Page 145 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Be realistic about the quality of your hosting and customer support. Prepare
by evaluating how much traffic you can actually handle, and plan for a bit
more than you estimate. That way, you won’t look amateurish if your promo-
tions succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

Assessing What Each Social
Network Offers You

Now that you’ve looked at the factors that influence your choice of a platform, you
can consider the platforms themselves to determine which ones are a good fit. In
Chapters 8 through 16, we cover each of the major social media platforms in depth.

In this chapter, we look specifically at the user profile for the top four social media
platforms. As of 2019, the statistics are as follows:

» Facebook: Facebook users are 43 percent women and 88 percent of
18–29 year olds are on Facebook. But Facebook isn’t a youth platform alone,
as 62 percent of online seniors are on the platform as well. The platform
has 2.41 billion monthly active users. Users outside the United States and
Canada make up 85 percent of its daily users. The average Facebook user
has 155 friends. Users focus primarily on social interaction.
» Twitter: There are 330 million monthly active users on Twitter as of
September 2019, sending 500 million tweets per day. The gender breakdown
on Twitter is roughly 34 percent female to 66 percent male. Eighty percent of
the users are mobile, with 79 percent of the accounts being outside the
U.S. They focus primarily on world events, television shows, sports, and
business-related topics.
» LinkedIn: There are 630 million users of LinkedIn around the world and
approximately 303 million monthly active users. Seventy percent of the users
are located outside the United States. Fifty-seven percent of users are men;
the largest demographic on LinkedIn is 30–49 year olds. 87 million Millennials
are on LinkedIn with 11 million in decision-making positions. Users focus on
jobs, marketing themselves, and selling services.
» YouTube: This site has 1.9 billion users who log in to the site at least once a
month, second only to Facebook. These users watch one billion videos every
day. And more than 70 percent of that time is spent on mobile. Businesses are
active on YouTube as well with 62 percent of businesses posting videos to a
YouTube channel.

CHAPTER 7 Finding the Right Platforms 129