subject: Some Data On Social Media Use [print this page] It is important to understand how people make use of social media if you want to use social media to reach people. Different market segments still use social media differently. Some people use Twitter more, some people use Facebook more. Aside from the frequency of use, there are other factors that can affect how you can use social media to market your products to your target market. In so many ways, social media can be used to reach the target market of a certain business.
Just like traditional media, you need to know more about your audience in order to be successful at selling to them. There are several steps involved in attracting clients to your products from grabbing the audience's attention to the final stage of closing the sale. Understanding how market segments use social media will help you decide what social media to use and what approach you should take when using them.
According to a study by The Nielsen Company, in the last month of 2009, people already spent more than 5.5 hours on social media sites. The year before, people only spend 3 hours. This means that social media use has definitely been on the rise. This means that companies are right in increasing social media spending. People are using social media more these days.
According to a survey by Pew, among those surveyed, 72% of teens and 40% of 30-year-old adults use social networking sites. The younger group are much likely to have no LinkedIn profile than the older set. Majority of the young set or 66% of the teens used MySpace while only 36% of the adults used the social networking site. Facebook seems to be a popular site among teens and adults with 71% of teens surveyed being on the social site and 75% of adults using the service. Teens are also blogging less according to the survey. Only 14% of the teens surveyed said they blog, compared to 28% in 2006.
Twitter users continue to be dominated by adults. Only ten percent of teens aged 14-17 use Twitter. Only 5 percent of teens aged 12-17 use the service. Another report published recently by eMarketer reveals that a bigger percentage of Baby Boomers (aged 44-62) now use social networking sites compared to the year 2008. The same survey shows that 13 percent of Baby boomers maintain Twitter accounts while 17% of Matures (aged above 63 years old) maintained Twitter accounts. Thirteen percent of Boomers used Linkedin and only 4% of the Matures maintained LinkedIn accounts.
