Everyone’s on Facebook and YouTube. So?

Everyone knows that people in the U.S. are constantly checking social media for information. 91% of U.S. Gen X’ers and 89% of U.S. millennials browse Facebook, while 50% of U.S. Gen X’ers and 76% of U.S. millennials watch YouTube. Brands know it. Advertisers know it. And content creators definitely know it. But I’m here to ask the question, so what?

While the maintained dominance of these social media channels has been well documented—the real question is the “how” of it all. How do consumers view these two channels differently? Who uses each channel, and for what purpose? And how does all of this affect where brands should tell their stories?

WE Communications set out to answer these questions for our clients and ourselves by conducting our Stories in Motion study in partnership with YouGov.

What did we discover? 

It turns out that when consumers are interested in different sectors, they approach the two sites in very different ways.

For example, when broken up by product purchase category, 72% of those interested in “tech for business” products gravitated toward YouTube videos for information over Facebook and other sites. What does this mean? While it is true that you’ll find more U.S. Gen Xers and millennials on Facebook, when it comes to specific purchase behavior among decision makers in the “tech for business” sector, Youtube is the place to be.

Because of these insights, we play to the strengths of each channel when we design motion graphics for product launches or B2B software updates. And because of our Stories in Motion research, we can play to consumers’ consumption habits, too. We can say, with the confidence of verifiable research, that our target audience consumes most media on mobile, making a mobile-first approach to video design essential. It’s no longer an assumption, it’s a guarantee.

For YouTube, this means our writer works with clients to create a script that’s meaningful and conversational, while our designers create large visuals optimized for fast loading times and small screen real estate. When designing for Facebook, we include key captioned words to accommodate Facebook’s mobile standards (i.e., muted sound on auto-play videos). And the results have been fantastic—our most recent promotional video for a client in the “tech for business” sector resulted in over 600,000 views.

With these new insights from Stories in Motion, we now have the information we need to guide our clients successfully through the landscape of social media. And we’re confident that the best way to tell a story involving B2B technology to millennials and Gen X’ers is through video content that’s compatible with YouTube and Facebook.

See you on the social channels.