Social marketing targets are changing
Posted: 06 Aug 09 at 13:08According to latest research, it's the older age groups that are showing growing interest in social sites such as Facebook. And if you've read about the teenager's report that put the financial marketing world in turmoil recently, you'll know that apparently young people aren't that interested in Twitter at all.
Social networking has been the latest buzz in marketing for a while now, and we're seeing growing numbers of articles advising us that we should be making the most of these sites for our own brands and businesses.
It's tough enough working out just how to do that. Now we hear that the demographics of social site users aren't what we might have thought they are.
First, the celebs might be tweeting about all over the place, but the majority of social networkers are sticking with the more familiar communities. New research from comScore reported by Clickz Stats finds that in the UK, Twitter attracted just over a tenth of the numbers of users logging into Facebook in May 2009. Next most popular site Bebo only attracted a third of the number of users at Facebook.
But even at Facebook, the user profile is changing. When comScore breaks down the Facebook visitor book it's to discover that the 25-34 age group is most active on the site using Internet access from home and work, followed by the 15-24 age group. And the older age groups aren't far behind.
Added to that, new figures reported by the Financial Times from Ofcom, the UK industry regulatory, find that the proportion of British 15-24 year olds with a profile on social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo actually fell last year. It's the slightly older age groups that are showing growing interest in these sites – 25-34 year olds and 35-54 year olds.
According to the article in the Financial Times, the likes of AOL and News Corp have been spending heavily in the social networking arena, hoping to reach the youth market. Now they too could be re-thinking their strategies, and trying hard to keep up with a rapidly moving demographic.
And marketeers face the same problem.
Tags: social networking marketing, Twitter, Facebook
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