A recent report by e-Marketer shows that Generation Y women are significantly influenced by blogs and other social media. The report was based on a study performed by PopSugar and Radar Research entitled “Why Y Women?”.
The report showed that while Generation X women were found to rely more on friends and newspaper articles, women from the next generation down, Gen Y, were more apt to discover a new product through status updates. The Gen Y women were also found to be more influenced by blogs – those written by professionals, as well as those written by people with whom the women can identify.
While newspapers and magazine articles were found to be the most influential sources for finding new products for both generations (at 66 percent for Generation X and 64 percent for Generation Y), almost double the number of Generation Ys responded that they were influenced by a friend’s online status updates (42 percent), compared to Generation X, of whom only 22 percent were significantly influenced by such a source.
Other notable differences included ‘a mention on a blog written by someone like me’, (28 percent of Generation Y were influenced significantly, compared to 16 percent of Generation X), and ‘an online ad I saw but didn’t click on’.
When it came to ways in which they share information, Gen Y women were found to post about products and brands on social networking sites and forums nearly twice as much as their older counterparts. Interestingly, Gen X women were found to be much more likely than Gen Ys to e-mail their friends about a product or brand.
Still, the phone remains the most popular method by which to share product and brand information among both groups, at 78 percent for Generation X, and 69 percent for Generation Y.
The study also revealed another interesting social cue: two-thirds of Gen X women consider Gen Y women to be trendsetters, meaning that we can expect to see a shift towards increased sharing of product and brand information through social networking among Gen Xers in the near future.
A study by Mr. Youth revealed further insight into the topic. A Gen Y subgroup, identified as Millenial Moms, were found to rely significantly on the opinions expressed online by members of their peer group, specifically other mothers. Social media has made it much easier for these moms to seek out peer advice, which they tended to rely upon even before the social networking explosion.
The report is an important one for those online marketers looking at targeting this young generation of women. Marketers should take note that traditional online advertising will no longer be sufficient – social networking-friendly advertising and brand visibility has become essential to reach this increasingly influential generation of young women.
Kaila Krayewski is a freelance journalist with a passion for all things internet. Having worked for nearly two years as the public relations manager for an internation search engine optimization company, and publishing hundreds of articles (how-to, informational, and otherwise) on SEO, she knows a thing or two about the field. Furthermore, having just started up her own website blondetraveler.com, she is doing her best to keep one step ahead of the search engines in order to keep the traffic flowing.
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