Let’s Choose the BEST Social Media Platform for You (2/3)

As authors, we need to build a relationship with our audience to succeed. Marketing, after all, is about relationships! In this episode of the Writing Momentum podcast, Chris and Gena talk about how to pick the BEST social media network for your interactions with your audience. Whether you’re looking at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest or YouTube, there’s a social media platform in your future!

Here's something fun

Download this FREE PDF poster and hang it on your wall to remind yourself each day: YOU'VE GOT THIS!

Links:

• Post to social media FAST with our favorite social media scheduler, SocialBee, and get 20% off for LIFE with coupon code MOMENTUM20 : https://writing.fyi/socialbee
• Write with us! Join Chris, Gena, and Rene each Wednesday at noon Central and let’s get our writing DONE! https://www.writingmoments.com
• Statusbrew Infographic: https://statusbrew.com/insights/social-media-statistics/#social-media-usage-statistics

Episode 40 Transcription:

[00:00:14].210] - Chris
Hello and welcome back to the Writing Momentum podcast. I'm Christopher Maselli and I'm here with my wife Gena. How are you doing today, Gena?

[00:00:20].970] - Gena
I'm doing great, thanks.

[00:00:22].170] - Chris
All right. Well, we are talking about social media, aren't we?

[00:00:24].810] - Gena
We are. This is part two of a series that we're doing on social media. And we are well, I think as authors, we can struggle with social media. We want to write our books. We want to get our message out there. Whether we're authors or whether we're bloggers or whether we're some other kind of writer, we want to get our message out there. But we sometimes have a hard time navigating social media even if we enjoy it on a personal level, we don't necessarily know what to do with it on a professional level. So we're going to talk today well.

[00:00:57].510] - Chris
We talked on our last podcast about why we as authors need to be on social media. And that is essentially because we want to build relationships with people, right? And marketing today is about building relationships and everyone's on social media, as we saw in the last episode, with those statistics that will blow your mind if you haven't listened to that, you want to go back and listen to it because really there's some amazing statistics in there. But you want to be on social media at least one network, because that helps you reach your audience in some way, because you'll find your audience on a network. And so we looked at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube, and today we're going to do that again. But instead of talking about all the.

[00:01:43].320] - Gena
Different, like the overall look at social media, we're going to be looking at the statistics and the demographics for each of those platforms.

[00:01:53].220] - Chris
That's right, because we want to figure out which social media network is best for you, because it's going to be different for all of us depending on what the demographics are, whether it's men or women primarily, or whether it's young people or older people or that sort of thing.

[00:02:09].970] - Gena
Well, and I think that with social media, you have your own personal favorites. But that may not be if you're somebody who loves Instagram, but you may find that your readers are on Facebook or you may find that your people are on TikTok, your readers are on TikTok, and you need to start figuring out how to make that work. So just because you personally have a favorite, although I do think that is a factor you need to include, because if you're going to enjoy being there, then you're going to probably be more active on it. But as we talk about these statistics, look at them in light of your reader and who is your reader and who are you trying to reach? So let's go.

[00:02:54].220] - Chris
This is from that status brew article. We'll put it in the show notes and there's going to be a lot of statistics here, so don't let it overwhelm. You just kind of listen to it and as you hear each one think, oh, that might be a network for me, or there's no way that's my network. Right? So the first one is Facebook. Facebook is always the most popular. It has two 8 billion active users. And this is kind of crazy, 98% of them access it on mobile. Right? So if you're not ready to do mobile content, you don't want to do Facebook, because almost everyone is accessing Facebook on mobile. Teens are starting to drop off. It is primarily 25 to 54 year olds. And this surprised me too. It's slightly more males than females. 56% of Facebook is male users.

[00:03:41].890] - Gena
You know, that does surprise me on one hand. But in the practical side, when I see people who are responding to us on Facebook, we have definitely men who are responding to us and who are engaging with us on there, and possibly even more than women. So that I mean, we think about if you ask our 18 year old daughter, she doesn't use Facebook unless she absolutely has to. And in her mind and what she says is, that's the mom's platform. That's the mom's. That's what our daughter says. Well, so that's the image that she has of it, and I think probably her friends would agree with that. But in actuality, it's not the moms, it's the dads.

[00:04:32].070] - Chris
Yeah, but it's a good network for people who are of that age, right, where they are moms or dad. So if that's what your reader is, if those are the people you're trying to reach, then Facebook may be the platform for you.

[00:04:44].340] - Gena
Now, Chris, can we just take a moment and recap? Why does it matter that so much of this is being viewed on a mobile device? We talked about this in our last episode, but I think it bears repeating because if you are somebody who uses your Facebook profile or you like to use social media on a desktop or on a laptop, or even on a tablet, you are going to be getting a different experience than most of the users out there. So what does that mean? What do we need to think about? What shift do we need to think about when we're preparing our content?

[00:05:25].180] - Chris
Well, it's for our website. It has to be mobile friendly, which means it has to be able to redesign itself when people come to the page to look good. Things like your sales pages, your pages on your website about you, they need to be what's called responsive, right? So that they changed depending on if people are on a mobile device. But even when posting on social media, you need to know that people may be just scrolling through pretty quickly. Right. It's a little different than a desktop where you're moving your mouse a little bit and stopping. Moving and stopping. It's just a constant scroll. So you need to have scroll stopping material that you put on Facebook or on any mobile network.

[00:06:03].490] - Gena
Right, I think that's true. You need something that catches some attention and they need to be able to read it. I think this is the other thing, and we're going to get into this, but using fonts that are easy to read on a smaller screen, using fonts, using colors, putting those two things together to make sure that they are easy to read on a mobile device, that's all important to take.

[00:06:29].400] - Chris
Gina's talking about images here. If you're using images in your social media, if you're just writing text in there, of course you have to use.

[00:06:36].130] - Gena
Whatever I'm thinking about. Yes. If you are producing images for your content or something, then you just want to make sure it's not eight point type.

[00:06:45].570] - Chris
That's right.

[00:06:46].030] - Gena
Because if it's eight point on a tiny screen, they're just not going to be able to read it.

[00:06:50].280] - Chris
All right, so the next network this is interesting is Twitter. Talk about networks that move fast. Twitter moves very fast. 26% of US users, users in the United States check multiple times a day on Twitter. They go there a lot. 42% of their users check daily. So Twitter has a very active user base. Those who are on Twitter check it all the time. I've heard before that you can post as many as like eleven times on Twitter. And it's not too much because that material goes away so quickly that you need to have something new on there all the time. And if you're someone who likes to fire stuff out there, you like to have short conversations. You've seen that Twitter can be very effective that way, but it could also be the kind of thing that's hard to keep up with.

[00:07:39].750] - Gena
Right.

[00:07:40].450] - Chris
We'll talk next week about hashtags and that sort of thing, because that's what you've got to use when you're on Twitter.

[00:07:45].570] - Gena
Yes, you definitely want to use hashtags.

[00:07:47].200] - Chris
I think more important is the demographics here, which is 58% of them are 25 to 49 year olds. So pretty similar to Facebook, but even more men. 70% of Twitter users are male.

[00:08:01].440] - Gena
Wow.

[00:08:02].020] - Chris
Yeah. So if you're writing for men, you may want to think about being on.

[00:08:06].180] - Gena
Yeah, you may want to be on. And I can see that because I definitely think that there is something appealing if you're somebody. And this was another part of that statistic. 42% are college graduates. 42% college graduates. So these are probably a more professional lot that you are.

[00:08:27].630] - Chris
You wouldn't know it by going there, would you?

[00:08:29].460] - Gena
You wouldn't necessarily know it, but these are professional people. They're busy. They want just the facts. They want to get in there and get out. And they're moving fast. And I think that would appeal to men. I think that would appeal to a lot of men. They're not looking for the emotion or the emotive content that you might get on Facebook or Instagram. They're just like, give it to me and let me get going.

[00:08:52].870] - Chris
Absolutely. All right, the next one is Instagram. Put your hands up if you like Instagram. A lot of people love Instagram. Instagram is the fourth most active platform online. And don't forget, it is owned by Facebook. Okay? So there are certain things you can post on Instagram, like your stories, and I believe those translate over Facebook, right?

[00:09:14].590] - Gena
It goes right over and vice versa. It goes back and forth. These are both owned by Meta.

[00:09:20].190] - Chris
Yeah. And so this is a younger audience because 64%, pretty much two thirds of the platform are under 34 years old. Okay, so that skews younger than it really does.

[00:09:35].290] - Gena
I actually would have thought Instagram was more in the 30 to 40 to 45 year olds. But you know what? Hey, that tracks with where we are. I was talking about our daughter, 18 years old. She and her friends love Instagram. They're all about the instagram.

[00:09:55].840] - Chris
It is pretty much evenly male and female. So it's about 50 50. Now, this is interesting. When it comes to what marketers do on Instagram, 58% of them use Reals are the short videos that are like 30 seconds or 1 minute long. 58% of marketers use those because they're very effective. 80% of the stories, which are the posts that have multiple posts in them, multiple pictures, that sort of thing.

[00:10:21].750] - Gena
And it's like a Slideshow presentation.

[00:10:24].790] - Chris
80% of those have a call to action. In other words, 80% of those try to point you to go do something like comment, respond, or go to this website or that sort of thing. And 83% of the people on Instagram use it to discover new products. That includes new books.

[00:10:43].840] - Gena
That is an interesting thing there, because Instagram alone is not a what am I trying to say? It's not a search engine. It is not a search engine yet. That's what a lot of people are using it as when they go there. And I think that's where the influencers come in, where people are looking for something, but they want feedback from people that they trust. So if you can build that relationship, then you're going to find readers who are more likely to trust what you have to say. So I think that tracks.

[00:11:19].120] - Chris
I find it interesting because we know that Pinterest is also very focused on helping people find products and things because people go there looking for answers. The difference is, I think you're right that Instagram is more about influencers showing you products, or Pinterest is more about maybe you finding products almost like in a storefront, because they really focus on their storefront.

[00:11:41].610] - Gena
Who needs when you go to Pinterest. You are looking for what? You need a lot of time. It is a search engine. So you were looking for I have a need that I want to fill and how can direct me to where I need to go to have it filled.

[00:11:58].660] - Chris
Yeah, that's good. All right, the next one.

[00:12:01].530] - Gena
TikTok.

[00:12:02].200] - Chris
TikTok. Okay. TikTok is very young compared to the other baby. Well, it's young in terms of how old it is. They reached a billion active users in a very short time, despite the fact that they were banned in India. Okay. So this is a network that has grown really big really fast. A lot of people used to talk, but it's used very young, 45% of the audience. So nearly half of the audience is 18 to 24 years old. Okay. So this is very young compared to the other networks. Also, 56% are female. So a lot of women use TikTok. A lot of young women. So if that's your audience, you might want to think about starting to produce videos on TikTok. We probably need to do a podcast on how to produce videos as an author because we are becoming a more video centric world. That's part of the reason why we have this podcast. If you're listening to this in an audio podcast platform, you might be surprised to find out we're also on YouTube. And we do that because we know a lot of people like to watch the video.

[00:13:08].170] - Gena
Right, right. I think TikTok also I think the way people use TikTok is a little bit different. I know when you and I go on TikTok, we have some of our favorite people that we like to watch on there. For us, it is very entertaining. It is very entertaining.

[00:13:22].650] - Chris
Is it an entertainment focused network?

[00:13:24].390] - Gena
Yes. So I think it's a little bit different. You don't necessarily get the or at least I have not experienced the good vibes, the feeling that I get, like from an Instagram kind of feel. So it doesn't have that same emotive. But some of the things are just hilarious. Some of the things were really fun.

[00:13:47].740] - Chris
LinkedIn now is very much focused on business users. Right. And so 60% of their users are also kind of young. They're 25 to 34 years old. They're evenly male and female, but they are very much focused on people who are professional. You don't put funny posts on there. For the most part, you want to reach people with business material. So if you write books that are nonfiction, that are for a business audience, this might be the platform for you.

[00:14:16].020] - Gena
Yes. And I was kind of surprised to see that LinkedIn was as it was kind of one of the heavy hitters. But when we were looking at those statistics from our last broadcast and our last podcast, I was surprised. But LinkedIn really is it's kind of a heavy hitter. It's hanging up there with everybody else, but it's just got a unique voice, which is what makes it so appealing for people.

[00:14:43].870] - Chris
Well, and 45 million people search for jobs on LinkedIn every single month.

[00:14:49].170] - Gena
Wow.

[00:14:49].470] - Chris
Right. So if you have a book about a job specific book, very much, you want to be on there. In fact, they say that 46% of most companies website traffic that comes from social media comes from LinkedIn. So people do follow LinkedIn, two different companies. So, again, if you're a nonfiction writer and you're trying to get people to see your company, or you're a freelancer, you're a full time freelancer and you want people to see your company, you want to be posting things on LinkedIn because people will follow to your website from there.

[00:15:18].820] - Gena
Absolutely.

[00:15:20].060] - Chris
Yeah. Next one is what? Gena?

[00:15:22].540] - Gena
Pinterest. Pinterest. Okay. Pinterest is 77% female. Who's surprised by that statistic?

[00:15:30].280] - Chris
This is where the women are. We talked about a lot of networks where men are, this is where the women are.

[00:15:35].110] - Gena
This is a little bit surprising to me. 60% of the people who use Pinterest are 18 to 34 years old.

[00:15:42].820] - Chris
So very young women.

[00:15:43].980] - Gena
So it's a younger audience. And only 5% use Pinterest globally. So only 5% of the social media users are international.

[00:15:56].060] - Chris
I'm taking that well. No, not international everywhere. So only 5% of social media users use Pinterest compared to the others. Right. That means they have a lot of room for growth compared to the others, which are like, for instance, Facebook has I don't remember what the number was, but they have a tremendous amount of people in all these countries. We talked about that last podcast, Pinterest. It's only about 5%. So they have a lot of room for growth, I would say probably especially internationally. And yet they are one of the top 15 most active platforms. People use it a lot, and most people who use it are in the US right now.

[00:16:38].190] - Gena
Well, here's what we have found that we like about Pinterest, and we may want to do a podcast about this later on about specifically on Pinterest, but Pinterest is a search engine. So when you're talking about Google, when you're talking about YouTube, when you're talking about Pinterest, you're talking about content that has a longer lifespan than when you're talking about Twitter or you're talking about Facebook or Instagram, where the feed is scrolling and going so fast that it doesn't have a long lifespan. So with Pinterest, when you create content for Pinterest, it lives for quite a while. And I think that's what makes Pinterest so appealing. We also have been in kind of learning more and more about Pinterest and learning that they are getting ready to release new innovative services. They tend to come up with new.

[00:17:35].010] - Chris
Things all the time because they're so small compared to the others, and they really want to grow. We talked a lot about Pinterest on episode 15 of this podcast. So if you want to hear more about Pinterest. Go back and look at some previous podcasts and check that out. All right. Next is YouTube. YouTube is kind of like Pinterest. It's really a search engine. It is the second largest search engine in the world, right behind Google, which owns YouTube. Okay, so almost all the search engine traffic in the world goes through Google and Google prioritizes YouTube videos when it's giving you answers. This has it reaches more 18 to 24 year olds than any TV network. Wow, think about that more than ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, it reaches more in that key demographic group than any TV network.

[00:18:25].530] - Gena
I don't know that that really surprises me. I mean, it's surprising on one aspect, but in another way, when I think about how our family uses YouTube, a lot of times when we are sitting down to watch something as a family, we will sit down and watch YouTube. We have some of the channels that are some of our favorites that we have found. And yeah, you can work your way through a few 15 minutes broadcasts or whatever, or videos. Anyway, when I think about that, I think, wow, that seems surprising. But on the other hand, when I think about how I actually use it and how our family uses it, I would say that's probably very much in line.

[00:19:08].410] - Chris
So 70% of the people who use YouTube also use it on mobile. So you want your videos to be mobile friendly. They average about 10 minutes. Short videos, you can do longer videos, a lot of people do long form content, but 10 minutes is that key area and it's pretty much evenly male and female, men and women like it equally.

[00:19:28].240] - Gena
Yeah, well, and also using the mobile when knowing that 70% is mobile, it means you really need to put some captions on there. And I know that's something we're even working on ourselves, right. Some of our videos, a lot of our videos as of yet we have not put captions on. So we are working towards making that happen.

[00:19:47].020] - Chris
YouTube provides captions but they're not perfect. If you're watching this right now on YouTube, we haven't gotten into our full workflow about putting corrective captions on our YouTube videos. So you may see it a little bit funny sometimes, but we're working on that right now. Those are the statistics. Very interesting. I hope as you are listening, you are thinking about which network might work for you and your readers, your listeners and that sort of thing. Now next week we're going to be talking about some really interesting tips and tricks associated with each one of these networks that came from this article. It's a fantastic article. Again, it's in the show notes. But if you are overwhelmed with your social media stuff, we do have a resource we want to share with you because it's one of our favorite. We only share resources that we actually use and love and that resource is called Social Bee. You can go and find out about it at writing.fyi/socialbee. That's our link to it. It's an affiliate link, but it gets you one of the best deals on Social Bee that's available today. Because what social media does is it's a content scheduler and you can connect all of the social networks to social media.

[00:20:59].340] - Chris
And then when you make a post, it goes out to all of them at once. It saves a tremendous amount of time and I really love it. We have a coupon that we worked out with the folks at Social Bee. That's MOMENTUM20. If you use that coupon at that link that I talked about. So MOMENTUM20 at writing.fyi/socialbee, it will lock in 20% off for life. That's about $12.60/month. Wow, it is so worth it.

[00:21:28].160] - Gena
And I will say this, I am not the techiest person at all. And so if you are someone who struggles with tech and you're thinking, oh, they're going to tell me about something that there's no way I can make this happen. I can use Social Bee and if I can use it, anybody can use it. It's that it's really. So it saves you so much time. And when you're writing, you want to spend your time writing. You don't want to spend your time being a social media manager. That's not what you're calling is. So you want to be able to write and Social Bee really helps you make that happen.

[00:22:05].290] - Chris
So check that out at writing.fyi/socialbee. It does so much more even than what we said here. But I won't belabor the point to check that out. I'll put it in the show notes too, so that you can go and just read about it yourself. Find out about everything it does well.

[00:22:18].210] - Gena
And can I just even say, if this is something that you're like, I'd love to know more about it, but I'm not really sure how to make it work. Comment about this or send us a text about this. We are talking around some ideas about doing some training video, live training videos to help people understand how to use it. And we'd like to know what the interest is.

[00:22:40].650] - Chris
It's not difficult, but it's the kind of thing that if it's new to you, you may be like, I'm going to know how to connect my Facebook account to something like this. We'll show you how to do it. It's pretty easy, but it's kind of nice sometimes. Just have someone there at your side that you can follow. So we'd be happy to do that. Anyway, if you've enjoyed this podcast, we hope that you will rate, review, subscribe and share this with other people that you know. The subscribing is super important because if you subscribe, you won't miss any of the episodes. Next week we're going to talk about those tips and tricks for social media. If you don't want to miss that. Be sure to hit subscribe there in your podcast player or on YouTube, and that'll make sure that you go ahead and get notified when that new episode is out. Plus, we have a whole library right now of previous episodes. We've got something like, I want to say 40 or yeah, about 40 episodes before this one that are all still very timely. And then you can learn all about writing and about publishing today and also.

[00:23:37].390] - Gena
Marketing your books and branding, just helping you all the way around.

[00:23:41].970] - Chris
So we hope you've enjoyed this podcast. Until next time. Remember that together we have writing momentum.