Girls vs. boys on social media.

Introduction

Kids social media marketing is a constantly growing universe as the brands lookin forward to communicate with parents and kids more day-by-day. Especially in toys industry, the main divisions are gender-based, girls and boys.  So, we decided to take a look at their world by considering that division and try to reach results which will lead to increase effectivity on communication.   In addition, we will look at their world by taking a look at the two main channels they are active, Facebook and Instagram to see where the boys or girls are more reactive. We are going to see some metrics of each channel to make sense out of them. All the data is retrieved from our partner, Socialbakers and all the results are based on those data we can reach. The data period is the year of 2019 and the comments are prepared for Turkish market.

Facebook Metrics

Most of the researches show that Facebook is getting more and more passive, especially in kids marketing since the average age is very high in the medium. However, it is still being used as identity card that people must carry with them anytime. Let’s take a look at the world of girls and boys among this medium, which is being perceived as old-fashioned, but still a necessary platform.

Who Does Interact More?

This metric is the main part of the thesis of numerical decreases of Facebook statistics. When we look at this metric in terms of behavior, boys and girls are of course still interacting with Facebook posts. It is clear to see that the girls side is more active than boys. If we compare engagement number/community size percentages metrics of two groups, boys side has 1,4%, while girls side has 12,3%.

Who Are Really Into Videos?

When it comes to the video, each marketer or agency would tell that it is the new trend on social media. And yes, videos are now undetachable parts of today’s social media universe and content numbers are increasing rapidly on each day. Not only quantity, but also quality is taking over by time.  According to retrieved data, it is simply possible to say that girls are more into videos. On boys side, the audience finishes just a little more than quarter of a video on average. On girls side, the audience has a deeper engagement with the video and watches more than 1/3 on average. 

How Are the Reach Engagement Rates? 

It is important to see what do we get when we reach to people while managing an account. The data shows that, boys are more keen on to interact with a post when they see anything associated with related page. In boys side, the rate is 7,98%. In girls side, the rate is 6,81%.  On the other hand, the difference is not very high to generalize this metric, because more follower brings more reach and stronger community feeling. 

Instagram Metrics

Nowadays, the diamond for brand managers, advertisers and users is Instagram. Each research shows that the universe of Instagram is dramatically and rapidly expanding each day with new features, influencers, advertisements and more.  More importantly, what makes Instagram a key medium is its persuasion rate for people to be active and in interaction. If we go further, users are acting on Instagram as it is a search engine or even a customer services department of brands. Besides that, the consuming speed is also more than ever. So, it is important to see what happens there.

Who Does Interact More?

While we look at the organic interaction comparison, boys are way behind . If we look at engagement number/community size percentages of two groups, this time girls are much more ahead. The boys side has 130,3%, while girls side has 177,6%. This data also gives us an idea about dramatic difference of activity rates between Facebook and Instagram users, regardless of genders. 

Who Are More Likely to View More Profiles?

One of the most important follower gathering criteria of Instagram for brands or people is creating a nice visual appearance of profile. That’s why, openness to visit new profiles have to be checked.  According to our research, girls are roughly 30% more eager to view new profiles and wander around. This situation organically causes more concern of visuals for brands while managing an account related with girls rather than boys.

What About Instagram Stories Which Everybody Finds Important?

Well, the stories are also taking greater part on people’s social media lives each day. Most of the advertisers and brand managers are developing strategies to be more effective, active and creative on stories to be seen. So, we are going to check what happens in there, both on girls and boys. If we check impression data comparison between two groups with same amount of stories, boys side have higher value. When 100 stories are presented to those two groups, boys’ impression values are roughly 26% higher than girls. This may be surprising for some. But to make it meaningful, we have to check another metric called “story completion rate”.  If we look at the data we retrieved, only 16,49% of boys complete the stories they see while 24.31% of girls do. So it leads us to a basic result of boys side passes through stories faster and more. The girls side really spends more time for each story and digests content way more. 

Conclusion

The most important conclusion that can be reached by those data is girls side has much more activity rather than the boys side if we accumulate numbers of two channels. Especially on Instagram, the margin is much more higher.  Moreover, girls have much more power on quality. They spend more time on viewing new profiles, watching videos or commenting. They are more into what the content really is or how it looks rather than boys. Even when the impression rates are higher on boys, they are much likely to skip content and see the next one available and skip it too. So if we are talking about real consumption, girls accounts’ concerns should be much more contextual and visual because of the evaluation process while boys account’s concerns should be accuracy in terms of interests to be “really” seen. It should not be forgotten that “stopper effect” is key for boys side.