Millennials’ sharing behaviour good for brands: report

Canadian millennials are more active in sharing on social networks, and engage more with content shared on their networks than the average population, according to research by Olive Media.

The Canadian Millennial Research Study showed that sharing activity reflects an engagement with brands, and a direct connection to purchase activity. The study tracked online data from 6.7 million IP addresses, or 95% of 18-to-34 year-old’s in Canada.

Canadians millennials are three times more likely to share content with their social networks than the average, and they are more influenced by their peers since they are two times more likely to click back on content shared by others in their network, according to the study.

Millennial sharing is also more diverse across platforms, with Facebook comprising 62%, Twitter 23% and Reddit 4%. That’s compared with the general population, where sharing largely takes place on on Facebook (81%). Millennials also share much more on-the-go, using their smartphones 46% of the time when they share.

Through Olive Media’s partnership with a 3rd party database, ShareThis was able to collect purchase data from 33 leading retailers and 250 brands. The company tracked and matched online social behaviour by connecting their database information and store loyalty programs to ShareThis unique IDs. The report was able to track 1.2 million offline purchases. Based on this data, millennials who share content about electronics are 2.4 times more likely to make electronic purchases, and those who share about food and drink and 2.1 times more likely to act on their sharing.

The study also revealed that millennials use different social networks for different topics. For instance, they are more 4.8 times more likely to have a conversation about consumer electronics on Reddit than the general population. They use Facebook and Pinterest more commonly to share about food.