Our fascination with the differences between men and women has spawned countless tv shows, hit songs, and bestselling books. And now we’re starting to understand how gender also influences social media use.

I began thinking about this while reading Porter Novelli’s EuroPNstyles research conducted among  consumers in the UK and other European countries. Drilling down into the facts and stats around social media, several clear trends emerged showing that the same preferences and behaviours are being played out in the digital space just as they are offline.

Of course both sexes are highly engaged in social media, but our data indicates that women are using social channels to reinforce existing social connections, and to interact with friends and family. By contrast men demonstrate a clear bias towards showing or sharing status, and promoting their opinions to the wider world. Never mind Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus – today it seems Men are from Foursquare, Women are from Facebook.

I pulled some of these trends into a presentation that I gave today as part of Social Media Week London, here are a few UK highlights:

• Women are more socially active than men:  65% of women access social media at least once a week, compared with just 51% of men
• Women are more likely to connect with people they know: 93% of women using social media do so to read posts and view pictures from friends or to comment on their friends’ profiles. For men the numbers dropped to 89% and 84% respectively.
• UK women lead the rest of Europe in following brands to access deals and offers – this is the motivation for around 64% of women in social media, compared to a European average of just 52%, and 56% among UK men.
• Men are more likely to use social networks to display status and opinions. In the UK  45% of men use social media to check into places compared with just 33% of women.  Men are also more happy to broadcast what they’re saying to the world: 35% of socially-savvy men are Twitter users compared to 27% of women.
• Men are also more active in the blogosphere: 54% of digitally-active men say they seek out other people’s blogs to read, compared with 46% of women. Men are more active bloggers than women too (34% vs 24%).

It’s interesting to see that Forrester, the Wall Street Journal, comScore and even Facebook are all seeing similar trends, although brands and marketers are not always following suit. As Forrester’s Tracy Stokes argues: “Women have the potential to drive a brand’s reputation online because, compared with men, they are more connected with each other and like to talk about brands and products, especially in social media. But marketers, particularly in more male-oriented categories like finance, are not making a digital connection with women.”

It sounds simple but in this new era of communications, it’s not enough to know how to “do digital” – we still need to understand people and what influences them, regardless of the medium.  Those brands that manage to combine social media savvy with human insights will maximise their chance of success.

Note: EuroPNStyles is an annual study conducted by Porter Novelli among more than 10,000 European consumers in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands (UK sample = 1,700 people). It reflects our agency’s belief that research uncovers insights which can trigger behavioural change.

Are you a Cheerleader, Loyalist, Opportunist or Outsider? These are the new consumer segmentation groups identified by Porter Novelli in our latest European research into how we use social media.

Spanning the UK and five other countries, the report Social Consumers in Europe which we have just launched, unveils four new typologies to help brands understand the social media behaviours of the audiences they want to engage with, and how to reach them more effectively. We’ve done this by combining media consumption patterns, attitudes to online brand interaction, and core human behaviours.

We interviewed more than 10,000 people, so we have deep international insights into how consumers are influencing the purchasing decisions of their family and friends, and whether they are brand loyal online, or digitally promiscuous.

The four social segments are:

Cheerleaders

24% in Europe, 22% in the UK: Aged 20 to 40 they are social media super-users who spend twice as much time as the European average on social networks (94 minutes per day vs 39) and accessing the web via smart phones (62 minutes per day vs 24). This group is also the most likely to follow brands via social media for product news (59%), and are three times more likely than others to trust brand information on owned websites and social channels. Cheerleaders are also influencers: 76% recommend products they like to at least three friends. Cheerleaders represent 25% of women and 23% of men surveyed.

Loyalists

18% in Europe, 19% in the UK: Like Cheerleaders, these mainly 20-45-year-olds are highly socially active. Around 82% access social networks once a day or more, and 95% of Loyalists will recommend products they like to friends. This group are the most likely to build long-term relationships with brands: 78% say once they have found a product or company they like they will stick with it. Loyalists are 20% of all women and 16% of men interviewed.

Opportunists

38% in Europe and UK: Typically older at 45-60, Opportunists are less socially-savvy or brand loyal. While they follow brands via social networks their primary motivations are to receive vouchers and discounts (53%), and to enter competitions (41%). Opportunists are also price-sensitive, with 62% comparing prices from at least two sources before making a major purchase. Opportunists make up 39% of men and 38% of women surveyed.

Outsiders

20% in Europe, 21% in the UK: The oldest group at 60+, Outsiders are online and use social media for personal reasons only. They do not engage with brands via social channels, preferring instead to find what they want on product web sites and via search engines. Around 17% of women interviewed and 22% of men are Outsiders.

The research also shows that Britons lead the rest of Europe in media multi-tasking and consuming information from two or even three screens at once: in the UK we spend an average of 112 minutes a day simultaneously watching TV and going online via one or more laptop, tablet or mobile device compared to the European average of 91 minutes daily.

The different social segments included in the Social Consumers in Europe report provide strong insights to help with communications planning. For instance, Cheerleaders are not just heavy social media consumers, they also read the most print titles too, which underpins how important integrated on- and offline PR campaigns are. We also found that three quarters of Loyalists and Cheerleaders write product reviews and comments on brands’ own social profiles so as a minimum, companies need to actively read and respond.

We’d love to hear your feedback on our findings so please do tell us what you think!

Note: The research is the latest in the EuroPNStyles series which is conducted annually by Porter Novelli across a cross-section of European markets. Research took place online during July 2011 among 10,200 European consumers from seven countries: Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom, plus Portugal whose data was not included in this report. Around 1,700 consumers in the UK, Belgium, France, Germany and the Netherlands were interviewed, and 850 per country in Portugal and Spain.

On average Facebook users spend most time looking at a) newsfeeds and b) profiles… but a very close third is photos. It follows that creative use of photography is a good idea for marketers, as illustrated by these five brand examples of photos being used effectively as part of Facebook activity.

1 Ask people to ‘like’ their favourite

Bearing in mind one should not attach liking a post or photo to a competition prize under Facebook’s promotion rules, asking for (non-prize-related) preference is a simple way to engage fans. If you create a Facebook album and add several photos at once to it, this makes for a highly visual wall post that is more attention-grabbing than one photo alone. Here is a good example from the StylistPick Facebook page:

2 Collect photos from users on your website

Revolution bars created a Facebook photo album and filled it with photos submitted via their website. This helped to add an extra layer of moderation for user generated images, so what appeared on Facebook was limited to the best photos they collected from users. This method needs a second step for maximum engagement – informing participants their photos are live on Facebook and they can go in and tag themselves. Every time a Facebook user tags a photo this action is shared with their friends in turn via their newsfeed – capitalising on the viral aspect of sharing on the platform:

3 Include important messages in Facebook album descriptions

The album description field is a good place to include a message you want to share, and even links to send users on elsewhere. Add a succinct, engaging sentence every time you create a new photo album. This is useful for people who go into the album itself and also, importantly, because the description will post into a Facebook update with every new upload you make. Here UNDP include a message on democratic goverance - the illustration also shows the limited number of words available to make an impact:

4 Share event photos and encourage tagging

Upload photos from events you host and tell people who attend that you will be doing that. This will encourage attendees to like your page, tag themselves in photos and share them on. In this example BT are sharing their Community Challenge Volunteering Day (disclosure: BT is a Porter Novelli client):

5 Collect wall post photos from users and interact

Let users tag your page in photos (this can be done in your Facebook page administrator’s image settings) then follow up the conversation by commenting on them.

You will be able to post-moderate the photos – and for the ones that are suitable/most appropriate you can comment and continue the conversation with that Facebook user (which, depending on their personal privacy settings, will be visible to all of their friends). This will also help you build up a bank of user-generated images.

In the example below Baileys respond enthusiastically to the posting of a Baileys trifle image by a user – encouraging all of their Facebook fans to follow the recipe and have a go making it themselves the following weekend.