Why women make better social networkers than men

I’m not usually into the whole gender difference/‘Men are from mars, women are from Venus’ thing but having recently been buried in a world of social media stats, the thought that we women make better social networkers than men has crossed my mind.

No, I’m not making this up. Where ever I look, I find stats that demonstrate we’re the superior social sex.

Take this beautiful visual from informationisbeautiful for one. See the pretty ‘pink ladies’ on Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Ning etc? That’s us girls. And if graphs don’t take you’re fancy – even this super gentleman says it with numbers. So there you have it. It’s fact and it’s official – when it comes to social media, it seems women are the better/more predominant sex.

So what makes us women such great social networkers? Here are a couple of random thoughts I’ve had….

We like to talk

This is not me looking at myself in the mirror and commenting on all womanhood, it’s true. I’ve yet to meet a woman who doesn’t like a good natter with a mate, in a group and sometimes, yes, even with ourselves. So men, you know when you say ‘she never shuts up’? Well, bet you’re regretting it now because you can’t stop us ‘birds’ blog, blog, blogging our way to success! Bet you didn’t know that all that talking would come in handy one day…

We’re pretty open with our feelings

One of the things I love about being a woman is that I get to cry when I want to without feeling embarrassed about it. Somehow, society has deemed emotion as an acceptable state for us women so when it comes to social networking, this helps. Social calls for transparency, honesty (with ourselves more than anybody else) and even if men understand this aspect, I think it’s easier for us women to work it naturally. Also, I do think when it comes to baring all – we can be pretty shameless. We like to have a rant, we do.

We like tea by day and wine by night

OK, so this is a totally random thought which is in no way substantiated but I’ll say it anyway. I think women are all secretly addicts. There! I’ve said it. I mean, most of us love shopping, even if we have lots of clothes, shoes, bags, make-up, we still shop. If we don’t love shopping, we love our tea or coke or Pepsi (max) or wine… we drink loads through the day and loads more before we go to bed. We’re even addicted to our favourite TV programmes – episodes of which we’ll kill for. And in some cases, like myself, we do all of that and more.

But this addictive nature is very, very useful for social networking – because we get hung up on stuff. Like our blog posts (or lack of them), or the increasing/decreasing number of followers, or the back links and our ranking on Google. It drives us mad and it drives us to do more. And you know what comes next, the more social networking you do, the more you… blah, blah, blah.

We’re not picky with whom we hang out with

In my last post, I talked about how we have to multitask as women, mums, daughters, entrepreneurs etc. In order to survive the work/life balance, women usually thrive on support that we gain from the network we have around us. If we don’t have that network, we grow it. So we’re inherently built to do the same online. Call us mumpreneurs, women in business, entrepreneurs, working mums, whatever – the simple truth is, we’re not picky when it comes to the networks we’re on. In fact, as you like it – we’re needy. So we’re quite happy to be on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube – the whole shebang and don’t care whether it’s right thing to do! I think by comparison, men like to question the use of their time. So they stay in the background, suss it out and then if it’s truly worth their while they’ll jump on.

We’re pretty giving when it comes to spreading the word

Remember that contentious word ‘gossip’? Well, guess what? Now it’s called ‘word of mouth’ and women don’t just do it well – we excel at it. This makes us the most wanted people in terms of followers and fans! And this time, there are no complaints when we big up or bring down a brand, when we share a link or two, when we refer and recommend or simply rant for the sake of it – because at the end of the day, gossip, er…‘contributing’ and social media go hand in hand baby!

We’re like a bitch with a bone

The biggest rule of social media is to ‘stick with it’ and persistence is ingrained in our social makeup. We women have fought hard to be where we are today (thinking equality and all). Besides, if you’ve ever given birth to a child you’ll know ‘stick with it’ is a good principle to abide by. So we’re not put off as easily by the lack of results you tend to have from social media in the first 3/6/12 months even. The ability to express ourselves, connect with other people, achieve a work/life balance and make a extra buck out of it all – is carrot enough to keep us going. And because we keep at it, we get better at it and so the wheel keeps turning. Yep, we’ll be here cracking our social media whips long after the roaches are gone.
So that’s why I think women make better social networkers than men but what do you think? Leave a comment and let me know!

Bian

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About Sarah Arrow
Sarah Arrow is the managing editor of Birds on the Blog, in real life she is the communications director of a same day courier service. She is an enthusiastic UK based pro-blogger and co- author of the soon to be published Zero to Blogger
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