This week, Universal McCann EMEA research team published its Wave 5 Social Media Tracker. Over the past five years, UM have researched attitudes towards and usage of social media, each time enlarging its universe. This latest report covers 37,600 active internet users in 54 countries and presents a truly global snapshot of social media today.
Wave 5 focusses on The Socialisation of Brands:
"Understand that and brands can create campaigns, messages and communities that consumers want to be part of, spreading the message far and wide much more effectively than simply buying banners and buttons in these spaces."
Some of the trends revealed in 2010:
Social networking has risen spectacularly: nearly 3 quarters of the active internet universe claim to have ever managed a profile on a social network. And although penetration remains highest amongst 16-24 yrs olds, it is the 25-34 yr olds who show the greatest increase in social network usage.
Activities on Social Networks: users are now doing more things with - for example - their Facebook profiles - than they used to. A ready made audience combined with increased site functionality means that they are, for example, sharing videos, organising groups and events, sharing photos and dating. In fact, use of photo and video sharing specialist platforms is growing at a much slower rate then before - presumably due to the increased facility of these activities through social networking profiles.
Blogging and microblogging Blogs are becoming less about personal experience (that activity having migrated to the social networks) and more about specialist subjects - news, music, travel etc. Microblogging (Twitter) has of course seen a huge rise, more than doubling the proportion of active users in the past year. Interestingly, the research shows a higher increase amongst women than men.
Mobile access. Thanks to the availability of an increasing range of smart phones, flat rate data charges, and apps, access to social media has never been easier. This is reflected in the vastly increased number of visits to social networks via mobile. Smartphone owners (who are incidentally, older, better educated, more influential and wealthier than their not-smart (dumbphone?) counterparts) visit their social network profile on average 3.5 times a day, 18% more often than the average social network user.
Brand communities
But the message that the report really wants to broadcast is the relationship between consumers and brands in the social media space. Whilst visits to brand websites are actually on the decline in percentage terms, the proportion who have afficliated themselves to a brand (by 'liking' for example) or joined a brand group has increased markedly. As the UM report concludes, clearly just having the brands present in a space socially relevant to the them means that consumers are more than willing to engage with brands. Globally, nearly half of the active internet universe claims to have joined a brand community at some point.
Different categories, different audiences, different needs
Across categories, the level of desire for engagement (beyond purely transactional) is high. Such 'engagements' include a range of interactions, from getting access to advance news of products to being able to access decision makers and influence product development. More than 70% of active internet users said that they wanted such an interaction across most categories.
The report analyses the differing requirements for social media between product categories and across territories: for example, in Latin America brand communities are more likely to be driven by the desire to associate themselves with something (to support a cause or even something they think is cool). In Asia they are more likely to join if it was recommended to them by their peers and in the Middle East it is about feeling part of a like-minded community. Contrast what users want from a movie category (fun) with what they want from health (learning). And the level of interaction required varies by the kind of participation the user is having also: a user who is simply 'interested' in a category has different needs from one creating content and collaborating within it.
Wave 5 concludes that there are four steps to identifying the right social media experience for brands:
- Understand the social landscape of the category
- Identify where the consumer fits in this landscape
- Identify the social needs of the consumer in the category
- Map them to social media platforms that can best deliver them
It's a fascinating piece of research, and recommended reading at eModeration this week. For more information, watch the videos and download the report here. Or, if you have any questions about the research or future Wave projects please contact the UM EMEA research team:
Glen Parker
Research Director EMEA
[email protected]
Lindsey Thomas
Research Executive EMEA
[email protected]