Findings from Shareemail by Pew Internet has shown teens and young adults are blogging less and using social networking sites more, with the exception of Twitter.
2,253 American adults and 800 U.S. teens were surveyed, to find out how they use the internet, which gadgets they own, and which social media tools they use the most.
Who’s Online

The research showed interesting trends such as:
- males are more likely to own a cell phone
- income dramatically affects computer ownership but not cell phone ownership
What they aren’t doing much of, though, is blogging and tweeting.
The study finds that blogging has dramatically decreased with the teen audience, 2006 28% of teens were blogging, were as now it’s only 14%. The report found that lower income households (under $50,000) blogged more than higher income households. This trend would, I imagine, be due to Facebook and Twitter offering easier platforms and connectivity to tell your pals what you are up to. A number of brands should be aware of the next point from the study, teens don’t tweet! Stop the press, yep check the figures out below:

The research highlights that teens love to be online, but don’t create content, due to time or possibly life experience. They are consumers and not creators, so in terms of communicating and harnessing this audience online, it’s key to push messages and create content for them online not necessarily adopt them as publishers or bloggers.

In EConsultancy and Big Mouth Media’s most recent “Social Media and Online PR Report,” 50% of companies surveyed said that they had directly contacted those within social media that had given their brand a bashing. Interestingly the survey showed that after this solution, the second most popular way to keep their brand seen in a positive light was ultimately to improve products and services, demonstrating just how powerful the collective voice is online to shaping consumer experience.

The research also showed that one area that was lacking was for brands to create their own content to offset negative consumer opinions, with only 12% of companies engaging in this solution. With brands having so much to talk about, surely this is an easy win for companies?

The research highlighted that Twitter was used to monitor brand sentiment, however Tweets from brands were used more widely as a tool for publicising new content e.g. product, service e.t.c.
A quarter of brands surveyed said that they used the micro blogging service to gather information and for customer service, an area that I feel has a huge amount of potential, especially when recruiting for and announcing winners of brand led competitions.

What is a concern is that more than 20% of the companies surveyed said that the risk of negative brand sentiment was a major influence in not creating more effective social media engagement. Surely the rewards from engaging with social media heavily well outweigh not? With benefits including; creating positive brand sentiment, SEO efficiency, audience segmentation, sentiment segmentation to name just a few, engaging with social media offers a brand so many more rewards and even if a brand isn’t engaging heavily negative views can still be aired, with the power of the collective voice as mentioned in paragraph one if you can’t beat them then you might as well join them.

Created by Ji-Lee, this diagram shows the levels of communication that we reserve for our closest friends. It highlights how the digital age has provided us with a number of communication tools to constantly stay connected, with Facebook and Twitter existing as their own channels – rather than being classed as just social media.

Add to Any, the makers of some of the most popular widgets for Facebook, have this week highlighted the sharing power of Facebook.

There report shows that when sharing content users are more likely to use Facebook than any other application, including email.

Share of sharing is broken down as follows:
Facebook 24%
Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz, and Yahoo Messenger 14.4%
Email 11.1%
Twitter 10.8%
Digg 4.4%
Bebo 3.1%
Linkedin 0.4%

When you consider that sharing content is the business model for Digg these figures demonstrate that Facebook really is all things to all men.

- MySpace leads all social media sites in unique video viewers, with 12.9 million (excl Youtube)

- MySpace Music, from 4.2 million to 12.1 million unique visitors year on year

- Facebook (Facebook) is quickly growing its video reach – from 2.4 million unique viewers in June ’08 to 12 million in June ’09.

- Twitter (Twitter) users spent an average of 31 minutes, 17 seconds on the site in June

The “2009 Social Media Study” from BlogHer, iVillage and Compass Partners has shown that one-half (53%) of the US female Internet population are actively participated in some type of social media. The research showed that three quarters took part in social networking, 55% consumed blogs, 12 million had posted to blogs and 8 million were publishing their own blog.

The research showed that blogs are now vital to many women, as those that use blogs were twice as likely to use them when seeking information, advice or recommendations as women who participated in social networking.

This research demonstrates the need for marketers to understand the digital platforms the user inhabits as well as the target consumers demographic. In order to target the correct consumer within the right environment at the right moment, it is fundamental that the marketer understands all the possible digital media consumption habits of that specific consumer.

Unlike most media digital offers numerous platforms to consider when apportioning advertising budgets, whereas with print you would just have to choose the titles. Digital platform consumption should be as much of a consideration when planning a schedule as the brands/publishers/titles.

.

Not really a fashion or luxury related story but LBi have created a cutting edge social media movement for the British Red Cross which, to my mind’ looks to be the most effective use of the medium so far.

Created for the British Red Cross, individuals are asked to pledge their support to refugees, during Refugee Week by ‘changing their online status’ across all social networks, instant messenger and email.

This campaign has been created to highlight the fact that refugees are generally labelled as one group when entering the UK; they are not seen as individuals. To highlight this the British Red Cross are asking the public to sacrifice their online identity by changing their status to just “label”.

To help this movement LBi have created an innovative social media toolkit, making it effortless to share this message and easy, compulsive and fun when changing profiles with the most amount of impact.
The social media toolkit includes a range of ways to change your status tailored to a specific social network and communication platform. The platforms and networks include: profile pictures, instant messenger avatars, Twitter hashtag set ups, a bebo skin, icons, blog badges and email signatures. Individuals can respond via Facebook, twitter, MSN, Yahoo!, bebo, blogs, email and share the message with everyone across all social networks and video sharing sites.

We feel here that this campaign offers a true social media strategy, an emotive topic that creates debate will always resonate within a social situation, so using social media as the corner stone for this campaign is spot on. By providing the assets for users to tailor their profile and messages, leverages the millions of social actions that occur daily providing unrivalled exposure for the cause through advocacy, this should be a runaway success.

LBi

Dell recently posted on their blog how to build a business plan for small businesses, a really nice use of social media as they’re providing something of real use to their target audience and demonstrating their credentials in this sphere, something a potential customer wants to know when investing in a product.

There are far too many brands using social media to push their products rather than harnessing this conversational medium, adding to the user experience and showcasing their knowledge e.g. Nike offering hourly advice on nutrition when training for a long distance run through Twitter. This could extend to a full hourly training schedule for the user, bolstered with the inclusion of followers tweeting with their recommendations. A community that offers real value, is essential to the individual in training and the opportunity for Nike to promote products in a less cynical environment e.g. Today’s weather in London is wet check out Nike’s microfibre running suite to keep dry

Nike’s knowledge of athletics is undisputed, so maybe this isn’t a great example, but this social media strategy identifies the brand as having an unrivalled knowledge of long distance running and therefore becoming a credible choice when the user is deciding to invest in a new pair of running shoes.

Maybe a better example would be for a high ticket item, something like a Bianchi road bike, which priced at £700+ is a much more consider purchase. By offering advice on training and bike maintenance the customer’s confidence in the brand is increased, as Bianchi demonstrate their wealth of knowledge. Creating a relationship and dialogue with potential and existing customers, as mentioned earlier, also offers the opportunity to up sell, as the user becomes more dependent on the brand to achieve their goal e.g. the Bianchi medium distance training schedule offers kit for the maintenance of bikes that are regularly being put through their paces at these distances.

And obviously this strategy offers brand loyalty, as the user feels that they have been well looked after and have become dependent on the brands social media offering to complete the task that they have bought the product to achieve.

eMarketer predicts by 2011, user-generated content sites will attract 101 million people in the U.S, that’s a pretty big figure when you consider that the US online audience is just over 300 million.

With this in mind you can understand the numerous blogger outreach programmes that are launching, making a good little penny from providing access to these influential environments. As this offering sits somewhere between display, PR and in some respects SEO enhancement it’s interesting that there aren’t more sector specific blog networks. I would presume that this would not be cost efficient? Just concentrating on one sector probably won’t hit revenues conducive to a company staying afloat, however when you consider that these blogger outreach programmes have to build up relationships with the bloggers and then make sure that the advertisers they use don’t devalue the blogs it makes sense for them to be sector specific.

With this in mind I believe that publishers and sector specific media agencies have the opportunity to fill this niche, due to their contextual relevance and a business model that does not just rely on social media outreach. Publishers generally have an existing relationship with bloggers, where bloggers reference and support their posts with a publisher’s content, relying on the publisher’s heritage and standing within its verticle. With this trust established and the list of publisher’s advertisers suiting the audience and context of the blog, this makes for a great business model. The relationship is mutually beneficial, with the publisher extending their commercial offering and the blogger benefitting from exclusives from the publisher, invites to events, mentions of the blog on the publishers site and commission/cash money!

With sector specific agencies offering access to the right brands, this relationship makes sense for sector specific blogs, as the agency work as a PR company providing relevant exclusives and stories for the blog and its audience. Include to this social media work the fact the agency will also look after the clients, SEO, SEM and display activity, a completely cohesive digital strategy is established, where all elements of the digital communication mutually enhance, providing the most efficient use of the clients budget.

It will be interesting to see if this is an area that publishers move into, as ad revenues drop and competition is upped from these blog networks, which generally trade on very low CPMs, will the big publishers and niche publsihers look at their most influential verticles and concentrate on building blog networks to that specific interest?

Nice little driving game by VW. I like the fact that you are educated on the heritage of the GTI and technological advances of the new model, in a not too tedious manner, before you get the chance to get behind the wheel.

The games itself is a little different, as you’d expect from VW, it is styled very nicely. The only real criticism I would have of the game is that it doesn’t really give a true indication of the car’s ability, although in saying that I haven’t driven the new Golf GTI so potentially it might?

Still having problems uploading images, so here’s the link:
http://www.gtiproject.com/