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