What are kiwis doing online, and more importantly, how do they feel about it? 2010 has seen some fantastic research into both social media use, and its relationship with business.

Activities

According to the Nielsen 2010 Social Media Report, of NZ internet users:

• 81% sent or shared a photo
• 75% posted photos online
• 73% sent or shared a link

Of regular online activities:

• reading wikis is up 26%
• creating social network profiles is up 16%
• updating social network profiles is up 17%
• looking at others’ social network profiles is up 16%

Altogether, 1.92 million online New Zealanders have looked to their fellow internet users for opinions and information about products, services and brands.

Platforms

Facebook

72% of New Zealanders use Facebook (source: Saatchi & Saatchi/Colmar Brunton, quoted here)

From the Nielsen report:

• 82% of online NZers have visited Facebook
• 70% have a Facebook profile
• 79% of social networkers say Facebook is their main social networking platform (was 19% in 2007!)
• Of those who have Facebook as their main profile, 54% visit the site at least daily, and 39% are on the site for at least 4 hours per week.
• 84% of mobile social networkers have visited Facebook (the most popular mobile site accessed)

And from Perceptive‘s July 2010 Omnibus, 15-24 year olds engage with Facebook the most frequently (surprise!).

Twitter

From the Nielsen report:

• 27% of online New Zealanders have visited twitter.com
• 11% have created a Twitter profile

From Saatchi & Saatchi / Colmar Brunton:

• 14% of New Zealanders “use Twitter”

From Perceptive’s Omnibus survey, again, 15-24 year olds spend the most time on Twitter.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a bit of a survivor. It’s older than most other social networks (established 2003) and it has successfully evolved from simply a place to post your resume online to a successful, business-focused social network.

LinkedIn has grown like topsy worldwide, and in New Zealand…

• There are more than 200,000 users according to Clifford Rosenberg, LinkedIn’s managing director Australia/NZ
• 8% of New Zealanders use LinkedIn, according to Saatchi & Saatchi/Colmar Brunton
• According to Perceptive, 35-54 year olds engage the most frequently with LinkedIn

YouTube

YouTube is the world’s second biggest search engine. And in New Zealand…

• 15% of mobile social networkers have accessed YouTube on their phone (Nielsen Report)
• Kiwis love engaging with YouTube, with a skew towards the younger audience (Perceptive)

Bebo

Yep, Bebo. It’s pretty much on life support, and virtually unusable for businesses (especially since they’re no longer selling NZ advertising) but it still has people on it. However it’s on the outskirts.

• In 2007, 35% named Bebo as their main social networking site. Today, it’s 4%. (Nielsen)
• 23% of mobile social networkers access Bebo on their phone.

MySpace

While Bebo was the king in NZ just 3 years ago, MySpace was the king of the world. Not so much any more.

According to Saatchi & Saatchi/Colmar Brunton 9% of New Zealanders use MySpace.

According to Nielsen, more people have a main profile on MySpace now (5%) than in 2007 (less than 1%).

According to Perceptive, MySpace is mostly frequented by 25-34 year olds.

Business

From Perceptive’s Omnibus:

This offers some guidance to companies who often feel caught in the “damned if you do/damned if you don’t” aspect of online engagement.

According to Nielsen:

• 42% of online kiwis are interacting with companies via social networking sites
• 44% have published opinions specifically about products, services and brands
• 73% have read other consumers’ product opinions
• Almost 2/3 of those who haven’t read consumer reviews and discussions intend to do so in 2010
• 44% of Twitter users in NZ say they have followed companies or brands

According to Saatchi & Saatchi/Colmar Brunton:

• 34% of kiwis want companies to actively interact with them
• 51% want companies to respond to requests on social media
• 41% want companies to solicit feedback
• 56% find companies on social media more engaging
• 57% feel better served by companies on social media

Conclusions

• Social media in New Zealand is mainstream.
• Businesses are active in social media and consumers are welcoming their presence.
• The best engagement is done on the customer’s terms

Many thanks to Jessica from Perceptive for her help putting this post together!

P.S: there’s also some great information from Social Media Club Auckland’s August session on measurement and analytics.

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“Social media is bad for me, bad for business and bad for society”

That was the moot of last night’s debate at Social Media Club Auckland – an unlikely topic, you might think, but as the event organiser I felt it was good to get some healthy discussion going.

On the affirmative side (agreeing that social media is bad) was an online strategist (and ex-Twitterer), communications lecturer (who blogs!) and a web design company owner.

On the negative side (arguing that social media is actually not bad) was a Twitter celebrity and upcoming novelist, a marketer who’s also a busy mum (and previous iJumpTV interviewee), and a scuba diving, business owning, online-response giver.

It was a great debate. We had some tired old cliches with an ounce of truth – that social media wastes time and kills productivity – but we also had some genuinely constructive collisions of ideas.

Thanks to Thomas for providing his slide deck:

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Some people I talk to get really excited when they hear about the possibilities of social media. Others groan. Not more work!

Does more information = more work? Yes. Can that be productive work? Yes!

You may see social media enthusiasts like ourselves creating, consuming and curating a lot of content, and feel like you have to do the same. This is my official permission to you to let you off the hook. You don’t have to live and breathe this stuff for it to be useful to you. But there is a lot of useful stuff out there.

Just as I’ve given you permission to not be online 24/7, maybe you need to give yourself permission to go online and just explore for half an hour, make connections and find something useful for you.

(Freakin’ awesome picture from graffiti.freiburg)

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In the wake of the Christchurch earthquake this weekend, it’s been great to see grassroots movements spring up from within some of New Zealand’s largest organisations.

Telecom NZ has set up Support Messages for Telecom Staff, and the IRD has set up Inland Revenue’s Earthquake Response.

What’s really interesting about this is that these are internal staff communities. They just happen to be available to the public – partly because it’s convenient, but also because it shows some of the humanity of two organisations which (let’s face it) don’t have a whole bunch of fans.

What’s also interesting is that Facebook allowed staff a quick and easy way to set up a communications infrastructure that just about everyone is already part of. When servers are offline or possibly destroyed, it’s hugely important.

Organisations that already have a page have an advantage. Lincoln University have been using their page to keep students, staff and anyone else updated about the damage, as well as when school resumes.

Seen any other examples of social media for emergency support? Please add them in the comments below.

(Also immensely awesome: this display of grassroots support from students)

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An eMarketer report shows that US marketers are planning on spending a lot more on social media this year. A survey by the Digital Leadership Group here in New Zealand confirms kiwi marketers have the same idea – except for the budget part (84% of respondents plan to allocate less than 5% of their budget to social, even though they say it’s important).

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Last week I joined IBM and a group of communicators from some of New Zealand’s top companies to hear about IBM’s CEO study which identified some key issues facing leaders around the world.

Increasing complexity, the need to be closer to customers, and the need for greater agility are the three things keeping CEOs awake at night.

As the second guest speaker, I was tasked with speaking about social media as a way to get closer to customers, but in many ways social media can help with the other two needs as well.

We all agreed that social media was a great way to sense what was going on in the marketplace – the pain points, the great customer experiences, and the unsought new ideas that come from unsolicited customer feedback.

The question then is, what do we do with all this data?

It’s like businesses have started to develop a nervous system. If a company listens in to conversations online, they start to feel the pain. But do the nerves go all the way to the muscles, to where action can happen?

Social media may have first been seen as an IT issue. Now it’s beginning to be seen as a marketing/comms issue. But how many companies are involving their innovation departments (in fact, how many companies have innovation departments?)

This is not a new idea. Bill Gates coined the phrase digital nervous system in his 1995 book Business @ the speed of thought (when @ symbols were ultra-cool and futuristic). Stephan Haeckl describes a similar idea in the Sense-and-Respond organisation.

But these have been theoretical possibilities. In the next few years, perhaps we’ll start to see organisations that work organically, able to not only sense the message of the marketplace, but respond positively.

Can you think of any examples of companies doing the nervous system thing well?

(Photo: perpetualplum)

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Sometimes things are funny because they ring true. In the process of trying to define and measure something, Murray is completely blind to his alienating behaviours. And it’s just as easy to do in business marketing and communications.

Of course measurement is important because simply being on social media is an investment that needs to be measured. But beware the effect your measurement has on behaviour. Watch out for what you incentivise, and what you discourage. Make sure you’re thinking in the customer’s shoes.

What’s best practice? So often it’s “better felt than telt” as the old Scottish phrase goes. In other words, we can give you a detailed checklist to get you going, but social media is just another way to connect with people. Rely on intuition and commonsense as much as best practice guidelines.

Essentially, this post is exactly the same message as my driving to Taupo post, but with some Flight of the Conchords fun thrown in

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