Social Media Marketing – age specific?

Is social media marketing age specific?

We’ve been working with a few clients lately that have tested our Drum Platform, and notably on one project because the average demographic age is higher that the norm. The point is that we have been led to research further the impact of age on social media sites and users.

I came across a very valuable piece regarding age demographics on a site called Royal Pingdom Blog. The article “Ages of Social Network Users” is informative. In fact, most of the emarketing, social media doubters will be very surprised at some of the statistics.

Although we work in this space, I was still surprised at by the numbers specifically the percentage of users in the 35 – 44 age bracket. This age bracket is a full 25% of social media site users … WOW! Yet, the doubters keep telling me that social media isn’t mainstream. What’s more significant is the overall statistic of the 25 – 54 age bracket, this age group represents 62% of social media users. These are big numbers folks; I’d suggest to you, that we’d consider this group mainstream.

Not surprising in this age study, is that only 3% of users are in the 65 plus bracket. Naturally it’s a fast growing group, but still of major significance. However, the 55 – 64 age bracket is growing and now at the 10% level of social media users.

In the same article there is various data broken down age versus specific social media sites. Only three of the Raven5 “Big Five” (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, SlideShare, YouTube) are included on the charts provided, with the average age of users of Facebook being 38.4 years, Twitter 39.1 years and Linkedin 44.3 years.

Just so I’m clear, social media is mainstream. The takeaway is that age demographics can factor into your marketing campaigns when utilizing social media. However, make no mistake, social media is mainstream and continuing to grow. As your digital agency, we’d suggest you rethink your emarketing and marketing budgets based on this data. Is social media marketing age specific? Seems so.

Michael Bickerton, Raven5, Toronto, May 2011

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