Report reveals social networks becoming dominant platform for content creation and sharing
Universal McCann (UM) recently released “Wave 4″ their fourth survey that delivers what is the largest global analysis of social media seen to date. The results were compiled after questioning 22,729 active internet users in 38 countries between November 2008 and March 2009.
ReadWriteWeb’s Sarah Perez did an outstanding job of compressing the data so what follows are excerpts from her blog post:
- The use of social media is still growing and has become a universal phenomenon.
- UM’s report shows that consumers are starting to focus their digital life around social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut, choosing to share their content within these sites instead of on services with a single focus, like Blogger or Flickr.
After four surveys of active internet users, a group whose total estimated global audience is now 625 million (or one in thirteen of people worldwide), UM found that the usage of social networks is on the rise. For example, 76% of social network users upload photos and 33% upload videos – percentages that were up from 45% and 16.9%, respectively, as noted in UM’s previous report released in spring of last year.
The new report also found that social networking is not a niche activity. Nearly two-thirds of internet users have spent time managing their online profiles. Also, 96% of active social network users have visited their friends’ pages.
The chart below shows that interacting with social media remains an important part of users’ internet experience. Several activities have seen increased growth since last year, most notably those involving social networks.
The report also revealed some surprising findings:
- The only activity to see a dip is uploading videos to video sharing sites – although video watching is now seeing a high penetration rate among active internet users at 83%, a number consistent with last year.
- But 33% of people are uploading videos to their social network profiles, up from 16.9% last year, as previously noted.
- It appears that blogging has also reached a saturation point –with only an increase of 1% up to 71% of users reported reading blogs. This seems to correlate with recent findings from Forrester Research, who also reported that no increase in blog reading was reported over last year.
The most interesting finding, though, is that social networks are seeing the most growth globally while other social media platforms stagnate or decline. Users are still sharing photos and videos and posting blog entries, they just tend to do this within a social networking site these days.
Social networks are an extremely popular destination right now. Two-thirds of active internet users have managed an online profile and 71.1% have visited a friend’s social network page. When you look at active social networkers instead of just active internet users, that figure is even higher: 96% of that group has visited a friend’s page.
USAGE BY COUNTRY
Even though these figures represent an average across 38 different countries, UM says that the figure has increased in every market except Brazil and Mexico.
The report also notes that the U.S. is a dominant player in the social media space with 60% of active internet users in this country managing a social network profile – a number up from 43.2% last year.
Sarah goes on to note that these continued increases in social media activity may partially be thanks to a coinciding increase in mobile internet access since nearly a fifth of active internet users have mobile access today.
SOCIAL MEDIA SUCCESS
I concur with her on this and would go on to say that whatever the reason, it is quite evident that social media continues to evolve at a fast pace and this report provides useful information for all companies.
If you want to engage with key audiences in these spaces you need to understand how, where and why they are using the many different platforms that enable content creation and sharing.
To further this point, at the end of the report, they include a 10-step program for Social Media Success which can be used by PR, advertising, marketing and IR professionals alike:
1. Listen to/observe what the target audience is doing in social media.
2. Create a “social object” that is relevant to the brand and of genuine interest.
3. Segment the target into tribes. Give them something they can join.
4. Allow them to engage via their preferred platform of choice—create multiple interfaces to your community.
5. Make the experience better when shared.
6. Optimise your content for sharing—particularly via newsfeeds and Twitter.
7. Use paid-for media to get the ball rolling.
8. Take advantage of extreme targeting offered by social networks.
9. Make sure you have the resources to manage your community management and refresh the content.
10. Track the results and optimise where necessary.
Related posts:
- Report reveals early adopters using Twitter for Investor Relations
- Corporate Social Media Best Practice: List Social Networks on Your Website
- Report Reveals 175% Increase in Adoption of Twitter for Investor Relations during Q3
- G&S Minerals Selects Q4 Web Systems Q4 WEB Platform
- 60% of Financial Advisors in North America are Using Social Networks to Drive New Business: Study
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.