Have you ever wondered how many of Twitter’s users are women? Or men? What about Facebook, MySpace, Digg, LinkedIn, and other sites in the social media sphere?

We have tracked down this information for a number of social network sites (19 of them). All the major ones have been included, like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter and also some of the most popular social news sites; Digg, Reddit and Slashdot.

Full list of sites in this mini study: Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Slashdot, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, Last.fm, Friendster, LiveJournal, Hi5, Imeem, Ning, Xanga, Classmates.com, Bebo.

To determine the ratio between male and female users on these sites we used site demographics data for the United States gathered from Google’s Ad Planner service.

Male/female site user statistics

Before we move on to the chart, here are a few quick observations based on the results we got.

• 84% (16 out of 19) of the sites have more female than male users.
• The social news sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot have significantly more male users than female. The standout here is Slashdot which takes male geekdom to new heights with 82% male users.
• If we hadn’t included the three social news sites, all of the sites would have had more females than males.
• Twitter and Facebook have almost the same male-female ratio; Twitter with 59% female users and Facebook with 57%.
• The most female-dominated site? Bebo (66% female users), closely followed by MySpace and Classmates.com (64%).
• The average ratio of all 19 sites was 47% male, 53% female.

And here’s a chart with the male/female ratio for all the sites, for your viewing pleasure:

The big question

Why do you think certain sites attract more males than females and vice versa? We’d love to hear what you think, so please let us know in the comments.

Source: Pingdom

Here are different type of Social Media users by Oversocialized

How old is the average Twitter or Facebook user? What about all the other social network sites, like MySpace, LinkedIn, and so on? How is age distributed across the millions and millions of social network users out there?

To find out, we pulled together age statistics for 19 different social network sites, and crunched the numbers.

Full list of sites in this study: Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Slashdot, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, Last.fm, Friendster, LiveJournal, Hi5, Tagged, Ning, Xanga, Classmates.com, Bebo.

To get consistent age data for the various sites we used site demographics information for the United States gathered from Google’s Ad Planner service and then did some additional calculations to get all the data we needed.

Social network age distribution

What is the age distribution in the social media sphere?

We took the age distribution data we had collected and calculated what the age distribution looked like across all 19 sites counted together. The resulting chart is right here below.

A full 25% of the users on these sites are aged 35 to 44, which in other words is the age group that dominates the social media sphere. Only 3% are aged 65 or older.

That was the age distribution when looking at these 19 sites together. When looking at individual social network sites, the differences are significant, as you will see below.

Age distribution per site

Here below you can examine the age distribution for each of the 19 social network sites we included in this study. The list has been sorted by the average user age per site (see further down for that), with the “youngest” site showing at the top and the “oldest” at the bottom.

Some observations on age distribution:

• Bebo appeals to a much younger audience than the other sites with 44% of its users being aged 17 or less. For MySpace, this number is also large; 33%.
• Classmates.com has the largest share of users being aged 65 or more, 8%, and 78% are 35 or older.
• 64% of Twitter’s users are aged 35 or older.
• 61% of Facebooks’s users are aged 35 or older.

Dominant age groups

Most of the social networks we included are dominated by the age group 35-44, which was apparent in the first chart in this article. This group has become the most “social” age group out there. This is the generation of people who were in their 20s as the Web took off in the mid ‘90s.

If we look at which age groups are the largest for each site, we get the following distribution:

• 0 – 17: Tops 4 out of 19 sites (21%)
• 18 – 24: Tops no site
• 25 – 34: Tops 1 out of 19 sites (5%)
• 35 – 44: Tops 11 out of 19 sites (58%)
• 45 – 54: Tops 3 out of 19 sites (16%)
• 55 – 64: Tops no site
• 65 or older: Tops no site

It’s a bit surprising that not one single site had the age group 18 – 24 as its largest, but that can be explained by this interval being a bit smaller than the other ones (it spans seven years, not 10 as most of the others). That the two oldest age groups don’t top any of the sites probably doesn’t surprise anyone, though.

Average user age per site

As we promised in the introduction, we have calculated an estimate of the average age for each of the social network sites included in this study. The result is here below.

A few observations:

• The average social network user is 37 years old.
• LinkedIn, with its business focus, has a predictably high average user age; 44.
• The average Twitter user is 39 years old.
• The average Facebook user is 38 years old.
• The average MySpace user is 31 years old.
• Bebo has by far the youngest users, as witnessed earlier, with an average age of 28.

On the social web, age is a factor

Although we can’t say how this will change over time, at the moment the older generations are for one reason or another (tech savvy, interest, etc.) not using social networking sites to a large extent. This probably reflects general internet usage, but we suspect the difference is enhanced when it comes to the social media sphere where site usage tends to be more frequent and time-consuming than usual.

It is also noteworthy that social media isn’t dominated by the youngest, often most tech-savvy generations, but rather by what has to be referred to as middle-aged people (although at the younger end of that spectrum).

Source: Pingdom

Strategy: “Dominate the market”

This strategy is oriented toward creating many small niche sites targeting very tight keyword groups (5-10 keywords) from long tail.

If in mega-site links and site building starts from the very long tail pages (that applies also to link gaining) then here this is totally opposite. Each website created is targeting actually small keyword on its homepage so 95% of all linking activities are oriented towards the homepage of site.

In general such website will have 5-10 pages on average. Of course some sites will naturally grow bigger as more related content and keywords will get discovered.

In many cases it will be enough to gain 20-50 links to rank well on all 3 major search engines in top 10.

These mini sites are good for funneling traffic to your review sites or MN product and feeder sites.

Action step example of first phase:

- In-depth keyword research on niche

- Creating realistic keyword groups

Then move to second phase:

- Pick up 10 sites and get content written for them

- Registering domain names (it’s important to vary registration information as well registrars for maximum safety)

- Find several different hosting companies to host these sites with

- Put these sites up and check if everything is working smoothly

- Start building links (see our other posting guide on link building)

- Repeat the process with next batch of sites

Depending on your resources you could be able to build quite big mini site network that over time could grow into huge part of market.

Biggest disadvantage is the quite high costs associated with domain names and hosting that’s why it’s advisable to do research and use bulk order offers where possible.

Since these mini sites are made for attracting search engines than creating high ranking site under heavy keywords, then outsourcing could be great help – be it for content, web design or link campaigns.

If it seems that it is hard to come up with 100 or more new sites without problems being unique then here is the fact: there are already millions of similar sites so extra 100 wouldn’t make big difference for search engine indexes (0.000001%) but could add to your bottom line heavily.

Strategy: “Diversification”

This strategy is oriented towards creation of many sites and working with visitor from different angles. Basically diversification says it all. It can be applied on different niches, products and viewpoints creating different sites to appeal to various visitor needs and capturing the sales from all these niches.

Several products within one niche

The core structure would look like pyramid starting with big generic site down to small product / visitor groups targeting mini sites and can be described like this:

- Main site

– covers all methods and all products

–it could be mini site about everything covering each topic briefly. It also could be a mega site and then many mini-sites around it.

- Category sites

– several sites on each product category, e.g. exercises, devices, surgery, pumps. In some sites showing the greatness of technique and say surgery site showing articles and cases on how bad it is while recommending safe alternatives – exercises, devices, etc.

- Last level

– in-depth review site for each product;

How to diversify within one product?

Let’s see how we could diversify using weight loss niche and create many websites:

– weight loss in general,

– weight loss for men,

– weight loss for women,

– weight loss for older people and how important it is to be in good shape,

– weight loss exercises,

– dieting and weight loss,

– overweight children and their psychological problems in school and society

The list probably could go on and on targeting different aspects like regions, eating habits, countries, nations, races etc.

Visual diversification

It means having great differentiation in terms of websites design, navigation, colors and layouts (e.g. left hand navigation, right hand navigation, complex two side menu navigation, heavy graphical approach, presentation look like site, etc).

Approach diversification

Here are few ideas on how to diversify websites approach to visitor:

- independent user’s website

- independent doctor’s website

- independent research group

- testimonial collection site

- site answering questions (FAQ) site

- forum / community type site

- product store / catalogue

Strategy#2: “Mega-Site”

Mega site approach is good. Owner concentrates not only on very small niche and small content site like 10-20 page review site but goes after wide variety of topics that includes high competition and volume keywords as well as smaller sub keywords along with related niches / topics.

Core strategy is following:

- select the main keywords and their keyword categories and sometimes even more sub-subcategories;

- select related subjects and their categories;

- develop huge list of keywords of so called long tail (thousands of little keywords) that fits under the main topics;

- develop main topics (quickly) just to fill main categories;

- heavy development of long tail articles – this means creating articles on groups on these small keywords and optimizing them fast with couple good links. Usually this strategy will allow having 10’s of pages optimized within few shorts months and receive first targeted traffic;

- As the long tail is being targeted and developed, the more traffic and more links are achieved which eventually will result in subcategory rankings and later in rankings of all main categories.

This strategy relies on the principle of uncovering different low searched low optimized keywords from different angles that relate to the main topics and then optimizing them for driving thousands and thousands of visitors from search engines and leading them from these long tail pages to your main pages like product reviews and sales pages.

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The next couple postings will provide you with a couple of strategies for growing and improving your affiliate businesses using websites and search engine optimization.

As In any business it is important to have strategy. The same applies to affiliate marketing since it is your business and has to be treated like business.

Each has own strengths and weaknesses, that’s why we’re stepping in and providing you with couple strategies to use separately or in one big marketing mix to ensure growth and stability of your affiliate business.

Before you start to apply these strategies it’s important that you have already decent understanding about websites, hosting and other basic elements of web.

Strategy #1: “Blogs”

Very simple but yet effective strategy is blogging. Blogging is good from couple of aspects, like:

- Blogs are free to create

- There are many different blogging services to use with different and very flexible features;

- Very important – blogs are search engine friendly content management systems (CMS) that can achieve high rankings in search engines even without knowing much about technical aspects of search engine optimization.

Here are few examples on what to write blogs:

- Blogs can be used to create diary about ones progress using some enlargement method. By posting different feelings, aspects, pictures, can create an interaction with audience.

- Blog of course can be used as any regular website as long it allows customizing navigation, setting up categories.

What would be the blog strategy that works?

Basically the main goal is to create little blog network of 5-20 blogs that are on close topics to each other as well they should be aiming for low competition search terms. Usually it means either low searched term or also terms that are 3-4 and more words long.

Key factor in blogging is to have keyword rich content and then link it between blogs and other sites targeting these specific keywords and pages. See our other post regarding Link Campaigns for more details.

Each blog should be updated with 1-2 posts every other day or so. Blogs should achieve 10 or more posts each.

In a month’s time it would be quite realistic to achieve 100 visitors a day. Of course, some blogs will produce better and some not. Some will achieve higher rankings some will support these with links.

Exit links per page

A common mistake many webmasters make is having lots of exit links to partner and affiliate sites. Sometimes it leads to 10 or more exit links per page which is bad from two aspects. Search engines can see this page as some sort of spam, and these many exit links take away valuable PageRank and minimize the possibility to rank well in search engines.

A simple solution is to minimizing the exit links and use them more effective. There is no need to have 25 links in one article whenever the product name is mentioned.

The same applies to link exchanges – there is no need to have on all pages links to partner pages. It is quite enough to create a separate page for this purpose and keep them there.

Exit links to other sites

The fact is that Google engineers say that it is normal to have one way links to a website as well as one way exit links to other websites (this means – the site that receives the link doesn’t have to link back). This makes sense since as there can be websites that are related and enhance the visitor experience or as references but once again don’t overdo. Several links are okay but too many again looks bad and can harm your website.

Final word

Add content and add links. Start slowly and as time goes on – increase the speed and keep adding content. Remember to link to the homepage as well as to internal pages or categories as well as getting one way and reciprocal links. Use a large number of keywords in your links and don’t overdo it with exit links, especially affiliate links per page. In no time the site will be driving steady stream of visitors and growing as you keep promoting it.

Link gaining speed

The speed of links appearing in a website is used for several spam prevention filters invented by search engines. For a new website it wouldn’t be advisable to get more than 100 links in the first month. This mean 2-3 links a day as an optimum way for first month.

Why? Because site has to grow slowly as it would do naturally.

Next month the number of links can be grown at speed of 3-5 links per day.

On third month up to 5-10 links a day can be added.

For older sites that already have a good reputation and have PageRank of 4 or more and 500+ links, the speed can be faster – 10-30 links a day.

It is important to add links to internal sections/pages and add new content constantly as the link campaign is being executed.

Link relevancy

Nowadays situation relevancy is taking an even higher importance than ever. Engines take a serious look at not only what PageRank and reputation the site has, but also the topic the site is about.

For example, if page “Weight loss pills” links to website “Programming”, this will be interpreted as bad and a low quality link that won’t offer as much benefit as if the link were on the same or a familiar topic.

The more links from relevant topic pages – the better.

Link proportions

There are lots of rumors about what link proportions a website should have. How many links should be one-way and how many of them can be reciprocal?

Answer is simple – the more one way links to website the better! 20, 30, 50, 90, 100%!

Why? Simply put – the more one way links the more valuable the site is and the better reputation it has.

If reciprocal linking is used heavily, the engines can minimize the value of them. Another thing is that link partners take away a portion of PageRank.

Links are the most important element after content on the internet! Why? Because this is how the internet world is tied together – through links.

This posting will explain key factors about links and how to use them in the right way for acquiring good rankings in search engines.

Every successful web site has to have links pointing to it. That’s the core principle of search engine rankings. So to gain visitors and rankings in search engines a link campaign must be planned and executed.

Where to get links

Links can be gained in several ways – the most popular are explained below.

Directories – are the best way to start working on your link campaign. There are hundreds of directories and many of them are free so it is good to start there. Some might require a backlink before accepting inclusion, some might require $5-20 payment but in return will give 4 to 10 links to your website to different pages and with different link texts.

Forums and newsgroups – are another option for gaining links – all it takes is posting into related places and along with posts include also links to website. Links can be integrated in signature or also in part of reply if there is appropriate information.

Blogs – are a great solution to give its owner total control over content and links. As a lot of blogging companies offer blogs for free it just makes sense to create them and use for link creation and building a network of sites around central website, however these blog sites have to be linked by other external sites.

Articles and press releases – represent a very powerful strategy for getting one way links as well as an instant stream of extra visitors if the article is republished by some online or offline medium. Places to submit articles:
http://www.newswiretoday.com
http://www.prleap.com
http://www.freepressrelease.co.uk
http://www.prweb.com

DMOZ and Yahoo directories – these two are very powerful in eyes of search engines – also called trusted sites. Link from any of these will assure search engines that your site should be high quality. However, it is quite tricky to get in free DMOZ especially if it is a 13 page affiliate site with links and banners everywhere. The same applies to Yahoo as well as 300$ to 600$ nonrefundable fee to review your site for inclusion which won’t guarantee inclusion.

Link exchange – most popular way for gaining huge numbers of links and improve site rankings. Only disadvantages that reciprocal links are worth less than one way links.

Link networks – stay away from these. Getting 500 links in one day is a sure way to get penalized by search engines.

Unfortunately, simply submitting your article to these social sites isn’t enough to pull in a massive audience. The good news is that you can act to improve your chances of hitting the social news jackpot.

Search the Web and you’ll find plenty of articles on how to “game” social news sites, most often by paying a dodgy service to skew votes using nefarious methods. We can’t discourage you from this approach strongly enough. Not only will your story immediately get buried by legitimate users, but going this route will also tarnish your organization’s name and pretty much ensure that no other stories from your company’s web address ever get promoted on that site. It’s the kiss of death!

Sites like StumbleUpon and Yahoo! Buzz are also efficient at filtering out lame, planted, or paid-for stories.

Your first plan of attack should be to generate mind-blowingly entertaining content that will make the masses laugh, cry, and be inspired all at the same time. Yep, this is a tall order. If you use social news services for any length of time, however, you’ll get to know their constituencies. You’ll start to see recurring themes among the popular stories. Studying these can help you to frame your own content appropriately. Here are some strategies that seem to consistently resonate with social news communities.

Following these guidelines can help move your stories up the ranks and closer to the front page.

Write a top 10 (or 20 or 53) list. Social news readers seem to love lists and often promote them.

• Share stories about technology innovation. As we’ve mentioned, social media early adopters tend to be techies, so these news sites are often geek-heavy. Industry-specific tech wars, such as Apple versus Windows, can be great fodder on technical sites like Slashdot.

• Teach something. Tutorials and advice are popular; for example, we’ve seen front-page stories on Digg about “How to take photographs in direct sunlight” and “Fifty scientifically proven ways to be persuasive.”

• Be political. Hot or politically charged news stories typically attract attention.

• Be controversial. Controversial findings from scientific studies or polling results often initiate heated debate.

• Post anything cute and cuddly. Why is it that we can’t resist stupid pet tricks, sneezing pandas, and other amusing memes?

By reading your social news sites of choice diligently, you’ll get a clear understanding of which stories are popular. Keep that firmly in mind when creating content to post on social news communities.

Many marketers are familiar with the notion of the marketing dashboard: watching the status of ongoing marketing activities, including spending and sales, to measure the return on marketing investment.

To build your own online marketing map, you must first determine your goals. Forrester analysts have invented an excellent approach for developing social media objectives called POST: people, objectives, strategy, and technology. POST encourages marketers to get to know their customers and to set concrete goals up front.

First, figure out who your customers are. Where do they spend their time online, and how do they like to interact when they’re there? How can you engage with them in a positive, meaningful way? Second, specify your ideal campaign outcome. Do you want a two-way relationship with your customers and potential customers? Do you want to reach a new audience? Do you want people to start talking about your product?

In the strategy component that follows, create a plan for what you will do if customers embrace online initiatives. How will you keep them engaged? What will you do to strengthen those relationships? Answer these questions before you start blogging, tweeting, or posting on Facebook.

The results you want should drive your critical technology decisions. If you choose to become active in a social network where your customers don’t hang out, you won’t be successful. If you want to build buzz, then a blogger outreach campaign is probably a better choice than starting a corporate blog. By taking all these factors into account and then measuring results against concrete objectives, you’ll know whether you’re on the right track.

In all cases, we encourage you to be as specific as possible. For instance, instead of simply gathering more incoming links, identify the kinds of sites you want to link to yours.