This is how teens and young millennials use Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube
New digital tools and social media are first adapted by two groups: the digital experts (people whose work or passion it is) and young people (up to 25 years). The first group did not adapt Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube and this is what happened.
Thus the digital experts were eager to start with live streaming app Periscope, Twitter and communication platform Slack, but they let Youtube (2005), Instagram (2010) and Snapchat (2011) be for what they were. Therefore, the most popular accounts are those of young people. And where young people go, the rest will come too. The channels of communication for 2016 are visual and social: Instagram, Snapchat and Youtube have many users, but still grow in everyday use and engagement. In particular the already popular accounts benefit from this: they grow the fastest. And now it’s not just young users any more, the ones aged 25+ that are discovering these channels too!
Statistics, behaviour, categories, influencers and brands
Because their target audience is there, brands are trying their best to manage these channels by creating visual and social content. Considering this is quite hard, most brands call in the help from social influencers: they are mostly young people who have many followers that have a strong commitment to their channel. Youngsters work differently with visual social media: they don’t have the same standards and values that experienced or older people have. They use all channels hundred percent mobile and they don’t give a damn about our ‘rules’ for the use of images, language, engagement and sponsored content.
Let’s take a look at the channels Instagram, Snap Chat and YouTube. We will focus on statistics, behaviour, categories, brands and influencers.
Instagram: fashion & sports
The daily use of Instagram in the Netherlands last year increased by 35 percent. The channel is hugely popular among young people, they follow celebrities, form communities around topics that interest them and have contact with each other via hashtags and the DM function. Besides fashion and sports the topics food and travel do very well. Young people like selfies: there are over 235 million Instagram photos tagged with the hashtag #selfie. If you want to become popular on Instagram, you have to have a really cool job, be extraordinary or have a beautiful and clear photo feed. There are over 400 million users worldwide, last year there were ‘only’ 300 million. Fastest growing age-group is 40+.
Popular Categories
The most popular categories are fashion and sports. Fashion bloggers don’t grow on their blog any more, but on Instagram. The same goes for fashion magazines. Sport and especially football, football clubs and sportspeople are very popular and have many followers and high engagement: for example 433, Messi, Ajax, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, and also the NBA (basketball) is very popular with its unique content.
Behaviour
Teens show different involvement with their peers than adults: they like every picture from every single friends, that’s what friends are for. Adults only like pictures they think are actually beautiful. Most young people don’t hesitate to add tags like “like4like ‘and’ follow4follow’ to their text to get lots of likes and new followers. Another striking thing is that they only have a few pictures on their account: they remove most after a while, just like that, or because they do not get enough likes. They have no problems with sponsored content from their idols, this is proven by the fact that sponsored pictures get as many likes as the other content. Instagram communities are booming, such as travellers, fashionistas, runners, fit girls and sneaker freakers. They talk to each other via comments and specific hashtags. They are not only involved with the subject through Instagram, but also in real life, something that defines a real community.
Influencers
The most followed accounts are those of celebreties, athletes and models. Dutch fashion blogger Negin Mirsalehi has grown thanks to Instagram and Dutch soccer player Demy de Zeeuw is the entrepreneur behind three of the most popular brands on Instagram with 433 (soccer videos) BALR (lifestyle fashion brand) and Wannahaves (luxury goods). Youtubers all have an Instagram channel where they show their real lives and have daily contact with their YouTube subscribers, something that can not be done on Youtube. It is striking that most of them have the same amount of Instagram followers and YouTube subscribers. Presumably all YouTube subscribers will also follow them on Instagram, because they are all huge fans. Children’s and teen tv-programs are growing fast on Instagram. Probably because these programs just started out using Instagram as their main communication channel.
Brands
The most popular brands are fashion brands such as Forever21, Chanel, Dior, Zara, Topshop and H&M, the high and low end fashion brands. Besides Nike, Starbucks is also one of the most popular brands on Instagram because many people photograph their coffee and post the hashtag #Starbucks with that. Starbucks also uses specific hashtags as #glutenfree #whereintheworld and #coffeelove. Retailer Nordstrom (like Nike) has several accounts: Nordstrom, Nordstrom men and Nordstrom Rack where they post pictures of fans. On Instagram focus and a clear concept are essential. Therefore, more and more brands are choosing for multiple accounts, verticals.
YouTube: Music, gaming & beauty
The video format is hugely on the rise thanks to the popularity of videos on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, and the possibility of live streaming Periscope and (almost) real-time video on Snapchat. Facebook even introduced the live streaming option. But video is for many people a complicated format to produce. Therefore, there are few brands that succeed in attracting a large number of engaged subscribers on their Youtube channel like popular vloggers have. Video is the superlative of text and image: there’s movement and sound so there is nothing to hide. Young influencers don’t have problems with it: they film themselves without any embarrassment and talk about what moves them in front of their own camera of smartphone, about subjects like gaming and beauty.
Figures from YouTube
The number of hours people watching videos (or the play time) on YouTube in the past year increased by 60 percent. That is the fastest growth in the past two years. The number of people watching videos on YouTube everyday, has risen in the past year by 40 percent. The mobile usage has increased by 100 percent.
Popular categories
Music is by far the most popular category on Youtube for both young and old. The top 10 Dutch channels is completely dominated by dance music like Spinning Records, Armada Music, Martin Garrix and Tiësto with the exceptions of gamers/vloggers Enzo Knol and DusDavidGames. Youngsters follow and watch their gaming heroes and beauty chicks massively.
Behavior
If you look at the statistics of vloggers you can see their followers watch the videos from beginning to end even if they last over 20 minutes. Many adults call the videos of vloggers ‘nonsense’. Additionally Youtubers ask their fans to comment on their actions and videos and they do so en masse. Not only in the comments beneath the videos, but also on the Instagram channels of the Youtubers. Vloggers are the new stars. Another popular phenomenon that has arisen due to the vloggers are challenges. Challenges that a group of people engage with each other. For example, play games against one another, with a challenge for the loser. Or an ab-challenge, a 10-day detox. And so on.
Influencers
Vloggers Enzo Knol and Teske de Schepper are now as familiar as presenters or actors on television and they are invited to join many TV programs. The 26-year-old Gamer Felix Kjellberg, better known as Youtuber Pewdiepie, has three times more subscribers on YouTube (40.7 million) than the most popular TV show in the world, the Ellen show (13.7 million), or Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, with 9 million subscribers. Dutch beauty vlogger Nikkie de Jager has two million subscribers. She was already popular with around 400,000 subscribers last year, but increased this number by making the viral video “The power of makeup”. Vloggers monetize their Youtube channel by preroll advertisements, but even more by working with companies and brands in the form of sponsored content.
Brands
There are few brands that know how to use Youtube (and video) to build a community like vloggers do. Therefore influencers (vloggers with a large audience) are paid to promote the channels of brands such as Wehkamp with six vloggers for their YouTube channel Simply Stylish. These vlogs are viewed 5,000 times: relatively low compared to the number of views on the videos on the channels of the vloggers themselves. Good examples are the Youtube brand GoPro (action-camera) and Red Bull, which both have sports content on their Youtube channel. The reverse also happens: from online to linear television. Dutch Youtubers started their own Tvchannel called FIRST, which is not a bad idea, considering their subscribers watch their new videos on fixed times anyways.
Snap Chat: Real-time and behind the scenes
Snapchat is a mobile app that is grouped under the photo and video services. It’s actually becoming a lot more that that. The unique selling point is that Snapchat’s content is available for 24 hours only. This is an interesting development which young people understood best: not all content needs to be stored and searchable. That is the standard that many digital professionals have: your content has to be found, not vanish. What young people share now is not interesting in a few years, let alone over 24 hours. You can sent snaps (a picture or video of up to ten seconds) to all your followers in the form of a Snapchat story (for example, ten snaps in a row) or to specific friends. You can also snap directly to each other via video, photo or text. The content on Snapchat you have to create on Snapchat and not anywhere else, you share immediately, otherwise it’s gone. You can’t upload and publish pictures and videos from your phone. Therefore, the content on this channel is near real time and always very realistic. The user interface is completely different from what we are used to: there are few buttons, you control the content with swiping up, down, left and right.
News from youth for youth
The Snapchat editorial states which daily “news” from the world they show on the section they cal LIVE. That can range from major sport events to national holidays like Halloween or big events like the European Christmas markets. With 100 million daily users, it has become an interesting news channel, news of young people for young people. There are more than 200 million users, and every day 6 billion videos are viewed. The service is closing in on Facebook, which counts eight billion videos daily.
Popular Categories
Like we often see with channels that are not yet “mature”, or have no obvious place in the social mix there is a lot of behind the scene content. With Snapchat that’s almost the only possibility you have, because without special apps you can only make real-time content with enrichment through doodling. Some are that good at doodling, they call themselves Snapchat artists. Showing the real lives of celebrities, models, bloggers and other well-known social influencers is what works on Snapchat. The challenges of Youtube are also getting popular here.
Instagram is ‘picture perfect’ and Snapchat ‘realtime reality’
Behaviour
Snapchat is used by many young people in the same way as WhatsApp, only with Snapchat there are more opportunities to do funny things with your content. In addition, the Snapchat lenses are very popular: a clever technique that allows you to see yourself live and shoot with rainbow vomit, as a unicorn or as an old person. Snapchat also provides the ‘Discover’ feature, where mostly media brands can publish special Snapchat content to a large group of users. You can call this magazine 2.0. The content exists of 10 small pieces of content with audio, video, pictures and text alternate. Initially Snapchat offered the opportunity only to media brands, probably because few brands have so much content daily, but since then a webshop (Refinery29) and a media agency (Sweet) are added to the discover section. Cosmopolitan International says the discovery channel commitment to this content is higher than in any other channel. All pieces are completely read and viewed.
Influencers
As you can’t see how many followers another has, we have to look for blogs about popular influencers. Snapchatter Jerome Jarre was previously known as the Vine-guy, the social media channel with six-second videos, but now has millions of followers on Snapchat. He travels around the world, pulls jokes and organizes challenges. Also Dutch fashion Instagrammer Negin Mirsalehi has been focusing on Snapchat: she promotes her Snapchat account heavily through Instagram. It’s certainly different content, Instagram is picture perfect and Snap Chat real-time reality.
Brands
Dutch news channel NOS presents the news in a behind the scenes form, often represented by young team members. Vodafone Netherlands is live every Friday, where a Youtuber has two young people carrying out a challenge. Gogo, a travel company, understands that snaps have to come from the vacation locations. Young people do follow brands on Snapchat, when they provide entertaining content. Is the content not that right, then they will be zapping away fast. You have to realize you only have a few seconds to convince your followers with your message.
What will happen this year?
Above is specified what works on the most popular social media that are dominated by young people and how young people deal with it. We also know that the rest (the elderly and the non-first moving brands) follow youngsters. Therefore the above findings are important for anyone who is in the marketing and communications industry. Now can you get to work with these channels, if your target market is located there and you can tell a strong visual story. Think carefully how you will approach it exactly. Take it differently, think out of the box. Think content and audience. Or involve young people. For young people by young people appears to be a golden combination. Thanks to smartphones and accessibility of all these visual and social channels, it has changed and young people want to be inspired by young people through their own communication channels and not by what is is broadcast on television.
And what about Pinterest?
The channel that I have not named above is the ‘social moodboard’ channel Pinterest. This visual channel diverges: it was first discovered by a group of creative women aged 30 to 40 years old and now you see in the statistics that the users are aged between 25 and 40 years. It grows fast, so definitely a channel to monitor in 2016!
