The Honeymoon Phase of Social Media

Social Media, more specifically how people are using it, is in the honeymoon phase we suggest. Business is eying it warily, a tiger circling its prey, nibbling here and there. Citizens are all playing with it delightedly, discovering their voice. Sharing ideas, trying out new online services and apps. Let’s face it, much of the content being produced is not of much societal value, but is valuable within the groups it is relevant to.

There’s been rumblings of “Online Social Activism” in the past. We’ve seen hints here and there; removing a Cardinal in Boston, outing bad marketing or poor service by companies (i.e. United Breaks Guitars and a number of others.) The failed attempt in Moldova using Twitter to drive a revolution and the successful use of Social Media tools to force BBC and CNN to cover the Iran elections in June of 2009.These are but early sputters of Social Media as a mechanism for significant social change right now.

One of the primary functions of our company is research into Social Media; who, how, why its being used and what tools, mostly for business clients. We’ve covered some very unique and seemingly obscure industries (i.e. model trains, knitting, HAM radios) and in each case we find people actively engaged in sharing, idea generation and discussion.

Having been at this for near two years now, our observation in a recent team discussion is that we’re in a honeymoon phase – the “early adopter” phase in marketing terms. One can’t predict when, but as sure as Luther figured out how to use a printing press to drive the Christian Reformation so will citizens figure out how to use one or several Social Media tools to cause another revolution. Obama made very effective political use of Social Media; it too was just a start and pale to what we predict will come.

Our forecast is that within 3 years we will see people figuring out how to become more organized, how to leverage these tools in ways we haven’t yet thought of. As rural communities and more countries turn on Internet access and the cost to access and use these tools continues to fall, more uses will be found. An article yesterday by Pete Cashmore of Mashable already hints at societal changes in terms of an individuals presence online and the change of privacy.

There is an interesting Chinese proverb/curse that says “may you live in interesting times.” I think we are in interesting times. I’m not sure its a curse though.

Do you agree? Are we in the honeymoon phase of Social Media? Is bigger change coming?

Age Groups and Social Media Usage Patterns: October 2009

Some of our findings in our latest analysis of Social Media use in New England, Atlantic Canada and Southern England. Our focus was on the 30+ demographics.

Research has shown women spend more time on Facebook than men. Our research into social media use in Atlantic Canada, New England and Southern England has backed this up. We’ve also noticed that different age groups perceive the technologies differently and use them for different purposes. Here’s some of what we’ve found that we can share:

Age 30-40: They’re driving much of what’s happening with social technologies, not the under 30 range. But are more conservative than the under 30 crowd. They’ll use social technologies for work and play, but more so than the 40-55 demographic. This group is also more open to leveraging newer services. PC age range in this group was about 2 years old. This group also adopts newer browsers with the majority using IE7 and FireFox.

Age 40-55: A very engaged segment and they will use social technologies for both work and purely social connection with friends. This age group is still fascinated with connecting to high-school and university contacts their parents couldn’t have enjoyed. The 40-50 crowd were also early adopters of the Web and so their usage behaviours correlate with earlier technologies. This range will use 3 or more social technologies and are 82% more likely to look at a new social media service. PC age in this group was an average of 2.5 years old.

Age 55 – 65: Are primarily motivated by their teen to early 20′s children who are often geographically separated by school or early career work. This age group prefers social technologies that enable picture sharing and family connections. Their secondary reason is personal hobbies, sharing with those of a similar mind. This group is not inclined to investigate new services. They’re more likely to stick with what they started with. They remain somewhat skeptical of technology and shy. This group will use 1-3 social technologies and are somewhat more likely to adopt new software and browsers with 42% using IE6 or 7 and the rest FireFox or Safari. PC age in this group was an average of 3 years old.

Age 65+: While still the smallest segment, this is changing. They’re preference is family connectivity over 90% of the time in the 1,500 people we surveyed. We found that this group tends to only engage in 1-2 social applications such as Facebook and a photo sharing site. They are extremely conservative in adopting new social technologies and consume most digital media through 2-3 sites. We also found this group very reluctant to change software apps they’ve grown comfortable with. In this demographic we found the highest continued use of IE6 (at 76%) and older PC’s (average age of PC being 5 yrs old.)

What we did find interesting was the commonalities across three different countries in each age group. There are some cultural differences, but I’m afraid we had to reserve those for paying clients. As could also be expected, privacy concerns escalated with age.

Methodology: We surveyed 3500 respondents via an online survey and email with a 75% completion rate. This was done over a period of 30 days. We surveyed people in Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Connecticut, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI and Newfoundland then Surrey, Berkshire, Kent and Hampshire in England.

Go Beyond The Database: Get Talking

From the 80′s through to the 90′s, business found competitive advantages in deploying technology to either cut costs or speed up transactions. In the mid-90′s came the move to networking technologies exploded as the Web began to go mainstream. Business slowly embraced the Web by building websites that offered little interaction, were mostly one-way communications and offered purchasing ability.

But as human beings one of our fundamental drives is to connect and communicate. We always form groups; to either share ideas or to complete a task, big or small, short term or long term. The point is, humans always communicate and always form into groups. Always. The more effective a business is at communicating internally, the better it performs.

The newest technologies to improve internal and external communications is social technologies. Tools such as blogs, social networks, microblogging, video and photo sharing. Businesses that recognize these tools go beyond one-way broadcast messaging and can be used to gain competitive edges are ones who will succeed in the future.

More compelling is that spread of the Web. It doesn’t mean being wired into a desktop computer anymore. The Web today is so pervasive and ties into mobile devices.

The first adoption wave of IT in an organization was essentially to build databases with an illogical communication tool thrown over top – email. Companies who figure out how to use social technologies to communicate better, not just internally, but externally with all stakeholders (suppliers, government, customers, partners) are the ones who will gain the next competitive edge.

Social Media Crises: The Hidden Chatter

When we think of and mostly talk about, Social Media crises, we tend to look at the bigger stories; United Breaks Guitars, Motrin Moms, JetBlue. Let’s face it, they’re juicier and hit a broader audience. These stories bring together traditional and social media. But smaller, mostly “hidden” issues can create PR nightmares for a business.

As we experienced with a client today. For obvious reasons I can’t name them, I like having clients and don’t like making a painful issue worse. The issue didn’t get broadcast across Twitter or Plurk or similar microblogging channel. Nor did it wind it’s away through Facebook.

This crisis took place across three “closed” forums. By “closed” I mean that it was in semi-moderated forums focused to a particular topic/industry. Someone posted a topic in a forum, within a short while, others joined in, discussing a product and their feelings about that product. It started only 3 days ago, but by this morning had reached a significant volume and resulted in a large volume of calls to a contact centre and began migrating up to senior management.

We monitor for this client monthly. Which helped. But the challenge of automated Social Media monitoring tools becomes quickly apparent – most of them are locked out of these forums. And this is a huge gap in Social Media monitoring.

Although this issue was “localized” and didn’t hit broadcast Social Media levels, it still caused a drop in sales in just 2 days of 8% and forced a mid-size business to focus many hours of senior management and people resources to contend with it. Fortunately it was kept localized and didn’t seep over into more public forums.

So what are some take-aways for a situation like this?

1. Don’t rely on Google Alerts or basic monitoring services.

2. Find out where “discussions” are going on in closed forums like newsgroups, chats or discussion forums and check in weekly to see what might be going on.

3. A crisis can occur in Social Media in closed loops and cause as much damage as if it hit the more public forums.

4. Engage in these discussions (be open and disclose who you are, trying to pretend your a customer is dangerous) and stay engaged.

5. Often times, these “hidden” sides of Social Media can be of more value than more public forums.

So what do you think? Have you had a similar experience? What steps do you take in this type of issue?

(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director)

Ethnography & Social Media Marketing Fulfilment

In Western nations as we see the steady increase in immigrants, marketers will have to become increasingly cognizant of ethnographic marketing. Advertising messages will take more research and ads that were easily understood before, may reach less of an audience or cause community anger.

In Social Media, it means deeper considerations when engaging an audience. It’s one thing to provide a Cantonese or Mandarin translation on your static web pages. It’s another to engage a Chinese audience in Social Media. Or Punjabi, Hindu, Ghanaian etc.

We’ve seen the rise of Social Networking sites for Latino Americans already. East Indians in Toronto use the Indian Social Networking site Bigadda more than Facebook in Canada – such knowledge can result in a failed Facebook campaign when your market is using an originating-country social media service. As a recent client of ours found out the hard way.

For longer term engagement, it means retaining staff who speak the language – and ensuring they can adequately communicate issues within the organization. More to the point, ensuring some form of sustainability in Social Media marketing efforts is also critical; these segment markets tend to be very loyal to products they feel value their culture and beliefs.

While a significant amount of acculturation occurs with immigrants, the deeper cultural assimilation and nuanced understanding of the country that have taken up their new lives in doesn’t usually happen until the first generation is born and of an age to be receptive to marketing tactics. So the two considerations we’ve found to be consistent is generation targeted and ensuring inter-organizational support while targeting the right Social Media vehicle.