There are a number of factors that would lead you to expect that brands operating in Australia would be investing heavily in social video content and leveraging the large user communities in the top sites, such as YouTube.

These factors are:

1. The simple fact that Australians are demonstrating a huge appetite for online video.  Close to a billion, yes a billion, videos were consumed by Australians in the month of January 2010. A billion in one month, or 33.3 million per day, or 23,148 per minute.
2. Video and mobile. 42% of online Australians use a smartphone, according to Nielsen.  Everything is going mobile, therefore brands need to provide content that works well on mobile devices.  The answer is video.
3. Because the average online Australian spends more than 6.52  hours per month in social media (Nielsen).
4. Video content is three times more clickable than text – this is an anecdotal fact that I hear quoted regularly. I don’t have a source for it, I’m afraid.
5. YouTube is emerging as one of the leading search engines.
6. The media landscape is shrinking, presenting fewer opportunities for brands to engage with their target audience.  Therefore, brands have to seize the initiative and begin creating their own branded content.  That content could take many forms; educational and how to guides; infotainment; news; opinion; video based campaigns and so on.

The fact is that 65 per cent of the brands that we studied did not have an official brand presence in the top social video sharing sites. That figure is a little disappointing but not tragic – the bad news is that more than (just over) 50 per cent of the corporate channels were inactive, which we generously defined as having not been updated for more than 2 months.

Now, this inactive issue is one we have encountered before.  It points to the issue of brands engaging without the necesary resources or strategy or integration in place.  We’re not saying this stuff is easy but I strongly feel that no presence is preferable than an inactive / dormant account.

Here is the full presentation and a link to the press release on our local website:

One of the challenges when conducting this research is identifying a credible list of companies that can act as the sample for the research.  In this case, we used the Nielsen Top Advertisers Report for 2009.  We worked with Nielsen to make sure that they were comfortable with our methodology for the study.  It’s important to stress that the study does not assume any direct link between media spend and social media strategy or between advertising content and social media.

It’s possible that the methodology caused us to miss video content that is being produced by these brands because it is served via their own corporate website, or a third party channel provider (such as Viocorp) or Facebook.  That could be the case but it still represents a missed opportunity.  If you’re creating video content then you may as well make it available via the most popular online video service, even if your primary video channel is hosted elsewhere.

The research is far less rigourous and detailed than anything that Nielsen would do (for obvious reasons) .  Having said that, we do feel that the research produced some interesting findings.  It can act as a benchmark for brands in Australia that want to assess their social media engagement and presence against industry as a whole.

We’ve worked on quite a few of these now.  It follows our study into the use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, blogs) by twenty top Australian brands and an evaluation of online newsrooms.  For both of these studies we drew the sample companies from the Interbrands Best Brands report.

• Facebook has 250 million active users to Twitter’s 19 million (eMarketer research via Mashable)
• A large number of users quite within the first month (Nielsen)
• Twitter has no revenue stream

So, is Twitter the new attention dashboard? I have my doubts. I think that’s a very limited view of the conversations that are occurring online.

Will the real-time Web be a major influence on communication in the future? Absolutely.

The focus on the newness of things, the tool and its features and the immediacy of information (Twitter beat CNN to the Tiger Woods story this week by 45 mins) is compelling – but only to a point.  Beyond that point, Twitter discussions tend to become rather sycophantic, repetitive, tactical and/or theoretical.

This stuff is important though; The immediacy of micro-blogs like Twitter influences the way that we value information and perceive it.  It speeds up the news cycle and makes information even more of a commodity.

In a presentation at the recent Media140 event in Sydney Barry Saunders spoke about the danger of not considering context when we use the real-time Web as a primary source of information.  This is among the most insightul and interesting things that I’ve heard said about this space.  Its a very valid point, which is – along with others -  being overlooked in a plethora of hype fuelled conversations about Twitter.  Mr. Saunders make some additional points on related topics here.

The Twitter purists consider Twitter to be a conversational tool but many organisations are, in my experience, approaching it is a broadcast medium, as research that we are releasing tomorrow will show.

I will leave you with this analysis from BlogPulse, which shows comparative mentions of ‘Twitter’, ‘Unemployment’ and ‘Iraq’ in all forms of consumer generated media over the past six months:

]]> http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/just-home-much-air-time-does-twitter-actually-deserve/feed/ 0 http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/australian-medi-hotel-to-offer-cosmetic-procedures-and-rr/ http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/australian-medi-hotel-to-offer-cosmetic-procedures-and-rr/#comments Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:35:09 +0000 Daniel Young http://justanother24hours.com/?p=1028 This man, Geoffrey Edelsten, is about to open a medi-hotel complex in Caroline Spings, Victoria.  According to this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald, the medi-hotel will provide a range of cosmetic surgery procedures with the idea being that clients can’t recuperate post-op in the Mercure hotel part of the medi-complex.

This conjures up some amusing / disturbing images of breakfast at the hotel with patrons munching away and imbibing (via straws) at various stages in their recovery with a multitude of bits and pieces bandaged, stitched and stretched.

The over 55s: A sizeable and wealthy segment of the Australian population with an increasing penchant for all things Internet.

I am not planning on cosmetic surgery.

]]> http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/australian-medi-hotel-to-offer-cosmetic-procedures-and-rr/feed/ 0 http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/great-tool-forester-technographics-profiling/ http://justanother24hours.com/blogging/great-tool-forester-technographics-profiling/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 01:00:16 +0000 Daniel Young http://justanother24hours.com/?p=1013

In the first, funding would come from industry associations and industry groups. In the second, the PR industry funds print journalism via a licensing system, which grants the license holder access to those journalists – similar to the registration of lobbyists.

Both concepts seem to create dependencies that would undermine journalistic independence and integrity, although the risk of this occurring in the second model could be minimised: “…to be a registered PR, one would stump up a fee that goes into an independently administered fund that is then redistributed to publishers with oversight to ensure it goes on wages” (Simon – in comments).

Putting aside the practical challenges of this model, some of which are discussed in the post, I doubt that the model would be sustainable. Funding from the PR industry would be a diminishing return as media relations become a smaller part of what PR agencies do.

Here’s where I come up with my alternative solve all solution.

I might need to get back to you on that but here are some other funding alternatives:

• Newspapers earn not for profit status and the associated financial and tax breaks
• Introduction of a subscription/ micro-payment system that covers multiple competing publications. Check out ViewPass, which would process payments and collect data to drive targeted advertising or trade content for information about the reader’s preferences and interest.
• Newspapers regulate the re-use of content – in the same way that the music industry does.
• Philanthropy may sustain some publications.

The subject is such an emotive and complex issue. I am definitely in the ‘newspapers are a good thing’ camp – but at the end of the day if the model ceases to work then we have to let ‘nature’ take its course.  Consolidation is inevitable but I think that the concept of a newspaper-less society is somewhat alarmist.

By the way, newspapers are flourishing in the developing world. 

Ultimately, I see a small number of print publications containing analysis and opinion available internationally, nationally and in major cities. They’ll play a key role in holding institutions, business and Government to account and would be supported by the not-for-profit- funding model if advertising revenue alone was not sufficient.

I am positive that the pendulum will swing back from digital to traditional media and that things will balance themselves out.

Quality print journalism will survive even if the industry is vastly consolidated and readers will turn to the Web for breaking news, trade/niche content,  entertainment and video. I don’t personally have an issue with a micro-pay scheme – I’d be happy to pay a small amount for quality content from someone that ‘appreciated the technical nuances of the fields concerned’.

There continues to be considerable opportunity for the newspaper industry to reduce cost which makes this scenario seem feasible. Moody’s estimates that just 14% of newspaper operating costs are related to content creation. It’s not all doom and gloom – there are still workable options.

Here is the section containing my quote and a link to the full article:

Creating a buzz

Stepping into online conversation about your business means opening up a new line of communication with your customer base. It may sound calculated, but you need to decide what you want to achieve, and where to place your online time and energy for best effect. And don’t forget, happy customers can boost your online reputation by word of mouth recommendations.

So how do you harness the good side of social media and get online buzz recommending your company or products? The secret lies in treading the fine line between participating and just using social media as a way to blast out advertising.

“The party analogy can be an effective way of helping to understand the online community,” says Daniel Young, digital practice director for public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. “If you’re rude and disrespectful at a party then it’s likely that others will talk about you behind your back. This is equally true if you fail to bring anything to the party.”

He advises clients to think about how their online engagement can add value for the customers who are reading the site or online service in question.

As an example, one Burson-Marsteller client, recruitment firm Robert Half International publishes a podcast (roberthalfinternational.libsyn.com) aimed at giving clients and job hunters information and advice. This in turn strengthens the company’s overall brand offering.

Pew Research Centre

The Pew Research Center has published its 2008 News Media Consumption Survey, which – unsurprisingly – found a continued migration of readers / consumers from print media to online media. It also found a decline in newspaper readership – print and online. 43% of those surveyed in 2006 said they read a newspaper ‘yesterday’ – compared to 38% in the 2008 survey. The number of people that read just a print version of the newspaper fell to 25% from 34%.

Newspaper readership declined overall, 14% of Americans said they read an online newspaper ‘yesterday’ compared to 9% in 2006.

One third of newspaper readers consumed their content via the Web in 2008 compared to a quarter in 2006. Generational segmentation shows that younger readers are more likely to source their news content online, as you might expect, but the decline in print readership is consistent across the board. Baby Boomers are less inclined to read print media down from 42% to 34% in the two years between 2006 and 2008.

Radio as a source of news content has experienced decline in the broadcast media category, while TV news has held its own since 2006, except in the Gen Y demographic. This table shows the most frequented Online news sites – the presence of new media brands in the top half of thise table is interesting. Many print media publications have successfully transferred their business to the Web but remain hamstrung by the inefficient and broken business models associated with their print editions. These challenges are compounded by the sharp decline in advertising revenue, which is accelerating the transformation of the news media.

Pew Research Center 200

I’ve heard it be said that it would be more economical for the publisher of the New York Times to provide every subscriber with an Amazon Kindle than it is for them to produce and distribute a hard copy version of its product. San Francisco could soon become the the first major city in America to not have a daily metro newspaper.

It seems almost certain that daily newspaper will cease to exist in the new future – its a case of when.

The scary aspect to this is the fact that readers will have the power to choose the stories they want to read. We are reliant on the reader to turn to serious online media outlets to ensure that we – as a community – remain informed about what’s going on in the world.  Will individuals organise themselves effectively to hold our institutions, Governments and leaders to account?