Social Media Demographics: Part 2

If you have already read Part One of this piece, then you already understand how important social media marketing is for a business and you should know how certain social media channel user bases are aligned.

Understanding what social channels to utilise and prioritise is important and can help maximise efficiency and effectiveness in your online marketing campaigns. So we recommend that you take a closer look. In Part Two of our series, we will highlight three more social media channels and their demographics, plus conclude on what social media channels are best for your business and why you should always keep up to date on social media channel news and demographics.

LinkedIn Demographic Overview:

LinkedIn has experienced consistent growth over the past few years and is widely regarded as the best B2B social platform with 92% of B2B marketers including LinkedIn in their digital marketing mix6. It also has a strong millennial presence with 24% of millennials (18-24) using LinkedIn(6), though these numbers are no competition for the likes of TikTok or Instagram. It has a huge U.S. user base of 171+ million users which is over double the second highest user base of India with 69+ million users(6). If you want to try and market your product into the high-end market, then LinkedIn is also a great channel as 41% of millionaires use LinkedIn with the average user salary being around $47,000(6). Finally, its gender split is 51/49 in favour of females(6).

Twitter Demographic Overview:

Twitter is supposedly one of the giants of the social media world despite only having around 340 million users(7), which is more than half of TikTok’s user numbers, a third of Instagram’s and one eighth of Facebook’s. It has a very strong U.S. user base, but Japan is the second largest user base by quite some way from India and Brazil in third and fourth(7). Twitter is also tailored to high end marketing, as 80% of Twitter users are affluent millennials with 77% of Americans who earn more than $75,000 using the channel(7). Furthermore, if your business posts a lot of news then Twitter could be highly beneficial for you as 71% of Twitter users say they use the channel as their primary news source(7). Additionally, Twitter’s engagement rate sits at around 1%, although, 36% of Twitter users experience an engagement rate of under 0.5% although that rate is increased by 55% when a GIF is included in the post(8). Finally, the gender split for Twitter is a difficult stat to locate due to Twitter being quite cagey with releasing statistics, however, a multitude of different surveys say that Twitter has a male dominant user base with an approximate 66/44 split.

YouTube:

YouTube is one of the most overlooked social media channels when it comes to marketing within businesses which could be colossally damaging. YouTube is the second most visited site in the world with 2 billion monthly active users and is also, technically, the second largest search engine in the world while accounting for 37% of all global mobile internet traffic(9). It also has a very wide age demographic as 77% of 15–35-year-olds from the U.S. use YouTube and even 51% of people over 75 use it as well(9). It is also a global channel with 89% of its users coming from outside of the U.S. and a large Indian user base of 265 million active users(9). Furthermore, once you reach a certain follower count you can monetize any content that you produce and earn ad revenue from the ads that play before the videos. You can also decide to have your own ads playing before videos which are specifically directed towards people that will be interested in your business. These ads have an unbelievable reach of 53 million people in the UK alone, this equates to 84% of all adults(1). The largest channel on YouTube is an Indian Music Label called T-Series which has over 181 million subscribers and 153 billion video views which, statistically, means that 20 times the world population has viewed one of their videos. Because they have monetized their YouTube marketing campaigns, this means that they could be receiving up to $13 million in ad revenue per month from just posting their videos(10). Finally, YouTube has a male dominant gender split of 62/38(11).

Conclusion:

It’s important to note that no niche business should stretch its social platforming without research into the demographic of the channel. Instead, streamline your social platforms to secure a strong ROI. By doing so you will be able to focus time and resources on relevant social media platforms which engage your target audiences.

Also, do you understand the functionality of the social channel? Each channel has its own niche to comply with, for example Instagram must have an image attached to any text, TikTok requires a <60 second video and Twitter has a 280-character limit.

So if your business does not have:

·Video marketing collateral then TikTok or YouTube will not be suitable.

·Images for marketing collateral, then Instagram will be challenging.

·Short, punchy content then you will need to change this to suit Twitter.

Social media is dynamic. With everchanging demographics and active marketplace, social media channels often go through a form of social demographic transition and Butler Modelling - Facebook being a good example of a later stage and TikTok being a good example of an earlier stage of each. There will always be new emerging channels which could take over, as TikTok has done in the past four years since its formation. If you need help mastering social media for your business, then the Flourish digital team can help.

Sources:

(1) Source:

The UK Social Media Statistics for 2021 - Avocado Social

(6) Source:

• Linkedin by the Numbers (2021): Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts (omnicoreagency.com)

(7) Source:

• Twitter by the Numbers (2021): Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts (omnicoreagency.com)

(8) Source:

Twitter Engagement Rate Calculator | The Online Advertising Guide –

(9) Source:

• YouTube by the Numbers (2021): Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts (omnicoreagency.com)

(10) Source:

T-Series's YouTube Stats (Summary Profile) - Social Blade Stats (Please note that these are live statistics, so they are constantly changing)

(11) Source:

YouTube Demographics to be Aware of in 2021 - 99firms.com