When presenting a social media program, people want to know about the numbers. Who’s on what network? How old are they? How much do they make? Quoting stats gives perspective.
For example, there are still people out there who think that Facebook is only for college kids. Or, that you can’t do business on LinkedIn. Or, that twitter is a place to report on what you’re eating, not what you’re doing. Each of these platforms is place where people gather and communicate. When you take the technology away, what you see is relationships connected, or not, by a series of status updates.
Social Media Demographics Who’s Using Which Sites is a cool infographic that displays information for eight social networks by age, gender, income and education level.
From the site:
Numerous social media sites have witnessed explosive growth of their user bases in the last several years, but it’s a known fact that the type of user a site attracts varies greatly. Have you ever wondered which sites attract the most educated of social media users, or those that pull in the highest income?
It’s tempting to take numbers and quote them. Interpreting them gives context. Overall, this graphic shows me that:
Facebook, LinkedIn and twitter are all good places to reach the 35-54 market in the $50-74,000 income range.
Women make up the majority of users on Facebook, twitter and MySpace. LinkedIn is split almost evenly between women and men.
LinkedIn leads the way in highest percentage of people with incomes of over $75,000; most members with bachelor degrees or higher and greatest number of members over 35.
Teens hang out on MySpace while Facebook, Twitter and MyShare have almost member equal share.
What do you think? How do use numbers like this in your marketing and PR?
Hat tip to @seegullmedia and Chad for the link.
English
8 thoughts on “Social Media Demographics for 8 Sites”
Hi Barbara,
Greetings from New York where I am about to attend Jeff Pulver’s “140 Characters Conference”, http://bit.ly/140confNYC.
What’s your reaction to the original post’s comments which seem to be questioning the source and research methods?
How trust-able are these findings?
Hi Barbara,
Greetings from New York where I am about to attend Jeff Pulver’s “140 Characters Conference”, http://bit.ly/140confNYC.
What’s your reaction to the original post’s comments which seem to be questioning the source and research methods?
How trust-able are these findings?
Hi Carlos:
Checking the source, the method and the date is always a good idea whenever statistics are concerned.
But, it’s even more important when you’re talking about social media. Because our world moves so fast, in real time, the user stats are in a continual state of flux.
These stats come from Google and, although the infographic presentation is cool, there probably are more recent and accurate stats out there.
We like these three sites to compare data for our clients: http://quantcast.com, http://alexa.com and http://compete.com
Knowing what you want to measure is really important. My goal here was to show how to interpret this information.
More recent numbers, for the past three months as of April 20, 2010 for Facebook and twitter site visitors from quantcast.com.
Facebook
22% 13-17
42% 18-34
20% 35-49
12% 50+
Twitter
14% 13-17
45% 18-34
24% 35-39
14% 50+
12% 50+
For marketers – how often do you measure statistics and how do you plan ahead knowing the site demographics will shift? Does it matter that much?
Barbara
Hi Carlos:
Checking the source, the method and the date is always a good idea whenever statistics are concerned.
But, it’s even more important when you’re talking about social media. Because our world moves so fast, in real time, the user stats are in a continual state of flux.
These stats come from Google and, although the infographic presentation is cool, there probably are more recent and accurate stats out there.
We like these three sites to compare data for our clients: http://quantcast.com, http://alexa.com and http://compete.com
Knowing what you want to measure is really important. My goal here was to show how to interpret this information.
More recent numbers, for the past three months as of April 20, 2010 for Facebook and twitter site visitors from quantcast.com.
Facebook
22% 13-17
42% 18-34
20% 35-49
12% 50+
Twitter
14% 13-17
45% 18-34
24% 35-39
14% 50+
12% 50+
For marketers – how often do you measure statistics and how do you plan ahead knowing the site demographics will shift? Does it matter that much?
Barbara