Some exciting new numbers coming out of the ‘States are showing that Social Networks have leapt from bleeding edge to mainstream destination in just one year.
New research from Josh Bernoff at Forrester* reports that both visiting and participating in UGC (User Generated Content) sites has become a common online activity for almost every age demographic. From social networking to product reviews, every facet of content generation has seen big jumps in user numbers.
What does that mean for the New Zealand market? You can be sure the local figures won’t be far behind, so it’s become more important than ever to start planning how your company will respond. Jumping into the conversation is no longer a strategy to be reserved for edgy teen products. Whether you are there or not, people of all ages are talking about you online and your brand might need to adapt.
Your brand is no longer just about what customers think about you – its also what they say about you.
* Forrester Report “The growth of social technology adoption” - Oct 20, 2008
Author: Matt Scott DraftFCB
This is my first time on this blog, I used to work in media research in NZ and now work in media research in the UK, I still keep an eye on the NZ media space from time to time and I can’t help commenting on this article from a research perspective.
I think this article should come with a health warning. I am always concerned about the use of online panels (almost all online surveys are conducted with panels) to conduct research which attempts to size the market for online only products, services, and usage.
You conduct an offline survey and try and find these people amongst the population at the levels that these online surveys suggest and they are just not there.
This is because online research panels are populated by the type of people who like to have their voice heard online by a wider group be they market researchers or the wider online population. They are rarely even representative of the online population and can never be representative of the entire population.
The other issue is that by only showing the percentage growth figures in the table we may be talking about a move from .5% of the online population to 0.7% which is an increase of 40%. As you will agree the 40% will always read better for industry cheerleaders.
I think it is important that agencies in particular ignore the flannel and get to the reality. There are thousands of genuine reliable figures that demonstrate the growth and power of online media, these are not amongst them.