It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to any of us that men and women are different. It turns out that men and women also use social media in different ways. Here are some of the highlights.
- There are a total 130 million social media users in the U.S. — more than the total population of Japan. A majority of these users are women (71 percent versus 62 percent for men). Many women prefer Pinterest to other sites.
- Only 15 percent of online adults use Pinterest but 70 percent of those users are females. Tutorials, do-it-yourself projects, and recipe pins are particularly popular and have a 42 percent higher click-through rate than other content.
- Pinterest drives more business referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube combined.
- Twitter takes a strong second place with 16 percent of online adults using the network, 62 percent of whom are women. Each month, in fact, 40 million more women visit Twitter than men.
- Facebook boasts a membership totaling 67 percent of online adults. Females account for 58 percent of Facebook’s total number of users. Women also tend to be more active on the site, participating in 62 percent of the sharing, and garnering a slightly higher number (8 percent higher) of friends than men.
- Facebook still claims the highest amount of time spent per month overall, with 405 minutes spent on Facebook versus 21 minutes on Twitter and 3 minutes on Google+.
- Men tend to gravitate toward Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. It is speculated that perhaps these venues are considered less of a “social network.” For instance, 75 percent of the male users on Google+ do not interact with other users. Only one in four men use Google+ as a social mechanism. YouTube also primarily serves as a solo experience, which male viewers utilize for about an hour each week compared to 35 minutes spent on the site for women.
- LinkedIn appeals to men as well but the professional network is mostly used for researching other companies (75 percent), for reconnecting with past business associates (68 percent), and for face-to-face networking opportunities (45 percent).
For more information about differences in the men and women use social media, take a look at the infographic below.
Infographic courtesy of InternetServiceProviders.org
