Social Media Platforms Study (part 1):
Platforms popularity among different generations

In a study made by The Content Savvy and took place between the month of July and August 2021, 738 people participated from different genders, age groups and geographic locations. The majority of the participants, %59.35 of them, were between 25 and 34 years old. 86.18% of the study participants live in the Middle East Region and 70.19% were females.

Below are the results of the demographic data collected which gives us insights about the nature of the sample used.

The objectives of this survey were to:

– Understand how social media platforms perform differently with different age groups

– Understand how social media platforms affect buyers’ performance

– Understand the level of effectiveness of social media marketing

– Get insights about the best ways to target people on social media

To understand the popularity of the different social media platforms, we asked the participants about the platforms they use frequently. Instagram came at the first place, then Facebook then Youtube. This result is quite expected as Instagram is more common among millennials (Gen Y). 97.5% of participants in the age group 25 – 44 selected Instagram.

On the other hand, we would expect Tiktok to be at the top of the list if the majority of the participants were from Gen Z. Noting that in our study, 98.8% of the participants between 0 and 24 picked Tiktok and all the under 18 participants use Tiktok frequently.

Of course, LinkedIn and Twitter are more popular among Gen X and senior people.

If we work on understanding the platforms better, we will understand the reason behind this difference in popularity among generations. Tiktok is a fun video focused sharing platform, while Instagram is a visual platform which used to focus on still images but now is moving towards having all types of media. However, twitter and LinkedIn are more serious platforms. When analyzing the platforms focus and functionality, it becomes much easier to understand why different generations would choose one platform over the other one.

What we are interested in here is how we can utilize these data to target the right audience in the right platform. If you are a fashion brand with lots of visual content, you probably should consider Instagram and Facebook more in your social media campaigns. If you sell to businesses where decision makers are rarely under the age of 45, you probably should consider LinkedIn and twitter. If you are a video game or a sports shoes business, then you probably need to consider a cool video Ad on Tiktok.

In the next part of the study analysis and findings, we will have a look at the rest of the results and to what conclusions it will take us.