Who is in control of your brand?

One of the most discussed IPOs in history, Facebook will attract an over inflated initial share price (in my and a lot of other people’s opinion).

Here are some interest facts about Facebook when considering it’s value. One VERY misleading stat is where they compare Google and Facebook ad revenue at the bottom, Facebook is bigger than Google’s but it’s not taking into account the very important Paid Search advertising which makes up nearly all of Google’s revenue.

(As a side note, this infographic was put together by accountingdegreeonline.com in what seems to be a very smart SEO link baiting strategy)

LinkedIn third social networking site used by Marketers

What I find interesting about this study of how marketers are using social media is that over 80% are using Facebook & Twitter, followed very closely by LinkedIn at 78%. Why I’m surprised is that from my experience LinkedIn is a very difficult channel to achieve the objectives they listed in the diagram above (right). LinkedIn is mostly a place to improve your personal career, not your employers brand.

Social Bookmarking a priority over MySpace

It’s also funny how we’re all still interested in social bookmarking site but so bored of MySpace, when the ability to use Social Bookmarking sites to achieve marketing outcomes at any scale is extremely hit and miss and you can build a MySpace page, buy some media and have an effective reach of 100,000-1,000,000 in Australia. Maybe it’s because it was once so mighty and now that it’s not number one we’ve all moved on.

The full report is available here in video and PDF formats, thanks to Social Media Examiner.

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-marketing-industry-report-2010

Thanks to Flowtown for turning data into pictures, again.

Doing some simple analysis of Facebook users in Australian confirms the belief that we want to be younger (or older); and we’re happy to lie about ourselves to the world.

It also reinforces the uncomfortable feeling I get when researchers (including people in my team) do focus groups, surveys & other prompted research – when you ask someone about their values, views or habits it’s likely that they’re going to lie.

So back to Facebook where we have a very unique scenario, 46% of all Australians 13 yrs+ are on Facebook and they have to answer a series of questions to create an account, resulting in a very large sample size of data, although not many ways to cross tabulate the data.

Using Facebook’s advertising system, where you can build demographic profiles based on all kinds of attributes; you can estimate the number of people in any given segment on Facebook.

Using the tool I discovered the following audience sizes, 25-34 being the largest, and more women than men in every age group.

Australian’s on Facebook (blue) vs. Men (red) vs Women (green)

For kicks I compared these numbers to the actual population in Australia with the intention of understanding the % of Australians in each segment on Facebook. Instead I discovered that Australian’s want to be younger (or maybe older) and are happy to lie about it.

Australian’s (red) vs. Australian’s on Facebook (blue)

The graph above shows the number of Australians in each age group compared with the number of people on Facebook who claim to be the given age.

Digging a little further it was clear the discrepancy was only with the women.

Australian Women (red) vs. Australian Women on Facebook (blue)

And the discrepancy isn’t tiny, it adds up to over 257,000, even with some margins of error that’s a big gap. Another way of looking at it is that there’s 115% of Women aged 25-34 on Facebook, an awesome stat, if only it could be true.

% of Australians on Facebook (blue) vs. % of Men on Facebook (red) vs. % Women on Facebook (green)

I’m making a big assumption here, as it could be an error, 13 year olds wanting to be 18 or something else, but I believe it’s a reflection on the pressure from society, media & our peers to be and live more youthful lives.

It highlights the impact of the new world we live in where Facebook (and social media generally) plays an interesting role in our social & professional lives, giving us more power to manage our own brand, reputation & image, unless someone else takes control, uploading those awkward photos of us from our best friend’s birthday party.

Oh, and to point out the obvious and the reason I actually did this analysis, 46% of Australians are on Facebook. Just for good measure here’s another pretty chart of visits to three sites in Australia from Google Trends to confirm traffic is trending up or down, and it’s up.

This swell article on SMH yesterday arvo enlightens us on the fact that Australians no longer only use mobiles for phone calls & texting, lots of us are using it for email, web browsing and entertainment. These kinds of reports are critical to my job as it helps make or break business cases on where clients should invest their money.

Some interesting results in the research report got my attention including:

• 9% of participants have iPhones
• 32% of respondents accessed social networking sites from their handsets
  • and half of those accessing social networks daily

However, skepticism started to creep in as the second stat seemed a little out of kilter with general social networking site usage in Australia…. So I dug a little deeper into the research report. One of the first places I usually look (and I’m no researcher) is who they surveyed – sometimes this skews the results – and in this case there was an issue.

The decision to implement the survey online and to promote the survey via mobile banner ads has some implications in terms of disseminating the results to the wider population.

SOME IMPLICATIONS?

I’d say a little more than SOME IMPLICATIONS – considering the survey is about mobile usage.

If you do a survey of people who are clicking on mobile banner ads it’s pretty stupid to ask them if they use mobile internet and applications – THEY JUST CLICKED ON A BANNER AD.

If AIMIA or the research agency can clarify the number of people that responded via mobile devices the report might be of some value – maybe not.

Footnote: I’m a digital advocate, believe in all things online/mobile/social, but flawed research reports make it difficult for me to judge the potential value of the research & therefore difficult to recommend it to my clients.

UPDATE: 13th October

Marisa from mNet has clarified the issues that I raised in this post in the comments below. Until I’ve reviewed the report in further detail assume that the research is sound. My question is why they didn’t clarify this important fact in the report.

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

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

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%).

The ‘search team’ at google review all kinds of trends and actitivty throughout all the searches done throughout the year.

Zeitgeist is a snap shot of “The spirirt of the times”…

Here are the stats for Australia…

Welcome to the Australian Google Zeitgeist page!
2008 has been a year of crises, Olympics, elections and blockbuster movies, and people have certainly been using Google to access information about all of this. Searches for technology and internet terms like YouTube, Facebook, iPhone and Google Maps rose rapidly, as did the ubiquitous Sarah Palin and the new TV show about the Melbourne underworld, Underbelly. Australians used Google to find out more about the financial crisis and swimming star Stephanie Rice. It also seems that everyone wanted to find out about the movie ‘Australia’ as well as stores at which they could find a bargain. Each of these lists shows the most searched terms, meaning they were the top searched terms of 2008. Take a look below to get sense of the zeitgeist, or spirit of the times, in Australia for 2008!

Fastest rising

1. iphone
2. facebook
3. google maps
4. youtube
5. wiki
6. anz
7. wow
8. maps
9. sarah palin
10. underbelly

Most popular

1. games
2. sydney
3. youtube
4. myspace
5. facebook
6. google
7. ebay
8. my
9. weather
10. hotmail

Top Olympians

1. stephanie rice
2. usain bolt
3. grant hackett
4. michael phelps
5. eamon sullivan
6. leisel jones
7. melissa wu
8. libby trickett
9. lauren jackson
10. cadel evans

Top Crises

1. financial
2. time
3. credit
4. cuban missile
5. economic
6. subprime
7. final fantasy (don’t know why this one’s in here???)
8. mortgage
9. water
10. food

Top Movies

1. australia
2. the dark knight
3. indiana jones
4. iron man
5. hancock
6. cloverfield
7. kung fu panda
8. sweeney todd
9. quantum of solace
10. tropic thunder

Top Stores

1. harvey norman
2. target
3. coles
4. myer
5. ikea
6. kmart
7. bunnings
8. big w
9. woolworths
10. freedom

You can check out stats from other countries or categories, like “trendsetters” here

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2008/index.htm

I’ll write a summary about these stats later…

http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/2008-social-network-analysis-report/#linkedin