Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ante Pelivan
When it comes to real estate, the motto is “location, location, location”. In digital, the motto is “allocation, allocation, allocation”. Whether you’re a large company whose marketing budget is somewhere in the stratosphere, or you have a small burgeoning brand, it’s important where you spend the money you got (often just by the skin of your teeth) for those “whachamacallem, social networks and Google.”
So, you finally have your budget and you want to use it in the best possible way. The first step, of course, is to see what people who deal with social networks (professionally) have to say about them. And trust me; after you do that, you’ll be even more confused than you were.
Some of the “prevailing” opinions among professionals are:
- “Everyone’s on Face, it has to be in the mix.”
- “Kids are no longer on Face, it’s only old people there.”
- “Snapchat is great for targeting kids.”
- “Instagram Stories is killing Snapchat.”
Wanting to save all of us from stumbling in the dark when it comes to social networks, in late 2016 the Croatian agency iZone took a closer look at the social networks the Croatian audience uses. What they love, what annoys them, what they can’t live without… All this was researched on almost “a gigabyte” of participants (N = 1027*) and here’s what they had to say.
In addition to Facebook, Instagram, G+, Pinterest and Twitter, we were also interested in the unavoidable YouTube and Snapchat, which are so often identified with “the new kids.” In short, we have taken in the suspects for questioning, and these are the results of the “criminal investigation.”
What we were first interested in is how widespread the most famous social networks are in Croatia, and the situation looks like this:
Regardless of their socioeconomic status, users have profiles on three social networks on average. The most commonly used networks are undeniably Facebook and YouTube, while the third network used varies according to the user’s age. The biggest difference in age is observed between users of Snapchat and Instagram, where most users are up to 22 years of age, and G+, which is mostly used by people over 35.
If we were to assign a gender to the social networks, Twitter would convincingly be a man, and Instagram and Pinterest women.
Particularly interesting was the fact that 80% of participants wake up with Facebook, meaning this is the first social network they visit in the morning, while 11% of surveyed users begin their day with Instagram.
When asked which network would be the last they would renounce, almost half of the participants (49.6%) chose Facebook as vitally necessary, 34.2% couldn’t do without YouTube, and 8.1% without Instagram.
Along with a description of the use of networks, we asked participants to rate the social networks according to their purpose, on a scale of 1 to 5.
- YouTube is the best social network to have fun and pass the time on (4.61, 4.19 respectively)
- Facebook is the best for communicating with friends and finding out what they are up to (4.27, 3.86).
- Pinterest is best for women who want to find something interesting (4.58), while men find YouTube best for this purpose (4.48).
- To get informed about what’s happening in Croatia and the world, participants find Twitter (3.6) and Facebook (3.4) equally useful, with no significant difference between the two.
And here are the average scores of the networks in all six dimensions of use (be entertained, pass the time, communicate with friends, find out what your friends are doing, find something interesting, get informed about Croatia and the world).
In addition to these ratings, the social networks were also subjected to an assessment of users’ personal experience of a few “serious” elements:
- Snapchat users enjoy the highest privacy of data (65.7%), while Facebook users have the least of it (41.9%).
- 6% of Facebook and YouTube users think that they are bombarded with ads, while the same is true for only 13.4% of Snapchat users.
- Users of Facebook have the most control over who can see their posts (96.5%).
- Croats say that the best social network for following brands and celebrities is Instagram (88.6%).
- Facebook is the best when it comes to following events (96.3%).
- Pinterest is the best source of good ideas (86.1%).
At the end, we asked the participants the most important question: Which network is the best?
Third place went to Instagram, with 13.4% of votes, YouTube came in second with 22.2%, and first place, by popular vote, goes to Facebook with 56.4% of the votes. Congrats!
But what kind of a theme of the week would this be with only one article? Lousy, we agree. Therefore, we have prepared four infographics for you which show detailed information for each of the analyzed social networks. So stay tuned for more about social networks in Croatia in the coming days:
Facebook – 28 February
Snapchat and Google+ – 1 March
Instagram and Twitter – 2 March
Youtube and Pinterest – 3 March
*The research included 313 men and 714 women. The average male participant was 32 years old, and the average female participant 29 years old. Participants were divided into the following age clusters – up to 22 (M=19.8, 233 participants), 23-26 (M=24.6, 313 participants), 27-35 (M=29.7, 208 participants), and older than 35 (M=45.7, 271 participants).
