There is so much more to social media than meets the eye. It’s a great way to keep up with family and friends, a great place to learn some neat “hacks”, and it’s an easy place to get recipes. According to Forbes, the average person has 8.4 social media accounts globally, and 7.1 in the United States. The average person uses 6.7 different social media platforms each month. I only have two social media accounts, and even that is hard to keep up with!

Social media has become so much more than just scrolling through your feeds. Nowadays, that is how news outlets report breaking news, it’s how awareness is brought about for natural disasters, and it’s even how the President of the United States announces that he is stepping down from the next Presidential election.

The social media trend really picked up with Facebook when that started in 2004, followed by YouTube (2005), X (2006), Instagram (2010), Snapchat (2011), and now TikTok (2016). Facebook has always had a reputation of being the most used social media platform, but according to the new data, Instagram (65%) has just passed Facebook (64%) as the No. 1 platform among 2,059 consumers surveyed. While this sample isn’t representative of all social media users globally, it paints a picture of where social media is going. One thing that all social media platforms have in common is that they are a great marketing vehicle for businesses to reach consumers.

When broken down by age group, there are significant differences in usage that marketers will want to analyze and consider using in their social media campaigns. Five hundred and nineteen participants within the survey were classified as Gen Z (18-24), 757 were Millennials (25-40), 502 respondents were Gen X (41-56 years old), and 281 were Baby Boomers (57-75 years old). What was discovered was that:

  • Gen Z uses Instagram most frequently, followed by TikTok, Snapchat, and Facebook.
  • Millennials use Instagram most frequently, followed by Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.
  • Gen X uses Facebook most frequently, followed by Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.
  • Baby Boomers use Facebook most frequently, followed by YouTube, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter).

What I found most interesting, and something that can also be helpful for business owners, is the type of content that the participants found most entertaining. “Edutainment” type of ads, which educate consumers about a product of service in a fun way, was the winner with 65% of those surveyed saying they found those types of ads most entertaining. The more entertaining you can get with consumers when it comes to ads, the more you are going to not only gain their attention, but keep their attention. The longer they are engaged, the better the chance you have of getting them to move forward with converting or taking that next step. A good example of an edutainment type ad that I see constantly on the two social media platforms that I use (Facebook and Instagram) are ads that are created from Shark Tank appearances. Here is an example of a static ad on Facebook that highlights it was a product on Shark Tank, but I have seen a lot of companies that will use their video clip from the actual show as their video ad on social media. This is a way for a business to highlight their product or service, but by doing it in a fun way that also educates them about the product or service.

Something else that I find interesting is the resurgence of what used to be known as product placement ads. When I was in college, back before streaming was a thing or you could record programs, live television was a major player in the advertising industry. American Idol was really taking off and I remember learning about product placement with the example of Coke being at the forefront of the judge’s table. That is clear advertising for Coke for all the people that are watching that show in real time. Fast forward to 2024, and product placement ads have taken on a new form with influencer marketing through various social media platforms.

With these kinds of ads, celebrities, personalities, and social media influencers are promoting a product or service and have been paid by the company to do so. To consumers, if they have a relationship or fondness of the influencer, they are more likely to purchase the product or service because it comes across as authentic and acts as another form of word of mouth. Below is an example of a social media influencer using Instagram to promote a product, but putting a personal spin on it so that it generates credibility, trust, and authenticity with the consumer. In this example, she is using a story format to talk about a hair growth supplement and showing the before and after. Showing before and after pictures and videos is always a great type of ad to utilize, no matter what social media platform, because it is something the consumer can visualize and see results with.

In the same study, it was found that 43% of consumers are most likely to unfollow brands for having an unoriginal content strategy (their content has become repetitive or unoriginal), and 42% of consumers are most likely to unfollow brands for collaborating with the “wrong” influencer (they partner with influencers that don’t align with their values). As a business, you want to make sure that you are partnering with someone that will represent your brand with integrity and that is going to reach the audience that you want to reach.

This also plays into another change when it comes to how social media has evolved when it comes to what consumers want to see. Facebook started off with static desktop ads, then added on mobile ads, and eventually added in video ads. While video ads are a great addition to any campaign, the length can make or break the success of it. As consumers, we want to consume short bits of information. A single Instagram story can be up to :60 in length, and you can have multiple stories. Facebook and TikTok ads can run up to :15, but the shorter the better, especially with TikTok. TikTok’s format is very fast paced, so brief, engaging content tends to perform best. As an example of how consumers don’t want to spend a lot of time on one thing, there are even abbreviations and hashtags for video content like “TL;DR” that stands for “too long, didn’t read”. When you see this, the advertiser puts up text explaining what the video is about so the consumer can get the gist of what the video is about, and quickly move on to the next one.

This also opens up the conversion on being able to target an audience based off of more than just demographics or behavioral targeting categories. TikTok offers the opportunity to target by hashtags to reach a more relevant audience based on their interests, behaviors, or the content they engage with. This strategy helps advertisers connect with users who are more likely to be interested in their products or services, increasing the chances of engagement, conversions, and overall ad performance. Advertisers can use hashtags to target ads by choosing those that align with the interests or behaviors of their target audience. TikTok’s ad platform allows you to identify hashtags that are trending or relevant to your niche, industry, or product. You can create ad content that incorporates these hashtags to improve visibility among users interested in those topics.

It’s crazy to think of how Facebook started as a social network platform for just college students, what it has evolved into over the last 20 years, and what other social media platforms have emerged as a result of it’s success.