In our previous posts, we partnered with SurveyMonkey Audience to examine trends in search and mobile behavior. For our final installment, we’ve asked internet users about how they use social media in their daily lives. The answers we gathered have given us some very insightful data. See what you can learn about the way your users interact with social media.
Let’s see how far the rabbit hole goes, shall we.
What about search privacy?
Most people believe that more is better. This doesn’t apply to their private lives: 75% of people object to sharing their private search data. While more search data would make online marketing easier, people still want their privacy, and infringing upon that can be disastrous for user experience.
Do “Likes” or +1s influence your search behavior?
They don’t! Only 12% of users are influenced by ‘Likes’ and +1s. It’s useful to know when implementing a social media marketing campaign that your site search traffic will not be heavily affected by not including ‘Like’ or +1 options (though we still do recommend them). People, for the most part just want their search results. Which brings me to my next point:
50% of users don’t care about images in search results. Although half of users don’t care about the images in a search result this shouldn’t mean they are not helpful. Users’ eyes are more drawn to images on a page and while 50% of users don’t care (or don’t think they do), you shouldn’t neglect the half that does. Images are still incredibly important.
What age demographic makes up each social network?
Facebook is not preferred by users under the age of 30, is not surprising. With so many different social media networks online (like Orkut, lol), along with the fact that younger users tend to go where their peers are. In contrast, users older than 30 go where you would expect them to go:
Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter are most popular with users who are thirty and older.
With 30+ adults being bought up while these social networks were first being introduced, there is more of a brand association with them. So older (and we don’t mean old) users are drawn to more established social networks.
Do users prefer sharing through Facebook or email?
75% of older user (45+) share using email. Unlike their savvier younger counterparts, older demographics (and again, we didn’t say old) are more comfortable using email as a form of communicating.
70% of people don’t use the Facebook search engine While Facebook’s search engine may not be widely used (for good reason), there is a small segment of their audience that is taking advantage of their search function.
How much time is spent on social networks?
From 2011-2012 time spent on social media has increased by roughly 30 billion minutes (or 37%). You may have thought Facebook increased the most, however there was a 4% dip in user visiting the site. However, Pinterest’s visits increased by 1000% (that is a whole lot of pins). This is a useful insight because it shows the social media market is not solely Facebook, a social media strategy needs to be holistic and flexible.
The point of conducting this study with SuveryMonkey Audience was to examine the behavior of online users and see if they align with the preexisting notions of search, mobile and social behavior. While many of our ideas were confirmed, we were also greatly surprised by many data points.
Please let us know your reactions. Were you surprised by any of the results?
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iAcquire Search Behavior Study
[…] Check back tomorrow for the final part of iAcquire and Survey Monkey’s study, which focuses on Social Behavior. […]
I’m gonna have to go ahead and be offended that I am, at age 32, “middle aged” according to this survey. 🙂
I’m sorry Heather 🙁 Next study we conduct I’ll make sure the age buckets are more favorable to us “middle aged” folks 🙂
Ha! We’re not dead yet! 😉
I’m gonna have to go ahead and be offended that I am, at age 32, “middle aged” according to this survey. 🙂
[…] : Social Behavior: The BIG GAME — A Study with SurveyMonkey […]
[…] Source : http://blog.iacquire.com/2013/04/04/social-behavior-the-big-game-a-study-with-surveymonkey/ […]
Is there a white paper available for this study?
Thanks for your interest regarding this study.
You can shoot me an email at nrowley@iacquire.com (or leave your twitter handle in the comments section) and I’ll notify you when the white paper is available. It should be next week. Sorry for the delay 🙂
[…] We got together with Survey Monkey to learn about how people actually behave online, focusing specifically on search, social, and mobile patterns. Did you know that 40% of mobile searches are conducted while people are watching TV? See what else you didn't know about the people searching in your space. Check it Out […]
[…] Social Behavior: The BIG GAME — A Study with SurveyMonkey [from iAcquire; written by Norris A. A. Rowley Jr.] […]
[…] is a great infographic is from iAquire partnered with Survey Monkey and offers some interesting insight into how social media is being […]
Did you get a chance to classify your respondents on the basis of occupation and gender?
Hey Sonia, we did get a chance to classify the respondents based on gender (with a split of 52% male, 47% female) however we did not do the same for occupation. Was due to the length of the survey and the worry of respondent drop-off.