Twitter Goes Female

* source: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2220597/twitter-goes-female-and-what-it-means-for-your-social-media-marketing
 

    I have to say that the header attracted me much because I had an image that twitter consists of full of male users who are late 20s, and early adopters. However, It seems that things are changing now! Women are increasingly turning to Twitter for interaction and information. Here are several important facts about Twitter that have an impact on business these days. 

   Twitter skews female. It's still quite surprising to me that sspecifically women outnumber men on Twitter 53 percent to 47 percent. Since as technology platforms most social media venues tend to attract men as early adopters. Therefore this shift toward female usage signals that Twitter is maturing. Thus, It's time for companies to focus more on female users on Twitter! What's more, this is what social marketing media firm Beevolve has to say about the average Twiter user. She's an American of indeterminate age, uses an iPhone, likes the color purple and has 208 followers. The gender split was 53-47 in favour of women, but the survey, which monitored 36 million Twitter accounts, also found that a quarter of them had never been used.

   Women tweet more than men on average. It's somewhat obvious that women tweet 610 times on average while men tweet 567 times on average. This makes sense since women are well known as communicators. Further, this is consistent with communications usage on other platforms and devices. To be specific, while men trust opinions of “experts,”  women trust the opinions of “people like me.”   If wine industry guru Robert Parker gives a wine a high mark, that’s an indication to men and women that it’s a quality wine.  However, women still want to know, “but will that wine appeal to someone like me?”  For women, to trust or not to trust often depends on the details that are shared.   The more product details and the more details about the reviewer the better.  She wants to know not only that someone liked the product, but specifically why they liked the product.  She also wants to know who the person or reviewer is.  Again, she’s wondering, “is this person like me?” That can partly explain why conversation is important on Twitter for women.

   Twitter usage by sex varies by country. In areas where Twitter is a more mature platform, women are the dominant segment. By contrast, in regions where Twitter usage is newer, men are the dominant segment. (I am sure that most of them are early adaptors.) Specifically, men tend to dominate in India, Brazil, and France. Thus, If you have plans to run business and do Social Network Marketing at those countries, You need to target men users first. By the way, higher female Twitter usage is consistent across age groups. In other words, being female trumps age in terms of Twitter use.

   Twitter conversation focus has shifted to family. This reflects the interests of the majority of women. This is an opportunity for B2C marketers looking to engage women around topics related to their products. Given the popularity of family-related topics, companies can create one or more Twitter feeds that offer a tip of the day or other regular information. Alternatively, companies also can use Twitter to curate other people's content on the topic. In addition, We need to keep in mind that with over 90 percent of U.S. businesses on social media, the shift on Twitter represents a significant marketing opportunity. As the third largest social media platform after Facebook and YouTube, Twitter is already a mass social media venue. I have to say that this is particularly important for B2C marketers.