Despite well documented examples of brands maintaining Twitter feeds, and using them to respond to customers, customer service is by and large not the biggest motivation behind brands setting up social media profiles.

This is according to social media monitoring service Alterian (via MarketingProfs) which found that fairly standard marketing objectives lay behind branded social media efforts.

“Acquiring new customers”…or rather plain old sales was the number one objective for 30.1%, followed by awareness raising (26.5%), and using it as a communications channel for existing customers (24%).   However customer services as such was the main social media objective for only 1.2% of marketers surveyed.

It’s worth noting that respondents (who were based in the US) were asked to give one answer, so this isn’t the same as saying that said marketers don’t consider customer services via social media to be important.   Still – the fact that many brands still see everything through an advertising prism, and often get it wrong as a result, can be seen in the fact that sales was the most popular answer.

At the same time another US survey has come out, this time via publisher Colloquy and the Direct Marketer Association.   This one found that among marketers who do see social media as a customer services channel, the average social media spend was $88k compared to $53k who were motivated by brand awareness and $50k by those who wanted sales.

Not withstanding the fact that this second survey was done by email and involved respondents filling out 17 questions, you do have to ask…is that it?! $50k (£33k) spend to use social media as a way to get new customers?   Unfortunately that stat confirms that marketers taking the social media sales route are sometimes also the ones who understand the least about the area.

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One of the key points from the (UK) Ofcom Communications Market Report was, unsurprisingly, the extent to which the media habits of 18-24 year olds differed from other age groups.   However, the stats also showed that 55-64 year olds were becoming much more willing to embrace new media, with the new generational divide occurring at 65 or so.   That’s now backed up by a Pew Report from the US about older adults and social media.

In summary Pew Research says that almost half (47%) of 50-64 year olds use social networks use social networks, while a quarter (26%) of the over 65s do so – this compares to 86% of the under 30s.    In other words the social media age barrier has steadily been moving from people in their 30s two years ago, to people in their 40s in 2008/9, to Web users in their 50s now.

When it comes to daily social network use, 20% of 50-64 year olds do so, along with 13% of the over 65%.

Pew says that older Internet surfers are still more comfortable with what you might call traditional past times such as emailing or reading the news.   And 20% of 50-64 year olds who use social media every day is still very much a minority.  But – it’s worth noting that a year ago, that figure was only 10%, so the number of habitual 50 something social media users has doubled in the twelve months.

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Here’s a stat from the KellerFay Group in the US about where word of mouth marketing conversations take place.   And it turns out 90% don’t take place on the Internet.  Oh nos! Time to get back to having promo staff doing stunts and giving away freebies on street corners.

The PR Squared blog says that this should serve as a wake-up call that online approaches are only ever an “ADDITIVE, not a REPLACEMENT for their “traditional” approaches.”

Though I know PR Squared certainly doesn’t fall into this camp, for social media sceptics this will be a bit of a “see! see! told you so!” argument.  It reminds me of a former colleague who used to dismiss social media marketing with “it’s all smoke and mirrors” and “you still need a good idea.”

Er…well yes, yes and yes.  Online marketing campaigns should very much work in tandem with other marketing disciplines, see a previous post on the need to combine TV and online for one example. Surely that should be self evident?

Naturally we talk about brands all the time (60x a week according to KellerFay) , and tend to do so in our normal day to day lives when not glued to a computer screens.  Similarly, most “new” news is still broken by what’s considered to be traditional media – check out this stat from Pew Research earlier in the year.

Where online channels do however come into their own is in amplifying and rapidly spreading messages.

For example, Twitter stories can become front page newspaper ones in as little as four hours.   And a separate study by Harris shows that Americans under 35 trust social media recommendations over newspaper ones….and far above celebrity ones.   Finally, people who are most active on Twitter are also the ones who are most likely to post ratings and reviews, comment on news and upload articles to share.

(via Lauren Fernandez)

Image – Kit Cowan

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An earlier post was all about the (UK) Ofcom Communications Market Report and the way in which TV and social media campaigns can work in tandem.

Deloitte has now looked into this as well, releasing a report to coincide with the upcoming Edinburgh Television Festival.   Deloitte commissioned research among 4000+ adults, and found that, as much as people like myself talk about ‘social TV’, only 7% of those polled had become fans of their favourite programmes.

At the same time, the generational shift that Ofcom found in its research, also comes into play here.   Among 18-24 year olds, 46% liked their favourite shows on Facebook.

Also, Deloitte’s research is about actively liking a programme, there is of course a stage before that of people simply tweeting about live TV while its taking place, or exchanging Facebook / IM messages about it.

TV ads skipped by 86%

Another reason why combining online +TV could become more attractive for brands could come down to 86% of viewers with PVRs skipping ads. This is the result of a second Deloitte study conducted to coincide with the Edinburgh TV Festival.

In fact, it’s younger viewers, the very ones likely to be online, who are more receptive to advertising messages.   Deloitte found that while a third of over 55s said that no form of advertising impacted them, only 13% of under 25s felt the same.

Image – ccharmon

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A common answer to ‘why Twitter, it’s not a mass market tool?’, is ‘because the people who do use it matter.’ The influence over numbers argument.

That’s backed up by an ExactTarget study, reproduced in emarketer. US Twitter users in April 2010 were far more likely than general Internet users to post to forums (75% vs 25%), blog (72% vs 14%), comment on blogs (70% vs 23%) and post ratings / reviews (61% vs 20%).

In other words, the 14 million odd people who regularly go on Twitter (as opposed to the 95 million that have signed up), are already active in social media, know how to make things happen and to create noise – good or bad – online, and take conversations elsewhere, be that to blogs, forums, other social networks, or even the mainstream media.

As Morgan Stewart of ExactTarget puts it, “What happens on Twitter doesn’t stay on Twitter. While the number of active Twitter users is less than Facebook or email, the concentration of highly engaged and influential content creators is unrivaled—it’s become the gathering place for content creators whose influence spills over into every other corner of the internet.”

ExactTarget also asked Twitter users why they followed brands. The biggest reason was for informational purposes, with updates on future brands (38%) and keeping informed about the company (32%) being the main reasons.

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While there are questions about the ability of Facebook to grow in future, Comscore has found that Twitter use has more than doubled over the past year.   Comscore’s stats (via Marketing Charts) also confirm the on-going trend of Twitter becoming less of an a US dominated, or even anglophone network.

While Twitter growth in North America was a respectable 22% from June 2009 to June 2010, in Europe it was 106%, in Asia Pacific 243% and Latin America 305%.  Overall, North American unique visitors counted for 27% of the 92.8 million unique visitors.

Though we’re not exactly comparing like with like, it is still useful to look at the Sysomos research from January, which showed the US accounting for 50% of Twitter’s user base.

Surprisingly, the countries with the highest % of Twitter penetration as a proportion of each country’s Internet population are Indonesia (20.8%), Brazil (20.5%) and Venezuela (19%).    Comscore says that Venezuela’s Twitter enthusiasm can directly be traced to Hugo Chavez setting up an account.  By comparison, Twitter penetration in the US was 11.9%, while in the UK  it was 10.9%
Mobiles drive Twitter use
Comscore says that Twitter’s growth in the US, UK, France, Spain and Italy is driven by Smartphone users.

This chimes in with an article posted up on GigaOm on Friday, showing that at weekends in particular, Twitter use from mobiles jumps – showing that people are still using the network when away from their desks and integrating into their online lives.

In his article Om Malilk talks about a study done by New York based SocialFlow, which looked at one (client) Twitter account with 500k followers.  On Saturdays, the % of clicks from mobile devices hits a peak at 41%.

Of course, 93 million global unique users, does not mean the same as 93 million regular users.  There is still the research from RJ Metrics showing that 83% of Twitter accounts are dormant every month, and that a base of committed users (often active in other social media / media channels) make up for the majority of activity.

Though the growth rates are certainly impressive, there’s as yet no new evidence that Twitter’s churn rates have significantly improved, with the service hitting real mainstream web adoption.

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Perhaps no big surprise – the Pew Internet & American Life Project says that young adults (the under 30s) use mobile data apps the most by a fairly large margin.

However, the same Pew study (via Marketing Charts) shows that this gap is narrowing. It seems that all age groups now like taking photos with their cameras – 93% of 18 to 29 year olds but also 67% of 50-64 year olds.

Pew’s research also shows that the biggest growth rate when it comes to the use of mobile data applications on smart phones comes from the 30-49 year old audience – the audience that’s actually most likely to be issued a smartphone for work, or to have the money to buy that iPhone4 outright.

One in five (20%) 30-49 year olds will watch a video on their phones compared to 40% of the under 30s.

Mobile video use is in fact a significant figure to look out for.

Last year a study by Transpera found that significant use of mobile video is usually a sign that someone is ‘graduating’ from using their laptop or PC to their mobile phone as their primary Internet device.

Gays and Lesbians are social media leaders
Another study that caught my eye from Marketing Charts today, was the fact that Gays and Lesbians are significantly more likely to be social media participants than the general population – at least in the US where Harris conducted the study to find out.

While 25% of heterosexual Americans read news blogs, among gay and lesbian adults that figure jumps to 36%.

Meanwhile, 29% of gay and lesbians read an entertainment blog every day, compared to 16% of heterosexuals. When it comes to readership of blogs overall, 54% of gays and lesbians read them, the figure for adults overall is 40%.

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South African blogger Herman Manson has posted an article on Memeburn (‘the South African Mashable’), questioning whether that by breaking news, Twitter will also break journalism.

There are plenty of examples of tweets being reported as fact without them being checked.   For example, the (UK) Daily Mail reported that the iPhone4 was being recalled after a Steve Jobs Twitter account – a fake one – sent out a message about it.

Similarly in South Africa, Manson looks at what happened after ex police commissioner Jackie Selebi was found guilty of corruption.

If you scanned Twitter immediately after the trial you would have thought that Selebi was guilty of both corruption and obstructing justice.    But actually Selebi was only guilty of the 1st charge.    The problem was that in the haste to get the 1st tweet out, a journalist got it wrong and with the tweets and retweets, this then became the story.

Manson points to an econsultancy piece by Jake Hird where he published an infographic showing how news breaks and spreads post Twitter.     As Jake’s graphic shows, Twitter very often precedes news outlets in spreading news, which means a lot of editors end up playing catch-up.

Urging journalists to add social media and Twitter into their codes of conduct, Manson says: “With Twitter able to deliver news quickly and to a potentially huge audience due to its viral nature, already-pressured newsrooms are under increasing pressure to get content out, and to get it out fast.”

And when they get it wrong based on a series of tweets, the damage is done – in the Jackie Selebi case, a correction was tweeted out, but by then, the original Twitter version had become gospel.

(The full memeburn article)

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There’s been a lot of research out about how social media recommendations can increase the chances of people buying products or services.

For instance, the other week Harris in the US found that 50% of under 35s followed the recommendations of social media friends, compared to 17% who acted on celebrity endorsements.   And last year Comscore released a study showing that ‘social search’ (social media activity and paid search together) was 233% more effective than search advertising alone.

However,  a recent study featured in Marketing Magazine in particular is worth noting.   It shows that people accessing an online retailer via social media are 10x more likely to buy something than a visitor that comes to the site cold.

According to Sage Pay, on average 7% of visitors to an online store will make a purchase.   However, if directed to the retailer via social media, the % of visitors who will go to the transaction section goes up to 71%.

Especially when compared with a click-through rate that can be as low as 0.02% for display ads, those figures are fairly compelling.   Yet, in the same Sage Pay survey, only 5% of marketers with responsibility for online marketing said that social media was the most effective communications channel.

This is one of the items that we featured this week at Rabbit on our regular ‘Rabbit Feed’ – more details here

Image – Daniel Weir, Via Flickr

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Hubspot has a useful graphic that makes sense when you think about it, but is still useful when someone comes to you asking for a Facebook page with 10,000 fans by next month.   The most popular Facebook pages according to Hubspot, involve movies, TV shows, popular books, bands and so on.

And at the bottom of the scale we have Govt pages, musicians (I guess unknown ones?), local businesses and Govt public services.

In fact, Inside Facebook says that entertainment sites are now driving a larger proportion of traffic to the social network, helped along by Facebook’s ‘like’ button that it unveiled the other month (and that I’ve finally got around to installing myself).

Inside Facebook quotes Compete stats that show that the whole boycott Facebook campaign over privacy issues was something of a non-starter, and probably a discussion point only among the minority of us that read the social media and tech press – in the US at least, Facebook gained 2.1 million new visitors in May.

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