Finding Your Home in the social media universe

We recently invited our friends and colleagues in the social media space to send us their most vexing public relations questions. Robyn Rinberger (Twitter handle @justsothankfulr) submitted this great question to kickoff our new advice column series:

@Madeira_PR clients don't understand social media platforms. They think 1 size fits all..tricky to "educate" w/o sounding impertinent. Hlp?














There are still a lot of misperceptions regarding who uses social media. If your clients think social media only has a youthful appeal, the excerpt from the new Business Insider report to your right might change their minds.

In fact, the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project has been tracking social media usage patterns and opinions since 2000 revealing a constantly evolving environment. This is why the platform that may best speak to your target audience today may not necessarily be a reliable communications tool in the future.

We find keeping our clients informed of social media trends and demographic usage patterns is the best antidote to the kind of tunnel vision your experiencing. 

Consider presenting yourself as a social media matchmaker. Conduct thorough research to understand who exactly your client needs to reach. Dig deep to identify age, income, geographic location, interests and concerns, just to name a few. This will allow you to steer your client to invest time and resources in the social media platforms that will generate the best return on their investment. 

Have a PR Question? 
We're here to help! Tweet your public relations questions and challenges to @Madeira_PR using the Twitter hashtag #PRHelp, and we may feature the answer here. 

---

Facebook still skews significantly female. Women in the U.S. are more likely to use Facebook than men by about 10 percentage points, according to a 2013 survey of social network adoption. 

Facebook remains the top social network for U.S. teens. Nearly half of teen Facebook users say they're using the site more than last year, and Facebook has more daily teen users than any other social network. 

That said, Instagram has edged out Facebook and Twitter in terms of prestige among young users. U.S. teens now describe Instagram as "most important," while Facebook and Twitter lost ground on this measure, according to Piper Jaffray's twice yearly teen survey. The survey also found that 83% of U.S. teens in wealthy households were on Instagram. 

LinkedIn is actually more popular than Twitter among U.S. adults. LinkedIn's core demographic are those aged between 30 and 49, i.e. those in the prime of their career-rising years. Not surprisingly, LinkedIn also has a pronounced skew toward well-educated users. 

Twitter has begun to lean worryingly toward male users, whereas previously it was a more gender-balanced social network. Pew found that 22% of men use Twitter, while only 15% of women do. 

YouTube reaches more adults aged 18 to 34 than any single cable TV network. Nearly half of people in this age group visited YouTube between December 2013 and February 2014, according to Nielsen. It was rated by millennials as the top place to watch content, ahead of digital and TV properties like Facebook and ESPN. 

Snapchat is the youngest social network of all. More than six out of 10 Snapchat users are in the 18-to-24 age group, compared to 28% of Instagram users, according to a survey by Informate.

Source: Thiago Guimaraes, Business Insider--11/42014.