demographics of social media use on mobile devices
Nielsen posted these mobile social stats from December 2009 about the gender differences when accessing social networks via mobile devices. You may be surprised to discover women were found do use their phones to “tweet” and “friend” 10% more than men.
Nielsen research also showed the 35-54 age group had more active mobile social networkers than any other group.
demographics of mobile social use - breakdown by age
optimising websites - making them mobile and smartphone friendly
making social sharing easier - sophisticated scripting to know whether you’re logged in to social network so you don’t have to log in every time you want to share on the move
social shopping, both real and virtual- Facebook announced a strategic partnership with PayPal, Read Facebook Credits “give users a fast and easy way to buy virtual goods on Facebook, including items from the Facebook Gift Shop”
geo location social- hot for 2010. Watch Foursquare - the sponsorship pieces like Pepsi & Bravo, and the localized business offers
social games - ones that work on the move. Foursquare encourages repeat use through reward. There are so many social mobile game opportunities, its the “how to monetize” which is the hardest nut to crack.
extending social media marketing to older audiences - Facebook’s fastes growing demographic in US is also reflecting the shift to 35+, whilst in Australia 25-34 is still growing fastest.
Its so easy to get caught up in “shoulds” especially with social media. I firmly believe that social is what you make it - the only rules of social media are conversation and participation.
UPDATE: One can extrapolate that there are rules of polite conversation and participation, social media accountability is one way of putting it. As Anne McCrossan commented, its about “‘blatant integrity’. The social web is a great opportunity for us to up our game about social behaviour. [link here]
So it bothers me when people try to tell others what to do - without any understanding of how social media works at either a social media marketing level or a personal relationship level. A friend who runs a very successful business was contacted via email recently as he’d been held up as a “How not to use twitter” case study at a marketing event.
The person who emailed said this:
I’m sitting in an Internet Marketing seminar in Sydney at the moment, and you and your business have just been presented as an example of what NOT to do online.
I’ll keep this short and do hope you get the point:
If you have people decide to follow you on Twitter from your [business] website, they are probably looking forward to receiving tips [on your business services]. Chances are pretty good they are not interested in hearing about football or “pregnant chicks at Ikea” or “hiding the sausage”.
Thought you would want to know you have just been held up to ridicule in front of some 300 people at this event. (The event is being repeated tomorrow in Sydney and twice this week in Melbourne.) Guess the good news is there’s 300 people who have heard of you and your business who probably didn’t know of you til now. Bad news is, it wasn’t a good news story.
Here’s a suggestion: Get a separate Twitter account for your business.
While the person who emails this may or may not have had good intentions, there are a bunch of reasons why they are just completely wrong and inappropriate in judging at all. I’ll start with their Twitter profile:
The person who wrote the email lists themselves as “guru”. They’ve tweeted a total of 30 times. Their Mr Tweet statistics really show up how little they use the channel they are a so called expert on. Their Twitter stream is full of the same plug for their website - over and over. There is no conversation at all. No surprises that the “guru” has so few followers.
There have been countless blog posts on the way Twitter is cutting down the barriers to creating conversation and injecting personality into faceless corporates. Yet this self-proclaimed “guru” is telling my friend not to have any personality at all, and not to be a conversationalist, be human, and crack jokes.
The marketing presentation that held up my friend’s Twitter stream for ridicule also took the tweets completely out of context. They only showed one side of the conversation - they did not show what the @replies were replies to. And they did not clarify that @replies are only seen by those who also follow those who are being conversed with, that the tweets would never be seen by everyone.
Its great how these professional speaker circuit type seem to forget, when it suits their argument, that twitter is an opt in social medium. So the people who follow my friend, are his clients and peers, and if they don’t like what they are presented with, its a very simple thing to unfollow him.
In my friends business, he deals with and talks to people on a very personal level - for up to two hours at a time. If his clients don’t like him, same deal as Twitter - they don’t go back. In fact, Twitter allows for people to see who he is and the type of personality that he has and has done a lot to build his business since its inception. So his twitter account represents him and his business - faithfully. My friend, also believes in honesty in communication, rather than some corporate, bland sanitised push marketing message.
My friend has picked up a lot of business by being himself on Twitter. He’s had blog posts written about his inimitable style and great busines. He’s picked up a lot of followers who love his fun attitude to life, his jokes and he’s become a real Twitter personality. That same personality has translated to genuine brand authenticity, both online and offline, and he’s built significant relationships using social media by being real. I could write a detailed post on how he’s used social media effectively to build a social brand and social business. In fact - using the same examples given by the emailer, I could write the exact opposite case study about how my friend - “How to use Twitter effectively to build a social brand”
And to finish, I’d like to compare and contrast the “gurus” 30 tweets to my friends 10,000 plus tweets and my friends Mr Tweet statistics
I like to say there are no failures in social media - only failure to participate. And for all those so called “gurus” who say Twitter is not for marketing or not for being yourself or not for being honest, or not for being human - they are clearly wrong. Because there are millions of people on Twitter who are using it the way they want and making Twitter what they want it and need it to be.
When considering your personal or a company or a corporate social media policy, one of the key cornerstones should be honesty.
Why?
Because so much advertising, marketing and PR involves spin, stretches of truth, hyperbole and wild claims.
Because in social media, authenticity and honesty are valuable commodities.
Because you can’t “buy” honesty.
Because an honest, personal voice can’t please all of the people, all of the time. Which makes it untenable for those looking for the bland and inoffensive.
Because it takes time to build the credibility to be considered “honest”
Because honesty is rewarded through followers/fans/subscriptions
So how do you talk about things that are negative, bad, disastrous, compromising or just plain bad? Honesty still counts. Just stick to the facts. Don’t lie.
Facebook signup continues to grow at exponential rates across the globe. In three months since April 2009, they’ve added another 50 million users If you’re looking for stats on Facebook’s infiltration into individual countries, the CheckFacebook site provides these revealing stats about Australia:
More than 6 million users
36.65% of Australian internet users are on Facebook
Slightly more females to males
18-24 year olds still the largest demographic
25-34 year olds second largest demographic
Australian Facebook statistics
With advertisers hungry to target internet users by demographic, Facebook is now busy cashing in on its rich rivers of private data. At the same time as growing the user base exponentially, Facebook globally is heading to make $500 million dollars on advertising in 2009, and are fast tracking their ad APIs.
Facebook occasionally pairs advertisements with relevant social actions from a user’s friends to create Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads make advertisements more interesting and more tailored to you and your friends. These respect all privacy rules.
Most Facebook users would not know where to change the settings so they don’t turn up in ads. I changed my own privacy settings a couple of weeks ago, but when I went back tonight, this is what greeted me
Privacy pop-up trying to address Facebook photo ad serving issues
The Facebook blog covers the “rumors” of the issue with the 3rd party ad serving, and the Facebook ads privacy policy has been re-written to cover the changes.
Probably not enough transparency about what’s really going on. So what does this mean for users and advertisers?
Everyone prefers targeted ads that are more relevant to them, but using people’s faces in cheap ads is a big no-no.
Facebook should admit to misuses of the 3rd party advertising API rather than deny them as “misleading rumours”.
Facebook is likely to be fast-tracking the advertising API, but at the same time should ensure the advertisers don’t abuse the platform, as they’ve admitted had been done previously.
Facebook should look after their users. Because their revenue is dependent on the incredibly private and powerful demographic data which enables precise ad targeting, probably not seen since the early days of the web. If users abandon the platform, there goes the revenue.
Facebook Users need to stay aware of the constant changes to the platform, and read the fine print carefully to make sure they are comfortable with what they are sharing, particularly with their own photos.
The question is whether the sheer size of Facebook’s user base will protect it from any issue. The tell will be whether the rate of signup of new users will slow down, or whether Facebook will continue to take over the world.
Either way, here’s hoping the ad targeting gets better in the long run. There are just so many home liposuction ads I can give the “thumbs down” to.
The Facebook advertising guidelines page has been updated. The 3rd party loophole that caused the married woman’s photo appearing in the singles ad has been stopped, at least until Facebook approves it:
“Unless authorized by us, your ads may not display user data — such as users’ names or profile photos — whether that data was obtained from Facebook or otherwise.“
Hopefully, the self-policing policy will stop these issues. It’s worth monitoring to see how effective it is.
At the Social Media Club Sydney June event panel discussion Do you need an agency to run effective social media campaigns? Karla Courtney - Online Editor Qantas Travel Insider, and @qftravelinsider - represented the client perspective. Karla works client-side and has built a community around the @qftravelinsider Twitter account by engaging in conversations around travel.
Qantas Travel Insider is an editorial product that is hosted/owned/branded by Qantas/qantas.com The general idea from an editorial perspective is to provide quality/independent/well-researched travel content that caters to the same market as the inflight magazine. Here’s a short excerpt from the discussion:
Karla points out that people perceive Qantas as an all encompassing brand, so even though she is doing travel editorial, she is representing Qantas on Twitter. What’s great with @qftravelinsider is that its not just repeating content that’s already on the website, its about connecting travel information with passionate travelers.
For Karla and Qantas Travel Insider, social engagement is not campaign based, but rather part of a long term brand strategy. Karla’s even started a section of the travel blog devoted to tips from twitterers and regularly asked questions, so the great content she sources on Twitter is available to everyone. Its great to see an iconic Australian brand like Qantas using social media for brand engagement.
The post I did a few days ago, How not to use Twitter HabitatUK a case study, hit a chord on Social Media Today. It was the most viewed post, and it obviously struck a chord with the Twitter community as it was tweeted about for days. It was picked up by the Guardian and Sky News. As a consequence, the Habitat press office contacted me this week to apologise for the matter, and asked me to post this on their behalf. Here’s what they said:
I know people have been waiting for a response tweet from us; we are treating this very seriously and wanted to offer a longer message.
We have been reading everyone’s comments carefully and would like to make a very sincere apology to any Twitter users who were offended.
The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat. We were shocked when we discovered what happened and are very sorry for the offence that was caused. This is totally against our communications strategy. We never sought to abuse Twitter, have removed the content and will ensure this does not happen again.
It has been really valuable to hear how users would like us to use Twitter and we are determined to do better for the Twitter community.
Claire
Habitat Head Office
London
Update:
The comments at Social Media Today prompted the Habitat Press Office to respond with some more detail - it was an intern who was doing the hashtags and tweets.
Being a big Australian Football League fan, (and Sydney Swans member), I was chuffed when the ultimate AFL application Aussie Rules Live was released. It has pretty much everything you need to follow your team and all the others, including live scores when the games are on.
AFL is a social game, with footy tipping giving you a reason to have a competition between your friends to see who gets through to the top of the ladder. You can extend your network outside of your immediate network to others who are also passionate about sport. It adds another dimension to use a tool such as Twitter to keep in touch with your favourite team for me its @sydneyswans, and your real and online friends live while the game is on. You can also use hashtags in Twitter Search to find conversations going on (often across the country as AFL fans have a higher representation in the southern states). So you can easily identify other AFL fans to follow on Twitter through their tweets.
Twitpic and YFrog are image posting services services accessible via web or through iPhone Twitter applications such as Tweetie, Tweet Deck and Twitterfon. My current favourite image posting for Twitter iPhone is Tumblr - another blogging platform but with a great little interface. You can even tag the photos before you upload them, or later on via the we. I love Tumblr because you end up with a photo blog, a collection of your favourite photos you can re-visit anytime. And you can sort the photos via tags too.
There are now 50,000 + iPhone (and iPod Touch, so iPhone OS) applications less than a year since release of iPhone 3G.
The displays are representing 20,000 of the most downloaded applications
More than 1 billion apps downloaded, the milestone was reached in April 2009, again less than a year since iPhone 3G
3,000 apps are downloaded every minute
New iPhone 3G S is faster, with video capabilities & even edit your video on the phone and share it straight to YouTube
I am an unashamed iPhone champion, I got one the day it was released in Australia. However, there are loads of detractors who keep looking for an iPhone killer, lauding Android, Blackberry and various Palm and Windows OS devices.
The figures from Apple are significant enough to keep the competition at bay at least for the moment:
Let’s look at popular iPhone apps and stats on content generation.
Twitter
Back in May 2008, I felt Twitter combined with GPS was going to explode on iPhone. It was scarily accurate, and my Twitter use increased thousandfold after getting iPhone Twitter apps and enjoying the experience of social on the go. It seems I’m not the only one posting mobile status updates, looking at Mashable and TechCrunch lists of the most popular Twitter apps:
Mashable has Tweetie, Twitteriffic and Twitterfon (all iPhone Twitter clients) in the top 10
TechCrunch has Tweetie as number 5 and Twitterfon as number 13 in the top 21
Flickr has a mobile version of its site that looks great on iphone. But the most compelling story is in content creation. Just look at this chart of the most popular cameraphones by Flickr members. What’s even more significant, out of all the cameras on Flickr, the iPhone is the second most popular after a”real” digital SLR cameras Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi. It’s outstripped 3 other popular digital SLRs since its launch. Read: pro-sumer digital SLR photographers and iPhone users are the most prolific sharers on Flickr
AdMob metrics from April 2009 gives us the perspective of how much iPhone punches above its weight. AdMob report shows iPhone OS had 8% of smartphone market share globally, but generated 43% of mobile web requests and 65% of HTML usage. That’s 8% of iPhones generating 65% of mobile web traffic.
Its a pretty compelling story of how iPhone OS feeds users and content to major social media and social networking sites, and helps keep users connected, anywhere 3G access is available.
With all the mentions of Twitter in mainstream media, one could be turned off by the hype but Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks in Australia. Twitter is also very adaptable to long term strategies in social media marketing and there are some brands that use it well, and others who are virtually invisible.
I’ve identified 10 Twitter strategies now being used by Australian brands. I’ve divided them up arbitrarily into “Talking” and “Listening” and low interaction (one way) and higher engagement (two way interaction) and plotted some of the types (and the examples) in a matrix diagram
One way interaction
People who matter - get closer to the big influencers e.g. @KevinRuddPM
Interactive news - a bit of feeds, a bit of interaction, my favourite type of news @mumbrella and @marie_claire_au can also be used well for recruitment like @s2mDigital
Promos & competitions - useful for brand building and sampling like@hp_touchsmart
Monitoring brand - this is more about monitoring what is being said about the brand on Twitter
Two way Interaction
Advice & Tips - connecting people with communities like @qftravelinsider does with traveling
Echo Chamber - everyone accuses Twitter of being an echo chamber, but worthy of watching the conversations that take place and see what is headed for meme status before it hits mainstream e.g, #chkchkboom
Customer service - @BigPondTeam have been doing it for a while, other less formalised accounts too
Shared Community Experience - Conferences & TV shows are in this space see @insightSBS@adtech plus follow any reality or panel show hashtag on Twitter during the show like #gruen or #masterchef
Personalising brand - people doing this well are either small brands, musicians or the “hijackers” see @stephenconroy@snobscrilla and @Afficionados_HH Bigger brands are too scared to venture into this space, but ripe to jump in and personalise a brand without a face
The era of social commerce hasn’t even started yet, so best to get in and start engaging in conversations. It’s not for the impatient or the fainthearted, so think of it very much as a long term strategy, one that should ultimately fit into an overall digital and brand strategy.
Leslie already had a cult Twitter following, so he was likely to be OK. Given that the Witchery Man launch had already copped it on from the social media set, as well as digital marketing/regular advertising commentary, we were all steeling ourselves for some serious stoushing.
We never expected what happened. Even though there was an initial cynicism that they were going to be sold a spiel, on the whole, people went with an open mind. They were polite. They listened carefully to what Adam had to say. The audience posed some challenging questions. Adam admitted they made mistakes and things they would never do again. And then, by the end of the question and answer forum, there was a definite shift - the vast majority had come around. The audience had put themselves in Naked’s shoes and walked in them for the 45 minutes or so. They found that journey to be challenging, and a level of empathy was genuinely gained.
So what happened in the few days between Beach Meet and Social Media Club Sydney’s Authenticity and Transparency in Social Media? Happy drugs being prescribed in bulk?
Really the only difference was the physicality of being in the room and face to face with the person who was taking responsiblity for the campaign that had been sniped and bitched about online. So Mark Pollard’s theory of anonymity being the antithesis to community may have some validity in the sense that being able to sit behind a computer/smartphone, and speak via a Twitter handle or blog is removed and anonymous enough that people feel that they can be freer in their levels of disparagement.
The Twitter stream was projected at the event, and Tim Burrowes picked questions/issues to then present to both Adam and Leslie on the night. By having Twitter up and displaying the hashtag #SMCSYD there was no hidden corners, the transparency had translated all the way through to Twitter interactions of the night. As Twitter was in full view, so even the commentary, though critical at times, was fairly polite.
We’re hoping that subsequent events will be as good as the initial one. The key takeaways for me were:
If the speakers take the audience on a journey or engage them in a story, the audience will go along for the ride.
If there is a level of honesty demonstrated by the speaker, especially by admitting mistakes (if made), then there will be a higher level of acceptance and engagement, no matter what else went on.
If the speaker talks to the audience from a real place rather than down to the audience, there is a willingness to go to that real place too
The “no pitch/no sell” rule works really well because you can leave the sales pitch at home, there is no pressure to impress.
Getting the Social Media feral sandpit children (although some of the Beach Meet bitchers and moaners didn’t deign to come to SMCSYD) out from behind the computers/smart phones into real life settings and the faux armour protection suddenly doesn’t have the same effect when you’re in the same room as the people you were sniping at. Read: bullies are only bullies when they feel untouchable, and real life is far more vulnerable
I hope the attendees got something out of the initial SMCSYD evening, please feel free to share your experience here.
p.s. If you would like to subscribe to the videos of all the events or view the second part of the evening, there is a SMCSYD channel on Vimeo
