I learned a new word today: platform reciprocity

I always like to read the annual PEW social media report. Of course the research is done with a sample of the US population, but it still always shows some swider trends that apply more broadly.

A not so surprising trend from the report is that, Facebook and YouTube are by far the platforms with the largest reach in terms of users. The rapid and steady growth of Instagram results in the Facebook owned platform coming in at third place. It also shows all age groups use social media, but teenagers and young adult just use it more. Also not very surprising, but nice to have some more fundamental data on it.

What I found the most interesting in the report is the section that gives a rare insight something that is notoriously hard to get relevant data on: platform reciprocity (288 hits in Google), or in normal words: the overlap between the different social media channels.

Thanks to the walled gardens, the only objective way to find out how big this overlap is, is through extensive surveys; expensive surveys. So thanks PEW, for publishing these results.

And like I said earlier, even though these numbers are for the US they are still valuable beyond that country alone. The relative adoption of social media and their relative size is relatively similar in most western markets, making it possible to look at the overlap data in a wider perspective. My key takeout: I expected the overlap was to be significant, but not as significant as the PEW data clearly shows. 

I added the overview above, as an image, but let’s just look at Facebook: Of all Facebook users, a staggering 87% is also on YouTube, which is about the same size as Facebook. Almost half (47%) of Facebook users, also is on Instagram. Of all Facebook user 35% also use Snapchat. 

Talking about Snapchat: of the Snapchat users 95% is also on YouTube, 89% of Snapchat users is also on Facebook and 77% of them is also on Instagram. That makes the "unique reach" Snapchat claims to have among millenials suddenly a lot less unique.

For me it shows that the early adopters of new platforms generally are just heavy users of the social media category in general (on all channels). The most heavy users of one channel are not so much loyal to the channel, they are just heavy users of the whole social media category. 

The biggest challenge for brands and advertisers is not to be on all these platforms. The overlap shows clearly that adding new channels will not increase your reach, it will just make it more likely you reach the same people more often. In other words: just adding more channels to the mix is more likely to build frequency. Or in layman's terms: If we do not fully embrace and commit to integrated channel planning, we just end up spamming our audiences everywhere they go...