Great update on a presentation first put together a couple of years ago. Lot’s of fascinating numbers and examples of just how pervasive and influential the use of social media is now.
Aug 182010
The third IPA TouchPoints Hub Survey has recently been released, describing a week in the life of a representative sample of the GB adult population during late 2009/early 2010.
As well as revealing that people watch 3.7 hours of television per day, listen to the radio for 2.1 hours and access the Internet for 1.8 hours per day – the survey is full of interesting insights into the way Internet use and social media are becoming increasingly important to people’s lives.
Digital trends
- 75% of adults use the Internet in a week now, rising from 53% in TouchPoints2.
- Daily Internet usage has increased 38% in the same period, up from 1.3 hours to 1.8 hours. This increase is greatest in the evening and primarily driven by the growth in social networking.
- Growth in Internet use is across all age groups but greatest for 15-24s (+43%).
- Internet use in general has a slight male bias and is more heavily biased towards ABC1s. It also has a quite marked regional bias towards London and the South East with the rest of the country being much lighter Internet users of all types.
- Email accounts for a 20% share of all Internet activity, next largest activity is using the Internet for work which takes a 16% share.
- Although, still at the 1-2% share levels, the time spent consuming media online has also grown substantially; listening to radio/podcasts is up by 166%, looking at newspaper websites by 61% and watching online television by 216%.
- 16% of all adults and 34% of 15-24s use their mobile phones to access the Internet each week.
Social media trends
- The time spent social networking has risen by 113%, increasing its share of Internet activity to 11%.
- 37% of adults use social networks each week — this group is particularly skewed towards 15-24s, and those either still studying or working full-time and also has a slight female and ABC1 bias.
- The incidence of social networking also has a strong regional bias towards London and the South East: with the notable exception of the North West, the rest of the country are much lighter social networkers.
- Social networking takes place throughout the whole day but peak time for people to social network is between 6.30pm and 10pm in the evening.
- 35% of all adults claim to use Facebook each week — up from 16% in 2008. For 15-24s Facebook’s weekly reach is 79% – up from 39% in 2008.
- Only 4% of adults claim to use Twitter once a week or more whilst the comparative weekly reach figure for Linkedin is 1.4%.
‘Showing summaries of many articles is more likely to draw in users than providing full articles, which can quickly exhaust reader interest.’
Useful and thought provoking insights from Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, on how to layout your homepage to get your messages across most effectively. Including some great research into how pages are read.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/blog-front-pages.html
According to the 2010 Towers Watson report, Capitalizing on Effective Communication, those companies that communicate with courage, innovation and discipline, especially during times of economic challenge and change, are more effective at engaging their employees and achieving their desired business results.
Companies that are highly effective communicators delivered 47% higher returns to their shareholders over the last 5 years than those least effective at communicating.
Have courage – communicate to your employees about what matters to them – and tell it like it is. Especially during times of change, make sure your employees understand what they can expect from the company and what the company expects from them.
Innovate - we are all being asked to do more with less. Try new communication tools to reach your employees in real time, but take the time to explain to employees how they will make a difference to the business.
Highly effective communicators are making greater use of social media than their less effective peers. However, usage is often outpacing effectiveness. To get a better return on any investment in social media companies need to – build knowledge and understanding of the benefits of social media; establish a social media policy; develop appropriate tools to measure success; and build executive support.
Be disciplined – plan to succeed. High-performing organisations are 2-3 times more likely to have a documented communication strategy than low-performing organisations. They are also more likely to have performance metrics in place to measure performance against business objectives and budgeted spend.
Jun 012010
This is a beautifully made film about the ‘semantic web’, a possible next step intended to make it easier for internet users to find their way through the masses of data being produced every day. Though content may remain king, the ability to find it quickly and easily will be the keys to the kingdom!
The MacLoed Report, ‘Engaging for Success: enhancing performance through employee engagement’, published in July 2009 was intended to start a nationwide discussion about developing greater employee engagement. The aim was to generate responses during early 2010 but it seems the difficult economic conditions and the election may have slowed down progress.
The inital report was a wide-ranging review of the nature and impact of employee engagement and not an attempt to provide answers. However, it was surprising and a little disappointing that a search of the whole report, one about the future of business, could find not one mention of either ‘social media’ or ‘social networking’. And, indeed, there seems to have been little debate since about how new technologies can contribute
The report identified four ‘broad enablers/drivers’ which were often cited as being critical to employee engagement, all of which could clearly benefit from the improvements in communication, conversation and collaboration that new ‘social’ tools and techniques can offer…
Leadership that “provides a strong strategic narrative which has widespread ownership and commitment from managers and employees at all levels. The narrative is a clearly expressed story about what the purpose of an organisation is, why it has the broad vision it has, and how an individual contributes to that purpose. Employees have a clear line of sight between their job and the narrative, and understand where their work fits in. These aims and values are reflected in a strong, transparent and explicit organisational culture and way of working.”
Engaging Managers, “at the heart of this organisational culture– they facilitate and empower rather than control or restrict their staff; they treat their staff with appreciation and respect and show commitment to developing, increasing and rewarding the capabilities of those they manage.”
Voice, “An effective and empowered employee voice – employees’ views are sought out; they are listened to and see that their opinions count and make a difference. They speak out and challenge when appropriate. A strong sense of listening and of responsiveness permeates the organisation, enabled by effective communication.”
Integrity, “Behaviour throughout the organisation [that] is consistent with stated values, leading to trust and a sense of integrity.”
A focus on these four areas, and some thought as to how improved communication techniques can deliver greater returns, sounds like a great place to start for any communications professional looking to make a difference to their organisation.
There are currently two very different views on social media, especially concerning its value to business.
Some will tell you that it’s just too big to ignore, the whole world is using it and it’s not going away; if you’re not at least considering making it work for you then you’re already way behind.
Others say it’s just the latest over-hyped big thing, a distraction for the workforce and, as nobody can make a convincing case for the ROI, a potential black hole for investment.
The truth lies somewhere in-between. The new technologies do offer enormous potential benefits for business but only the best have worked out how to realise them. Whilst some companies have struggled however, there are plenty of developers, consultants and evangelists out there to help them make sense of it all. The applications and their uses are improving all the time and the variety and choice is growing too; all of which suggests a prosperous on-going future for these new mediums.
Whatever the long term prospects, it’s clear that businesses today can’t afford to just ignore social media. Even if the decision is ‘not for us’ they must at least consider the potential impacts, positive and negative, on both their external and internal communications and relationships. And, as with anything as fast moving as new technologies, they need to keep revisiting their analysis.
One indicator of the growing importance to business of social media is the fact that The Economist recently produced a special report ‘A world of connections’. It’s well worth a look, especially the article on the challenges, issues and benefits facing those trying to the deploy the new technologies within their businesses.
The Economist argues, and we agree
‘…social-networking technologies are creating considerable benefits for the businesses that embrace them, whatever their size…this is just the beginning of an exciting new era of interconnectedness that will spread ideas and innovations around the world faster than ever before.’ 
