I confess to being a true troglodyte when it comes to social media.

Proudly showing my new iPhone to my daughter recently, she immediately burst my bubble by making fun of me for not having Facebook on my home screen. After fiddling with my phone (a device I mainly use to read email and to call before coming home to see if I’m supposed to stop at the grocery store — “What, you don’t use text for that?!” she admonished) a few moments, she discovered I had a personal Facebook page.

I was as astonished as she was. I had no recollection of starting one. Then she discovered that for the last several years, ‘Friends’ have been sending me all sorts of messages and invitations — and not a few birthday greetings — to which I’ve never responded! I had no idea all this ‘socializing’ was happening.

[Sorry about that, friends and former friends! But, in defense, no one ever brought this to my attention face-to-face in real life, as in … “Tom, for the last three years you’ve ignored my Facebook birthday greeting, buzz off!”]

Of course Facebook is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my social media deficiency — Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram … huh?

I’m sorry. All of this is a bit of a digression. Brought about by noticing this recent look by Reality Mine at the demographics of social media users. Here are the key findings:

• Google+ is dominated by Baby Boomer men;
• Image sharing sites are mainly preferred by Millennial women;
• Women are 5 x more likely to use Pinterest than men;
• Twitter is the only social media channel to be used by men more than women in every generation;
• $50,000 to $74,999 is the most common income bracket among social media users;
• Twitter users are most likely to be educated to bachelor degree level.

To those of you in the know, there probably won’t be any surprises here. I was a bit disappointed to find that college grads were the biggest users of Twitter! They must be tweeting Stephen Hawking.

The point worth noting here is that there are differences in the core audiences of various social media. And beyond that, the vast amounts of data collected on users by these channels will permit increasingly precise targeting of messages and interactions.

Without doubt, our younger Agitator readers will need to come to terms over your careers with the capabilities and opportunities presented by social media.

My own strategy is a cop-out one. I do have two business-related Facebook pages, both of which have direct marketing objectives. But I have a very clever 20-something social media whiz who maintains them. I like to think I know more about marketing fundamentals than she does; but I can imagine the day when she’ll masterfully blend marketing with medium, far surpassing my capabilities. And I must admit I’m getting sucked into the analytics behind these channels.

If you’re a direct marketer at heart, social media might be your ultimate sandbox.

Tom

P.S. Thanks to Mandy O’Neill for the pointer.

P.P.S. If you want to follow the demographics of social media more carefully, Pew Research are the folks to watch.