Archive for December 22, 2010

While overall social networking use by online American adults has grown from 35% in 2008 to 61% in 2010, the increase is even more dramatic among older adults, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. In particular, the rate of online social networking approximately quadrupled among Older Boomers (9% to 43%) and the GI Generation (4% to 16%).

Millennials Still Lead in Social Networking

Despite the dramatic uptick in social networking among older adults, members of the Millennial generation still enjoy a healthy lead among all age groups in social network use, with 83% of online adults from 18-33 engaging in social networking. This increased about 24% from 67% in 2008.

Gen X has the second-highest social networking rate, 62%, up 73% from two years ago. The rate among Younger Boomers increased by a factor of 2.5, rising from 20% to 50%, while it tripled among the Silent Generation, going from 11% to 34%.

8 in 10 Adults Go Online

Overall, 79% of US adults 18 and older can be classified as “online.” As would be expected given their much higher social networking rate, Millennials are most likely to be online with 95% participation.

Online rates drop with each succeeding age bracket. Eighty-six percent of Gen X and 81% of Younger Boomers are online. Even three-quarters (76%) of Older Boomers are online, meaning a solid majority of working-age adults are online.

However, adults in their retirement years are online at notably lower levels. More than half (58%) of the Silent Generation are online. This figure sharply dips to less than one-third (30%) of the GI Generation, age 74 and older.

Other Findings

• The percentage of all adult internet users who watch video online jumped 14 points in the past two years, from 52% in May 2008 to 66% in May 2010.
• 51% of all online adults listen to music online, compared with 34% the last time this question was asked, in June 2004. While Millennials used to be by far the most avid listeners, Gen Xers and Younger Boomers are catching up.
• As of May 2010, 53% of online adults have used a classified ads website such as Craigstlist, up from 32% in September 2007.
• Searching for health information, an activity that was once the primary domain of older adults, is now the third-most-popular online activity for all internet users ages 18 and older.
• Only half as many online teens work on their own blog as did in 2006, and Millennial generation adults ages 18 to 33 have also seen a modest decline in blogging. However, an increase in blogging among older adults has resulted in a small overall blogging increase from 11% of online adults in 2008 to 14% in 2010.

Youth Favor SocNets, Facebook

Results from the recent Harris Interactive “YouthPulse 2010″ indicate that three-quarters of 8-to-24-year-olds use a social networking site and about two-thirds (68%) spend time on a social networking site daily. Facebook is the most popular social networking site in this demographic, with 86% of 18-to-24-year-olds using Facebook and 71% of 13-to-17-year-olds doing so. More than one-quarter of 8-to-12-year-olds (28%) use Facebook, as well.

The update of Facebook’s official statistics page highlights how the social network is expanding its reach via initiatives like Facebook Connect, Open Graph and social plug-ins such as the Like button.

The new topline stats show Facebook has more than 500 million active users, half of whom are logged on to the site at any given time. People spend over 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook, and the average user has 130 friends. The site has more than 200 million active mobile users, and those users are twice as active as Facebook members on the desktop.

Facebook’s efforts to grow through integration with third-party sites, however, is where the company is seeing the fastest growth. It now has more than 250 million users engaging with the site through Connect, the Like button and other social plug-ins. That’s up from 150 million in late June and 60 million in February, according to Inside Facebook.

“Connect has been around for years, but Facebook’s renewed efforts to build on it with the plug-ins and Graph API has quickly paid off. With its big and growing portions of off-site users, Facebook has the opportunity to integrate even more of its features, like Credits and ads, with everywhere users are,” noted Eric Eldon in a Friday post.

Since the launch of the plug-ins and Graph API in April, an average of 10,000 sites a day have been integrating with Facebook. Some 2 million sites use the plug-ins, up from 1 million in June. That total includes 80 of comScore’s top 100 U.S. sites and more than half of the top global 100.

Facebook also revealed that its users install 20 million applications a day. In terms of interaction on the site, the average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events and creates 90 pieces of content a month.

Facebook has continued to extend its push across the Web through more recent projects such as its partnership with Microsoft to create Bing Social. It allows users to view “Likes” and content on Bing generated by Facebook friends. But the move into social search and Facebook’s overall effort to make the Web social carry parallel privacy concerns.

The social plug-ins, for instance, collect data such as the Web page visited and Internet address of the visitor as soon as the page loads even if someone doesn’t click the Like button and whether a Facebook users is logged in or not. Facebook has said it doesn’t correlate pages viewed with advertising, so someone reading articles about vacationing in Mexico won’t see ads for hotels in Cancun.

If someone does click on the Like button, however, that data is added to their profile and they might see a related ad. Facebook has also come under criticism for its instant personalization program that shares information about Facebook members with outside sites, including Yelp, Pandora and RottenTomatoes, by default.

A new StrongMail survey in late November, conducted by Zoomerang, reflects the attitudes of  business leaders in regards to their planned marketing budgets, priorities and challenges for 2011. The data reveals an optimistic marketing outlook, with half of businesses planning to increase marketing budgets, and another 43% keeping them steady. And, for the second year in a row, email marketing and social media marketing remain the top targets for increased spend.

Survey Highlights

• 93% of businesses plan to increase or maintain marketing spend in 2010
• 41% of business cite lack of resources/staff as primary email marketing challenge in 2011; 41% data integration; 36% email deliverability
• 52% of businesses cite increasing subscriber engagement as top 2011 email marketing initiative; 49% improving segmentation/targeting; 43% integrating email and social media
• 65% of businesses plan to increase marketing budget for email; 57% social media; 41% search
• 71% of businesses plan to integrate email and social media in 2010

According to the survey, half of businesses plan to increase their marketing budgets in 2011, and another 43% plan to maintain current levels. Only 7% of respondents plan to decrease marketing budgets, a significant improvement over the 11% reported in last year’s survey.  Despite budget increases, respondents indicated a lack of resources/staff to be the biggest email marketing challenge in 2011, representing a potential demand for outsourced marketing services. Integration with customer data and email deliverability rounded out the top three email marketing challenges for 2011.

Email marketing and social media will be the top areas of investment in 2011, followed by Search, Direct Mail and Tradeshows/Events are the top targets for decreased spend. This is a marked improvement over last year’s survey, says the report, which found marketers reducing spend in these areas by 42% and 44% respectively.

The most important email marketing initiatives for 2011 are increasing subscriber engagement, improving segmentation and targeting, and integrating social media and email marketing. On the latter point, a full 71% have already integrated email and social, or plan to 2011.

Among social media initiatives, Facebook is the biggest priority, followed by viral/referral marketing programs. Marketing via Twitter and implementing social media management technology tied for third place. Awareness building is the primary goal for social media marketing initiatives, followed by loyalty acquisition and reaching new audiences. As is the case with any new channel, social media marketing is seen as least effective at generating leads and revenue.

Ryan Deutsch, vice president of strategic services at StrongMail, concludes that

“… marketers… are focused on increasing subscriber engagement through increased relevancy and automating lifecycle communications (in 2011)… though struggling with insufficient resources, this challenge can be overcome with the right marketing partner… ”

To review the release, please visit Strongmail here, or full survey data in PDF format may be found here.

A recent survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services indicates that nearly two-thirds of the 2,100 companies who participated said they are either currently using social media channels or have social media plans in the works. As promising as that might sound, answers to the survey point to the newness of social media efforts. One third of companies, for example, do not measure the effectiveness of their social media efforts. A whopping 75 percent have no idea where their most valuable customers are talking. The survey, sponsored by business analytics software and service provider SAS, relays business’ attitudes about social media, their current challenges, their perceived benefits, and their usage habits and plans for the future.

Here are some highlights from the survey:

• Among surveyed companies, 87 percent participate in social networking sites.
• 58 percent use blogs or multimedia sharing.
• 53 percent use microblogs like Twitter.
• A lowly 7 percent said they are able to integrate social media into their overall marketing strategy, such as campaign management, retail analytics, CRM and business intelligence.
• Only 12 percent of companies described themselves as effective social media users.
• About 23 percent use social media analytic tools.
• 75 percent of companies report not knowing where their most valuable customers are conversing about them.
• 31 percent do not measure effectiveness of social media.
• 50 percent list “Increased awareness of our organization, products, or services among target customers” as the primary benefit from applying social media efforts to the organization.
• Only 9 percent list the ability to measure the frequency of discussion about the organization as a benefit.
• Two-thirds of the companies predict that their use of social media would grow significantly over the next few years.
• Those who already budget for social media plan to increase spending for it by 30 percent or more in the next year.

The report states: “Many still say social media is an experiment, as they try to understand how to best use the different channels, gauge their effectiveness, and integrate social media into their strategy.” Jeff Gilleland, global customer intelligence strategist at SAS, remarks further that we are still very much in the early stages with business. “The medium and the tools are consistent with the adoption of any new emerging media form,” he says. “What we expect is that there will be this rapid acceleration as these experiments get underway and companies begin to demonstrate effective strategies and measure the results.”

The report conveys that many companies are struggling to treat social media as an enterprise-wide operational strategy. Instead, the report states that companies are operating under old paradigms, and treating social media as a one-way channel. “Many organizations [are], viewing social media as one-way flow marketing messages, instead of capitalizing on the opportunity to monitor, analyze, and participate in the millions of conversations between consumers.”

John Bastone, global product marketing manager for SAS Customer Intelligence, says social media is “a classic silo right now.” Although numbers are less than stellar for monitoring conversations, analyzing conversations, and applying analytics before taking action, both the report authors and the SAS executives seem to come to the same conclusion: Businesses are adapting to social media — albeit slowly.

The report sums it up nicely: “Those companies who are most effective in social media now are not only experimenting with multiple channels, but also creating metrics to measure impact and using new tools to understand how to enter into a new conversation with their customers. In the future, effective use of social media will be led by these organizations that are able to enter into this new relationship with customers, employees, and partners.”