Social Networking Trends in Q3 of 2011

Q3 2011 Social Media report from Nielsen shows that its popularity continues to grow, allowing people to connect with just everything which they can watch and buy. Like always, tools like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook played a key role in expanding its popularity and concept.

The latest report from Nielsen shows how powerful this influence is on consumer behavior and how they are educating consumers with various options both offline and online.

The value of the time consumers spend online and on social networks and blogs continues to grow, most visible through the influence on purchase decisions. For instance, 60 percent of people who use three or more digital means of research for product purchases learned about a specific brand or retailer from a social networking site. Forty-eight percent of these consumers responded to a retailer’s offer posted on Facebook or Twitter.

The Key Findings from the report are:

Social Media Around the World

1. Social networks and blogs continue to dominate Americans’ time online, now accounting for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the Internet.
2. Social media has grown rapidly – today nearly 4 in 5 active Internet users visit social networks and blogs.
3. Americans spend more time on Facebook than they do on any other U.S. website
4. Close to 40 percent of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone
5. Social networking apps are the third most-used among U.S. smart phone owners
6. Internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social networking through the Mobile Internet
7. Although a larger number of women view online video on social networks and blogs, men are the heaviest online video users overall streaming more videos and watching them longer
8. 70 percent of active online adult social networkers shop online, 12 percent more likely than the average adult Internet user
9. 53 percent of active adult social networkers follow a brand, while 32 percent follow a celebrity
10. Across a snapshot of 10 major global markets, social networks and blogs reach over three-quarters of active Internet users
11. Tumblr is an emerging player in social media, nearly tripling its audience from a year ago

Few other interesting facts from the reports are:

Social Networking is a global phenomenon and in Nielsen reports which collected samples from 10 countries/markets shows that social network and blogs are the top online destination in each country accounting for majority of the time spent.

 

Social Networking blogs are the top online destination where most of the users spend time. They attract almost 22.5% of traffic compare to online games who does only 10%. 

U.S. Internet Users Spend More Time on Facebook than Any Other Web Brand. Almost 53% users are on Facebook, followed by 17% on yahoo. Facebook became a synonym not only with Social media but also with Web use for general use.

 

 

Females and 18-34-Year-Olds are most Active Social Networkers.

There is rise in number of users who are accessing Social media through mobile for different purposes.

Men are more likely to Visit LinkedIn and Wikia compare to females, check one image from the report.

Influence of Social Media

Report shows that out of 5, nearly 2 users access services from their mobile which can be for either downloading Music, Social networking or just for browsing.

Active Social Media Users are Influential Offline. Consumers trust the reviews or recommendation from peers on these sites. Almost 60% social media users create reviews of products and services.

Media Alert from Nielsen news - Top 10 Blogging Topics in May

Swine Flu was the most discussed topic in April 2009, according to Nielsen news. Bloggers were helping world by providing useful information related to this. In India itself, according to today’s news 31 infected patients/cases have been found so far. According to experts its cure will take at least 6 more months to come to India – though I am not sure it’s available any where else too.

Recently released Nielsen news shows that in the month of May, Swine Flu has been dropped to number 8 wherein Memorial Day and Star trek has taken the top position. Politics again is able to take position in this list – thanks for Barak Obama's desire to pass a new credit card reform law and his visits to different places.

Here is the list:
1. Memorial Day
2. Star Trek
3. Barack Obama
4. Dick Cheney
5. Notre Dame
6. Cinco de Mayo
7. Mobile Phones
8. Flu Virus
9. Sonia Sotomayor
10. Terminator Salvations

Tweet Etiquette...

I have recently joined twitter and honestly I just loved it. In process of understanding more, I came across this article on Tweet Etiquette’s from Joel Comm, co-author of Twitter Power. I found it useful and thought to share it with you all.

Every conversation has rules. We know not to interrupt someone when they're talking. We know not to use bad language when we talk. We know not to talk too loudly.

And we know too how and when to break all of the rules.

Exactly the same is true for a Twitter conversation. The site hasn't been around for long, but Twitterers have already tried to figure out something like Twittering etiquette.

Some of those etiquette rules are smart, sensible, and should always be followed. Others are smart, sensible, and should usually be followed.

While it's important to know the rules, it's just as important then to know when to break them -- and what happens when you do.

1. Don't spam: This is one rule you can't break. Spammers don't survive long on Twitter. They don't build followers. Any followers they do get don't read their tweets and the number of conversions they can generate will be so tiny that as a marketing method, you'd probably be better off printing a thousand flyers, folding them into paper airplanes and tossing them out of your office window.

2. Follow style rules: Twitter's founders may have had mobile phones in mind when they designed the service, and plenty of users may be typing their updates from their handheld devices, but Twitter isn't exactly the same as SMS messaging.

That means the language needs to look more like real words than the usual SMS-style abbreviations.

3. Give credit for retweets: One of the things that makes Twitter such a powerful tool is the fact that information placed on the site can quickly go viral. When one person spots a good tweet, they can pass that message on to their own followers, and soon it's spreading right across the Twitterverse and beyond.

For a marketer, that's like hitting the jackpot.

On Twitter, it's done by retweeting: Twitterers can simply copy someone else's tweet and tweet it themselves . . . but they must give credit to the original Twitterer. The format for retweets, then, looks like this: "Retweet @username: original tweet."

4. Stick to 140 characters: You have to stick to 140 characters, right? That's all they give you, and they do it for a good reason. Being starved of space stops you waffling and sparks your creativity. It's what Twitter is all about.

Twitter gives you 140 characters because that's all that can fit through SMS systems. If mobile phone companies could handle messages of 200 characters, then that's probably how long our tweets would be.

5. Follow people who follow you: How many people you should follow on Twitter can always make for a great discussion point. Follow thousands of people and you're not going to be able to read all of their tweets. Inevitably, you'll miss tweets you'd really like to read, and you'll look like someone who has lots of acquaintances but no real friends.
In practice, it doesn't always work this way. I follow more than 1,700 people. That's a lot less than the 4,500 or so who follow me, and while I know I'm missing tweets, I love the fact that when I look at my Twitter page I can see a huge variety of different conversations taking place.

Spend any time on Twitter and you're going to come across plenty of other rules too. Some purists, for example, argue that your tweets should only describe what you're doing, not what you're thinking or planning to do. I think that's far too restrictive: if it sparks a conversation and entertains your followers, it's a fair topic. If they don't like it, they should read someone else's tweets.

And that's really the ultimate test of tweet etiquette: how other people react and how you would react to the same kind of thing.


I personally feel that this article has covered many things related to etiquette of using twitter. In simple words, if we are building followers and they're responding to what we are writing, we are following the right rules.

Recession Power - Favorable or Unfavorable

Recession Power: Is it possible for Companies Rise to the Top, Even in Down Times…

Thanks to our news channels and papers, I got curios towards a subject called Recession and its possible impact. The way they all are covering this topic – it’s not very far that we all are going to loose our business, jobs and money.

To find out the truth - I did some online research and prepared this document – which shows that we don’t need to press the Panic button as yet. It’s just a normal economic cycle.

I am sure, we all agree that Recession is one of the most distorted, counterproductive words in the English language. We are in economic downturn that may get worse before it gets better. It has generated a fear in the minds of consumers and business owners – a fear of defeat!

But if we see its positive side, it has forced us to get more conscious about our money and spending. Through this we have realized that we have to get rid of waste and conserve our resources where most needed.

If we go by the words of management gurus “Recession IS strictly a matter of our perception". It’s we who perceives and responds to a recession and determine whether our business grows profitably or fights for survival.

This document proves that companies can actually do better during recession, if –

1) We can transform external threats into opportunities: The Japanese are masters at crisis management and look at situations like recessions as polarities. That means, neither all good nor all bad, but a mixture of both. The Japanese symbol for crises is a representation of two separate symbols: danger and opportunity. Such a perspective encourages responsiveness - not reactive ness. As a result, the Japanese focus not on the problem, but on new solutions - not on survivability, but on growth - not on short-term losses, on but long-term prospects.

Give a Thought - How do we perceive the current downturn - as a threat or an opportunity? How might the recession actually be an opportunity for our business?

2) We can take advantage of and profit from changing dynamics in the marketplace: A business can grow and profit during a recession if it understands the underlying dynamics of the marketplace. Crises tend to stimulate change in people. The challenge is to respond to such changes in a timely and direct fashion. To take advantage of these shifts, we have to consider 5 "W's."

¨ WHO: Who is doing the buying now? Although overall spending may be down, such trends cannot be generalized across all industries and business segments. Buying behavior shifts, changes and refocuses more than it declines. What new markets can we address that are actually on the rise?

¨ WHAT: What needs and benefits are priorities for our customers at this time? Are there new products or services that might address these shifts or serve as alternatives to satisfy the status quo?
¨ WHEN: What needs must the customer have satisfied now VS later? What special incentives will motivate the consumer to buy today?

¨ WHERE: During a downturn, customers often rethink their buying loyalties. From what sources are they currently buying? How can we make our products more accessible to our target market to buy?

¨ WHY: The "why" addresses customers' underlying motivations for buying. What motivations are driving customers' buying decisions today? What are customers' expectations of the future? How will these expectations affect their buying behavior today?

3) We can catalyze seemingly "negative" times into positive moves: In recessionary times, we have to aggressively look for the "silver lining in the cloud" and mobilize resources to seize those hidden opportunities. We have to act, not react.

4) We can make room for new growth by "de-cluttering" that which is marginal or ineffective: During times of growth and expansion, it's easy to get hooked into over-spending, "over-doing" and over-confidence. Sloppy behaviors, attitudes and habits often creep in and get masked.

We have to take advantage of down times to de-clutter "excesses" - i.e. any drains on time, money or people resources generating little or no return, have to scale back to what they do best in order to be at their best. We have to make room for new growth and profits.

5) We can build our resilience muscle to thrive in tough times: In the 21st century, accelerating change, increasing complexity and escalating risks have become the new business reality. To withstand external shocks that can destroy a business, we have to build our resilience capacity.

Resilience, first, is a mindset. Resilience thinking transforms uncertainty into confidence, fear into action and adversity into advantage. On an organizational level, resilience comes from a strong culture based on operational flexibility, employee loyalty and team collaboration.

6) We can aggressively position our selves ahead of the competition during economic downturns: During economic downturns, most companies go on the defensive -- cutting back costs, downsizing marketing efforts and commoditizing products and services - just to survive. But to fight we have to do just the opposite.

In recessionary times, we have to position our selves to win -- ramping up promotions, accelerating new product introductions, and keeping a visible profile. By taking advantage of the emerging opportunities, we not only differentiate our selves during the downturn but also position our selves for explosive growth after its turnaround.

7) We can find the "learning" and the "grander purpose" hidden within challenging times: Our greatest challenges are our greatest teachers. Their "grander purpose" is to shift our thinking, behaviors, strategies and actions and ultimately aid us in our future growth.

Companies negatively impacted by a recession never see the grander purpose such times can offer them. Instead, they perceive only the worst, react out of fear and shrink to a victim mentality.

While on the other hand, we have to see recessions as learning opportunities. We have to recognize that yesterday's thinking and strategies will not address today's challenges.

PS: Sources can be shared on request!!