Social Network Cheat Sheet
It can be really difficult to explain social networks to colleagues who don’t use them. Part of improving digital skills in the workplace is building familiarity with these tools. With that in mind, we’ve created a cheat sheet for you to share with colleagues*:
* Please bear in mind that these are generalisations meant to give you a starting point. You should always do research on your own specific target audience and their behaviour on any particular social network.
Personality / Tone:
If you follow a brand on Facebook, you’re inviting that brand into your living room. Your newsfeed is where you share things with your friends and family as well as trusted organisations you have a personal relationship with.
Audience:
Facebook has the widest demographic spread of the social networks. It very quickly reached an average age of 40 only a few years after launching.
Personality / Tone:
Being on twitter is like attending a house party. You don’t only meet and talk to known bodies, you meet new people. Some could be in a work context, some have shared interests etc. If you’re walking past the kitchen and you hear an interesting conversation, that’s a hashtag. You may leave with some new friends who have common interests.
Twitter is the most open social platform in terms of the professional vs personal mix.
Audience:
Twitter has a slightly narrower audience demographic than Facebook in terms of age. The average age is nearer 39 but the spread is narrow.
Because of the open follower relationship and easy tagging, twitter audiences are arguably more accessible to each other.
Personality / Tone:
LinkedIn should be treated like any other business networking event. You should be professional, authentic and personable.
The No1 mistake users make is not treating LinkedIn networking the same way you do traditional face to face. You would never sell before introducing yourself or building a relationship in real life — so don’t do it on LinkedIn!
LinkedIn’s power is with the individual. While businesses can have Company Pages and build an audience, the real activity happens peer to peer.
Audience:
The LinkedIn audience skews slightly older than other networks because it is focused on working professionals.
Universities are actively introducing students to the platform which is having an impact on the average age but it’s a slow process.
Personality / Tone:
Instagram is the world’s photo album and hobby magazine. The currency here is eyeballs! If you’re looking at a feed of images, your brain cannot help but process them (unlike text which is easier to skim). That’s not to say everything gets seen, it just means that Instagram users give you a fraction more of their attention when they do look at their feed.
The content is based more around interests than people (though there is a lot of overlap) and it’s a place where you find your community around relevant #tags.
The biggest challenge to businesses has always been the lack of clickable links from Instagram to your website but that is about to change.
Audience:
Instagram now has 400 million monthly active users (more than twitter). Their biggest growth area in terms of age is 35+ and they have implemented several new tools to stem the flow of users to Snapchat.
Snapchat
Personality / Tone:
Snapchat is all about authentic personal connection. Images and videos have low production value but are high in authenticity. It has clicked with a younger audience and differentiates itself from other platforms because of the way you can easily control who sees your updates as well as the filters and ease of creativity.
Audience:
The audience here is younger with the biggest growth age group being 25+. Instagram Stories may have stemmed the flow of more mature users to Snapchat. Snapchat also has a reputation for deep user engagement. They may have fewer users but they dedicate a lot of time to activity on the platform.
YouTube
Personality / Tone:
If you have video content you should upload it to YouTube. It is the second biggest search engine and the best way for your video content to be discovered by new audiences.
8 out of 10 18–49 year olds watch video on YouTube every month.
Note: If you want to host video on your website it is better to host it on a platform like Wistia to avoid pulling your audience from your website to YouTube.
Audience:
Every demographic is represented on YouTube one way or another. There is wide variation between user behaviours from regular community members who comment, interact and create video content and passive viewers.
YouTube has detailed analytics to help you discern who your viewers are.
