Is Social Media too Masculine?

May 8th, 2012

Is Social Media too Masculine?

Social media is a virtual world that everyone wants to be a part of. To network, to interact, to share opinions and do a lot more. Irrespective of whether the individual is a male or a female. The kinds of interactions though, tend to be very different for males and females. Men join social networking platforms to meet new people, speak more on manly subjects and discuss rational topics without the intervention of women. Men may use sites to blog, vent and to converse with new people. Women, on the other hand tend to use social networking platforms as a means to keep in touch with their existing network of friends and associates rather than meeting new people. Women like to share their daily life experiences and stories with their friends on social networks.

Also, different social media platforms have different formats of engagement and depending on those; the engagement level may be high or low for males or females. E.g. there may be many websites that are designed to allow sharing of sports scores, opinions on the outcome of matches, or even betting. These sites are likely to have a high level of male engagement. Platforms designed to talk about cosmetics; luxury products, shopping, lingerie products, etc. are bound to see a high engagement level from females. So you can’t really put a finger on whether social media is masculine or feminine. There’s something for everyone and it’s up to the brands and users to make the most of it and benefit from it.

Brands market themselves on various social media platforms taking the help of a reliable social media agency that helps to strategize and leverage the right kind of brands on the right kind of platforms to get a perfect fit with the target audience. For instance, if you’re a company manufacturing industrial products like chemicals or fittings, you would rather be present on a male dominated platform like LinkedIn and if you’re a brand of beauty products you would rather be present on Facebook.

Social media thus does not appear masculine or feminine. It all just depends on what you make of it and who you choose to target. Be it in the real world or the virtual world, men and women, today, just want their own space. Everyone believes in FREEDOM. And different social media platforms give them just that! Their own space to interact with their own kind.

It’s never a good idea to generalize, but from experience, most of those who constantly share content within networks tend to be women. While the type of use may vary depending on the digital marketing strategy employed, it’s not fair to say that ‘sharing’ is the only way to ‘use’ social media. Consuming social media still qualifies as use, and is actually the larger portion of use. As the rule of thumb goes, 20% of users are creating 80% of content. And the remaining 80% that use social media merely through consumption could be either males or females, thus proving once again that it isn’t right to judge whether social media is too masculine or feminine.

Another thing we could look at is the ratio of males to females in a social media agency. Had social media been too masculine or too feminine, we would have seen it being reflected in the number of males and females working in the field of digital marketing strategy. Though it is a possibility that women may be able to do a significantly better job of it due to their inherent nature or nurturing, sharing, caring and building relationships, there doesn’t seem to be a conclusive pattern evolved yet. Who works on which brand in a social media agency depends on who the brand’s target audience is and which social media executive has the most knowledge about that particular audience segment. Whether the executive is a male or female doesn’t make a difference.

So I thereby conclude that I do not buy the idea that social media is either too feminine or too masculine. And I’d like to know what you think. How frequently do you use social platforms? Do you think any of them are particularly masculine or feminine? If you think there’s scope for a battle of the sexes, bring it on!