Which Social Media channel encourages the most engagement from users towards brands?
This contributes to a tailored approach for businesses social media marketing campaigns, ensuring that they are successfully delivering a marketing communications message which is encoded by the user, making sure the brand can effectively communicate their marketing message through the noise involved through many social media channels constant timelines/newsfeed.
Each social media platform encourages a different level of engagement and attracts a different type of users compared to the next social media platform. The results gathered from the questionnaire will help analyse and differentiate the basic demographics and characteristics each social media channel possesses. This information was further emphasised through the collaborated cross tabulation results, ensuring that the following conclusions could be made in regards to the individual applicability of each respondent, drawing a constructive analysis, concluding each social media channels specific market segment they consequently appeal to and provide the most authenticity for social media marketing specific to a brand, their marketing objectives and target audience.
Facebook is by far the most popular social media channel, with 470 respondents out of 508 saying they were on Facebook, with 35% of participants stating that Facebook is their favourite social media platform. These findings are supported by 665million daily users, suggesting that 51% of all online internet users are active on Facebook. Facebook consequently appeals to the mass market, and is vital to be included in any social media marketing campaign, with 22% of users saying they engage with brands. Although this may not be as high compared to other social media sites eliciting more engagement from users, the percentage is regarded from a much higher overall user number base which consequently includes overall a high number of responses than any other social media site.
LinkedIn was more popular among males (135) compared to females (59). This may be due to its professional nature, attracting more working professionals in a male dominated corporate environment. Supported by 41-50 year olds being the most popular age group to enjoy using LinkedIn – the most at 15%, followed by 51+ at 11%. This goes on to show support why mobile engagement is considerably low, with 35% of participants saying they don’t use LinkedIn via a mobile device, as a result of attracting a slightly older generation that are less likely to participate on social media through their smart phone.
LinkedIn’s business model is founded based on a membership model, posing as one of the first social media sites to generate a consistent level of revenue. It has therefore been a low priority for LinkedIn to include paid brand promotions on their social media site which is supported by 40% of participants saying they don’t engage with brands through LinkedIn.
YouTube was twice as more popular amongst males, with 174 male and 81 female respondents using the social media site out of the total 508 participants. The most popular age group was the 22-30 year olds with 164 respondents, followed by 35 responses from the 31-40 year olds. Mobile engagement was considerably low, which may be due to difficulties streaming a video through a mobile network; however 38% of participants said that they use YouTube up to 50% of the time via a mobile device, suggesting potential growth in the future with the introduction of better mobile coverage for networks.
Pinterest had the most predominant gender difference, with 11% of female respondents saying it was their favourite social media channel, compared to 0.7% for males. The age range was still however more popular among 22-30 year olds with 59 respondents, followed by 10 responses from 31-40 year olds. Lack of mobile engagement was the second highest compared to all the other social media sites with 35% of respondents saying they don’t use Pinterest via a mobile device, which is evident in their poor mobile app which struggles to load the content on a users mobile newsfeed as it would on a desktop, due to the large demands required to load all the data.
Brand interaction among Pinterest users is relatively high, with 35% of respondents admitting to actively engaging with brands on Pinterest. This is particularly common amongst brands in fashion, who are taking advantage of the recently introduced rich pins which allow businesses to include additional information about the image they are pinning and consequently referring them directly to their website.
Google Plus was predominantly more popular among males, with 6% of respondents saying it was their favourite social media site compared to 1.4% of females. Previous research suggests that Google Plus’ first users were essentially Google employees, which consequently are dominated by males. Essentially if the first users are mainly males, they will subsequently be promoting the social network to male friends and consequently having a domino effect. The most popular age bracket was the 31-40 year olds with 13% saying Google Plus was their favourite social media site, only joint third with YouTube, behind Facebook and Twitter. The popularity of this age group may be reflected with 29% of respondents saying they don’t engage with brands through Google Plus.
65 respondents said they had a Tumblr account, which was fairly balanced between males and females, however only 4% of participants stated that it was their favourite/most used social media channel. 43% of participants said they use up to 50% of their time on Tumblr through a mobile device, which represents a split amongst users preference to use the social media site through mobile or desktop. Brand engagement however is the highest compared to all other social media sites, with 48% of respondents saying they interact with brands through Tumblr, suggesting a blog orientated content may be user’s favourite form of marketing communication. Tumblr doesn’t currently have any form of paid advertisement on their site, however with Yahoo recently acquiring Tumblr they may look at using the social media network to generate revenue from.
Instagram ranked third most popular social media site behind Facebook and Twitter amongst 18% of females who said it was their favourite/most used social media platform. The 22-30 year old age range was the most frequent of instagram users (77), with 16-21 year olds the second most popular age demographic (35) using the social media site. Instagram was the most popular social media channel via a mobile device, with 60% of respondents saying they spend up to 75% of their time and 20% of respondents saying they spend up to 100% of their time on Instagram through a mobile device. This is because Instagram was originally launched as an iPhone only application, which then made its way to Android devices and only recently web profiles via a desktop computer.
In summary, each social media channel encourages greater engagement dependent on the target audience of a social media campaign. It is however, essential for a social media marketer to include Facebook integrated along with their other relevant social media channels that appeal to their specific target audience, as Facebook offers such a mass appeal across most market segments it is vital to include this social media channel in any digital marketing communications. It is also important to consider that social media marketing is not just spending a business’s budget on promoted tweets and Facebook ads, but developing a relationship with users by creating content which is engaging. Although social media marketing is a new marketing concept, content marketing and word of mouth marketing isn’t.
By Chris Kyriacou