“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is – it is what consumers tell each other it is,” said Scott Cook, co-founder, Intuit, an American financial software company, on the topic of the increasing influence of social media over the generations and its affect on the marketing strategies of businesses.

These social media adages are scary enough to give any CMO the chills. The lifeblood of online marketing before the Age of the Consumer has centered around control – of brand, user experience, messaging, conversations.  Marketers have been told countless times over the last few years that social meant the end of control. You were told that no longer would your users linger on your carefully manicured website, absorbing your delicately crafted messaging as they click on products and articles. You were told that consumers now had the power, and, in some ways, that has become the reality. But that’s not the whole story. Social business has evolved to the point to where marketers are taking back their brands and, by using social infrastructure, they are reaching, understanding and influencing their customers like never before.

For some time, the prescription to the “social problem” for businesses has been to create a Facebook fan page, a corporate Twitter handle and, for the avant-garde, a Google+ and Pinterest page. While creating and managing social media profiles has become the norm for many big brands, data shows that posting content to marketing tools like Facebook pages does little to engender any significant level of engagement or other meaningful business metric. Furthermore, booting users from your company’s website to its Facebook page isn’t an optimal way of getting your users to engage with or stay connected to your brand.

This raises an important question: If consumers are deeply rooted in being social on the Web (a thesis widely accepted by analysts and industry observers and evident from the billions of active social networks users), how can companies respond in a way that provides both a social experience to those consumers and brand control to those very companies? While there is no social silver bullet to miraculously help brands navigate through new media, there is a powerful set of technologies that companies can employ to maintain control over their brands while catering to a social user-base: social infrastructure.

Social infrastructure is the technology that makes Web properties social. It’s the backbone of the social Web beyond the walls of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networks. Anytime a user registers or logs into a website with his social ID, leaves a comment with his social ID, shares content from the site to his social network(s) or participates in a site’s gamification elements while leveraging his social profile – that is social infrastructure at work. This set of technologies mobilizes a user’s social identity and allows them to be truly social across the web. But aside from an improved user experience, social infrastructure delivers a critical element to marketers: control.

Control in this case refers to two distinct but interrelated concepts. First, by implementing social infrastructure and allowing your users to be social on your site, you can control what your users see – messages, content and even advertising. The alternative is to boot your users to Facebook where they are placed in a hyperactive circus of ads from other companies, sponsored posts and two constantly updating feeds displaying their friends’ activities across the social Web. This all-too-common scenario provides little control for a business trying to foster brand engagement. In fact, for marketers, it’s chaos.

The second way that social infrastructure gives marketers control is in the incredibly valuable sets of data that your social users bring to your site. When a customer comes to your site and signs in via social login, for example, a cordial exchange occurs. He is able to register and login to your site quickly without needing to create a new set of credentials and is able to seamlessly share and comment on and otherwise interact with your site’s content using his social profile. In return, you, the marketer, gain permission-based access to his social profile information, building a lasting relationship with the user. This data set is quite literally the most extensive and valuable assortment of user information available. When authenticating via social login, the user passes dozens of data fields to you including: name, email, birthdate, hometown, relationship status, political views, interests, activities, work history, religious views and education level. It’s the holy grail of customer information which is easily attainable in an aboveboard and responsible way.

The exchange that takes place when a user logs into your site via social login is essentially a “virtual handshake” where customers receive value from a faster login process and the ability to interact with content, and you, the marketer, gain permission-based access to customers’ social profile data.

There is little debate that social networks have changed consumer behavior and expectation. Big brands can no longer get away with unresponsive customer service, lackadaisical content and poor quality products. Customers now have a voice and they’re not afraid to shout their cacophonous opinions across any number of social platforms for the world to see. But rather than cowering in fear at the new uninhibited consumer or simply trying to manage the online conversations that take place outside of your business’s Web properties, you can embrace technologies that help you maintain control of your brand and understand your customers like never before.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/08/04/listening-to-social-media-cues-doesnt-mean-ceding-control/#ab4d12ecd52c

Author: Eric Savitz

On the surface it doesn’t seem like much. It’s just another clip from TikTok, the wildly popular app on which users lip sync, pontificate, flirt, dance, and share in short video clips. This one features a young woman pointing to some text on screen which asks a question: does this summer feel really weird to anyone else?

When I posted the clip to my Instagram feed, numerous friends responded with something to the effect of “yes, totally!” One suggested that this was a quintessentially modern feeling — a kind of listlessness or aimlessness endemic to a post-industrial world.

That may be true, but the clip is quintessential TikTok, too: it’s too short for YouTube; and just the words alone wouldn’t have the same resonance on Twitter or Facebook. It is exactly the sort of poignant or funny video fragment that TikTok is made for, and that its cultural progenitor, Vine, didn’t quite lend itself to. And it’s how TikTok, in its evocation of a zeitgeist, a feeling, has captured Generation Z — in both its structure and its culture, it reflects the conditions of their lives.

TikTok started out as Chinese app Douyin, an app dedicated to video sharing. Developer ByteDance first released TikTok as a version of Douyin for the non-Chinese market, and then purchased Musical.ly, a lip syncing app, before merging the two apps in 2018.

Media is now full of explainers about the app, but at the heart of the app is the “sound,” a recorded snippet of music or dialogue from an array of sources that users lip sync, sometimes just because they like the song, but often to invoke the words to make a point — about everything from dating or gender relations, to politics, or very often, just to make a self-deprecating joke.

Sounds proliferate across the app, getting remixed. The song “Wait a Minute!” by Willow has been spliced by TikTokkers, who play on a variety of its lyrics, from punning on the title to randomly dancing to the line “but I’m here right now.” Similarly, the 1970s Redbone classic “Come and Get Your Love” was used for a variety of jokes until a user cut a line to turn it into a statement of surprise. Those in turn were transmuted into absurd, often risqué jokes — like, say, a passenger on the Titanic waking up to fish, or much more darkly, a concentration camp guard being shocked at a prisoner coming out of a shower.

The concentration camp example is undoubtedly in poor taste, but that line-skirting remixing has emerged out of the way the app relies on iterability: the way a unit of meaning like a line from a song can be reproduced and recontextualized to a dizzying number of purposes. It’s meme culture made manifest in an ideal medium for it.

In some ways, it’s just funny. But the constant remixing also points to the way in which performance is another key part of the app. Users play out different identities and ideas. In particular, self-deprecation looms large on the app, often in sharp, profane terms like “I’m a dumb b****,” and it stands in stark contrast to the shameless self-promotion of Instagram or Twitter. As just one example, the line “I just took a DNA test and turns out” from Lizzo’s “Truth hurts” gets switched up to celebrate a user’s ethnic identity, but then also mixed with an old Vine that switches to the sing-song “I’m still a piece of garbage.“

It can seem a bit sad, until you remember that this sort of self putdown is a way for the young to work through their insecurities. And it’s true that, like anything in the world, and especially online, TikTok is full of all the usual problems: misogyny, racism, harassment, and of course, creepy middle-aged men leaving comments on the posts of 17-year-olds.

But there is reason for optimism, too. Queer identities are frequently celebrated on the app, gender bending is far more accepted than it might be elsewhere, and the creativity on display is often mind-blowing.

That the young gravitate toward this app in particular, though, makes sense. The short video format has a low barrier to entry. Unilke YouTube, users can cultivate a following without much financial or cultural capital (teens’ rooms figure prominently), and the app’s reliance on an algorithm for its central “for you” page means it’s possible to go viral without lots of followers.

Beyond the practical, though, there is something in the structure of the app that feels very of its time — perhaps as Tumblr did in the late 2000s, or the way in which Twitter encapsulates our current political moment. TikTok’s syntax of memes and remixing, its performativity and playfulness, and its surprising rejection of a strict self-promotion or positivity seems appropriate somehow. For a generation not simply raised on the internet, but also facing the specters of climate change, economic inequality, and the rise of nativist populism, the app, if not quite a place to play out the end of the world, seems like a place for the feelings that arise from the sense that we’re living through something strange and new.

Yet, despite its fan base and creative vitality, TikTok faces the same problem Vine faced before it: how does it become a sustainable business? It already serves ads, but given Facebook and Google’s dominance of that market, it’s not clear that TikTok can carve out its own niche, especially without alienating the users who make it great. It’s a difficult challenge, with an uncertain outcome.

I bet there’s a TikTok that perfectly captures the feeling.

Source: https://theweek.com/articles/856051/how-tiktok-captured-generation

Author: Navneet Alang

Approximately once in a generation (and by generation, we mean news cycle), there emerges a trope that takes the experience of young womanhood — in all its beautiful, maddening, tumultuous, tear-stained glory — and flattens it to the point that it means virtually nothing. In the 1980s, it was the Valley girl; in the 2010s, it was the basic bitch. Now, on the precipice of the Year of Our Lord 2020, the latest stereotype used to malign and mock burgeoning teenage female identity is that of the VSCO girl, a meme that originated among teens using the app TikTok that has now infiltrated the mainstream.

The phrase “VSCO girl” is an allusion to VSCO, a photo editing and sharing app with about 20 million weekly active users, the majority of whom are under the age of 25. Although the app is somewhat less overtly image-obsessed than Instagram, omitting such now-standard social media metrics as likes or follower counts, it’s best known for its gauzy, beach-inspired filters, which has led to it becoming associated with a certain type of breezy, casual, Hollister-esque aesthetic (though no self-respecting aspiring influencer would actually buy Hollister). But the VSCO girl meme itself has primarily found a home on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, with the latter boasting 785 million views of the #vscogirl hashtag.

Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/vsco-girl-meme-internet-what-is-gen-z-879667/

Author: EJ Dickson

Our world has never been more connected than it is today.

Nearly two-thirds of the world’s population is plugged into the matrix, with over 4.4 billion internet users across multiple device types. We use these devices for work and for play—and social media has altered the way we interact both online and offline.

Today’s infographic from Global Web Index compares key generational and regional differences of social media use based on data from nearly 114,000 internet users, highlighting how pervasive social media has become in our lives.

Note: China is excluded from the usage data regarding specific social networks and apps.

From Age to Age: Social Media by Generation

How does the use of social media vary by generation?

Baby Boomers

Boomers currently rank last in nearly every category and metric when it comes to technology and social media use. This generation didn’t grow up inundated with technology in the way today’s youth are.

However, Boomers are showing the greatest increase in activity on social media platforms. For example, usage of Instagram and WhatsApp is up 59% and 44% respectively for this group since 2016, which is more than double the global average.

Generation X

Also known as the ‘MTV Generation’, the Gen X group was the last generation to grow up before the Internet truly took off. The early years of this group were marked by a burst of new technologies, from wireless phones to personal computers.

On average, Gen Xers spend nearly two hours on social media per day—less than Millennials and Gen Z, but more than Boomers.

Millennials

Perhaps surprisingly, Millennials show a slow down in the time spent on social media. From 2017-2018, screen time for Millennials on social media decreased by one minute, to 2 hours 38 minutes per day. This trend points to Millennials seeking real-life experiences and better engagement from the brands they interact with online, rather than passive scrolling.

Other factors also play a role in this evolution─nearly 50% of Millennials admit that their activity on social media has caused them to overspend to impress their networks.

Generation Z

Gen Z is the first group in history that has never known a world without the Internet. Immersed in the online world since birth, Gen Z surpasses Millennials in daily activity on social media with 2 hours 55 minutes spent per day.

North American, Latin American, and European Generation Z-ers lead in the number of social accounts they’re actively using. Many are also moving away from platforms like Facebook in favor of multimedia-heavy sites such as YouTube and Instagram.

Social Media by the Numbers

Social media sites measure the number of unique users on the platform each month as a metric of success. Below is a snapshot of the five major social media sites shown in today’s graphic and their active user count.

Monthly Active Users (MAU) as of July 2019

• Facebook: 2.4 billion
• YouTube: 2 billion
• WhatsApp: 1.6 billion
• Instagram: 1 billion
• Twitter: 330 million

Even more striking is what happens in a social media minute:

• 41.6 million messages sent over Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp
• 347,222 people are scrolling Instagram
• 87,500 people posting to Twitter
• 4.5 million videos on YouTube being watched

Social Media’s Role in Retail

Social media has evolved from simply keeping us connected to our friends. Users can now access career tools, engage with their favorite companies, stay current with global events, and find love.

Across all regions and generations, social media has propelled e-commerce into the limelight. More than ever before, social media sites are being used for product research, brand engagement, and online purchases. For example, Instagram now offers one-click shop features that allow users to buy what they see immediately, with a simple tap on their screens.

The greatest growth in e-commerce, however, has been the influencer industry. These star-studded internet personalities boast massive online followings from a wide range of demographics—and companies are taking notice.

In 2018, 72% of major brands stated that they were outsourcing a significant portion of their marketing resources to online influencers. Followers feel as though they’re getting a product recommendation from a friend, making them more likely to buy quickly.

Social Media Growth

Despite the rate of social media growth slowing down, social media use is still growing. From 2017 to 2018, the average person increased usage by three minutes per day, while becoming a new user of 0.8 social media accounts.

Social media is a broad, multi-faceted, and complex industry that appeals to a wide range of cultures, age groups, and personalities. While growth in social media activity may be slowing down, a growing global population may mean we’ll see more opportunities to stay connected.

Source: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-social-media-use-by-generation/

Author: Ashley Viens

Over 70% of the US population with internet access also has an active social media account. Social media is mainstream and it’s no longer just about building relationships with friends and family. Social media has morphed into a space where users connect with brand and influencers, conduct research, share content, and even purchase products.

Depending on your age, your relationship and use of social media will vary dramatically. Social media platforms hold very different values depending on when you were first exposed to this medium.

Depending on who you ask the dates may vary slightly, but for the most part, the generations fall into these timelines:
Baby Boomers: 1946 – 1964
Generation X: 1965 – 1979
Millennials: 1980 – 1995
Gen Z: 1996 onwards

This post breaks down how these different generations interact with social media.

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Baby Boomers

“Boomers” are now the oldest generation in the workforce. This generation did not have access to social media until they were already well into building their careers. While social media adoption rates are growing within this generation, there is a still a reluctance to fully embrace social media platforms the same way as younger generations. This is especially true when it comes to mixing their personal and professional lives.

Eighty-two percent of Boomers who use the internet also have at least one social media account. Their platforms of choice are Facebook and LinkedIn which neatly split their work and personal lives. Baby Boomers are less likely to use other social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram. They are also less likely to have multiple social media profiles.

This generation generally lacks the technical proficiency and understanding of the nuanced differences when posting on different platforms, but they have embraced social media for communication and research. Baby Boomers are 19% more likely to share content compared to any other generation. They are the least likely to access social media from a smartphone or make a purchase through an app.

Besides sharing content about their families on Facebook and searching for information on LinkedIn, 54% of Boomers watch video content. Adoption rates for Baby Boomers are continuing to increase as their comfort with social media grows.

When marketing to this generation on social, it is important to remember they have a clear work/life divide, they like to reshare interesting content, and prefer to use social media as one of their many information resources.

Generation X

Anyone born between 1965 and 1979 is considered to be part of Generation X. This generation now holds the majority of business leadership positions and despite their small total size relative to the entire population, their purchasing power now accounts for 31% of the total U.S. income.

When discussing social media usage, many are surprised that this generation uses social media more habitually than Millennials. Gen X’ers are often overlooked despite the fact (according to a Nielsen report) they spend an average of 6 hours 58 minutes a week on social media networks.

This generation was quick to adopt social media, but unlike Millennials they did not inherit the ‘selfie culture’ most associated with social media. Gen X does not like to broadcast their personal life, in fact, only 24 percent have actually shared on social media. Similar to baby boomers, they like to spend time connecting with friends and searching for information.

Generation X values their independence and likes to do their research before making purchases with 68 percent making their buying decisions based on online reviews. They are also avid multitaskers and use regularly switch between multiple devices (computer, tablets, and mobile). Their favorite social medium is Facebook.

When using social media marketing to target Generation X, it’s important to remember they are the generation of counter-culture; they value their independence and making smart purchase decisions after careful online research.

Millennials

Millennials are those born between 1980 to 1995. They were the first generation to access social media and adopt it as their main form of communication. The also began using social media while still in school. Because of this early adoption, social media is relevant to both their personal and professional lives. Millennials were also the first generation to learn the pitfalls of oversharing and that the internet is written in ink, not pencil.

Millennials are described as optimistic, collaborative, digital pioneers, who unlike previous generations have no issue putting their personal and professional lives on public display via social media. Facebook is still the most popular platform among millennials, but Instagram is a very close second with most Millennials using multiple social media platforms multiple times a day.

This generation is heavily influenced by what they see on their favorite social media platforms. 72% have reported buying fashion and beauty products based on Instagram posts and 84% said they’ve been influenced to make a purchase based on UGC (user generated content).

While Millennials trust their peers and celebrity influencers they are much less trusting of big brands and traditional advertising. They tend to believe what their peers say and turn to social media to seek validation. This validation also results in “FOMO” or the fear of missing out as they are more exposed and influenced by their peers’ activity on social media.

Marketing to Millennials is all about engaging with them on their level. They prefer content from those in their network and look at social media as a primary form of communication and inspiration.

Generation Z

Gen Z are the new kids on the block – born after 1995 and largely considered the future of the global economy. By 2020 this generation will be the largest group of consumers worldwide and they have never known a world without social media.

Social media is their primary form of media and entertainment. This generation is more likely to turn to YouTube on their mobile device than the television. They are truly tethered to their mobile devices and social media with 44 percent checking their social profiles at least hourly.

This generation is filled with realistic, independent digital natives, who unlike Millennials are more private when it comes to sharing. They have learned from past generations and are more careful when it comes to posting and privacy. Unlike Millennials who love to post publicly, Gen Z prefers direct and timebound social sharing like Instagram stories and Snapchat.

In addition to this direct social sharing, they are also avid content consumers with 95 percent watching YouTube, and 50 percent surveyed saying they could not live without it, as compared to different social media networks. This is truly the YouTube generation.

When Millennial were teenagers, social media was a place to check out what their friends were up to and update their status, for Gen Z social media is a place for entertainment. Generation Z is more likely to use social media to fill time and be entertained rather than connect with friends. They also stick to fewer platforms for longer periods of time.

When marketing to this generation it is important to remember most of the content they consume is via YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram because they love visuals. With their average attention span of 8 seconds brands need to be eye chatting and quick to capture this generation’s attention.

Source: https://www.postbeyond.com/social-media-generations-2/

While the young may be categorized as the most technologically savvy, it’s true that people of all ages use social media apps.

Having access to a huge network of friends and family in your pocket is appealing, and that fact registers in the app store, where social media apps dominate the top Android and iPhone apps.

While people of all ages are using social media apps, how do these age groups use social media apps differently?

Older Users Check Facebook More

Mark Zuckerberg and his friends founded Facebook in 2004 and 14 years later, the service has over 2 billion active users. Keep in mind, the world’s population is about 7.6 billion as of March 2018. That’s a huge percentage on Facebook.

This explains why Facebook is far and beyond the most popular social media app, according to a recent survey. Nearly 90% of social media app users check Facebook daily, with Instagram trailing in second place at 49%.

Younger people are characterized as the most addicted to their smartphones and social media. You’d think that across the board, millennials are checking social media platforms more than other generations. This isn’t the case, though.

Interestingly, baby boomers (55-years-old or older) check Facebook slightly more than Gen Xers or millennials.

However, given the size and longevity of Facebook, this isn’t too surprising. While younger users may spread their attention on social media over several platforms, older users may use Facebook exclusively.“The older respondents are not about to jump to the next thing in social media platforms because they’re still getting their bearings on how to navigate a social network and how they can use it to their advantage,” explained Alex Levin, co-founder of L+R, a creative agency.

Furthermore, millennials may be more likely to jump to the next new social media platform, instead of sticking around on Facebook.

Facebook’s size and age can be its disadvantage – it cannot meet the unique demands of every user, and often cannot pivot its approach without causing controversy (i.e. see Facebook’s recent algorithm change).

Millennials Love Snapchat

Millennials check Snapchat daily far more than Gen Xers and baby boomers.

Especially after its controversial recent update, Snapchat can be a quandary for many potential users. Yet, millennials appreciate its affinity for personalized and on-demand content.

With Snapchat, “[Millennials] can choose to tune in and out,” explained Levin. Unlike with Facebook’s newsfeed, “they’re not forced to look at everybody’s information. It puts them in control of seeing it or not.”

Josh Krakauer, founder and CEO of Sculpt, a social media marketing agency, said that Snapchat’s focus on the camera is also appealing to younger users.

“One major reason why Snapchat is such a dominant force with a younger audience is that the entire experience is designed so that the camera is the communication tool,” said Krakauer. “It’s really changed how millennials communicate with each other and feels like a more personal space.”

Furthermore, Snapchat is an example of “shareable design.”

Most people consider good design to be intuitive – users learn how to operate an app with little explanation.

Many features of Snapchat aren’t intuitive, though – such as a two-finger pinch on the camera screen, which brings up a map of your friends’ locations.

This motion isn’t clearly explained within the app – many users of Snapchat may learn how to use the “Snap Map” by watching their friends.

This turns into free advertising for Snapchat.

“It’s converting you into an evangelist for its product, and you don’t even feel like you’re evangelizing: You’re just showing your friends how to do something neat,” explained Josh Elman, a partner at Greylock Partners.

While older users may grow frustrated by Snapchat’s intricacies, millennials possibly see it as an opportunity to learn something new.

Social Media Offers Different Opportunities for Different Generations

Social media apps aren’t just for the young – they are pervasive enough to be used frequently by all generations.

But different ages prefer different types of social media apps. While the breadth of Facebook can appeal to all age groups, millennials remain invested in Snapchat’s personalized content and sometimes complicated design.

Understanding how different ages using social media apps helps a business if they are seeking to build a similar mobile app.

Source: https://www.business2community.com/social-media/different-generations-use-social-media-apps-02024237

Author: Riley Panko