Photo by Eva Bronzini

Why social media marketing is more than a popularity contest

By Robin Anderson

This blog is designed to help you determine the best place to focus your time and energy when marketing through social media. We’ve provided a few stats, along with the primary reason each age group uses social media. Use that information to create promotions that resonate, leading to engagement to build your community.

Using social media as a means to drive awareness can be viewed as an easy way to promote your company and product. And with today’s market automation tools, posting on every social media platform that is available is extremely efficient. However, managing your presence everywhere you post  - the comments/responses, following through with the building of your community - may quickly become unwieldy. Making it impossible to keep up and be present for your audience who may be active participants. Therefore, it’s important to figure out where the best place your customer is going to be. Make the most of your promotions and actively converse with your followers to do the best you can with one platform before expanding your marketing footprint.

A bit of housekeeping is needed before you start posting. First, determine what your primary objective is when promoting your product or service. Is it to build awareness, generate leads, or capture customers? Set KPIs to help you measure the results. Second, it’s important to know who your primary audience is so that you can then determine where the best place to promote and build a community.

With that in mind, here are the platforms most frequently used by the customer segments by age group and their primary reason for doing so:

GEN Z

YouTube leads the pack of social media platforms for this age group. In fact, according to Statistica, 95% of adults age 18-29 use YouTube for entertainment. When it comes to users, the bulk of TikTok’s audience is younger. In fact, 47% of U.S. TikTok users in the U.S. are Gen Z’s. In addition, TikTok has a strong level of influence from brands, particularly among females. According to Data.ai, TikTok users spend close to 5% of their waking hours watching TikTok videos. 

Research has shown that this age group uses social media to connect with friends and fill their spare time. They use social networks over search engines to research products. And while influencers have the most impact on this age group, following influencers is lower than using social to see what’s trending or reading the news. Not surprising, they also feel the most pressure to be perfect on social media.

MILLENNIALS

Again, YouTube is a leader. When it comes to advertising, YouTube’s largest advertising platform is this age group. The long-form content makes this an attractive source for information as they spend more time on YouTube than any other platform. Twitter has a high level of engagement with this age group, however the demographics skew towards those who are college-educated and make more than $75K annually. Millennials are the primary drivers of LinkedIn. They too are driven by high-earning professionals. According to LinkedIn, it is the top-rated social network for lead generation (B2B). However, keep an eye on TikTok with their new resume feature announced in July. Growth in this age group for TikTok will likely grow considerably. Millennials still actively participate on Facebook and is the largest age group on Instagram. 

Posting videos and photos remains popular among the ‘selfie’ generation. This group, more than any others believe social media is good for society. They have a high interest in brands. Keeping in touch with family and friends is the prime sort of interest for using a specific platform, followed by news and events related content. 

Example of building community and engagement: GoPro

GoPro has over 19.5 million Instagram followers. Every day they run a competition - Photo of the Day that helps strengthen their brand engagement and loyalty. Take a look at the contributions - the photos are AMAZING!

GEN X

More than any other age group, GenX uses social media to keep in touch with family and friends, with reading news stories coming in at second. Oddly, the third most popular reason for using social media is to fill spare time. They have an interest in brands they buy from, with little interest in influencers. Facebook keeps them connected with 74% of adults in this age group using it. Instagram, no longer considered to be the ‘hip’ platform is still engaging with it’s ability to display video, in addition to photos.

84% of consumers said watching a brand’s video convinced them to make a purchase or subscribe to a service.

BOOMERS

Facebook is the leading social media platform for Boomers. It’s the first social media platform where they were able to connect with family and friends. This continues to be their primary reason for using social media, followed by reading news stories. Boomers are the leading age group for concealing their feelings when online and are the least likely to click on an ad within social media. However, they are more likely to discover a new brand on tv as opposed to on social media. Interestingly, Boomers use search engines, more than any other group, as a primary source to research a product. While Milliennials are the largest advertising audience for YouTube, 49% of U.S. internet users over 65 say they use YouTube. The largest age group for Pinterest is age 50-64. Users use pinterest as a platform for research. It’s focus on product make it an idea platform to advertise. 

When creating your social media posts, it’s important to consider the visual, not just the copy. Static images still serve a purpose, such as emphasizing a statistic, or a quote, however, capturing the essence of your product or driving emotion can happen so much easier through video.

Video has become the primary way to reach and engage with all audiences, no matter the age group. Rather than produce professional style videos, keep them short, informal, fun. Think 90% of your content in the video as being informative and fun, with 10% or less as being salesy. The best part, when creating videos, even light ones, you can repurpose the content for other uses such as other social platforms, your website, or newsletter.

After building your initial community, and in preparation for Web 3.0, take your social media to the next level. How? Many brands are incorporating social into their user experience through their own app. Doing so drives higher engagement and loyalty making it easier to continue to build your community and reward those who participate. It becomes a place where your customers are there for the connection, the community. And while this hasn’t changed, it is now more important than ever to be present within your community. To be actively engaged. That means to respond to requests, needs, inquiries in a timely manner. A perfect place to demonstrate your company’s commitment to inclusivity - everyone is welcomed.

Need help building your community? Contact Us for a free 30-minute consultation.

FunFact Friday

Founded in 1928, Welcome Wagon was started as a way to welcome new homeowners to a neighborhood. “Hostesses” would bring a gift basket to new homeowners in the neighborhood. The baskets would contain coupons and samples from local businesses. Welcome Wagon lasted for 50 years until 1998.