A recent study from eMarketer says that user counts for Instagram and Twitter are strikingly similar, although their demographics are different. So you thought Instagram wasn’t business friendly? Think again, because @teenvogue, @time and @rollingstone, and savvy publishers who appeal to the millennial audience are rocking it.
“eMarketer estimates that 43.2 million US consumers used Twitter monthly last year—or 17.6% of the total internet user population. Meanwhile, Instagram users represented 16.1% internet users. Limiting that figure to smartphone Twitter users, Twitter hit just 30.8 million in 2013; this will increase to 37.3 million in 2014, or 22.7% of US smartphone users.
Both figures fall slightly below those for total Instagram users, and while Instagram activity all but exclusively takes place on smartphones (meaning Instagram’s smartphone user base could be higher than Twitter’s), it is possible for Instagram users to have an account online without accessing the service through a smartphone. As a point of reference, eMarketer pegs US smartphone Facebook users at 123.7 million this year.”
How does this apply to the average publisher or marketer? Well, “Twitter’s US user base shows signs of maturing in its demographic composition, spreading the user population more evenly across age groups, while Instagram is still largely limited to a pool of millennial and Gen X users. Last year, 69.0% of Instagram’s users were ages 18 to 44.” So in other words, if you know your audience, then you know which social networks might be best to market on.
Read the full stats on eMarketer.
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