Millennials have always been a hot topic for marketers, who yearn to understand everything around this dynamic and complex demographic — how millenials think, how they act, their loves, their hates. It goes without saying that they are digital mavens who are exceptionally more attuned to the social landscape. Grasping the ins-and-outs of this group’s online social patterns and sharing behaviors can prove to be invaluable when marketing to this audience.
ShareThis’ social toolbar runs across 3 million sites and apps and powers sharing across 120 different social channels, providing a bird’s eye view into the sharing habits of millennials.
ShareThis’ data captured 95% of the Canadian millennial population and collected 87 million social signals across the social web. This substantial pool of data collection makes this study twice as large as ShareThis’ previous Moms study, resulting in the biggest ShareThis Canadian consumer study to date and rendering the ensuing data tremendously powerful.
It doesn’t come as a surprise that millennials, according to the research, are far more social. This audience not only has a high propensity for sharing but they are also 2.0x more likely to engage with shared content recommended by their peers, solidifying them as influencers in their social communities.
Millennials are also more diverse when compared to the general population, utilizing Facebook around 20% less and Twitter 17% more. As a millennial myself, my phone is the first and last device I use every day, so it’s not surprising that smartphones take the lead with 46% of this audience’s sharing activity.
ShareThis then dove deeper into the type of conversations in which this demographic engages.. Arts & Entertainment drove the lion’s share of millennials’ social activity. That’s a whole lot of conversations around Justin Bieber’s latest antics. Yet, when compared with their elders, who would have thought that they are far more likely to socialize with content concerning business, finance, health, education and politics? Their sharing habits, stemming from launching their careers or becoming finance literate, reflect a more nuanced set of interests and provide an opportunity for brands to reach them via key passion points and engage more deeply with them.
Marketers often wonder how social media will move the needle for their brand. The most compelling part of the study shows that sharing behavior does, in fact, have a major impact on consumer purchase decisions. For the first time ever, ShareThis looked at how social intent drives purchase activity and the results spoke for themselves. Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, take note: millennials who shared content about electronics were 2.4x more likely to purchase an electronic product in store.
Following electronics, the next three categories demonstrating social influence in purchase decisions were food & drink (2.1x), household supplies (1.8x), and personal care (1.7x). To be able to tie a social share to actual purchase activity is a remarkable story for marketers and an enormous validator as to why social targeting should be included in any marketing strategy.
For more information, contact Chloe Efthyvoulos, product manager at Olive Media
