Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
Access to Facebook via mobile browser grew 112% in the past year, while mobile Twitter access experienced a 347% jump, according to a new study from comScore.
Mobile Users Favor Facebook and Twitter over MySpace
In January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser, up 112% from 11.8 million mobile users in January 2009. While only 4.7 million mobile users accessed Twitter from their mobile browser in January 2010, this represented 347% growth from 1.05 million mobile users in January 2009.
- Growth in mobile usage of social networks
Meanwhile, mobile usage of MySpace dropped in the past year. In January 2010, 11.4 million mobile users accessed MySpace, a 7% decline from 12.3 million mobile users in January 2009.
Facebook’s mobile browser audience surpassed MySpace in February 2009, three months earlier than the Facebook audience exceeded that of MySpace on the PC-based internet in May 2009. These figures do not include access of the social networking services by the nearly 6 million mobile phone owners who do so exclusively through mobile applications.
Mobile Social Networking Grows
In general, the popularity of mobile social networking is increasing. In January 2010, 11.1% of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via mobile browser, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from the previous year. Much of this growth has been driven by smartphone owners, 30.8% of whom accessed social networking sites on their mobile browsers, up more than eight percentage points on the year. By comparison, just 6.8% of feature phone users accessed social networking sites on their mobile phones.
- Mobile usage of Social Networks
Women, Middle-aged Do Most Social Networking
Women and people between 35 and 54 are most apt to perform social networking activities via mobile device, according to data from The Nielsen Company. A clear gender gap exists in social networking activity on mobile devices. In December 2009, Nielsen research indicates that women were responsible for 55% of mobile social networking activity, compared to 45% performed by men.
Kids Don’t Lead Mobile Social Networking Usage
Despite the stereotype of teens spending every waking moment on a mobile device, Nielsen data suggests their parents actually spend more time performing mobile web surfing. Only 7% of mobile social networking activity was represented by 13-to-17-year-olds and only 16% by 18-to-24-year-olds in December 2009.
The leaders in mobile social networking activity are 35-to-54-year-olds, who accounted for 36% of mobile social network usage in December 2009. Close behind them were 25-to-34-year-olds, who performed 34% of the month’s mobile social networking activity. Users ages 55 and up combined for the remaining 7%.
A difficult economy has helped spur small businesses to adopt social media marketing in greater numbers, according to “The State of Small Business Report” from Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. Social media usage increased to 24%, from 12% the year before.
The most common usage of social media among small business was a company page on a social networking site, followed by posting status updates.
Social Media Tactics used by US Small Business
Small businesses’ expectations of social media seem roughly to be in line with their experiences, although they are not quite as successful as they had hoped. Respondents’ top accomplishments were customer acquisition and placing their own businesses within the market, but did not meet expectations fully. Social media’s capabilities for staying engaged with consumers and collaborating with other businesses, however, were more in line with businesses’ expectations.
Performance of social media tactics by small business
Most small businesses say they are just breaking even with their current usage of social media, but a solid one-fifth find it profitable already. Businesses are positive about the potential as well: Nearly one-half believe it will make them money in the next 12 months, and another 39% think they will break even on it. Just 9% think social marketing will continue to be a losing proposition.
Impact of social media marketing on small business
Overall, 58% of respondents felt social media lived up to their expectations. One-half felt it took up more time than they realized, but only 6% claimed negative comments on social media had hurt their business.
“Social media levels the playing field for small businesses by helping them deliver customer service,” said Janet Wagner, director of the Center for Excellence in Service, in a statement. “Time spent on Twitter, Facebook and blogs is an investment in making it easier for small businesses to compete.”
Previous research on small businesses and social media use revealed a somewhat rocky relationship. A Citibank study indicated social media was not working well for small businesses’ lead gen efforts, but other data showed small companies would be upping spending in the channel.
While Q3 2009 data showed e-mail on top for content-sharing, February 2010 information from social optimization platform Gigya points to Facebook as the Web’s top social sharing hub.
Almost one-half of article links, videos, photos and other content shared via Gigya’s widgets are posted to Facebook, with another 29% broadcast through tweets.
Social Media sites used by US Internet users to share online content
Social sharing widget AddThis also distributed the most content on Facebook (33%), followed by a long tail of other options. Similar results were posted in summer 2009 by the AddToAny sharing widget; Facebook, with 24% of shares, took the top spot.
In addition to sharing content with contacts, social site logins are often chosen as a method of user authentication on third-party sites. Facebook was No. 1 for this purpose as well, but usage was dependent on content type, indicating that Facebook users may be most concerned with sharing fun, entertaining content on the network.
Breakdown of sites used to share information and content
The social giant’s 52% share of authentications on entertainment sites dropped to just 31% on news sites, where Google made a close second place showing with 30% of logins. Yahoo! also boosted its share to one-quarter of news site authentications.
Facebook and Social Media
Eight in ten (77%) parents with children between the ages of 12 and 17, inclusive, are concerned that their child could encounter sexual predators online, with a majority (51%) indicating that they are “very concerned” and a quarter (26%) saying they are “somewhat concerned,” according to an Ipsos Reid poll of Canadian parents.
According to the results of the Ipsos survey:
- Parents are also concerned with their child potentially encountering pornographic websites (74%), fraudulent scams (70%), inappropriate language (68%), and cyber-bullying (60%).
- In an attempt to monitor the content of websites that their children are visiting, almost two thirds (62%) of Canadian parents say that they have visited the websites that their child has visited.
- Similarly, two thirds (65%) use their internet browser’s history function on an ongoing basis to see what sites their child has been visiting.
- Furthermore, two thirds (66%) of parents monitor the online activities of their child while on the computer at home.
- Women (65%) are more likely than men (56%) to say they have visited the websites that their children visit in order to monitor content. Women (67%) are also more likely than men (61%) to use their browser’s history function for this purpose.
- Most Canadian parents (92%) have discussed the possible dangers of the internet with their children.
- Three quarters (74%) have sat down and clearly communicated what are acceptable and not acceptable online activities.
- Equally, 74% have instructed their child on what to do if they are contacted by a stranger online.
- A similar proportion asks children about who they are chatting to online (77%), and explicitly asks their children about which websites they are visiting (74%).
- However, only half (49%) of Canadian parents with children aged 12-17 are familiar with their child’s online aliases.
- Also, when asked about their familiarity with some common online products that their children might be using, many Canadians claimed that they were not familiar with some of these products:
- Just 11% were unfamiliar with instant-messaging products.
- One quarter (26%) of parents were unfamiliar with YouTube, despite its increased coverage in the media.
- One third of parents with at least one child aged 12-17 were unfamiliar with blogs (31%) and MySpace (32%).
- Despite its popularity among young people, four in ten (41%) Canadian parents were unfamiliar with Facebook
- If their child were a victim of any sort of negative experience online, only half (53%) of Canadian parents say they know whom to contact.
- Also, only six in ten (58%) know where to download parental control software, and just 54% know where do find materials to help them or their children become informed about internet safety.
- One quarter (22%) of Canadian parents do not know where to find any of these materials.
- Just over one third (36%) of parents are initiating parental controls on their internet browser; even fewer (31%) are posting rules for their children to follow by the computer.
Every day I can guarantee that you will be impacted in some way by social media, there will be experts telling you, you need a profile on social networks like Facebook, and that Twitter is the best thing since sliced bread was invented, so you create a profile and you start to tell everyone and anyone who will listen about your latest product or service, but is that really the way to approach social media, doing the same thing you do every day on more traditional mediums?
Taking this approach to your social media strategy will do nothing more than waste your precious time, time that could be spent prospecting for new business opportunities and working with your clients face to face.
I know some younger business owners who think that social media and the Internet will replace face to face contact, the reality is it won’t, however the very same principles you use face to face, apply to social media, the only difference being the method of delivery.
I know of some major companies who have launched their social strategy with profiles on this site and that network, yet their sites are full of their staff members or franchises congratulating themselves on such forward progress, but where is the consumer?, where is the engagement factor?, where is the interaction with the people that count the most, your customers.
This should be the reason you create your social media strategy in the first place, to create the local expert, the trusted advisor role, create and engage your community and to provide information and advice for the long term.
One question to ask yourself is, why do people interact within social network sites in the first place? Is it to get your latest product or service? No, No, No, they are there to connect, to engage and interact with other like minded people, to share experiences, to share activities and create a sense of community and to stay in touch with family and friends.
You as a business person need to understand this motivation and work with it to really maximise the return on your investment of time in creating a social media strategy for you and your business. So what is the best way to approach a social media strategy, firstly you need to work out why you want to have a presence on social networks, is it because everyone else is doing it? Is it because your competitor down the road is doing it so you should as well right? Well wrong actually, do it because it gives you another advertising medium to capture the attention of prospective customers, do it because it is a huge billboard of opportunity to take your message to the masses, do it for you and the exposure it can bring you and your brand, do it because you are an expert in your field and do it because people are looking for an expert to advise, coach and motivate them.
Start by doing a business and digital media strategy and look at ways in which you’ll start to build an audience, do you start a blog first, do you jump on Facebook and MySpace or do you start using Twitter and on what network sites do you create a profile.
How do you declare your brand identity? Remember, you should be focused on how you and your team help other people, being the business to call when requiring a service or product and raising the profile of you and your business on the web.
The first step, is create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube. Check in and see where you fit in to the community, upload or add all of your contacts into Facebook and start a routine of regularly adding “friends” to your page, the goal is to get your personal contacts engaged and to start to follow and engaging with other local businesses, build a schedule so that you can allocate time each week to this, otherwise you will find yourself becoming overwhelmed with trying to keep up with all the conversations that happen.
As you become more familiar with the sites you learn that Linkedin or Twitter may not be for you, that’s fine, at least you are now more informed than you where when you started.
You are learning, next you can start to build your blog, your blog web site is your central hub with all roads leading to it, and everything you do should be designed to get people to your blog and interacting with you on your territory.
It’s great to have a Facebook page but even better when you have both working for you; you are in a win win situation.
Remember, with your blog comes responsibility, you’ll need to add content to it regularly and this takes time, so you should allocate at least 2+ hours a week.
Use the same strategy for all the social network sites you use, allocate time each week in your plan to update your sites and remember it’s about engaging your community not only about promoting your latest product.
We can help you save time and money in building your social media business plan and setting up your pages and blog, we provide weekly coaching clinics that provide information and advice on content and tactics for social media. If you’d like to find out more about our social media integration plans and coaching clinics contact me at Mike Andrew Consulting and we’ll design and set up a coaching plan for you.
Marketers going after moms on social networks such as Facebook know by now that users rarely embrace ads in environments where they are focused on socializing with friends.
Data from lucid marketing and Lisa Finn shows that most mom Facebook users feel neutral about ads on the social network, compared with about 36% who actively disliked them. Only a tiny percentage of respondents reported liking ads on Facebook.
Attitudes of US mothers towards Facebook advertising
Moms were much more receptive to marketing in general, however—at least when done on their terms. Though most moms used Facebook primarily to keep in touch with friends and family, and only 10.4% said they focused on checking out companies or products, three-quarters were fans of at least one company or brand.
Reasons US mothers use Facebook
Further, some 16% of mom Facebook users followed more than 10 companies’ fan pages. Respondents named parenting-specific pages as their favorites, along with restaurant, grocery and entertainment pages—especially kid-oriented ones.
The survey found mothers on Facebook savvy about marketing and skeptical of offers that seemed to good to be true. They expected companies to be straightforward and respectful of their time, and indicated a great interest in special offers and deals exclusive to Facebook, such as coupons they could send to their friends on the site.
“Facebook is fertile ground for marketers to engage mothers and drive sales, but it needs to be done on their terms,” said Kevin Burke, president of lucid marketing, in a statement. “They have no time for brands that don’t ‘get it,’ but they do embrace brands that play by their rules.”
Cybercriminals are turning their attention to users of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a new report [pdf] from IT security and data protection firm Sophos.
Spam, Malware Attacks on the Rise
Sophos’ Security Threat Report: 2010 indicates criminals have increasingly focused attacks on social networking users in the past 12 months, with a dramatic rise in the use of spam and malware. Fifty-seven percent of social networking users reported being spammed in December 2009, a 70.6% jump from 33.4% reporting spam attacks in April 2009. Similarly, 36% reported social network-based malware attacks in December 2009, a 69.8% rise from 21.2% in April 2009.
Facebook is Most Feared
When asked what social network poses the biggest security risk, 60% of respondents said Facebook. Another 18% said MySpace, 17% said Twitter, and 4% said LinkedIn. Facebook is the largest social networking site, with an estimated 350 million users.
Despite Facebook’s perceived high risk, 49% of US firms allow employees unfettered access to Facebook at work. In addition, despite the low percentage of respondents saying LinkedIn poses the biggest security risk, Sophos advised that by publicly posting information on corporate structure, companies using LinkedIn can make it easier for criminals to launch targeted attacks on a corporate directory.
Enterprises Unprepared for SocNet Threat
Unchecked social network use poses a threat to enterprise organizations, according to research by Cisco. A recent Cisco global study indicates only one in seven of the companies that participated in the research notes a formal process associated with adopting consumer-based social networking tools for business purposes. In addition, one in five participants identified any policies in place concerning the use of consumer-based social networking technologies in the enterprise, and only one in ten respondents noted direct IT involvement in externally facing social networking initiatives.
Global consumers increased the amount of time they spent on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter by 82% in December 2009 compared to December 2008, according to The Nielsen Company.
Time, Unique Audience Increases for Social Networking Sites
In December 2008, global consumers spent an average of three hours, three minutes and 54 seconds on social networking sites. That amount of time increased to five hours, 35 minutes and five seconds one year later. In addition, unique audience increased 27%, from 242 million in December 2008 to 307.4 million in December 2009.
Facebook Increases US Dominance
Facebook dramatically increased its dominance of the US online social networking market between December 2008 and December 2009. In December 2009, Facebook recorded about 110 million unique visitors, a 100% increase from 55 million unique visitors in December 2008. Myspace, which remained the second-most popular US online social network, saw its number of unique visitors drop about 17%, from roughly 60 million in December 2008 to roughly 50 million in December 2009. While Twitter only recorded 18.1 million unique visitors in December 2009, this represented 579% growth from 2.7 million unique visitors a year earlier.
Aussies Love Spending Time on Social Networks
Australians’ reputation for sociability transcends into the virtual world. Although Australia only ranked number nine on the list of countries with total social network unique audience for December 2009 (9.9 million), on average Australians spent the most time on social networks for the month (six hours, 52 minutes, 28 seconds). The US by far led in unique audience during December 2009 (142 million) but came in second in terms of time spent on social networks (six hours, nine minutes, 13 seconds). Japan had the second-highest unique audience monthly total (46.5 million) but came in 10th for time spent per person (two hours, 50 minutes, 21 seconds).
Facebook Beats Text, Email
In one sign that it is truly becoming a dominant means of communication, a recent survey by Prompt Communications indicates that among a pool of 300 consumers in Boston, 96% of them use Facebook to communicate with friends and family on a regular basis. While Facebook trailed the phone at 99%, it beat text messaging at 93% and email at 91%.
The average US web user visited 83 domains, had 51 internet sessions, surfed 2,614 pages and spent an average of 56 seconds per page in December 2009, according to data from The Nielsen Company.
The habits of American internet users have remained essentially the same since September 2009, the last month for which Nielsen reported web use statistics. In September, the average online American visited 87 web domains, had 53 internet sessions, surfed 2,645 pages and spent 57 seconds per page.
Top 10 Parent Companies/Divisions
As it did in September and June 2009, Google came out #1 on Nielsen’s ranking of the top 10 web parent companies/divisions in December 2009. Google had 155.6 million home and work visitors to at least one of its sites or who launched a Google-owned application. Each visitor spent an average of two hours and 21 minutes on the site. In September 2009, Google had 153.9 million visitors who averaged a little more time on the site, two hours and 36 minutes. The remainder of the top five, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, and AOL, held the same rankings they did in September.
Top 10 Web Brands
Google also retained its #1 position in Nielsen’s ranking of the top 10 web brands, which it held in September and June 2009, the last two months Nielsen released a top-10 list. Google had 146.7 million unique visitors during December, who spent an average of one hour and 40 minutes on the site. Visitor numbers were up slightly from the 144 million unique visitors in September 2009, although average time spent on the site dropped from one hour and 53 minutes.
Yahoo, Facebook, MSN/Windows Live/Bing, and YouTube were the #2 through #5 web brands in December. Facebook, which was ranked #4 in June and #3 in September, switched places with September’s #3 MSN/Windows Live/Bing in December. Facebook had 109.9 million unique visitors in December, each of whom spent an average of six hours and 24 minutes on the site. Both of these numbers were up significantly from September, when Facebook had 105.4 million unique visitors who spent an average of five hours and 24 minutes on the site.
Socialo Media is about buzz and excitement or is it
Brand marketers want consumers to follow them to build buzz and engagement, but social media users often desire something in return. What they’ve come to expect is a good deal, but many consumers—including the most active users of social sites—are also interested in deeper engagement.
A December 2009 MarketingSherpa survey indicated that learning about specials and sales was the top motivation of those who friended or followed a brand online, supporting the results of earlier surveys. But looking for savings was followed closely by learning about new products, features or services.
Reasons for Friending on Social Sites
Users described as “max connectors”—those with at least 500 social connections—were less interested than average in getting deals. Instead, they cared about new products and company culture, demonstrating the deeper engagement expected by social media power users.
An earlier study, by Razorfish, also found that exclusive deals and offers were the primary motivation of US Internet users following brands on Twitter.
Reasons US Internet Users Follow a Brand
Respondents who friended a brand on Facebook or MySpace responded similarly, though they were more likely to become a fan because they were a current customer (32.9%) than were users of Twitter.
Sharing interesting content that users care about, along with the deals and discounts they have come to expect, will both keep them engaged and spur them to pass along marketing messages.
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