Social Media Demographics and Activity in a CPG Customer List

A few weeks ago, we analyzed trends in Twitter followers within the customer list of a leading consumer packaged goods (CPG) company and found that the most popular users pick up more followers and pick them up at a faster rate.

Who are these Twitter influencers and what do they look like? To answer this question, we analyzed social media profile counts and self-reported demographics of the CPG’s top 0.1%, top 1%, and top 10% most followed Twitter users and compared that data with the 90% least followed users. As a reminder, the sample set includes over 40,000 “active” Twitter users (defined as those with at least five followers, five friends, or five updates).

Main findings

• The company’s most popular Twitter users are predominantly female and between 36 and 45 years old
• The more popular a user is, the more social media profiles they have online: over 43% of the top 0.1% most followed Twitter users have more than six online profiles

Bear in mind that these results are specific to the CPG company’s audience and, consequently, will tend to skew towards middle-aged females. Here are more details on user demographics and online activity:

Gender of CPG’s Most Popular Twitter Users

Highlights

• Top 0.1% of most popular Twitter users are 66% female; over 83% of the top 0.1%, top 10%, and bottom 90% of users are female
• For the company, the proportion of male users increased as popularity increased

Ages of CPG’s Most Popular Twitter Users

Highlights

• Over 39% of the top 0.1% most popular Twitter users are in the 36 – 45 age group
• Nearly 66% of the top 0.1% are at least 36 years old
• There are hardly any users under 18 years of age and less than 10% of users are 25 or under

Online Profile Count of CPG’s Most Popular Twitter Users

Highlights

• Users in the top 0.1% tend to have the most profiles across the social web, followed by users in the top 1% and top 10%
• More than 53% of the top 0.1% most popular users have at least five online profiles, compared to 30% of the bottom 90%
• In order of popularity, the six most-popular social media sites for the top 0.1% outside of Twitter are Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, WordPress, StumbleUpon, and Flickr.

Concluding Remarks

In general, the most popular Twitter users in the CPG company’s customer list tend to be females age 36 – 45 who have many social media profiles, especially on Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Rapleaf’s client is a leading provider of food products and drinks so it’s not surprising that their customers are primarily young to middle-aged females. In addition to the CPG company’s market focus, another reason why people under 25 years old are so underrepresented may be because younger demographics, especially teenagers, are not avid adopters of Twitter. It would be interesting to study how the demographics and online activity of these customers compare to those of Twitter’s most popular users.