How Age Groups Use Social Media Differently

Over 30? Well, you prefer text-based content, you’re more likely to use Flickr and you’ll fuss over photo editing but rarely record, edit and upload a video. Under 30? You love video and if you’re female you’d prefer to edit photo’s than video.

These are just some of our findings into 2010 in our ongoing look at how we’re using Social Media channels and the technologies that product content. Remember, today, everyone is a producer.

Youth: This market, under 30, prefers video to photo’s, yet interestingly enough, women prefer to edit and then share photo’s whereas boys prefer to create, record, edit and share video content. Additionally, youth (under 30) are more likely to participate in marketing promotions that have some form of participation that includes ranking content, changing content or somehow manipulating outcomes.

Adults: Those of us over 30 (sadly I’m one), well, we like to mess with photo’s more than video and we are prolific when it comes to writing. In an analysis of blogs across North America (we sampled profiles indicating 30+ to over 40,000 blogs) we found that the +30 crowd actually reads, whereas the -30 crowd prefers to massage video and watch. Interesting hey?

Marketers…if you want to engage the under 30 market segment…give them something to do with your content. That’s what they’re interested in. Over 30…stop being boring, but we’ll share your content if it’s interesting. Boring content? Don’t waste your money. The Web really is about “action” and the moment you forget that, you lose.

Want more information? Give us a holler and we can let you know what’s happening by generations or age groups and we can slice it six ways from, well, boring old Sunday.

(Author: G. Crouch)