Ep 13: Targeting by Social Media Platform

In this episode of Off the Record Marketing Deconstructed, the hosts discuss the different demographics associated with various social media platforms, including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. They analyze user gender distribution, age brackets, and engagement rates, offering insights for marketers to effectively target their ideal clients.

The episode also delves into the evolution of these platforms and the implications for future marketing strategies.

00:00 Introduction to Audience Targeting by Social Media Platform
01:29 Diving into Facebook Demographics
03:53 Exploring YouTube Statistics
06:41 Instagram Insights
09:08 TikTok Trends and User Behavior
13:37 Snapchat Usage and Demographics
16:07 Twitter/X: News and Engagement
19:11 Pinterest: The Niche Platform
20:56 LinkedIn: Professional Networking and Content
26:36 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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Simplified Social Hub
Simplified Social Hub simplifies social media management by consolidating essential features into one user-friendly platform. It empowers businesses and individuals to effectively manage their social media presence, enhance audience engagement, and achieve their marketing goals.

https://simplifiedsocialhub.com/

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to Off the Record Marketing Deconstructed. On today's podcast, we are going to dive into audience by social media platform and how you can use those platforms and that information to your advantage when you are trying to reach and market to your ideal client. The client's a lot about how YouTube really is a big search engine also, which Here's that, that stat. It's no longer, like, what you're following, when you were doing it in a what you're following. Yeah, just watching TikTok or YouTube or, you know, whatever it is, just sitting there. You could see their hands, right? I mean, I didn't, I didn't. The funny and entertainment piece to that, like, when people go to TikTok, that's what they're searching for, that is not. So, you guys, let's kind of dig into demographics by social media platform. Yeah. We use social media a lot. We do it organically. We use paid social. We do all kinds of things. And I think it's important as our clients rely on us to understand what the demographics of each platform are and how we can put our clients on the right platform based on who they're trying to target. So, um, I pulled some numbers. the most up to date statistics on platforms. And so we know them, but I'll just kind of share these with our audience that's watching. So, um, the number one platform that people are on and using is Facebook. Uh, Facebook has over 3 billion monthly active users. Um, and then Facebook Messenger, which is also part of that has 979 monthly active users. Um, so let's break down to the actual statistics of who's looking at it. So, um, Facebook Messenger is the most active user on the platform. And this always surprises me across a lot of the platforms is that 56. 8 percent of Facebook's audience is male and 43. 2 percent is female. I always think the female, uh, audience is higher on all the social media platforms. So I, it always surprises me. Um, 31 percent of Facebook users are 25 to 34 years old. And that is the largest age group on the platform. 89 percent of social media marketers use Facebook and the average user spends 19 hours, 47 minutes on Facebook each month. Um, reasons for using Facebook are really to message friends and family. So, that's kind of how Facebook breaks down. Anything surprising on that for you guys? I'd say the, uh, the gender demographics of that are surprising. I didn't necessarily think it'd be like reversed or anything like that, but I figured it'd be pretty close to 50, 50. So I thought it would follow the population trend, which is very, very close. I mean, I think it's like 1 percent difference between the two, something like 49. 5 percent or something like that, but I thought it would closely follow the population trend. Although I would say that one thing that wouldn't surprise me, I wonder how much Marketplace funnels that because I do feel like places like eBay and Craigslist In my experience were places where it would be very male dominated, uh, selling places. And oftentimes I look at marketplace and say, only a guy would be thinking that's worth selling to the public and not just throwing away. Uh, so I, I am curious like what, how much that might drive some of that traffic as well. Interesting. Okay. Um, all right. So let's talk about YouTube. Okay. Um, so stats on YouTube. So YouTube has around 2. 49 billion monthly active users. Uh, users watch 70 billion videos on YouTube Shorts every single day. That's a huge number. Um, they consume around a billion hours of content on the platform. around 63 percent of brands that post video content share it on YouTube. I think that's important. I mean, I just, you know, we're going to talk about video and future episodes, but I, um, I think that's huge for any of our clients that we do stuff with is that YouTube's a place they need to be. It's a huge search engine. So, um, so YouTube is the second most common video distribution channel after Facebook. The, let's see. Um, YouTube is the second most trafficked website in the world after Google. Um, so we talk about, I talk to clients a lot about how YouTube really is a big search engine also. Um, it, which, here's that, that stat, the second most used internet search engine. So, uh, and it is mostly watched by, um, it's male dominated as well, as far as the percentage of those that watch. And that doesn't surprise me. No. Compared to Facebook. Mm hmm. Yeah, I think it's less of a surprise. So. But, you know, the math says, based on the number of active users per month and based on the daily number of users, reels um What it only comes out to what like four or something four reels per day per user now not to say that everybody's right because you're talking about monthly versus daily, but on average it's only four reels per day Which that number kind of feels low to me because I feel like there are some people that would get on there for hours And just watch reel after reel after reel after reel. Yeah And this might be a personal anecdote for how I use you know youtube versus facebook or instagram or tiktok, but I don't go on YouTube looking to go on reels necessarily. I expect multi minute to possibly multi hour content on YouTube. Whereas I'm not looking at something like that long, that length on Instagram or TikTok. Yeah, I would not be shocked if the number of active users went up. Engage or, you know, watching and engaging with Reels is significantly lower than the total amount of I mean, I like I would I wouldn't be shocked if you told me it was 10 percent of those active I mean, I don't have that number. They didn't advertise it, but yeah, it wouldn't surprise me Yeah Um, okay. So let's talk about instagram So instagram has two at least two billion monthly active users 50 percent you 50, it's, it's pretty even split on Instagram. 50. 6 percent of Instagram's audience is male while 49. 4 percent is female. So that's a pretty even 50 50 split. 30, almost 32 percent of Instagram users are 18 to 24 years old and making that the largest age bracket for, um, Instagram. The average user spends 15 hours and 50 minutes on Instagram monthly, And the average Instagram engagement rate for all post types is 1. 89%, which I think is, that's an interesting figure across when we're looking at engagement rates, just in our client's small little world. Like, how does that relate? Um, 70 percent of Instagram users say they use it to post or share photos or videos, making that the number one use case on the platform. Um, and 16. 5 percent of surveyed social media users said Instagram is their favorite platform, which is more than any other network, so. Unlike other platforms, isn't that really the only use case for Instagram? Like, what else can you do on Instagram? They have like the broadcast channels. You can go live. Messaging. But I mean, that's Subscriptions. You can do your, you can do a subscription on YouTube. I mean Instagram. Mm-Hmm.. Those feels like a reach, but, okay. I, I mean, okay., you're not wrong.. Well, I get what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Advertise, I mean, you know, that's trying to grow their reach as far as like, not just an advertising platform, but you can sell your products on you Instagram now too. So you, it's growing and it's trying to grow in different areas. I, I, to me, and maybe I'm just too old fashioned, I just feel like Instagram is the one trick pony of the. Of the social media bunch, right? Yeah, it's, I mean, that's your first, second, and third use case, and then the other one trails off. Yeah, I think they're trying to make an effort, though, to increase how people use it. Or change how people, not change, but add, right, in addition to how other people use it, so. Um, TikTok, which we did an episode on TikTok a little bit earlier, but, um, TikTok has 1. 562 billion monthly active users. Um, let's see. TikTok recently overtook Google to become the most visited internet site. That's interesting. 80. 3 percent of TikTok users say they use the app to look for funny or entertaining content. making that the number one use case for TikTok. 52 percent of TikTok users are male, while 48 percent are female. And 36. 7 percent of TikTok users are 18 to 24 years old, making it the largest age bracket on the platform. Only 6. 3 percent of TikTok users are over 55 years old. The average TikTok user spends 34 hours on the app each month. And, um, the median engagement rate for posts by TikTok business accounts is 7. 8%. So the funny and entertainment, um, piece to that, like when people go to TikTok, that's what they're searching for. That does not surprise me because my niece, I, like a little while ago, I was like, what are you watching? Like, do you have any shows that you're watching? And she was like, no. I just watch TikTok. And I was like, Really? Like you don't have like a favorite TV show or a favorite movie? And she was like, no. It just like baffled me. It's like I just watch TikTok when I'm at home. So like they're literally, that is their one source of content. Is tiktok That's scary my I think that's scary. It's terrifying. So my my My wife and I we have a daughter. She's about two years old We went out to dinner a couple of weeks ago. I'm like, it was like a wednesday night or whatever and um There was a like one of the Semi circle type booths, right? As this family of five, I don't know who they are. So I, you know, sorry, this was your family and it's probably a lot of families around the world, right? But this family of five, there were two younger children, a boy and a girl. And then there was an older boy, probably, I don't know, 14, 15 mom and dad, right? Two youngest kids, uh, each had an iPad with, and they had their headphones on their big headphones, watching Tik TOKs. And then the mom was also on an iPad. And I was just like. I, I couldn't imagine being, like, and the dad, I felt so bad for the dad, he just kind of like sat there, right, and just no engaged, I mean, and the teenage boy, I was surprised that the teenage boy wasn't really, I mean, no, yeah, and, and, but they, yeah, just sitting there, they were younger, obviously, but. Yeah, just watching TikTok or YouTube or, you know, whatever it is, just sitting there and you could see their hands, right? I mean, I didn't, I didn't even, I couldn't see their iPads, but I knew exactly what they were doing because what, right? Like, yeah, yeah. I think, I, that is, it's, like you said, it's, I mean, it's scary and it's terrifying, I think, and I see that in my kids. I was trying to think, So my kids are older, right? So I have a now 18 year old and a 19 year old. And, um, my sister came in our house the other day and asked, My 18 year old, you know, what are you watching? Like, what do you like to watch? Any movies or TV or whatever? And he said, yeah, I don't really watch TV. And, um, as he's scrolling right on Tik TOK and so, and so that is scary. Cause. Um, of, of the content that's out there. It's just amazing that the change in our world and when our kids are, are exposed to, it's just a very different, um, well, it'll be interesting as they grow up. Is TikTok going to climb higher to that list or will there be another version of that? Like what? Like, as these younger generations, including mine, continue to grow up, like, what will consumer habits shift to? Because right now from that, Facebook is number one, but like, when are we going to see the downturn of that? Well, let's Have we done Twitter yet? No. We're getting there. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So let's, um, let's say Snapchat. Um, Snapchat has over 800 million monthly active users. 414 million daily active users. 4 billion snaps are sent every day on average. 42. 9 percent of Snapchat users use the app to post or share photos or videos, making that the number one use case. 49. 2 percent of Snapchat users are male, while 49 percent are female. Uh, the average Snapchat user spends 3 hours 33 minutes on the app and there are 7 million Snapchat users. Over 7 million Snapchat plus subscribers. Is that something different? I'm not familiar with that. As of right now, from that piece of, from that article, like their males are dominating the social media and that really surprises me, especially with all of, I feel like on the content creator side, and this might just be from what I consume, but I feel like there's more female. So it gives us, for some of these, it gave us the, the, the, um, largest age bracket, right? And I think, you know, That might be interesting to dive further into, because how many teenage boys are on YouTube watching whatever, right? Or gaming, or, or whatever, right? And, and I think that that could be interesting, because I could see, um, I could see, when it comes to engagement, As you get older, females are more engaged, but as you go younger, males are more engaged. In terms of actual engagement, right? Yeah. I don't know that's, I mean, I don't have any data to back that up, but I wouldn't be shocked. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, that, I think that would be interesting. I mean, on Snapchat, it looks like, you know, it's, it's, it's 50 50 really, as far as male and female, but Snapchat, It trends younger, right? As far as what the audience is. So, um, so I think that that, you know, when we're looking at targeting too, I think that's something else to, to take into account is usually the case because it's a newer platform and younger demographics usually jump on trends more easily too. So that would make sense. Yeah. Um, so let's talk about Twitter. So Twitter, um, or X, right? Ex formerly known as Twitter, um, I think that we still struggle a little bit on what to actually call the platform, but, um, I think it's interesting, uh, it's shifted a little bit, I think, uh, after Elon Musk purchased it. But, um, X has around 619 million monthly active users, 60. 6 percent of X users use the app to keep up to date with news and current events, making that the number one use case. for Twitter. Um, 60. 9 percent of ex users are male, while 39. 1 percent are female. Um, 35. 4 percent of ex users are 25 to 34 years old, which is, that's the largest age bracket on Twitter. The average X user spends, or yeah, Twitter X, sorry, I'm confusing that. The average X user spends 4 hours and 40 minutes on the app monthly. Um, let's see. Kirk and I both have that. That seems low to me, right? I'd like to audit that number. Yeah, that seems low. Deeply. The amount of time? Yeah. Per month? Per week? Yeah. To me, it usually seems like Twitter users are either They just don't really use it. Yeah, because it's the news now. It's people. It is the news. That's in place of people reading the daily newspaper in the morning. Right. Or that's in place of people watching the 5, 6 o'clock news. Right. So, yeah. Or on Twitter. Yeah, I wouldn't be. But if you think about it though, they're bite sized chunks. So it doesn't take you as long to consume that information, unless you go off platform to read something. It is true, but as we've gone on, it's no longer like what you're following. When you were doing it in a what you're following format, there's only so much content coming onto your feed. But now that most people are using the For You page, You just keep uploading the new stuff that it puts in front of you. That's an endless stream of stuff you can keep doing. And if you're somebody, especially who isn't just wanting to be inundated with only videos and you kind of want more information or you just, you know, don't want to have, Want to have all videos, you know, you could spend hours and hours on there. The, the time what, you know, ages ago when you could, you could open up Twitter and you could go back to things you'd already seen because it was chronological and it was only who you followed. So you like. Okay, now I got through these 40 posts, but I've already seen everything below it now. Like I could be done. Yeah. Now you just need to keep going. You just keep, yeah, it keeps putting things in front of you. Yeah. Do you, I wonder if that number is different than, um, because these are, these are up to date statistics. I think if we, I wonder if we went back a year or two. Um, prior to the purchase, right? If that number has changed, the way that the platform has changed, too. I didn't know that would be something interesting to dig into, so. Um, okay, I think, um, Pinterest. So, Pinterest is actually, um, The third largest search engine out there. Like we talked about Google a little bit, we talked about YouTube. Um, and then, so here's the stats for Pinterest. Uh, it has around 498 million monthly active users. Um, only 22. 4 percent of Pinterest users are male, while 69. 5 percent are female. Uh, 61 percent of users say Pinterest is where they go to start a new project. 46 percent of Pinterest users have discovered new brands or products on the platform. I think that's really important, because if you're trying to reach a mostly female, um, audience, and you have something that you want to get in front of that audience, I think a lot of marketers don't give Pinterest the credit or use Pinterest as much as they should to be in front of that audience. Um, it's, it's, that's an interesting thing. But I think that platform so far of the ones we talked about is the most Niche when it comes to your product service, whatever and I would argue probably more so service than product It's definitely underestimated. I think but I think it depends what you're offering is and I feel like it is Similar to like they they were saying that male dominated on YouTube I feel like that is like the equivalent for females for Pinterest Mm hmm So I'm definitely not surprised by that either. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So let's talk about what's our last platform. Let's talk about LinkedIn. Um, LinkedIn, it's interesting LinkedIn since COVID. So what's that 2020 ish timeframe, right? Has exploded. Um, and it's, I've, it's really making a resurgence. I've seen in the last, uh, year, I would say, but, um, LinkedIn has really been known mostly for professional and job hunting and, um, and, you know, more corporate posting or things like that. Uh, it was recently acquired by Microsoft. I say recently, it was 2016, but they've been working on the platform. So we've seen a lot of changes based on that acquisition. Uh, LinkedIn has around 310 million monthly active users, but it has around a billion users in total. Um, 56. 4 percent of LinkedIn users are male while 43. 6 percent are female. Um, and it says the average LinkedIn user spends, um, 51 minutes on the app monthly, um, which I think is interesting, uh, statistic as far as the time spent on LinkedIn. And, but what I've seen is that there's more, um, there's more organic engagement On LinkedIn, I think, um, that we've seen over the last year or so. So that's an interesting thing and people are more, you are using it more for content than just trying to find, um, a job or look at that corporate information, it's really starting to, um, organically increase reach. So I think that'll change, but, but right now it's, it's a really good platform from an organic standpoint, but, um, there are lots of other social media platforms that we didn't talk about. Um, there's some new ones that have come on board. There are some old ones that are still out there. Um, there's things like, you know, Instagram launched threads. Reddit, um, there's some that I'm not even, you know, that I'm familiar as I'm looking through this list, but, um, and then there are messaging platforms that are also acting as social media. Um, WhatsApp's a huge platform that's owned by Meta, um, Telegram, which is, Uh, a lot of video content producers are on Twitch, so there's a lot of different platforms out there, but these, the ones that we talked about and with more of a deeper dive on demographics are ones that we use For our clients when we're trying to get build awareness or when we're trying to advertise and lead generate and things like that. I think, um, those are the larger platforms that we should take into consideration. Um, also I think it's a really good opportunity thinking about those statistics. I always tell people, I think all of us always tell people, um, where is your ideal client hanging out. Right. And these statistics really kind of give you an idea of where they're hanging out. So you really have to dig deep in who your ideal client is and then where are you going to reach them? And these platforms. So, uh, and then producing content to reach those people. So thoughts you guys on content or Cassidy's the social media, the resident social media expert. Um, well, kind of going back to LinkedIn, I feel like that you brought up a piece about, um, there are more content opportunities there. And I think like the content creator space is definitely like shifting that way. Um, You know, I personally don't love LinkedIn, um, but I think that there is definitely a space for that and a huge open market for content creators there. Um, I'm not sure on the monetary side of things, like if they have like the infrastructure to support creators like YouTube and Meta does. Um, but I, I'm sure if they don't have it, like that is. In their future for sure. Yeah, I think I think they're probably moving away from that. They used to actually have um a I don't know what a subscription not a subscription It's not a subscription, but it's like you could join it as you know a business you could join it as a personal you could also join it as a creator and and They played around with that and that was something that did not resonate on linkedin So that option actually isn't there anymore and they played around You With, you know, you could do a video in your, um, your LinkedIn profile. Um, and you can add links to your LinkedIn profile now, but you can't actually have a moving video in your, um, like your profile picture used to be able to put something like that. So they've really kind of moved away from the creator side of the platform. Um, and I don't, I don't know that we'll see that come back, but they are playing around more with video and carousels, um, newsletters. It's definitely less of a creative platform and more of a way to reach that B2B audience. Thank you for listening to today's episode of off the record, marketing deconstructed. If you would like more information about our team, you can follow us on social media at five and rise, or you can visit our website at five and rise. com. We invite you to share, subscribe, and leave us a review and tune in to our next episode.