Understanding generational differences can help you to communicate effectively on social media. Specifically, each generation has different views and desires of life.
Therefore, to communicate effectively with any marketing message, you need to understand your target market.
Creating a client avatar is the first thing you need to do before writing your marketing messages. It is impossible to create effective marketing that talks to everyone.
Digital marketer shows you how to write a client avatar. They cover five steps to creating your client avatar.
- Define your customers’ goals and values.
- Determine where they get their information.
- Detail your ideal client’s demographic information.
- Describe their challenges and pain points.
- Specify their objections to purchasing.
By and large, this important step will help you to create a clear message for all forms of your marketing.
You will need to take a deep dive into understanding your target market and their preferences to get the best results.
You can now identify the generation you are targeting from your ideal client demographics. Provided that, you can learn more about that specific generation to help you determine what you need to address.
The different generations we will be addressing are:
- Baby Boomers – born between 1946 – 1964 between 58 – 76 years old.
- Generation X – born between 1965 – 1980 between 42 – 57 years old.
- Millennials – born between 1981 – 1997 between 25 – 41 years old.
- Gen Z – born between 1998 – 2011 between 12 – 24 years old
Generational differences impact how they perceive your messaging and brand on social media platforms.
The Manifest surveyed social media users and found:
- Daily usage of social media is a trait of 80% of each generation daily.
- Images remain the most popular form of content.
- Facebook is becoming less popular with younger generations.
- Most Babyboomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z access YouTube videos at least once per week.
In a 2021 Pew Research poll, 7 in 10 say they use a social media platform. This statistic has remained stable for approximately five years. YouTube and Facebook are the top two most popular platforms. In addition, 40% of adults use Instagram, 30% use Pinterest or LinkedIn, and 25% Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, or TikTok. These statistics are for all users of all generations combined.
Social sites YouTube and Reddit have shown the most growth since 2019. Conversely, facebooks growth has leveled off over the past five years.
Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok are used most by adults under 30 years old.
Across the generations, YouTube and Facebook seem to remain the top social media platform. While Instagram comes behind those two with the higher usage under 30 years old. Similarly, Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter follow respectively, with the 30-year-olds and under as the majority user.
Part of understanding generational differences is identifying which social media platforms each generation uses most.
In fact, seeing where the distinctions lie gives us a good idea of where our target market is hanging out on social media.
Understanding that different generations utilize different social media platforms demonstrates the need to clearly identify your target market before creating your marketing plan.
