Some media events tend to target either men or women exclusively. But even if your media event targets both sexes, it helps to know that men and women use social media differently, and understand what the differences are.
This is the basic foundation of any marketing, understanding your target market (audience) and understanding its demographics, which allows you to create targeted and effective marketing campaigns.
The General Overview
A total 129,987,341 people in the US use social media. Of the total, 71 percent of users are women, while 62 percent are men. However, what sites do women prefer, and what sites are preferred by men? How do the sexes differ in the way that they use social media? Knowing the answers to these questions can help you to strategically design a social media campaign to tap this huge potential market for your future events.
According to internetserviceproviders.org, Facebook has a wide lead among all the major media sites. Statistics show:
- Facebook is used by 67 percent of adults. (Monthly average on the site is 405 minutes).
- Pinterest is used by 15 percent of adults. (Monthly average on the site is 89 minutes).
- Twitter is used by 16 percent of adults. (Monthly average on the site is 21 minutes).
- LinkedIn is used by 29 percent of adults. (Monthly average on the site is 17 minutes).
- Google+ is used by 10 percent of adults. (Monthly average on the site is 3 minutes).
- MySpace has no states on adult usage in this study. (Monthly average on the site is 8 minutes).
Sites that are more popular with women
More women use Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest than men do. Statistics show that:
- Twitter users are mostly women at 62 percent. Numerically, there are 40 million more women who use Twitter than men.
- Facebook women users total 58 percent. Women are also more active, with sharing done by 62 percent of women. Women also have eight percent more friends than men do.
- Pinterest women users total 70 percent, with most click through rates (42 percent) in the areas of tutorials, recipes and DIYs. More business referrals are gained from Pinterest than from LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+ combined.
Sites that are more popular with men
The social networking sites that have a larger male population usage are Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube. Statistics indicate that:
- Google+ male users total 64 percent. One in four men use Google+ for social networking. The remaining 75 percent of male users don’t interact with other Google+ users.
- LinkedIn male users total 54 percent. However, 75 percent of them use LinkedIn mainly to conduct research on other companies. Some 68 percent use LinkedIn to reestablish networks with former business colleagues, while 45 percent use it to arrange face to face meetings for possible business opportunities. Only one in 10 men use the paid version of LinkedIn.
- YouTube has a total 280 million active YouTube accounts and 54 percent of them are male. What’s more, 25 percent of men watch a YouTube video daily, compared to 17 percent of women. Men also average one hour a week on YouTube versus 35 minutes for women.
Understanding your target market (audience) and where you can find them is key to creating an effective marketing campaign. For example, if you're targeting 45 – 65 year old women for your event, engage them on Pinterest and use images and content that speaks to that age group – so your images should not have teens or college students, which are popular with stock photography websites.
