More Australian social media statistics

People typically think that social media is only used by young Australians. Finding hard statistics on Australian demographics though isn’t easy, particularly when you don’t have $750USD to fork out for the latest Forrester research paper. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), though, is a handy resource if you’re willing to put in the time and know how to analyse and interpret the statistics.

With an ex-ABS employee on hand, we went through some of the recent survey data on Household Use of Information Technology and Population by Age and Sex, Australian States and Territories, Forrester’s Social Technographics ratios, and started some serious Excel work.

Here’s what we found:

Age	Number of Australians Online	% of demographic	Est % of total population
15-17	731,000	83.9%	4%
18-24	1,536,000	72.8%	9%
25-34	2,106,000	71.0%	12%
35-44	2,303,000	74.1%	13%
45-54	1,949,000	65.9%	11%
55-64	1,281,000	53.1%	7%
65+	680,000	24.0%	4%

As a proportion of their age demographic more 15-17 year olds use the internet  than any other group. This includes access from computers, mobile devices, set-top boxes connected to either analogue or digital television and games machines. You’ll note, though, that more 35-44 year olds use the internet than any other age group.

It’s when you then start to break down into the 18+ group (ABS and Forrester define ‘adult’ as 18+) that things get interesting.

• In 07/08 there were 16.4m Australian adults [1]
• 11.2m Australian adults used the internet 07/08
• 8.5m Australian adults used social media on at least a monthly basis in 07/08

When examining the ABS statistics in light of Forrester’s Social Technographic roles in 07/08 we see that some 43% of all Australians read blogs, watch online video, listen to podcasts, read forums, and read reviews/ratings. A high proportion, 18% (higher than our US counterparts Forrester reports), even create this content.

Forrester Roles	Australian online adults	Number of online adults	Australian adults
	%	(m)	%
Creators	26%	2.9	18%
Critics	35%	3.9	24%
Collectors	16%	1.8	11%
Joiner	45%	5.0	31%
Spectators	63%	7.0	43%

Even about 1 in 3 of Australians maintain their social networking profile — probably on Facebook given Hitwise rates it as the most popular website Australians visit recording 4.03% of all website traffic.

Australians are not ‘engaged’ in social media? … I think not.

M

Note: Special thanks to Steve Noble who answered a few questions for me regarding the Forrester data

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1. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2008) Population by Age and Sex, Australian States and Territories ABS Cat No. 3201.0, June.

Social media engagement: What are Aussies doing?

I’ve blogged before about the taxonomy of social media — a simply means by which you can classify the activities or roles of people’s social media activities produced by Forrester. In previous posts, though, there’s been some questioning over exactly whether Australians are ‘engaged’ with some suggestions that a simple poll will confirm the old 1/9/90% ratios that Nielsen reported back in 2006 based on research in the 90s.

Source: Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, October 9, 2006

More recent research by Forrester, though, confirms earlier findings regarding the social media activities, including some new Australian statistics from their Nov 2008 Australian Adult Social Technographics® Report.

Source: Forrester, 2008

Specifically, Forrester reports that Australian consumers are blocking marketing messages and turning to each other for advice. Importantly, their research finds that:

• Three quarters of Australian online adults now use social technologies at least monthly
• One-quarter create their own content
• Australians are more likely to be content creators than their US counterparts
• Men are slightly more likely to use social technologies than women, but when it comes to joining social networks, the difference is negligible
• Creating content or joining social networks falls away dramatically as participants get older
• 46% of online adults in the Older Boomers and Seniors demographic, though, continue to consume some form of social media at least monthly, whether it’s watching other peoples’ videos, reading other peoples’ blogs, or looking at other people’s photos

With such a fundamental shift in how Australians use media, marketers, government, and private organisations must rethink their communications and engagement strategies. For example, to engage online women in Australia Forrester suggests, interactive marketers should focus on content and connections. As a small, developed market that makes heavy use of social technologies, Australia is the perfect launchpad for global brands adopting social marketing tactics.

Evangelists and marketers will be surprised “if they assume that social technologies are uncommon in Australia, they’ll be surprised to find they’re now mainstream. In fact, only 24% of online adults in Australia do not regularly use social technologies in some way”, reports Steven Noble of Forrester.

So, are Australians engaged? I think the statistics speak for themselves.

M

Toward Government 2.0

Ive been presenting to the a number of senior executives and committees this week on Web 2.0 and its use in government — ie: Government 2.0. Here’s the PowerPoint presentation which you can also download from SlideShare.

If you can’t wait for the videos to load, here they are:

What is Web 2.0?

How can government leverage Web 2.0?

With a reported 4 in 5 Australians using Web 2.0 websites at least monthly, and an estimated 69% of Canberra’s polulation engaging participating (in some form or other) in online community activities like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Ning and YouTube, it’s no wonder that the ACT Chief Minister’s Department, after launching its Citizen Centred Governance Paper last year, is now looking toward implementing Web 2.0 tools for citizen engagement to better deliver communications in a more responsive, relevant and open way. 

M