by Jonathan Haile

It’s not a groundbreaking thought: Men and women think differently. They process and react differently to the things around them. What can be interesting is how online marketers and social media strategists choose to reach men differently than women, because they interact in different ways on social media.

Facebook

Sixty-seven percent of online users are connecting with friends on Facebook. Fifty-eight percent of those users are female. Women also contribute to 62 percent of the sharing on the world’s most popular social media site and tend to have eight percent more friends than males do. It’s a curious statistic because 80 percent of women complain that their Facebook friends annoy them (oops).

Twitter

Only 16 percent of online adults use Twitter. Sixty-two percent of its users are female. Each month, 40 million more women visit the site than men will.

Pinterest

While just 15 percent of adults use Pinterest, 70 percent of its users are female (you shouldn’t be surprised). How are they using it, you ask? Forty-two percent of clicks generated from Pinterest lead users to DIY projects, recipes and tutorials. That’s not to say that a lot of users aren’t secretly planning their weddings, which they’re entitled to.

LinkedIn, Google+ and Youtube

While 20 percent of online users are connecting with LinkedIn, men edge out women, slightly, with a user base of 54 percent. Google+ is still getting its feet wet, with just ten percent of online users utilizing it. Google’s real problem is that on 1 out of 4 users signed up for the service actually use it. And, finally, 25 percent of men watch a Youtube video daily, compared to just 17 percent of women. Men will spend an hour each week watching Youtube vids (I’m probably guilty of spending more time than that), while women will spend just 35 minutes.

What does this mean for marketers?

The fun thing about social media is that it’s so interactive when it comes to different sites and services. While Pinterest and Youtube are two very different things, you can still pin Youtube videos (that might even be DIY videos). Men and women may use social media differently, but it’s still so connected that our strategies have to include many different aspects of reaching our audiences.

At the end of the day marketers have to know what the best ways to reach men and women are, and based on this study, it’s not exactly straight forward, but we have a great idea of how.