, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who’s online but isn’t on social media.
What has led to the rise of these social networks? What kind of people do they attract?
What is their psychology? What kind of content do they like to consume? And most importantly for bloggers and marketers – what works, what doesn’t on social media?
Facebook has become the ‘home base’ for most people online. While they may or may not use other networks, a majority maintain a presence on Facebook.
Popular: Used by 72% of all adult internet users in America.
More women users: 77% of online female users are on Facebook.
Younger audience: 82% of all online users between 18-29 are on Facebook
USA (14%), India (9%) and Brazil (7%) form the three largest markets.
Twitter’s quick flowing ‘info stream’ attracts an audience that swings younger and is mostly urban/semi-urban.
Younger: Used by 37% of all online users between 18 and 29.
Educated: 54% of users have either graduated college, or have some college experience.
Richer: 54% of online adults who make over $50,000+ are on Twitter.
More women than men: 29% of all online women are on Instagram, vs. only 22% of all men.
Overwhelmingly younger: 53% of all 18-29 year olds are on Instagram.
Less educated: Only 24% of Instagram users are college graduates, while 31% have some college experience – fitting since its audience is largely younger.
Google+ is a mysterious beast. It is ubiquitous, yet doesn’t attract nearly a tenth of the attention as Instagram or Facebook. Some marketers swear by it, while others are busy proclaiming its death.
Younger users: 27% of all 16-24 year olds online are active members of Google+. In contrast, only 18% and 14% of 45-54 and 55-64 year olds are active on Google+ at the moment.
Large non-US user base: Only 55% of Google+ users are American. 18% are Indian and 6% are Brazilian. One reason for this international user base is Android’s popularity outside the US (since Google+ is baked right into Android).
Even income distribution: According to GlobalWebIndex.net, 22% of people in bottom 25% of income earners are on Google+. For the top 25% of income earners, this number is 24%, while for the mid 50% earners, this number is 23%. This means that nearly all levels of income earners are nearly equally represented on Google+.
Pinterest’s visual nature makes it a fantastic marketing tool for B2C businesses. And it’s got the potential to drive a large amount of traffic to your blog if you have a solid strategy.
Here’s what you should know about Pinterest demographics:
Overwhelmingly female: 42% of all online female users are on Pinterest, vs. only 13% of men.
Older audience: 72% of Pinterest’s audience are 30 years or older. Only 34% are between 18 and 29. Significantly, 17% are over 65 years old.
Distinctly suburban: Suburban and rural users form the largest share – 29% and 30% respectively. This is distinctly different from other networks where urban users rule.
Higher income: Given the higher average age, Pinterest users also have higher disposable income, with 64% of all adults making $50,000+ on Pinterest.
The professional networking site LinkedIn attracts an older audience that is largely urban, wealthier, and more educated.
Older: Only 23% of users are between 18-29 years old. 21% are over 65 years, and 31% are between 30 and 49 years of age.
Urban: Very limited number of rural users – only 14%. 61% are either urban or suburban.
Wealthier: 75% of users earn over $50,000.
Highly educated: 50% of LinkedIn users are college graduates. Another 22% have some college experience.
Snapchat is the newest social networks on this list, but also one of the fastest growing. Here’s what you need to know about its demographics:
Dominated by women: 70% of Snapchat’s users are females.
Overwhelmingly young: 71% of users are younger than 25.
Limited income: 62% earn under $50,000 – fitting given the average age of Snapchat’s users.
ere’s what you should take away from all these stats:
If you’re targeting younger users, stick to Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat.
If you’re targeting women with disposable income, head over to Pinterest.
For professionals with better education and income, use LinkedIn.
For everyone, go with Facebook.
The psychology of social media users
Facebook is a ‘closed’ network where your friends list will usually be limited to family, friends and acquaintances you’ve met in real life. Privacy is a big concern for Facebook’s users, and all posts are private by default.
This ultimately affects the way users interact with each other and with businesses on Facebook.
Facebook users are more trusting (since the network is closed).
Facebook users have more close relationships. Pew found that heavy users of the platform are more likely to have a higher number of close relationships.
Facebook users are politically engaged and active.
To understand why people share or follow on Twitter, researchers at Georgia Tech and UMichigan analysed over 500M tweets over 15-months. They found that the three biggest reasons why people share/follow on Twitter are:
Network overlap: Your network is similar to your followers’ network.
User tweet-RT ratio: The number of tweets vs. the number of RTs for a user.
Informational content: The more informative the content, the better.
As per one study, a person’s Pinterest boards represent his/her “ideal self”. That is, it is a representation of everything the user would want to be or have. This is in opposition to Facebook that represents the user’s “real self”.
keep the following in mind:
Instead of marketing yourself on every network, pick the network whose demographics matches your target audience’s.
Positivity always wins – unless you’re deliberately trying to create controversy (not a good option for most non-media businesses).
Rules of content: Informative content on Twitter and LinkedIn, aspirational content on Instagram and Pinterest, fun/positive/uplifting content on Facebook.
A two-part workshop running 90 minutes each session on Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30 Central/12:30 Mountain/11:30am Pacific and Thursday, August 31, 2017 at 2:30pm Eastern/1:30 Central/12:30 Mountain/11:30am Pacific
Snapchat is one of the 10 most downloaded apps in the world and a key means of communication for individuals aged 13-34. Emerging quickly onto the social media scene, Snapchat has left many librarians wondering how to incorporate it into their outreach strategy. In this two-part workshop, social media expert Paige Alfonzo responds to this question and teaches you how to successfully leverage Snapchat as a marketing tool—one that can be used for readers’ advisory, promotion, information dissemination, and a variety of other marketing purposes.
In part one, Alfonzo covers the ins and outs of the platform—from teaching you the basics of setting up an account, adding friends, and sending snaps to demonstrating how to annotate snaps, incorporate filters, and use Snapchat Stories and Memories. In part two, Alfonzo delves into the specifics of how to make Snapchat work in libraries by discussing how librarians have successfully used Snapchat to promote their services, then she provides you with an opportunity to participate hands on with Snapchat by sending snaps to each other. The workshop will leave you with useful approaches to get creative with the app and expand your social media strategy.
#2: New Platform Features Spur Millennial Adoption
Facebook – An RBC Capital Markets social media survey showed that in the last year, an average of 33% of Millennials who took the survey increased the time they spent on Facebook, whereas an average of 23.5% decreased their time on Facebook.
Instagram –
Twitter –
Snapchat –
#3: Millennials Prefer Indirect Sales Messages
These days, the preferred formats are content marketing and influencer marketing.
the old “sell without selling” idea.
In your content marketing, give Millennials something for their time, attention, and (hopefully) loyalty. They’re more likely to trust your brand if you show a genuine interest in educating them with a how-to, for example.
While Facebook has tried to push other copycats of Snapchat, they’ve typically lived in separate apps like Poke and Slingshot, or as features buried behind the News Feed, like its revamped camera. But now it will be impossible to use Facebook without being exposed to Facebook Stories.
The purely episodic nature of Snapchat works to promote timely engagement and audience retention through consistent sharing of snaps. By combining the longevity of your feed posts with the 24-hour duration of your story segments, you can generate urgency while providing consistent and engaging content for your Instagram followers. Bottom line: Snapchat relies on 24-hour stories from users, providing content that is purely episodic and temporary to viewers. Instagram content can be delivered episodically through stories or more permanently through the feed.
#2: How Filters Compare
Snapchat Geofilters for Location-Based Snaps
When you want a customized geofilter to reflect an event or location, Snapchat geofilters will frame your image or video snaps with branding and themes. While large organizations often sponsor geofilters on a bigger scale (think the Olympics or national holidays), Snapchat also lets you create and use your own geofilter.
Snapchat Face-Mapping and Motion Filters for Creative Snaps
Instagram Filters for Various Coloring Effects
Bottom line: Instagram story filters are limited to overall color, contrast, and lighting adjustments. Snapchat filters provide more options for customization, motion, and branding from the filters themselves.
#3: How Hashtags Work
At present, you can use hashtags in your Instagram and Snapchat stories to indicate segment topics or commentary. However, the hashtags don’t provide any functionality for users. In other words, users can’t tap a hashtag to search for that term within the app.
Beyond social media, there is also a clear disconnect between how college admins reach out to their students and what students actually pay attention to. While the average college admin, like most adults, is used to reading and sending emails, students are quickly moving away from using email in their daily lives and getting them to check it regularly is painful.
A fantastic New York Times article in the fall examined college student use of technology and the results were fascinating.
While some faculty members are hesitant to contact students on whichever social media platform is in vogue, others have explored texting as an alternative to email.
The paper, which is being presented at next month’s Information and Telecommunications Education and Research Association conference, also recommends colleges should consider using texting and social media platforms to reach students. However, the findings still suggest email can be an effective method of communication.
How Millennials use and control social media, Published
———————-
Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty ;
The Roll app will help you make sure your images are the best they can be. The Roll analyzes your photos, rates them on a zero to 100 scale, and adds keywords for easy search (much like Google Photos).
The Roll has more features than I have time to write about it here. Just do yourself a favor and check it out. Your visual content will thank you.
Tuurnt is a social media app and platform following in the ephemeral footsteps of Snapchat. Giving users 24 hours to respond to photos and videos, Tuurnt turns regular visual posts into social events where participation and contribution from both known contacts and public users is encouraged.
Yubl’s success can be attributed to not only the highly detailed interface, but the three main areas of the user experience. “Private” is for one-on-one or invite-only group, ‘Public’ is an open forum across the entire social network (including brands and celebrities), and ‘Explore’ is for searching and finding other users such as brands and celebrities.
Quik allows users to create stylized videos with just a few taps on their mobile devices. Once your video is done, you can post directly to your social media accounts through Quik. my note. compare Quik to other video editing free tools for mobiles: https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2016/01/21/video-editing-for-mobile-devices/
The app bridges the gap between your phone and computer, and, as Gizmodo explains, “automatically sends all your phone notifications over to your computer in the form of little windows.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/9881673/Screen_Shot_2017_12_16_at_10.02.31_AM.png)
