Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Assessing What Each Social Network Offers You

Now that you’ve looked at the factors that influence your choice of a platform, it’s time to look at the platforms themselves to determine which ones are a good fit. In Chapters 7 through 13, we cover each of the major social media platforms in depth.

In this chapter, we look specifically at the user profile for the top three social media platforms and add a fourth, YouTube, which is not usually covered as a social media platform, but is in fact the fourth-most-visited platform online. As reported in Social Media Today by Paul Kiser (http://socialmedia today.com/paulkiser/285851/who-uses-facebook-twitter-linkedin-myspace-4thq-1stq-stats-and-analysis ) in April of 2011, the statistics are as follows:

Facebook: Facebook users are 61 percent women; 72 percent of users are between 25 and 54. Users focus primarily on social interaction.

Twitter: Fifty-seven percent of Twitter users are women; 54 percent are between 25 and 44. They focus primarily on world events and business-related topics.

LinkedIn: Fifty-five percent of users are men; 61 percent of the users are between 35 and 54. Users focus on jobs, marketing themselves, and selling services. ...