Internet Marketing and Digital Strategy Blog
Social Media
Social Media insights
Jun 20th
PEW Internet & America Life Project released their latest report on Social Networking sites and our lives. Sites reviewed included mainly the following:
- MySpace
Key takeouts include the following:
Usage of social media:
- Usage had doubled since 2008
- Average age of user has gone from 33 in 2008 to 38 in 2010 (The older you are the later you adopt?)
- 56% of users are female, 12% more in 2010 than in 2008
- Most females are on Twitter as proportion of users
- The males are all on LinkedIn
- 92% use Facebook
- 52% and 33% of Facebook and Twitter users, use the platform daily
- Largest growing age group is 50-65 year old
- The young folk have either moved or are not bothering much with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or MySpace at the moment
What are they doing on Facebook?
- Commenting (42%)
- Liking content (26%)
- Updating their status (15%)
- Sending private messages (10%)
Who are their Facebook Friends?
- High school (22%) – boring
- Family (20%)
- Co – workers (10%)
- College friends (9%)
- Other (39%) – seems like a lot?
Only 3% of friends generally have not been met in person.
Australian Social media Stats
Sensis and AMIA have also one a report here. Key findings were:
- 62% of internet users have a presence on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or LinkedIn.
- Facebook captures 97% of social networking users and 60% of all internet users.
- The average Facebook user spends more than five hours a week on the site.
- The top reasons people use social media are catching up with friends and family, sharing photos or videos, and coordinating social events.
- Many consumers take no notice of advertising on social networking sites.
- 12% of social media users said they use social networks for researching products, 36% said that the last time they used social media to research a product or service resulted in a purchase.
- The types of products and services most commonly researched on social networking sites are clothing/fashion, electrical goods, furniture/things for the home, computers/software and music.
- Social media users are most interested in what businesses can give them in the form of discounts (57%), giveaways (45%), invitations to events (41%) and product information (41%).
- Blogs and reviews have a notable influence on buying decisions, with 63% of social media users reading reviews before making a purchase decision.
- On average, people read six reviews before making a decision. However, only 24% of online users post blogs or reviews, so reaching that 24% of ‘influencers’ is key for marketers.
- The majority of social media users (64%) don’t follow any brands or businesses on Twitter, suggesting that marketers need to carefully plan their Twitter strategy so it connects with their audience.
Some considerations for Businesses
- Much household product or service research is done by women and while they may not make the decision alone they would be a strong influencer in the final outcome
- Females are generally better at relationships than males, I say that in a very general way and thus it is no surprise they use social media sites more, other than LinkedIn which is dominated by males and really more about business, networking and selling than sharing
- Social media sites, while not there for product search will influence outcomes
- Users are ruthless and want stuff for nothing from companies on social media sites
- The opportunity exists to connect with these people the challenge is the strategy and how best to connect
Can you afford not to be on Facebook? No, is it clear exactly what you should be doing on Facebook? No. But getting your contact and brand shared between trusted communities is powerful. The volumes and final impact or ROI will come out in the wash as more data is collected over time.
Youtube Campaign and the Pelvic Floor
Nov 10th
New Youtube campaign released by Poise Australia on pelvic floor exercise videos. This includes 13 videos from Jane Simmons a leading advisor in this area. There are also a lot of competitors competing for this space such as Tena.
The Poise channel is professional and the videos, clear, branded and easy to recognise. I actually might do some pelvic floor exercises myself. So well done on the channel set up, be interesting to see if these will result in blended search results.
Optimising Youtube videos in this day and age is no longer a luxury, it is a must.
These videos are also available on the www.poise.com.au website, under in the Benefits of pelvic floor exercises. The videos are well explained on the site, walk you through the steps and are in the correct sequence. A great way of showing multiple channels to market, through the vendor site as well as through Youtube to maximise the brand awareness of Poise Pilates, created by Poise for woman suffering from incontinence.
Free your mind
May 28th
So what does all this mean?
There is no time for complacency and innovation is essential. And you can get a powerful message across with an innovative approach, good design and Youtube.
Social Media Strategy and Marketing
Mar 28th
With Twitter going mainstream and the number of social media experts, strategists and consultants on the scene, I thought it was high time to interject with some thoughts, seen as everyone else is. If you read my previous post “Brands on the rise” this ties in closely. Getting your brand socialised will become increasingly important in the future, for Internet Marketing.
So what should you consider for your business from a social media strategy, other than the need to show a return and the potential difficulty in measuring a return, be it financial or otherwise?
Also, while many agencies use social media as another channel for creative ideas to generate brand awareness or sales, this is not about campaigns using social media as a channel. This is about companies engaging with social media in a well thought out strategy. Setting up processes with the objective of increasing brand awareness and sales through ongoing relevant and value adding interaction with customers and potential customers. If you do have a campaign, you would these social media processes to deliver on the campaign and own them, not let your agencies own them.
Key activities to include in your social media strategy include:
- Social media policies
- Social media audit
- Social media strategy
- Social media operationalisation and ongoing monitoring
1. Social Media Policies
Have you got any guidelines, advice, communication for staff as to how they may or may not interact with online media while on company time, through the company network or as an ambassador of your brand. If you have people in your workforce under 55 years old, in fact if you have people in your workforce, trust me they are engaged somewhere, be it LinkedIN, FaceBook, FlickR or Twitter.
Do you have formal advice for them on:
- Whether they can represent the brand, e.g. commenting on an industry issue n a blog as a member of your company
- Whether they can mention customers, e.g Twittering about a new pitch or a customer experience
- What internal information can be discussed, e.g. Blogging about staff cuts
- Privacy e.g. including pictures from the office party of drunken colleagues in fancy dress in their public FlickR account More >
Bruce Clay SEMToolBar
Jan 9th
Bruce Clay has released 2 new tools, the first being the new SEMToolbar, something we have been excited about for awhile.
You can download the SEMToolBarhere. The SEMToolbar is a browser plug-in that can extract data from the key search engines being Google, Yahoo and Microsoft as well as other sources and then deliver that data in a variety of ways through the browser and search results. You can set up any search engine you like to check results in, not just the aforementioned.
Since we have been road-testing the toolbar, here are some of the features we have found particularly useful.
At the touch of a button. (i.e very quickly), you can:
From the SEOToolset perspective:
- Run the Keyword Density Analyzer while in the webpage you want to review
- Run a Check Server command to view aspects related to your server, including block-lists and cloaking checks
- Use the W3c Markup Validation Service
- Review the keywords and domains you manage
From a search engine marketing and search results perspective:
- number search results
- quickly check different search engine results without leaving the page i.e. move between Google.com, Google.com.au and then Yahoo etc. More >
Will Twitter fail, or fail to make profits?
Jul 7th
Twitter has some scaling issues we all know that, but its addictive. Twitter also has a blog, new offices and new funders in the form of Jeff Bizos (Bizos Expeditions) and Bijan Sabet (Spark Capital) not to mention Union Square Ventures and Digital Garage. So its all happening over at Twitter HQ.
The stated strategy is to “become a sustainable business supported by a revenue model”. Thank goodness for that, capitalism aint dead, profits are king.
But, the profits will have to wait. Twitter believes “our biggest opportunities will be worth pursuing only when we achieve our vision of Twitter as a global communication utility. To reach our goal, Twitter must be reliable and robust”. All from the Twitter Blog.
Well Twitter is not reliable and not yet robust, but I believe there is much effort in process to get this right. So assuming we have a reliable and robust product, whats next.
Looking at the Twitter top100 90% are based in the United States (US), 2 we were unable to determine, 1 was from Europe, 4 from the United Kingdom (UK), 2 from Australia and 1 from Mars. Who knew? So we have a global userbase already, even though it is skewed to the US. But then we would expect that, given the size and military might of the US.
By all accounts growth is exponential, just look at Twitterfacts. Twitter facts was updated in February 2008 and states that users are expected to reach 1 million by April 2008. Twitdir etimates current users around 2,1m although no date is given. On review of the top100, Mars Phoenix was the 14,693,823th thing to sign up for Twitter and that was fairly recent. In fact the first post was 13th may 2008. So 28,125 followers in 2 months, not bad. No stats were available on active users at the time of writing.
Will Twitter ever become a Global Communications Platform?
Currently the profile of users across Twitter seems stacked towards a Twiteratti, mostly with their own shows or ways of promoting their Twitter feeds, for example Leo Laporte via TWIT, Cali Lewis on Geekbrief TV and Jason Calicanis on just about anything he can find. Great, they have the numbers and the platform. In fact around 10% of the people on Twitter appear to be following the Twitteratti, when they make up less than 0.001% of the twitter population, based on the top 100 and signups of around 15m. This is even more if you factor in accounts that are dormant which seem significant.
Most of the Twitteratti use Twitter as a means of promotion, look at TheRealDvorak, and Jason Calicanis to mention a few. These guys have to be respected, they have built an audience, maybe 75% of their posts are not related to their own sites but the rest drive traffic to an article or whatever. Lets be clear, there is no issue here, just the fact that may be more a way of rapid updates and interactive news from niche sources than a communications platform. These guys also work hard for their audience at an average of around 2,205 tweets per person normalised and around 15,244 followers each. Or maybe not if you consider madrid, the top updater who has made 322,230 tweets to date, and Im sure counting.