Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr and Pinterest. That’s six social networks businesses can use to reach their target audience! And as if that wasn’t enough, we’ve got new social media sites like Vine and App.net popping up.
Case in point, there’s just not enough time in the day to maintain an active presence on all the major social networks.
So how do you decide where to invest your time? Ideally you want to be where your target audience is hanging out. Otherwise you will not see the results you were expecting.
Each social network caters to a different demographic. Which means you can’t use a one-size fits all strategy. Let’s take a look at some statistics of the six major social networks and see which one is a good match for your business.
30 Social Media Statistics To Help You Decide
- Facebook is the larges social network on the list with 1.06 billion monthly active users (Source)
- 680 million monthly mobile active users (Source)
- Facebook’s audience is almost level in age distribution with 57% of Facebook users aged between 18-44, and 10% being over the age of 65 (Compete.com)
- The average age of a Facebook user is 22 (Source)
- Males account for 43% of users (Uberly.com)
- 60% earn less than $60k annually (Compete.com)
- 77% of B2C companies and 43% of B2B companies acquired customers from Facebook (Source)
- Twitter’s audience is more middle-aged with the average age of a user being 37.3 years old, with 55% are over the age of 35.(Source)
- 60% of users are female. (Source)
- 17% earn more than $100k (Compete.com)
- Interesting content, personal connections and humour are the top 3 reasons why people retweet (Source)
- LinkedIn has the oldest audience out of the social networks on the list with 15% over 65 (Compete.com)
- 55% of their audience earns more than $60k, of which 27% earn more than $100k (Compete.com)
- Gender distribution is equal at 50% (Source)
- B2B business experienced a 61% success rate in customer acquisition via LinkedIn, compared to 39% for B2C (Source)
- Largest industry on LinkedIn is information and services, followed by financial services, higher education, computer software and telecommunications (Source)
Google+
- 60% of Google+ users are under 45 (Compete.com)
- 22% are aged 35-44 (Compete.com)
- 68% of Google+ users are male, while 32 percent of Google+ users are female. (Source)
- 30% of Google+’s audience has income over $100k (Compete.com)
- Student is the top occupation on Google+ at 20,01%, followed by software engineer at 2,65% and consultant at 1,99% (Source)
Tumblr
- Tumblr’s audience is among the youngest out of all the social networks on this list with 45% being under 35 years old. (Compete.com)
- 47% of US Tumblr users are male (Source)
- 35% of Tumblr users make less than $30k (Compete.com)
- 65% of Tumblr’s audience has a college education (Source)
- The most popular age group on Pinterest is 25 – 34 year olds at 30% (Source)
- 80 % of Pinterest users are women, while 50 percent of all Pinterest users have children. (Source)
- 28.1% of Pinterest users have an annual household income of $100k (Source)
- Visitors coming from Pinterest spend 70% more money than referrals from non-social channels (Source)
- Tutorial, DIY & recipe pins experience 42% higher click-through rate than other types of pins (Source)
So what can you do with this information? Well if you’re wondering whether your target audience can afford your products, simply look at their annual income. Are you a B2B business? Chances are, you’ll have better success with LinkedIn.
These statistics give you a basic idea of who’s using what and where your target audience is. Just because everyone else is on a social network is not a good enough reason for you to be on it. The only way to grow an audience is to be active, follow people and have content with substance to contribute. At the moment the top 3 for businesses are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
What social networks are you using?
Image by Jason A. Howie
