6 Reasons Why Women are Driving Social Media Growth

Do you know the 6 reasons why women are driving social media growth? If not, then keep reading and you soon will!

For some readers this information may be a surprise while for others it will meet expectations; however there are some very interesting facts anyone involved with marketing should be aware of.

Women and Social Media

We crunched the numbers and reviewed the research and the results are in; women are driving social media growth and apparently have been for the past few years. Here’s why:

• Women are more active on most social sites – Across the board there are more women being social than men. The one lone exception to this trend is on LinkedIn where men hold a 5% edge over women. We fully expected women to be using a site like Pinterest more than men and according to 2013 stats they do to a tune of 33% of all women online compared to only 8% of all men online. However it is surprising that they are more dominant on Twitter (by 1%), Instagram (by 5%, Tumblr (by 8%) and Facebook (by 10%).
• Women are more actively daily – Another interesting stat shows us that out of all the adults online in U.S., 30% of women access sites several times per day compared to only 26% of men. This is an interesting statistic. While the numbers are close, it seems that women are more prone to check back on feeds which would lead us to believe they are more likely to have a higher level of engagement on topics. Aside from daily activity, women seem to be more active in general such as having 55% more posts on their Facebook walls than men and playing more than twice as many Facebook games as men.
• Women interact more with brands – Following up the previous point, we actually statistically see that level of engagement at the brand level. While on a comment level adult women in the U.S. are only slightly (3%) more likely to comment on something, they are 10% more likely to show support to a brand and 17% more likely to access offers! Of the top 50 brands on Instagram women make up 53% of their followers. That means at the social level you should be targeting women more often with special offers.
• Women dominate visual sites – This is another not so surprising idea, but the actual numbers themselves are rather surprising. More women are using visual sites like Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram then men. They obviously dominate Pinterest and have a healthy 10% lead in Tumblr as well. That isn’t overly surprising but did you know that those three sites have gained over 10 million new users in the past year? That is an incredible statistic making them the fastest growing social media segment. What this tells us is that those sites are prime locations for marketing plans geared towards women.
• Men are more active on desktops – What this means is that women are more active on mobile devices for accessing social media. While smartphones are fairly even with women only a few percentage points ahead of men, a surprising 12% more women than men are accessing social media via tablets. For those companies that use targeted marketing, this is an important statistic.
• Women get more news from social media – When you look at the two most popular feeds people use for news, Facebook and Google+, statistics show us that 58% of all adult women online are getting their news from these two sites compared to only 42% of men.

Surprised by these numbers? They can be a bit eye-opening and also very useful for the savvy marketer. We can see from these 6 reasons why women are driving social media growth that there are some great opportunities available for targeted marketing campaigns aimed at the female demographic that should be well-positioned for great results!