Whether you’re just a guy trying to promote your blog, own a small company, or are the head of marketing at a large corporation, it’s becoming more and more likely that your competitors are using Twitter, so should you be using it too? Before answering that question, it’s VERY important to understand Twitter’s demographics so that you know what sorts of audiences you might be reaching. The purpose of this post is to explore the major variations in Twitter demographics in order to help you decide if Twitter should be used as a means of social media marketing. The following summarizes the three major demographics of interest.
Age
- 1% 12-17
- 47% 18-34
- 31% 35-49
- 21% 50+
You can see here that the bulk of twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 34, followed by people aged 35 to 49. This means that most Twitter users are generation Y, followed by generation X users. These two generations account for 78% of Twitter’s demographics.
People from generation Y are information driven, ambitious, and striving to get ahead. On the other hand, people from generation X are often times called the “reactive” generation and are very street wise.
Ethnicity
- 82% Caucasian
- 7% African American
- 5% Asian
- 5% Hispanic
- 2% Other
As you can see, the distribution of ethnicities is hugely lopsided, in which Caucasians account for most of Twitter’s demographics.
Family Orientation
- 84% No kids
- 16% Has kids
This demographic is also largely segregated, in which most Twitter users do not have kids. This might indicate that having children will take away all of your free time to make tweets. Yikes!
Conclusion
By looking at these three very important Twitter demographics, you can see that most Twitter users are between the ages of 18 and 49, are Caucasian, and have no kids.
If your company promotes a product or service that fits this demographic, Twitter would be an excellent marketing tool to help bring in new business. If on the other hand your product or service does not fit these demographics, it would probably be a wasted effort to invest in social media marketing with Twitter.
