Women Are More Social -- When It Comes to Social Media, That Is A new report shows women are the major players in social media. Time to tweak your marketing?
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Women are much more likely than their male counterparts to engage in blogging, follow brands and celebrities online, and buy products online that they've seen featured on television, according to a new report from Nielsen.
Nielson's latest State of The Media (PDF) report shows that women are 8 percent more likely than men to create or update their own personal blog. They're also 18 percent more likely to become a fan or follow a brand on a social site such as Facebook or Twitter.
When it comes to who has at least one social networking profile up and running, the women are 6 percent more likely to have accomplished that task. Same holds for users who actively follow a celebrity online. Again, women took the lead, proving to be 15 percent more likely to follow the stars. Women were also more likely to have used the Internet to buy a product they saw on television (12 percent) than men.
So the women are the alpha players on the social media playground. The question for entrepreneurs and small-business owners who depend on social media in their marketing is: How best to take advantage? Here are some of my thoughts:
- Using a celebrity to endorse your product, business or brand makes the most sense if your target audience is made up primarily of woman.
- If you're involved in the creation and marketing of blog-related software and solutions, such as widgets and plug-ins, it's good to know that women are your target audience due to their propensity to build and be active on their personal blogs.
- The fact that women maintain more social networking profiles speaks to the need for multichannel marketing campaigns when attempting to reach this audience.
