Who is in control of your brand?

Twitter is certainly raising the profile of social media, although marketers/brands don’t know what it is, it does get them asking questions – which is a win for social media generally.

However, I and lots of other pessimists doubt Twitter’s phenomenal growth and how it’s changed the world. For me it’s profile is partly due to it’s value to the publishing community – basically it helps journalists find stories quick, which makes their lives easier, so they write about it lots.

However, a Hubspot report, which surveyed 4.5 million Twitter accounts gives us a good indication of the uptake of the new craze.

Some of the key stats from the study are:

• Currently 32.1M users, up from 1.6M 12 months ago
• The average user has tweeted 119.34 times in total
• The average user has a following-to-follower ratio of .7738
• 24.14% of users have a bio in their profile
• 31.32% of users have a location in their profile
• 20.21% of users have a homepage URL in their profile
• 45.12% of users have tweeted at least once
• 47.29% of users have at least one follower
• 44.50% of users are following at least one account
• You can read more here: http://blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/sotwitter09.pdf

On the surface there’s been a growth in user-base from 1.6M (12 mths ago) to 32.1M (now) – a 2000% increase in 12 months – not bad. But as we all know not all the users are active, so lets consider the inactive accounts – inactive account could be defined many ways, I’m using ‘have not followed anyone’ as a broad measure. Hubspot tells us that 55.5% of people aren’t following anyone, which brings the active user-base down to 14.2M.

Assuming all of the original 1.6M users were ‘active’ the growth year on year is 787%. Now which ever way you want to skin that, or define ‘inactive’ that’s still impressive growth. Maybe it’s not as big as Facebook or MySpace, but how often do MySpace & Facebook get press based on their ‘active users’?

I still believe that Twitter is an over-hyped application, however, it is changing the game – and making marketers & businesses sit up and atleast ask questions.

Other discussions on the report

• GigaOm: Ironic But True – Many on Twitter are Just Silent
• SFGafe: Most Twitter Users are less than Twitter-obsessed
• VentureBeat: Twitter Study Finds More Lurkers than Active Users
• Mashable: Are Twitter Users Inactive?

Thanks to Laurel Papworth,  I discovered that in the US internet has overtaken newspaper as a primary source of news 40% (internet) to 35% (newspaper). Another amazing stat is that the percentage has grown from 24% to 40% from the same time last year.

However, considering all this, TV still dominates as a primary news source for all people at 70%.

One powerful finding shows that 59% of people under 30 yrs old see the internet as a primary source, this is up from 34% last year, equating to about 50% growth. On the flip side, TV has declined from 68% to 59%, a 11% decrease.

And as Laurel Papworth puts it

Remember, 71% of Australians don’t trust the printed word. Many more trust online news. And the Pew study confirm that 2008 was the year that that view went global.

*Research: Pew – Figures add to more than 100% because multiple responses were allowed

If I were in the newspaper business I’d be thinking of a new name for my industry, without the news, its just paper, and Reflex are doing pretty well in that space.

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• Americans abandon newspapers for the internet
• More Americans get news online than from printed newspapers
• Newspapers are Old News

As social media analysts and consultants fall off the pages of the AFR and mainstream media, the excitement is rapidly declining.

In 2009 excitement will be replaced with its less glamorous older cousin ‘measurement‘. People and brands around the world have experiemented with all kinds of social media and its been fun, but now its time to count the cookies, and deliver solid a ROI.

Kate over at Social Abacus brings together the predictions of industry leaders, analysts and researchers on social measurement in 2009.

Top 4 predictions for 2009:

* We will substantially advance our understanding of individuals and the meaningful connections they have.

* We will identify methods to tap what people are *really* thinking, feeling, and paying attention to, meanwhile gaining insight on what a measurement is truly capturing.

* We will determine how to measure the value of social interactions and attach financial value, whether we’re monetizing attention or a new medium.

* We will build better tools to manage– analyze and visualize– massive volumes of data, primarily tapping the evolving social graph.

Back in September I discovered this tool, by Technorati, that calculates your blog’s value… It’s based on AOL’s purchase of Blog Inc way back in 2005, so its very theoritical, but interesting non the less.

Back then my blog was theoretically worth around $500, I was curious to see if it had changed, and it has roughly tripled to now being worth nearly $1700! woot! time to move up the coast and retire.

You can chuck your blog in and see how it fares.

I’ve compared a few of my favourite blogs below, add yours to the list.

Seth Godin $4,473,414

Love Digital $4,516.32

Adspace Pioneers $65,486

The Zeitgeists $0.00

Marketing Charts $349,450

Laurel Papworth – Social Networks $92,584

Six Pixels of Seperation $401,952

Jim’s Marketing Blog $36,130

The White Agency $2,258

This post on marketingcharts.com discusses the difference between under 30′s and over 40 yr old women. And in summary 40+ yr old women are online for one main reason – to shop! And they’re sophisticated too…

In contrast, women over forty have higher incomes overall and say shopping is their #1 online activity. They also research products online more than their younger counterparts and are more likely to post product reviews on shopping websites (62% vs. 53%) and to purchase products based on e-mails from companies selling things (50% vs. 45%).

Younger women are more likely to be online for social networking:

• Shopping online is less of a priority to younger women (51% vs. 59% overall) and they research products less online (37% vs. 42% overall).
• Younger women are more likely to post photos online (78%) than product reviews (53%), while older women are more likely to post product reviews.
• Younger women are less responsive than average to emails from companies, and have less disposable income.
• Younger women are more likely to have social networking profiles: 86% of those 30 years or younger have profiles.
• Young women are relatively more likely than older women to respond to someone else’s blog post (63% vs. 50% overall), post photos online (78% vs. 50% overall) write their own blog entries (46% vs. 27% overall).
• Facebook (65%) and MySpace (63%) are the most popular social networking websites for women, though 40-somethings are more active on Classmates.com (42% vs. 19% for those under 30).
• LinkedIn is more popular among high earners (41% for those with a household income of $120K+ vs. 17% overall).
• Among all women, connecting with others is the top activity on social networks, while beauty products are the top category discussed on social networks (69%). Food/restaurants and movies/entertainment are also popular, especially for younger women.

• The highest proportion of younger women have between 20 and 49 contacts on social networks, but some have hundreds of contacts, driving the average up.
• Younger women have more contacts than middle-aged women (25% of those <30 and 4% of 40-somethings have 200+ contacts.
• Women over age 40 are more likely to be connected to people they’ve met on a social network (20%) vs. women under 30 (14%).

Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester Research has created a ‘health check’ for your corporate blog.

He covers:
1. Writing style
How you write indicates how real you can truly be

2. Topics
What does the blog talk about? does it matter to marketing –or customers? 

3. Humility
Perhaps one of the most important attributes, how human and real is this blog, or is it giving lip service? 

4. Linking behaviour
Links are the currency of the blogosphere, it indicates you respect someone else’s opinion so much that you’re willing to send them away from you. 

5. Customer inclusion
Do corporate blogs allow their customers to partake? or are they only second class citizens 

6. Dialog
Allowing for feedback can instill more trust 

7. Comment moderation
Blogs that allow for disagreeing comments are more real –and interesting. 

8. Frequency
While more isn’t always better, having a steady rhythm of content is important 

Full article here: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/12/10/health-check-how-trusted-is-your-corporate-blog/

There’s a reference to this story by CIO magazine about Corporate Bloggers AKA “CLOGGERS”
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/12/11/corporate-blogging-revolution-cancelled

Bloggers write about things they think are important, and maybe other people will care or not. To help build a stronger more considered ‘story’ some bloggers link to external content, images, blogs, videos etc. This process involves searching to find high quality reference materials, in an attempt to make that process easier ‘Zemanta‘ has been developed.

Zemanta automatically recommends related articles and images based on the content of your blog as you’re writing it.

Its a great idea, however, the quality of the recommendations is key, and as this is my first post using it, I’m going to include all the recommended links – so you can be the judge.

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• Tips for good blog content
• FriendFeed: a blogger’s perspective
• Big college athletics continues blindness on blogging
• Comment Form vs. Contact Form: Do You Mistake One for the Other?
• Important Blog Directories to Help Your Blog
• Three years? Really?!?
• The ABA Journal profiles me (among others).
• Why I blog – And it’s not to be on some stinking list
• Hear my question on CBC Spark

Right now it supports:

• WordPress.com
• Self-hosted WordPress.org 2.1+
• Blogger.com
• TypePad
• Ning
• MySpace
• LiveJournal
• MovableType
• Tumblr
• Drupal

Great idea, what do you think?

If you’re getting into, or actively using, social media this is mandatory reading.

The guide gives you detailed directions across a whole range of sites and functions.

“Social media mimics real relationships — in many cases. Would you do the following within real face-to-face relationships?”

Check out the full article from techipedia here

http://www.techipedia.com/2008/social-media-etiquette-handbook/