Historically (and statistically), social media has always skewed slightly favourably towards women, and recent studies suggest that almost three-quarters (71 percent) of internet female users are active on one or more social media sites, compared to slightly less than two-thirds (62 percent) of men.

Typically, women are more likely to use Twitter (which has a 62 percent female populous), Facebook (58 percent women) and, of course, Pinterest (70 percent women), whereas men dominate Google+ (64 percent men), LinkedIn (54 percent men) and YouTube (54 percent men).

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So you want a Twitter Profile for your business? And maybe a Facebook Page, too. Perhaps you’re thinking about doing something on Pinterest. And you keep hearing all this good stuff about Instagram.

So you set all of these up. Done. Finished. Ready. Good to go.

Now what? How do you go about actually engaging your audience?

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Who is the average Twitter user?

According to the latest social research, it’s an 18-29 year old minority woman who lives in an urban area. Overall, 16 percent of online Americans use Twitter, with the micro-blogging social network scoring favourably with women, Hispanics and African-American users.

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Did you know that between 2011 and 2012, time spent on social media increased by some 30 billion minutes, representing a year-on-year increase of 37 percent?

But, according to one study, while Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest remain popular with users aged 30 and over, it’s the formerly niche social platforms such as Reddit, Github and DeviantArt that can boast the highest representation amongst the important 18-29 demographic.

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Those good people at the Pew Research Centre recently updated their annual look at who is using social media, discovering that 16 percent of U.S. internet users are now active on Twitter, with the social micro-blogging network continuing to be popular with black and hispanic users, adults aged 18-29 and folks who live in urban areas.

But what about some of the other major social platforms? Aside from Twitter, who exactly is using Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr?

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Social media has always skewed favourably towards female users. Indeed, a recent study from the Pew Research Center discovered that female usage of social media sites well exceeds that of men. Moreover, women are typically more active on these channels, too.

So what does this mean for marketers?

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Did you know that in the U.S. Facebook and Twitter are the most effective social networks for brands targeting business to consumer (B2C) channels?

Chinese users are three times more likely than Americans to make a purchasing decision based on user-generated content on social networks (for example, comments), 35 percent of Irish users access social networks via their smartphones and, in the UK, one-fifth of all Facebook users earn more than £50,000 per annum.

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Did you know that 36 percent of people surveyed in a recent poll admitted to posting TV or movie spoilers onto their favourite social media sites?

What if I told you that one in ten social networkers have been unfriended due to their prolific posting of political content, one in four Facebook users intentionally post status updates that are so vague that their friends are compelled to ask for more detail, and that almost a full quarter (24 percent) of young men admit to creeping on an ex’s social media profile at least once a month?

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Taste is, as they say, very much a matter of taste.

For the same reason that you can’t tell somebody what they should find funny, exciting, scary or (dare I say it) erotic, what any one person finds annoying can often be something of complete indifference or even a source of absolute joy for another. And vice versa.

Of course, on social media, we see a little bit of everything. And we meet every kind of person. So, it lays to reason that we are going to stumble across people who, perhaps through no fault of their own (and, other times, with actual intent) we find annoying.

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Did you know that almost one in five (17 percent) of Twitter users earn more than $100,000 per annum?

That’s the findings from a new survey from Compete, who used their internal demographic data to track the income breakdown of the top six social media sites.

Perhaps not all that surprisingly, LinkedIn users rated amongst the most affluent, with 27 percent commanding an annual income of more than 100K, which was beaten only by… Google+.

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