An article in ReadWriteWeb recently highlighted the changing demographics in one social media platform: Facebook.

Summary: “ College and high school users have declined in absolute number by 20% and 15% respectively in a mere six months, according to estimates Facebook provides to advertisers  that were archived for tracking by an outside firm. Facebook users aged 55 and over have skyrocketed from under 1 million to nearly six million in the same time period. There are more Facebook users over 55 years old today than there are high school students using the site”

The graphic below demonstrates the shift that has occurred.

Out take: For those that are marketing products aimed at the older demographic don’t dismiss social media platforms as only appealing to the young.  These platforms should be utilised to talk to that segment that:

(a) have time for social networking

(b) may have physical ailments and hence the platform has great appeal

(c) many of them probably started out on the platform to communicate with family members overseas but saw additional benefits along the way.

Are you dismissing the appeal of social media for this demographic? It might just be time to take another look.

Article of relevance:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/health/02face.html

I came across a great article today in Harvard Business about some of the less sexy sides of Social Media – the continual maintenance that you need to do such as ‘seeding’ and ‘weeding’ that are necessary if you want your social media engagement to flourish.

It is an important area and one that I talk to my clients about – who will be the designated social media champions internally? do they have time? what is the org. structure? who has what skillsets/interests and who is already dabbling in the space?

It reminds me of setting up and managing intranets years ago. Initially intranets were managed in either IT or Comms but over time to have fresh content and relevance you needed buy-in and resourcing from all areas – effectively a decentralised model – which today is the norm.

Social media strategies are starting to follow that shift. While they might be owned technically in marketing or by one division to have real relevance and cut through decentralising and building social media champions throughout the business is integral.  Not only will your maintenance activities be shared, you will get buy-in from the whole business and the benefits to the organisation will increase four-fold.

Digital consumers have stronger relationships with brands than non-digital consumers. This was the finding from Millward Brown, who analysed WPP’s BrandZ database recently.

The report compared the brand relationships of digital consumers with those of non-digital consumers across all categories and countries. The findings: that digital consumers have  15% stronger relationship with a typical brand.

For some categories such as airlines they have a 93% stronger brand relationship while others such as soft drinks and fuel (items you don’t usually buy online) both recorded a 5% stronger brand relationship.

The chart below shows the categories and impact of digital on that category to consumers brand relationships.

So what is the BrandX definition of a digital consumer?  This is “someone who has either bought or researched that category online”

Digital consumers were reported to have have stronger relationships in all 24 countries examined.

Key Takeouts from the Report:

• Willward Brown discuss the ‘digital branding circle‘ where consumers are more interested in brands, research online increases brand knowledge, digital purchasing increases brand knowledge further.
• As more digital researching and purchasing takes place the brand relationship gap between digital and non-digital consumers widens
• Some consumers will be digital consumers in some categories and non-digital consumers in others
• Brand managers should examine if their category has a strong digital relationship, examine  their competitors digital relationships and integrate the research into a smarter digital marketing strategy.

(Report Background: The report was compiled using 2008 BrandZ data with a total of 100,000 consumer intervierws and over 8000 brand measurements. Interviews covered 24 countries and an average of 15 categories per country. The report pointed out that the digital relationship difference ” is not a measure of brand equity – it has no correlation with the absolute strength of the brand’s pyramid.)

How do you help build engaged digital consumers?

So how can you build a closer relationship with your consumer and make it easier for them to interact with your brand online?

(A) Search Marketing and Organic SEO can help you answer the ‘visibility’ question ie getting your brand found on the web. There has been much written about the fact that during recessionary times consumers are spending more time researching products and services online (lending more relevance to the ‘Digital Branding Circle’ theory discussed above.  

(B) Social Media Marketing. While search marketing might help you get found on the web social media marketing will help with the ‘engagement’ of those consumers. In fact a study released recently by The National Retail Federation’s Shop.org and Forrester Research found that:

• Amongst retailers that are reducing spending, 56 percent are cutting spending on search engine marketing, while only 24 percent will cut their social media marketing budget.
• Amongst retailers that are performing well (“beating expectations” according to the study), 12 of the 20 will increase spending in social media marketing.
• Further, amongst retailers that are increasing budgets, 80 percent will put more money into search, while 65 percent will put more into email marketing.

Tight economic climate right for building ‘digital consumers’

The recessionary climate where consumers are increasingly researching your products is the opportune time to start engaging with them online.   

As marketing students we all probably remember the four Ps: Product, Pricing, Placement and Promotion – the traditional model of marketing.

Today marketing has been reinvented and the Ps are being replaced with Cs – Collaboration, Creativity, Connection and Communication.  Brands now need to tap into those online community connections and hence the term Swarm Marketing was born.

Recently Dell revealed Dell Swarm a new marketing scheme in Singapore. As discussed by the Ebiquity Blog it goes like this: If you agree to buy a laptop on Dell Swarm, the discounted price drops as others join your “swarm” and also buy.

Here’s how the Dell system is described:

-Start by picking the laptop you would like to purchase. Be the first buyer to join a Swarm and you’ll enjoy a price lower than Dell.com’s best discounted price (after cash rebates).

-Join a Swarm after, and you’ll enjoy a new, lower price – as will all previous buyers. 

- Once the swarms closes – which is when the limit of 15 buyers or 72 hours is reached, whichever is the earlier, the price is then finalised. This final, lowest price now becomes everyone’s purchase price – including yours!

-To get the maximum discount, grow the Swarm by Sharing with your friends. You can share via Twitter Or post a note on your Facebook® profile and tell all of your friends Point others towards your Swarm using Digg, del.icio.us and other tools. Or simply send your friends an email directly! Not ready to buy yet? You can also choose to Follow the Swarm. You’ll then receive updates via email. As well as through free SMS alerts.

What other examples do you have of swarm marketing? are there examples in Australia?

Could your business benefit from a Swarm marketing approach?

It has been a week of ‘Influence’ locally with Ross Dawson launching the Influence Landscape Framework and Gavin Heaton summarising and commenting on some of the recent findings and blogposts.

Internationally ‘influence’ was also being discussed in a  paper by the Harvard School of Business and in the latest issue of Business Week where the cover page stated “What’s a friend worth”.

The Harvard Paper

The Harvard School of Business paper entitled  Do Friends Influence Purchases in a Social Network? (by Raghuram Iyengar, Sangman Han, and Sunil Gupta) undertook research to to look at the influence of friends on purchasing decisions.

The Study

Using data from Cyworld, (a very popular Korean social networking site) the study empirically assessed if friends indeed influence purchases. Using 10 weeks of purchase and non-purchase data from 208 users they built an individual level model of choice (buy-no buy) and quantity (how much money to spend).

Findings

The key takeouts of the paper were:

• There is a significant and positive impact of friends’ purchases on the purchase probability of a user.
• The study identifies three distinct group of users
• However, there are significant differences across users. Specifically, this social effect is zero for 48 percent of the users, negative for 12 percent of the users, and positive for 40 percent of the users.
• “Moderately connected” users exhibit “keeping up with the Joneses” behavior. On average, this social influence translates into a 5 percent increase in revenues.
• Highly connected users tend to reduce their purchases of items when they see their friends buying them. This negative social effect reduces the revenue for this group by more than 14 percent. This finding is consistent with the typical fashion cycle wherein opinion leaders or the elite in the fashion industry tend to abandon one type of fashion and adopt the next in order to differentiate themselves from the masses.

The researchers said: “…The members in high status group have an influence on those in the middle status group for the diffusion of a new product. However, a successful diffusion in the middle status segment may make high status members lose interest in the new product.”  

The findings naturally have implications for the way you engage differing users within the social networks.

You can download the full report  to read more.

Business Week

In addition to the Harvard paper above the cover story on the June 1 BusinessWeek edition,  asks “What’s a Friend Worth?” 

The article examines how  “Companies are working fast to figure out how to make money from the wealth of data they’re beginning to have about our online friendships“.

The article is of note as it not only examines networked relationships in the external world (around social networks and marketing) but also examines them within companies from a knowledge management – KM perspective (ie how can we more effectively transmit knowledge around the organisation). 

Many years ago when I was involved in developing Knowledge Management strategies understanding social network analysis theory and identifying the ‘connectors’ within an organisation was vital in understanding knowledge flow and who would ideally make the ideal ‘knowledge champion’ within each companyand division.

The same connector/influencer knowledge was then applied when I crafted Internal Communication plans – particularly around ‘Change Communications’ or introduced a new decentralised Intranet that need the ‘influencers’ involved.

Social Network Analysis (SNA) has been around for many years its not new but with the focus on online social networks researchers are now scrambling to crack the code.

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy .  Enjoy the article? please subscribe to the RSS Feed

Information Aesthetics one of my favourite blogs brought the following to my attention:

“Google recently introduced its so-called Wonder Wheel as an addition to its normal results page. .. this new feature shows how Google might be slowly stepping into the search visualization space. You should be able to see the graph for yourself, either by following the link above, or by choosing the “Show Options…” link immediately under the search box on a results page.”

As a digital marketer this is a tool I will be using to examine  relevant keywords  and find niches for my clients online.

How will you use the Wonder Wheel?

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy . Enjoy the article? please subscribe to the RSS Feed

The Global Online Media Landscape report by Nielsen has just been released and there are some interesting findings.

Some key takeouts include:

• Online display advertising’s share of revenue has plateued at 20% of total online ad spend in the US
• Online video has high engagement levels
• Search continues to be indispensible tool for online with search across social media networks the likely next opportunity
• Long term prospects for the global online medium continue to be bright.
• Shopping directories and guides style portals are declining in interest with social media sites such as Facebook graduating into ‘some of the most significant short tail sites’
• Member communities surpassed email for the first time in Feb 09
• Twitter is the biggest media story of the year with conversations around Twitter surpased Facebook during March 09
• Market Research ‘ as we know it will be enriched and redirected’ due to the Social Media phenomenon
• Mums and in particular new mums are more likely to  visit social networking sites and publish their own blog than most other online users.
• Women 40-50 in the home are the fastest growing demographic on Facebook
• Social Media will change advertising ‘ marketers will ignore these [social media] communities at their own peril’. The report examines the Motrin advertising and discusses the impact it has. (you can read more here about Motrin from one of my previous guest blog posts).
• 2009 is the year of the mobile with proliferation of smart phones

In future posts I will be examining the trends and what they mean for the Australian marketplace.

About the Author: Jenni Beattie is the Director of Digital Democracy a Sydney based Social Media Consultancy . Enjoy the article?please subscribe to the RSS Feed