A useful study here from the ‘Pew Research Center’ taking a look at the demographic make-up of US social media users across Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook. No data on LinkedIn of Google+, but great stats all the same.

It is no surprise how fast Twitter user numbers have grown, Pew says they have doubled since November 2010 and now has around 500 million in total with around 200 million who are active, but Pinterest is almost on a par with the percentage of internet users using it service.

Pinterest remains heavily skewed to women, it is also “whiter” and its users are better educated. Instagram also has more women users, as does Facebook. Twitter is the only network where there are more men (although LinkedIn if it were included would lead in this category). Read More »

I’m sure you’ve all seen a Vine, the six second looping images have been widely embraced by brands across social media. Some have got it completely right with well thought out directed mini movies whilst others just post content and hope for the best. A potential use for Vine, which has gone mostly unnoticed so far, is it’s potential use in Citizen Journalism.  Read More »

In the week that it was shown that users only visited the planet Google+ for less than 7 minutes a month it’s interesting to look at how a contemporary rock artist brand goes about using social media in their marketing and the different levels of interest on different platforms.

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For an industry supposedly in demise, the music business is leading the way when it comes to generating social currency.  And, for the savviest of social marketers, generating sales as well.

Back in the good old days when I spent a fair chunk of a gap year behind the counter of Our Price, the mainstream music industry’s sales formula was a simple one:  the major labels gave radio stations (and record shops) pre-release singles they wanted played, essentially to advertise the forthcoming albums they were taken from  – which made them the money.  Read More »

Yahoo! will integrate Twitter into its news frontpage, continuing its battle to be relevant in the social age. Certain tweets will now be included amongst the aggregated news headlines, although it’s not yet clear how they will be selected.

It is somewhat ironic that Yahoo! chief exec Marissa Mayer is bringing Twitter into the fold, as her previous employer, Google, had a major fall out with it.

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Nice idea here from the Guardian to celebrate reaching the Twitter  milestone of one million followers. To mark the occasion it wants to find out more about its followers and where they are tweeting from.

It is asking @Guardian followers to share their view by taking a picture of where they are tweeting from and tweet the picture to @Guardian with the hashtag #1msides – apparently a “selfie” is also acceptable if you’re that way inclined.

It has been promoting the occasion with a Promoted Tweet, which the paper has employed a number of times to date. Read More »

The more tweets that prospective car buyers see the higher the likelihood that they will walk into a car showroom or book a test drive, according to a new study.

The study, from Twitter UK in partnership with Compete (@Compete), found tweets can directly influence offline behaviour and the more they see the more likely that is to happen. Read More »

One of the biggest questions that people ask about Twitter is what should they be tweeting? What is it that is going to get the best response and score high levels of  engagement and reach?

There has been much written on this question and people have suggested the time of day, use of exclamation marks, the length of tweet and where the link is placed in a tweet are all factors in getting more clicks on Twitter.

It’s the $64m question and while there is no simple answer there are a number of tips you can employ to succeed and Twitter has put together its own series of tips, based on analyses of its internal Tweet engagement data, to help advertisers craft the most engaging Tweets. Read More »

Twitter continues to get closer to television and sport with an expansion of its relationship with ESPN.

ESPN will show video highlight clips on Twitter of major sports events in the coming year, including from World Cup matches, American college football and the X Games extreme-sports tournaments, according to a WSJ report. Read More »

A new Twitter analysis tool has been launched in the UK  to analyse a users profile.

However, instead of look at retweets, Klout or reach, it analysis how sexist your retweeting is!

The tool is called Tweet-Q, and was launched in Sweden as year ago. It has now been launched in the UK to coincide with the launch of Joan Smith’s book ‘The Public Woman’ that look at contemporary gender roles and inequality. Read More »