I'm looking forward to the Combi2010 Conference in Helsinki this week and to my own talk on social media marketing on Thursday. The plenary speeches are being broadcast live here. This is my presentation.
The announcement this week that Facebook had turned cash-flow positive (not profitable) generated a lot of buzz that I don’t need to contribute to. However, it did remind me that I’ve been confused about the term “fan pages” ever since the new corporate pages were announced in March. No one, at that time, was using the term fan pages. It probably came into general use because brands want consumers to “fan them”— or maybe it was just to confuse me!
In any event, fan pages were introduced to give businesses an alternative to the existing groups pages. This chart from Search Engine Journal gives a good comparison. The conclusion that groups pages are better for discussions and fan pages better for long-term relationship building is important. If you are thinking about building a fan page, or you want to assess your existing one, here’s a good post from Carnet Williams at iMediaConnection.
eMarketer (September 17, 2009) had some good charts on current Facebook growth. Last month it was highest among young males, but followed pretty closely by middle-aged men and middle-aged and older women. The demographics of Facebook remain young, but older groups have been gaining steadily in recent months. If a Facebook page is an important part of your marketing strategy, you might want to follow Inside Facebook, which keeps up with these developments.
That reminds me—I need to find a young friend on Facebook and congratulate her on her recent engagement. Such is life in the world of the connected—of all ages! Are you making it easy for your customers (actual and potential) to stay connected with your brand?
The scariest thing about this report is its conclusion: If your target audience isn’t already on social networks, it probably will be soon! However, according to a study by Anderson Analytics, different audiences will be concentrated on different networks. The soon-to-be-released study was shared with the ReadWriteWeb blog over the weekend; that’s where I found it.
The RWW blog has a good overview of the demographics of users of the 4 major platforms. There’s a substantial amount of overlap in usage. Just visually, it appears that Facebook has the most unique users, followed by MySpace, although the absolute number appears smaller for MySpace. Neither Twitter nor LinkedIn have many unique users. They both have a big overlap with users of Facebook. LinkedIn has almost no “unique overlap” with MySpace.
That squares with a lot of what we already know about users of the 4 platforms. It also provides interesting confirmation of the most interesting report of the day. I found this report from Morgan Stanley on an @mattrhodes Tweet. What makes it intriguing is that it was written by a 15-year old on “work experience.” MS liked it so much they published it, and if your work has anything to do with young people, you ought to read it.
Two quotes:
No teenager that I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the newssummarised on the internet or on TV. Ouch! Maybe double ouch!!
Facebook is popular as one can interact withfriends on a wide scale. On the other hand, teenagers do not use twitter. Most have signed up to the service, but then justleave it as they release that they are not going to update it(mostly because texting twitter uses up credit, and they wouldrather text friends with that credit). In addition, they realise that no one is viewing their profile, so their ‘tweets’ are pointless. He says it’s about the profile—fascinating!!
The Anderson Analytics study breaks social media users into 4 segments. According to Ad Age:
Anderson's research breaks down general social-media users into four categories: business users, fun seekers, social-media mavens and late followers. Of those, social-media mavens are the key group, not only because of their high incomes and decision-making power at companies but also because their large social-media footprints can make them brand allies and evangelists, Mr. Anderson said. Fun seekers are also an important group because they are the up-and-coming mavens as they transition from students to employees.
The report also segments non users:
Contrary to what some might think, people who spurn social media aren't tech haters. In fact, they spend as much time as social-media fans surfing the web. But they say they don't use social media for three basic reasons: They don't have the time, they don't think it's secure or they think it's stupid. While the first two groups -- which Anderson labels "time-starved" and "concerned" -- may be swayed to join eventually, don't hold out much hope for the last group: 94% said they will never use social media.
Their commentary about the concerned non users is especially interesting:
The concerned non-users are an older demographic (one-third are retired) who don't use social networks because they're worried about their privacy. However, they do recognize value in social media and may join as they become more comfortable with it.
The study also found that almost 50% of the “time-starved” consumers expected to use a social network within a year.
Hence the conclusion: social networks are soon going to be ubiquitous among all except the oldest Internet users—and they may give in also!
There’s more to come from this interesting study. You can follow Tom Anderson’s blog and the Anderson Analytics website—and do a lot of thinking about where/how to best engage with your target audience!
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