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UK Social Media Statistics – Understanding Your Target Audience

I recently read some fantastic UK social network statistics which gives us a huge insight to our own market.

Summarised below are some of the key findings:
 facebook-24x24  Facebook (30 Day Traffic)
Unique Visitors
23mn
Reach
50.7%
Average Time Spent on Site
25:00 minutes
Male/Female Split
46%/54%
Best Age Demographic
25 – 34 (31%)
Household Income
£30,000 – £49,999 (32%)
twitter-24x24 Twitter (30 Day Traffic)
Unique Visitors
3.8mn
Reach
8.4%
Average Time Spent on Site
12:00 minutes
Male/Female Split
55%/45%
Best Age Demographic
25 – 34 (31%)
Household Income
£30,000 – £49,999 (26%)
linkedin-24x24 LinkedIn (30 Day Traffic)
Unique Visitors
1.8mn
Reach
3.9%
Average Time Spent on Site
10:00 minutes
Male/Female Split
58%/42%
Best Age Demographic
25 – 34 (34%)
Household Income
£50,000+ (35%)
These stats provide fantastic insight into your potential audiences in social networking channels.
 
How to Interpret Social Media Statistics
However as with all statistics, interpretation is key. Depending on how I chose to interpret them I can create or certainly try to alter perceptions.
Taking a Tabloid hack approach I could add comment and interpretation as follows:-
Facebook is the predominantly the domain of women with time on their hands. (a male tabloid hack).
Twitter is the haunting ground for men who like to monosyllabically contain their comments to within 140 comments, they can only maintain this furore for a limited period of time. (female tabloid hack).
LinkedIn is for the elite leaders of our society, predominantly men who spend limited time on the site due to their busy corporate lives.
 
Understand Social Media Statistics – Start listening to Gauge your Potential Audience
The reality for marketers is however very different. A good understanding of statistics, particularly the potential reach remains important but social media marketing can only really succeed if you go beyond the statistics.
Success in social media marketing has to start with the first action – that of listening to social media networks and doing the hard work of  understanding your potential audience. As discussed in other posts, the social media marketing cycle starts with listening, proceeds to interacting, reacting and finally selling.
Each and every brand will have a best target audience. Get started, launch into social media but remember to listen, do not base all your information on statistics.

My thanks to Nigel Lamb whose original post gave me statistical information.