The medium is the message, but the message is also intrinsically tied to the medium in a reciprocal relationship, especially when you consider social media. Why? Because with social media, the medium is the audience.
The way you frame your content has to be paramount when you consider social media messaging. Sure, there is considerable overlap, eg. Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook all skew to a female demographic while YouTube, G+ and Reddit, but there are also great divides, like Tumblr with their young audience and Linkedin is much older and affluent. An employed woman isn’t going to respond to a video about cupcakes the same way a teen boy would, so why would you post the same content with the same message to both those mediums and, hence, both those audiences?
I know this is a bit adsy/online marketer of me to point out, but it’s something that I think is increasingly relevant as more social media technologies come into play and lazy practitioners just decide to copy+paste their content to all the social platforms, regardless of if it’s appropriate to the medium.
Q: What social media platforms do you use the most or are your favourites for a particular activity? Why?
Bonus Q: Do you fit into the ‘average’ user type for that social media platform?
Related articles
- Encouraging social media engagement – 10 top tips (simplybusiness.co.uk)
- Three Ways Companies Blow it With Social Media (blogs.wsj.com)
- How to Become a Social Media Expert (istitutodiplomatico.wordpress.com)
multimodal media 
It’s quite daunting the number of social media platforms out there; I can barely keep abreast of the 3 I use: Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. With Facebook, I’m talking to just family and friends, with Twitter I feel like I’m engaging with anyone in the world with similar interests and with LinkedIn, I mainly use for career networking. I totally agree that you need to tailor your content but where would the average person get information on who is using what social media platforms?
Mashable.com is typically a good source for Social Media news and intermittent roundups on demographics – but I suppose the average person doesn’t really have to ‘know’. It’d largely be fuelled by stereotypes and personal experiences I guess.
Also, some are pretty obvious – like LinkedIn users typically having a higher base income than Tumblr users, or Pinterest skewing much more to women.
I just thought it would be interesting to think about – are you swimming in the ‘right’ pools, so to speak. You might find you’ll really enjoy another platform that you hadn’t signed up for.
Although it’s all based on arbitrary ordering systems that many won’t fit perfectly into, but it could be worth thinking about.
There are so many different types of apps and ways of communicating I find I am forever checking my SMS, email, facebook, snapchat just to see if someone I know has tried to make contact. While some of these apps are very handy it gets confusing sometimes to figure out how a person will respond
It’s the same thing with ‘following’ people – it gets confusing when you’re trying to keep up with 20 different friends on 5 different social profiles each. And then logins! Trying to remember your username and password for all of them is insane! If my phone didn’t automatically log me in to most of my social profiles, I’d have to reset my passwords to get back into my accounts.
I’m only on Facebook, but I used Pinterest to look at cute ideas for my wedding, so yeah, I guess I was in the ‘average’ user group for that. It was good that a lot of the other people on there had gone or were going through the same stuff as I was.
YouTube and blogs were great too, to help me learn how to make things myself to avoid paying heaps for them. It’s like asking a friend for help, but instead you just type it in Google and someone you’ve never met before gives you a hand.
I didn’t realise YouTube was mostly guys because I always use it to learn how to make things. I’m never signed in so how would YouTube know if I’m a girl or a guy?
I’m a guy and I have Facebook and I don’t go on Reddit. Does that mean I’m actually a girl?
Well, I’m a girl and I do go on Reddit a lot, so … It’s typical, not all. I guess it just boils down to your interests and if they veer more towards what society (or marketers) have labelled as ‘male’ and ‘female’ interests.
Good point on the laziness of practitioners. They feel like they need to get themselves in every social media platform, but they lack the understanding of how each platform is different in format, purpose and audience. My profile on Facebook is different from my profile on Tumblr, and Twitter. Each platform allows different aspects of my personality and interests to be presented. Being a spectator of a social platform also comes into it. I browse through Reddit to be entertained, but I’ve never joined. Is that because I don’t find myself as the average user for that platform, so I’m hesitant to participate? Maybe, but there’s so much out there to be a part of, at some point it’s going to start feeling like bits of your soul are embedded into these social platforms.
A while ago, I did this thing on Google where they could predict your sex, age and other things based on what you’ve Googled. It came up that I was a man in my 30’s… So yeah, if you have interests deemed to be ‘socially acceptable’ to a female, then you’re good. But if you go outside the mould, you’re a bit special eh!