Twitter Tops Social Tools for Social Media Marketers

According to research conducted by Social Media Examiner and reported by eMarketer, Twitter tops the list of most used social media tools by marketers.

The survey, which was administered in January of 2010 asked marketers to identify which tools they use most. The results were as follows:

• Twitter - 88%

• Facebook - 87%

• LinkedIn - 78%

• Blogs - 70%

• YouTube or other video site - 46%

• Social bookmarking sites (i.e. Delicious) - 27%

• Forums - 26%

• Digg, reddit, Mixx, etc - 22%

• Ning sites - 17%

• MySpace - 11%

If you're in marketing and not sure what to think of Twitter or how to effectively use Twitter, my advice is talk with Twitter users and solicit their feedback. I'd be happy to talk with anyone about my thoughts on why Twitter is the preferred network for marketers, including myself.

Insightful Social Media Demographics

A co-worker was asking about recent social media stats this week so we did some digging. Here's the latest and greatest in terms of what social media sites are used most heavily, what age groups are dominating social media and what they want.

Most popular social sites:

• Facebook with more than 400 million active users
• Twitter with 75 million+ registered users (although we know not all users are active). Twitter estimates 50 million tweets per day are being sent by its members
• LinkedIn with more than 60 million users
• MySpace with close to 60 million users

Age Groups:

A recent study by Royal Pingdom pulled together statistics for 19 different social networks including the popular sites listed above plus some of the second tier sites including Hi5, FriendFeed, Tagged, etc. The results show the age group usage of social media as follows:

• 35-55 = 25%
• 45-54 = 19%
• 25-34 = 18%
• 0-17 = 15%
• 55-64 = 10%
• 18-24 = 9%
• 65+ = 3%

When looking at Facebook and Twitter's heavy users, the percentages of users 35 or older exceeds 60%. Bebo and MySpace as expected are made up largely of younger audiences aged 17 or younger with 35-45% falling into that age group.

Other interesting social age stats:

• Average LinkedIn user is 44
• Average Twitter user is 39
• Average Facebook user is 38
• Average MySpace user is 31
• Average Bebo user is 28

Social Content:

Online advertising network Chitika analyzed the interests of social networking sites. The results seem consistent with what we know:

• Myspace Users are generally interested in: video games (28%), Celebs and entertainment (23%), Business and Law (10%), Tech and Community (tied at 8%) and other (23%).

• Facebook Users are generally interested in: News (28%), Community and Other (tied at 17%), How to/DIY (13%), Shopping and Celebs/Entertainment (tied at 9%), Tech (7%).

• Twitter Users are generally interested in: News (47%), Other (23%), Tech and Celebs/Entertainment (tied at 10%), Movies (6%) and How to/DIY (4%).

Interesting Stats on Social Media

I just stumbled upon some interesting statistics regarding social media. It's funny, I still hear a fair amount of people who don't like or just don't get social media and feel it's a fad. People listen up...it is not a fad!

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network

• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web

• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media

• Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.

• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia

• 80 % of companies are using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees

• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama

• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?

• Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

• The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube

• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs & 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily

• People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them

• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, Only 14% trust advertisements

• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.

(note: the sources to back up these statistics can be found on Socialnomics Blog)