With 50+ million active social media users, Indians spend more time on social media than on any other activity on the Internet, according to Nielsen. In fact, 80 percent spend more than 15 minutes per day on social media every day. And social media usage on mobile phones is expected to exceed those accessing similar sites on personal computers in the coming year. But is this audience engaged?

At the Nielsen Consumer 360 Conference in New Delhi, India, Farshad Family, Nielsen Managing Director of Media, discussed how brands can effectively break away from the pack in order to differentiate and improve social media engagement levels.

More Consumers ≠ Higher Engagement
A Nielsen analysis among brands in the telecom, soft drink and auto categories reveals that a higher brand-page count does not translate to a higher level of engagement. In the study, engagement was defined as how a consumer interacts on the brand page: visiting, downloading and using an app on a page and/or sharing, commenting and “liking” updates on a timeline.

On a scale of one to 10, where a level of 10 is the most engaged, a Nielsen Engagement Index shows that all consumers in the study cluster around a score of seven—regardless of whether a brand page has one or 4.5 million fans. Clearly, brands are not differentiating on engagement levels. But how do I break away from the pack?

Top Six Drivers of Engagement
Company interaction and brand aspiration are the two most important drivers of social media engagement. Other key factors of engagement success include offering free giveaways, posting lively discussions and general updates about the brand, having a “hip” brand and being “liked” by friends.

The consumer is open and willing for engagement, but marketers need to experiment and innovate with brands in order to build commitment. A Nielsen survey reveals that one in six respondents want brands to share updates with them on new products and services. More than half (53%) want announcements on sales/discounts and half want to hear about the latest industry trends. Consumers also want brands to provide tips and tricks about how to maintain and use products/services (48%), conduct a greater number of contests (42%), resolve concerns (41%), create more utility applications/games (35%) and conduct more conversations (31%).

And engagement is influential in the buying process. Of the 39 percent of consumers who consider a friend’s recommendation for a product on a social networking site when making a purchase decision, three out of four will often/sometimes purchase the products based on the review.

During the session, Brad Smallwood, Global Head of Measurement & Insights at Facebook, shared four key insights into what makes a good social media campaign.
He said to start with the concept of social. “Social should be baked into everything.” Smallwood said to speak with an authentic brand voice and not try to be something you are not. “Nurture relationships and focus on understanding where they are in the lifecycle,” he said. “And continue learning – listen to the community and evolve the campaign accordingly.”

Mobile is Changing the Game
In India, mobile is going beyond voice and short-message-texting capabilities as the number of active mobile Internet users continues to climb. By the end of next year, while more than 40 million users will access social media sites via personal computers, over 60 million users will access the sites via their mobile phones. And as smartphone prices continue to fall, penetration levels will climb.

Indian consumers are willing to spend more on mobile handsets. A Nielsen mobile insights survey finds that non-smartphone users are willing to pay 7200 INR on their next handset, which is below the current average smartphone pricing of 5,500 INR, suggesting that a smartphone will likely enter the consideration set for consumers in 2012.

In fact, Internet and 3G rank highly among Indian consumers on features most sought after in their next phone. After camera and FM radio, Internet ranks third with almost one-in-four (23%) consumers indicating a desire for this capability. Today, social networking is already prevalent on the mobile screen. Among smartphone users, three-of-four use social networking and spend more than two hours browsing and downloading applications and entertainment.

“The Indian consumer’s quest for a new phone is almost entirely feature driven and while the camera and FM radio remain favorites, consumers are now also looking for Internet connectivity via their mobile phone, hoping to finally connect to the growing online community,” said Farshad Family, Managing Director of Media, Nielsen India. “It is evident that going forward, the Indian consumer’s aspiration to upgrade will also be a strong driver.”

The Future is Promising
A confluence of factors—a growing social media user base, an increasing smartphone penetration and a mounting consumer desire to connect—is creating a perfect storm of opportunity for brands to make social media an integral part of the marketing strategy with engaging programs that elevate and differentiate their brand from all the rest.

During the session, Family moderated a cross-industry panel of marketers to discuss how brands are using digital platforms to successfully drive better engagement for brands. Vikram Sakhuja, CEO, Group M, Anupama Ahluwalia, CMO, Coca-Cola India, Arpita Menon, Head of Media Planning & Buying, Star TV and Sahana Sarma, Partner, McKinsey & Company agreed that you need to make the interaction special for the consumer. “This is a long journey and there are no short-term solutions,” said Ahluwalia. “You need to take the consumer on board and continue on the journey with them.”

Not surprisingly, the top drivers of social media use among social networkers are keeping in touch with family and friends (89% and 88%, respectively) and finding new friends (70%).  Another driver of use is the desire to view and contribute to reviews of products and services as 68 percent of social media users go to social networking sites to read product reviews and over half use these sites to provide product feedback, both positive and negative.  Other top reasons social media users engage in social networking include entertainment (67%), as a creative outlet (64%), to learn about products (58%), and to get coupons or promotions (54%).

The study also looked at the differences in use among social media users with children and those without, finding that parents are more likely than non-parents to use social media for almost every thing, with dating being the exception.  Parents are 26 percent more likely than non-parents to visit social networks to play games, 23 percent more likely to use as a creative outlet and 20 percent more likely to use for entertainment.

Methodology

NM Incite’s ‘State of Social Media Survey’ is based on a representative sample of 1,865 adult (18+) social media users who were recruited from the Nielsen Online Panel to take an online survey. “Social media user” is defined as participating, talking, and networking online through various platforms to share information and resources. This includes Internet forums, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, video sharing, consumer rating and other social networking websites. The survey fielded from March 31 to April 14, 2011.

]]> http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/friends-following-and-feedback-how-were-using-social-media/feed/ 0 http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/kids-today-how-the-class-of-2011-engages-with-media/ http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/kids-today-how-the-class-of-2011-engages-with-media/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 14:51:21 +0000 Nielsen Wire http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/?p=27879 1993 was a big year. The Mosaic Internet Web browser was launched, NAFTA was signed, Seinfeld won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series and the high school class of 2011 was born. Nielsen congratulates the class of 2011 and takes look at today’s American teen, raised in an age dominated by media choices like never before—from the Internet to cable channels to web connected devices galore.

Kids Today…

• Are the Heaviest Mobile Video Viewers: On average, mobile subscribers ages 12-17 watched 7 hours 13 minutes of mobile video a month in Q4 2010, compared to 4 hours 20 minutes for the general population.
• Are More Receptive to Mobile Advertising than their Elders: More than half (58%) surveyed in September 2010 said they “always” or “sometimes” look at mobile ads.
• Out-Text All Other Age Groups: In Q1 2011, teens 13-17 sent an average of 3,364 mobile texts per month, more than doubling the rate of the next most active texting demo, 18-24 year olds (1,640 texts per month).
• Talk Less on the Phone: Besides seniors 65-plus, teens talk the least on their phones, talking an average of 515 minutes per month in Q1 2011 versus more than 750 minutes among 18-24 year olds.
• Grew Up in the Age of Social Media—and It Shows: While they make up just 7.4 percent of those using social networks, 78.7 percent of 12-17 year olds visited social networks or blogs.
• Watch Less TV than the General Population: The average American watched 34 hours 39 minutes of TV per week in Q4 2010, a year-over-year increase of two minutes. Teens age 12-17 watch the least amount of TV on average (23 hours 41 minutes per week).
• Spend Less Time on their Computers: American 18 year olds averaged 39 hours, 50 minutes online from their home computers, of which 5 hours, 26 minutes was spent streaming online video per month.

Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8 percent just a year ago (43 percent increase) according to new research released today from The Nielsen Company. The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36 percent) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging.

“Despite the almost unlimited nature of what you can do on the web, 40 percent of U.S. online time is spent on just three activities – social networking, playing games and emailing leaving a whole lot of other sectors fighting for a declining share of the online pie,” said Nielsen analyst Dave Martin.

Additional findings include:

• Online games overtook personal email to become the second most heavily used activity behind social networks – accounting for 10 percent of all U.S. Internet time. Email dropped from 11.5 percent of time to 8.3 percent. (Source: Nielsen NetView)
• Of the most heavily-used sectors, Videos/Movies (which includes video-specific and movie-related websites only – and is not inclusive of video streaming behavior elsewhere) was the only other to experience a significant growth in share of U.S. activity online. Its share of activity grew relatively by 12 percent from 3.5 to 3.9 percent. (Source: Nielsen NetView)
• June 2010 was a major milestone for U.S. online video as the number of videos streamed passed the 10 billion mark. The average American consumer streaming online video spent 3 hours 15 minutes doing so during the month. (Source: Nielsen VideoCensus)
• Despite some predictions otherwise, the rise of social networking hasn’t pushed email and instant messaging into obscurity just yet. Although both saw double-digit declines in share of time, email remains as the third heaviest activity online (8.3 percent share of time) while instant messaging is fifth, accounting for four percent of Americans online time. (Source: Nielsen NetView)
• Although the major portals also experienced a double digit decline in share, they remained as the fourth heaviest activity, accounting for 4.4 percent of U.S. time online. (Source: Nielsen NetView)

Email Remains Top on Mobile Internet Activities
The way U.S. consumers spend their Internet time on their mobile phones paints a slightly different picture to that of Internet use from computers. In a Nielsen survey of mobile web users, there is a double-digit (28 percent) rise in the prevalence of social networking behavior, but the dominance of email activity on mobile devices continue with an increase from 37.4 percent to 41.6 percent of U.S. mobile Internet time.

Portals remain as the second heaviest activity on mobile Internet (11.6 percent share of time), despite their double digit decline and social networking’s rise to account for 10.5 percent share means the gap is much smaller than a year ago (14.3 percent vs. 8.3 percent).

Other mobile Internet activities seeing significant growth include music and video/movies, both seeing 20 percent plus increases in share of activity year over year. As these destinations gain share, it’s at the cost of other content consumption – both news/current events and sports destinations saw more than a 20 percent drop in share of U.S. mobile Internet time.

“Although we see similar characteristics amongst PC and mobile internet use, the way their activity is allocated is still pretty contrasting, added Martin. While convergence will continue, the unique characteristics of computers and mobiles, both in their features and when and where they are used mean that mobile Internet behavior mirroring its PC counterpart is still some way off.”

NOTE: This piece of research looked at the share of all U.S. Internet time each of the 84 “standard” NetView subcategories/sectors holds. Only the top 10 sectors were actually called out, the remaining 74 were grouped into “other” and not called out.

The Mobile Internet data is derived from a survey which tracks self-reported mobile internet usage from over 5,000 respondents each month.  Mobile internet universe is defined as people that they have used the mobile internet, email or instant messaging on their mobile phone in the past 30 days. The Mobile internet data is weighted back to benchmarks for age, gender, income, race/ethnicity and operator share collected in Mobile Insights.

All three participants couldn’t stress strongly enough that the social landscape has changed and that the relationship between brands and consumer has been flipped on its head because of the way consumers connect. So much influence (and insight) is now in the hands (and tweets, posts, votes and updates) of the consumer. “Consumers expect brands to be listening,” said Blackshaw. “It’s a no-blink environment for brands.” Consumers aren’t always paying attention to your marketing message, warned Taqqu, but they are paying attention to each other. Brand loyalty is in no way a lock for today’s consumer who is constantly reevaluating brands.

The power and appeal of social media is not just hype. The facts bear it out. After friends and family, the number one driver for brand trust is online reviews and feedback from the social media space. If brands believe that trust is central to their message and their marketing, then social networks must be part of the ROI equation. Eliason notes the immediacy of response can be not only a huge credibility and trust builder with customers, it can also help the bottom line. He said a when customer tweets about a station outage, it saves Comcast considerable time and money in its response effort because information was received in real time.

Fast Facts

• More than 40% of consumers go online to check reviews and consumer feedback before purchasing consumer electronics.
• 60% of those going online have visited a social network, with half going back everyday according to Facebook.
• 23% of social network users expect companies to listen and respond to what is said online

The Big Question
A conference attendee asked if brands were alienating their older customers by focusing on Twitter, or blogs. Comcast’s Eliason stressed the importance of meeting the customer where they are. It’s critical that brands have multiple channels to allow feedback. While Twitter customer service is hot right now, traditional surveys, call centers and focus groups aren’t going away. Just like every social media space is different, every interaction point is different, so brands need to rethink and expand all their customer touchpoints.

In April 2007, Social Networks & Blogs accounted for less than nine percent of all UK Internet time, but in three years the sector has grown to account for almost 23 percent of U.K. Internet time – the equivalent of one in every four and a half minutes. In other words, if all April 2010 U.K. Internet Time were condensed into one hour, 13 1/2 minutes would have been spent on Social Networks & Blogs.

The most heavily used sectors following Social Networks & Blogs are personal (non-work) Email (56 million hours / 7.2 percent share of time) and Online Games (53 million hours / 6.9 percent share).

The biggest casualty of the rise in social networking is Instant Messaging (IM) which, three years ago, was the most heavily used sector but has since dropped below Email and Online Games. IM’s share of U.K. Internet time has fallen from 14 percent to five percent – a relative drop of 66 percent. In contrast, personal Email, which many predicted to be another casualty of the social networking phenomenon, has actually increased its share of online time from 6.5 percent to 7.2 percent – a relative rise of 11 percent.

“Despite the large increase in the amount of time people spend online and the increasing proliferation of websites and online services, one thing has remained constant and that is the bulk of time accounted for by communicating, networking and playing games,” said Alex Burmaster, VP of Global Communications for Nielsen’s Online division. “These are the pillars on which the Internet as a heavily used medium are built.”

Globally, the total minutes spent on social networks monthly saw a more than 100% gain over the same time last year, driving the average time per person spent on social networks to over six hours per month.

NOTE: Effective with June 2009 data reporting, Nielsen has made several enhancements to the U.S. NetView service.  For some sites, trending of previously-reported data with current results may show percentage differences attributable to this methodology change and should only be compared directionally.

Twitter’s audience levels grew by more than 400% in 2009 and nearly one quarter of online Australians (23%) read ‘tweets’ in the past year, 14 percent ‘followed’ companies or organizations via Twitter (up from 5% in 2008) and 13 percent posted ‘tweets’ (up from 4% in 2008). Wikis continued to grow as a popular form of online content – close to three quarters of Australian Internet users (73%) read a wiki in the past year compared to 61 percent in 2008 and just 37 percent in 2007. Nearly two in five online Australians are now interacting with companies via social networking sites, reinforcing notions that Australians are open to engaging with brands and companies online.

“The opportunities for brands and companies to tap into the social media phenomenon are really just beginning to emerge and to date we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg,” states Melanie Ingrey, Research Director for Nielsen’s online business. “Incredibly, nearly nine in 10 (86%) of Australian’s online are looking to their fellow Internet users for opinions and information about products, services and brands, and Australians’ engagement with online word of mouth communication is going to increase in coming years as social media plays an increasingly important role in consumer decision making.”

Social networking on sites such as Facebook was a key driver in Australians’ trial and uptake of social media. Close to three in four online Australians (73%) have looked at others’ profiles on social networks and well over one third (37%) of these report to be interacting with others via social networking sites on a daily basis. Facebook dominates the online social networking space, with three quarters of Australian Internet users (75%) reporting to have visited Facebook, 59 percent have a Facebook profile, and the average time spent on Facebook in a given month is 8:19 hours – seven and a half hours more than its closest rival site, YouTube. Moreover, 83 percent of social networkers name Facebook as their main social networking platform, up from 72 percent in 2008 and 34 percent in 2007. And, as reported recently in a global view of social networking usage, Nielsen data showed that Australia topped even the U.S. when it came to time spent per person on social networks.

Networking On The Go
The rise in smartphone ownership (43% of online Australians now own a smartphone) and relaxed download caps on mobile phone plans has seen mobile social networking gain traction in the past year. Nielsen found that over one quarter of social networkers (26%) participated in mobile social networking in the past year, with younger consumers the most likely to participate in social networking via mobile – 66 percent of mobile social networkers are under 35 years of age. Facebook is the most popular social networking site accessed via a mobile (92% of mobile social networkers have visited Facebook), followed by YouTube and Twitter (18%) and MySpace (9%). However, Twitter sees the most frequent mobile usage, with half of its mobile users visiting the site daily. In comparison, Facebook saw 36 percent of its mobile users visit the site daily, while 22 percent of MySpace users and 16 percent of YouTube users were making daily visits.

Fourteen percent of home Super Bowl viewers with Internet access browsed the web at least once during the big game, up slightly from last year’s 12%. Additionally, time spent on line for those multitaskers was up from 24 minutes last year to 29 minutes with much of that concurrent time was spent on social networks.

Overall, Google and Facebook were the most visited domains while watching the game. Preliminary analysis of Nielsen’s single-source measurement of Internet and TV, in Convergence Panel and select National People Meter homes, shows that 36% of simultaneous users visited Google.com and 34% visited Facebook.com. Facebook, which was visited during the game by 1 in 20 of all at-home Super Bowl viewers with Internet access, led the most-visited sites in terms of simultaneous time spent, averaging 19 minutes per user.

The growth of simultaneous use, particularly on sites such as Google and Facebook, demonstrates the growing importance of Web interactivity in the television viewing experience. For some time, Nielsen has been discussing and gearing our audience measurement towards how this interactivity could make a positive impact on live television viewership. We expect to see this trend continue to manifest itself in the Winter Olympics and this summer’s FIFA World Cup Soccer event.

• Download  information on Nielsen’s simultaneous measurement of TV and Internet.

Nielsen found that simultaneous users were most engaged in general interest, e-mail, and online social networks. Sports sites, which might be more directly associated with the game itself, were visited by 18% of simultaneous users.

Almost a quarter of simultaneous users spent some time during the game on Facebook. Those users spent an average of 15 minutes on the site. Google and Yahoo! Mail were also popular destinations for Super Bowl viewers.