If you’re asking questions like, “What works best for video? Facebook or YouTube? Then keep reading. This blog is for you.
Understanding content marketing continues to be something that baffles marketers. In a recent Content Marketing Institute study they found:
- Only 30% of B2B marketers say their organisations are effective at content marketing, down from 38% last year. Effectiveness levels are greater among respondents with documentation, clarity around success, good communication, and experience.
Today’s blog I intend to help solve this mystery, at least for the first half of 2021. I’ll break down the most important social networks, who lives there and what kind of content works best on which channels.
Today you will learn:
- Why content marketing is important in 2019
- The demographic breakdown of the channels
- What content works best on each channel
If you don’t already know why content marketing is so important, here’s why. It generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing while costing 62% less. Source: Smart insights
Why will Content Marketing continue to be a big focus for all smart marketers in 2019? For me… it’s for 3 main reasons:
- Marketing only relying on ads leaves you with cold leads
- Content Marketing will help to keep you top of mind whilst potential customers are in the research phase and give you multiple touchpoints which can be fully automated
- When done well and approached with data to fuel the relevance your content will be shared. This is the future for brands. Uninterrupted marketing.
- 67% of B2B buyers rely more on content to research and make B2B purchasing decisions than they did a year ago. (DemandGen Report)
[Tweet “Content Marketing is the answer to my business woes!”]
The challenge – online users don’t come in a uniform profile. It’s like a classroom filled with students of various personalities and character, which makes it a requirement for their teacher to also come up with different techniques to be able to help each one of them.
Enter Demographics – This is the term you have to be very familiar with, in 2021. Demographics is data that portrays specific characters characteristics of a group of people (sex, age, location, ethnicity, etc).
A group of students with similar characteristics in a classroom is what demographics is to business. It’s important because “…grouping consumers based upon characteristics allows organizations to better serve the needs of their ideal customers. In terms of marketing, it means selling a product or service to the person most likely to buy it based on their unique needs and preferences.” (Source)
[Tweet “The Key To Great Content is Personality!”]
Now that you’re up to speed, we’re going to understand demographic breakdown over the most popular online channels and assess which type of content works best for each of them.
The Demographics Of Social Media Users & The Type Of Content That Fits Them Best
Facebook – A bit of everyone still uses it. But its popularity is changing with younger demographics
Source: Pew Research Center; Audience Insights Tool
Age
Facebook data shows that the 18–24 age range is the biggest demographic using the site.
- 87% of adults 18–29 use Facebook.
- 73% of adults 30–49 use Facebook.
- 63% of adults 50–64 use Facebook.
- 56% of adults 65+ use Facebook.
Gender
- Facebook has more female users – with 77% of adult females on the site and 66% adult males.
Education
- 74% of adults who went to college use Facebook.
- 71% of adults with some college experience use Facebook.
- 70% of adults who graduated high school or less use Facebook.
Income
- 77% of adults who make less than $30,000 use Facebook.
- 74% of adults who make between $50,000-$74,999 use Facebook.77% of adults who make less than $30,000 use Facebook.
- 72% of adults who make over $75,000 use Facebook.
- 69% of adults who make between $30,000–$49,000 use Facebook.
What Type Of Content Works Best On Facebook?
- Facebook Posts with a photo generate 120% more engagement than simple text; 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more click-thoughts.
- Posts shorter than 250 characters have 60% more engagement than longer posts
- Question posts have double the engagement of non-question posts
- Video is going to get bigger on Facebook in 2016 because of a few reasons. The millennials are comfortable with jumping behind a camera, it’s as a photo was to the older demographics. Secondly, Facebook is in a race to win the trophy for video content viewed online over YouTube. Post video’s and use video ad’s on fb is my advice. Less money more impressions.
Related Read: The Ideal Length of Everything Online
Twitter – Savvy Executives
Source: Pew Research Center; Twitter
Age
- 37% of adults 18–29 use Twitter.
- 25% of adults 30–49 use Twitter.37% of adults 18–29 use Twitter.
- 12% of adults 50–64 use Twitter.
- 10% of adults 65+ use Twitter.
Gender
- 24% of adult men use Twitter.
- 21% of adult women use Twitter.
Education
- 30% have graduated college.
- 24% have some college experience.
- 16% are high school grads or less.
Income
- 27% of adults who make over $75,000
- 27% of adults who make $50,000–$74,999
- 21% of adults who make $30,000–$49,999
- 20% of adults who make less than $30,000
What Type Of Content Works Best On Twitter?
Source: Quicksprout
- Tweets with Images.
- Social-media company Buffer has seen an 89% increase in Favorites with images over those without, and a 150% increase in Retweets.
- Users on Twitter tweet images 361% more than they tweet videos.
- 62% of posts that are getting engagements are humour-based, while 38% are other types
- Tweets containing How-To Lists received 3 times more retweets than any other type of text-based content.
- Users who tweeted quotes had 43% more followers
Instagram – Big market, the millennials
Source: Pew Research Center
Age
- 53% of 18–29-year-olds use Instagram.
- 25% of 30–49-year-olds use Instagram.
- 11% of 50–64-year-olds use Instagram.
- 6% of people 65+ use Instagram.
Gender
- 29% of online females use Instagram.
- 22% of online males use Instagram.
Education
- 31% of Instagram users have some college experience.
- 24% of Instagram users are college graduates.
- 23% of Instagram users are high school grads or less.
Income
- 28% of adults making less than $30,000
- 26% of adults making over $75,000
- 26% of adults making $50,000–$74,999
- 23% of adults making $30,000–$49,999
What Type Of Content Works Best On Instagram?
- User-generated content (this is why some businesses are staying away from “sales” stuff on Instagram and going with an “Instagram theme”.) Australian brand FrankBod has nailed this.
- Vintage-style images, tell a story. “A picture is worth a 1000 words.”
- Short videos & quick video tutorials
- Food photos, animals, fashion, quotes
Source: Source: Pew Research Center; LinkedIn
Age
- 31% of adults 30–49 use LinkedIn.
- 30% of adults 50–64 use LinkedIn.
- 23% of adults 18–29 use LinkedIn.
- 21% of adults over 65 use LinkedIn.
Gender
- 28% of online men use LinkedIn.
- 27% of online women use LinkedIn.
Education
- 50% of adult college graduates use LinkedIn.
- 22% of adults with some college experience use LinkedIn.
- 12% of adults with high school or less experience use LinkedIn.
Income
- 44% of adults making over $75,000 use LinkedIn
- 31% of adults making $50,000–$74,999 use LinkedIn
- 21% of adults making $30,000–$49,999 use LinkedIn
- 15% of adults making less than $30,000 use LinkedIn
What Type Of Content Works Best On LinkedIn?
Source: LinkedIn
- 6 out of every 10 LinkedIn users are interested in industry insights – the most-demanded type of content among LinkedIn members.
- Company news appeals to 53% of LinkedIn members
- New products and services are the third most popular content, with 43% interested in this kind of update.
- LinkedIn shared that updates containing links get up to 45% higher follower engagement than updates without links.
- Status updates that contain questions receive almost 50% more comments and images lead to a 98% higher comment rate.
Source: Source: Pew Research Center
Age
- 34% of adults 18–29 years old use Pinterest.
- 28% of adults 30–49 years old use Pinterest.
- 27% of adults 50–64 years old use Pinterest.
- 17% of adults 65 and overuse Pinterest.
Gender
- 42% of online women use Pinterest.
- 13% of online men use Pinterest.
Education
- 32% of adult college graduates use Pinterest.
- 30% of adults with some college experience use Pinterest.
- 22% of adults with at least some high school experience use Pinterest.
Income
- 34% of adults making over $75,000 use Pinterest.
- 30% of adults making $50,000–$74,999 use Pinterest.34% of adults making over $75,000 use Pinterest.
- 28% of adults making $30,000–$49,999 use Pinterest.
- 22% of adults making less than $30,000 use Pinterest.
What Type Of Content Works Best On Pinterest?
Source: Hubspot
- Tall, infographic-style pieces to get more engagement.
- Images showing something people can aspire to do, be, or create – Quotes, DIY, Recipes, Designs, etc
- Most pinned words: love, home, things, style, ideas
Google+
Source: Statistic Brain
Gender
- 73.7% of Google+ users are male.
- 26.3% of Google+ users are female.
What Type Of Content Works Best On Google+?
Source: Hootsuite; Copyblogger
- Posts that provided new knowledge. Ex: product update, social media tips or new tools for learning
- Product gifs have performed startlingly well on Google+, far better than most of our regular image posts.
- Google+ posts that receive the most comments are resource-type articles with a lot of links.
Snapchat
Source: Business Insider
Gender
- 70% female
- 30% male
Age
- 29% older than 25
- 71% younger than 25
Income
- 38% earning more than $50,000 in income
- 62% earning less than $50,000 in income
What Type Of Content Works Best On Snapchat?
Source: Social Media Examiner
- Live Events
- Deliver Private Content
- Contests, Perks or Promotions
- Take People Behind the Scene
In conclusion, content marketing is going to be appreciated by your customers, revenue and most importantly the messiah. Google it eats good content up like the Cookie Monster in the Oreo factory. I’ll write more on this in another blog.
Cheers to building lasting and meaningful customer relationships this 2021!