Wealthy But Are They Healthy?

According to an article in Singapore's Straits Times there are thirty two billionaires in Singapore and increase of five over the previous year.

They share a combined wealth of US$65 billion.  What is revealing is the patriarchal nature of Singapore business, which remains very much a tradition within the country and its wealthiest families.

As this graphic shows, none of 32 billionaires are women and most of the money is, and has been, made in the financial sector.  The majority of these super wealthy are not born and bred Singaporeans but have moved there (or their families have) to take advantage of the country's growth and prosperity.

But whether they are a healthy lot is quite another matter with only a quarter showing any interest in health and wellness.  The drive to succeed I would suggest often overcomes any concerns of physical well-being.  That said,  as they have the money to buy the best medical services available, many of these folk enjoy a reasonable life span; the average age of these billionaires being sixty two.

The global trend shows a 7% growth in the number of billionaires and there are now 2,325 of them according to recent research from Wealth-X and the Swiss bank UBS.

12% of the world's billionaires are women and more than half are self-made. i.e. they did not inherit their fortunes.  The old saying about 'money makes money' holds true as most enjoyed an average growth in their wealth of 4.4%.

Even though Singapore is enjoying good growth in the super-rich club the best place to make your fortune remains the USA with China coming a close second.

Related articles

• 47% of Chinese Billionaires Want to Leave China Within 5 Years, Only 6% of US Billionaires Seek to Leave US
• Mostly camera-shy and very often reclusive, but the lesser-spotted billionaire is thriving
• World's Billionaire Club Expands By 7%

11 Ideals That Will Change Your Communications

What is the optimum length of time for a presentation to clients? How long should we make make our company video?

These are just two of the questions that are answered in recent collated statistics from a variety of reputable online sources.

Here are eleven statistical findings that should guide your online and offline communications:

1. The ideal length of a tweet is 100 characters
2. The ideal length of a Facebook post is less than 40 characters
3. The ideal length of a Google+ headline is less than 60 characters
4. The ideal length of a headline is 6 words
5. The ideal length of a blog post is 7 minutes, 1,600 words
6. The ideal width of a paragraph is 40-55 characters
7. The ideal length of an email subject line 28-39 characters
8. The ideal length of a presentation is 18 minutes
9. The ideal length of a web page title tag is 55 characters
10. The ideal length of a domain name is 8 characters
11. The ideal length of a YouTube is 3 to 3 1/2 minutes

And yes, I am aware that the headline for this post is seven words rather than six and that the content is less than  1,600 words; both of which are less than 'ideal'.  But we need to remind ourselves that 'ideals' are not absolutes.

Demographics of Social Media Users

The Demographics of Social Media Users — 2012 | Infographics

Something in the Water? Internet Pornography is Big Business

There must be something in the water in Elmhurst, Illinois?  This town has the dubious distinction of being the number one place in in the USA for viewing pornography online.

As this infographic shows the traditionally religious day of rest, Sunday, is prime time for this activity and it only dissipates around Thanksgiving, no doubt due to the close proximity of other family members!

Like it or not, pornography on the web is big business - there are more than 24 million such sites on the Web and just over $3,000 every second is spent by those who view them. In the US alone Internet porn generates $2.8 billion per year and that figure needs to be measured against the estimated $4.9 billion that the industry generates globally

Societal Effects

Setting aside any moral position on the subject, the evidence is fairly conclusive that apart from sheer economics, Internet pornography is having a major societal impact.

Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam undertook a large research study in the field of collective sexual identity.  Gaddam, the co-author of their resulting publication “A Billion Wicked Thoughts" says that "Web porn has changed everything". Tastes once regarded as deviant more widespread.

Another report also shows that Internet porn is creating a generation of young men who are hopeless in the bedroom. "A 'paradoxical effect' is created whereby with each new thrill, or 'dopamine spike', the brain loses its ability to respond to dopamine signals, meaning that porn-users demand increasingly extreme experiences to become aroused" 

But psychologist Michael Castleman takes a contrary view. In an earlier blog post he writes "The evidence clearly shows that from a social welfare perspective, porn causes no measurable harm. In fact, as porn viewing has soared, rates of syphilis, gonorrhea, teen sex, teen births, divorce, and rape have all substantially declined. If Internet porn affects society, oddly enough, it looks beneficial. Perhaps mental health professionals should encourage men to view it."

What ever the conclusions reached by research one fact remains; with 12% of Internet web sites pushing porn, it is likely to be around for a long time and be a huge money spinner for those who profit from the industry.

Related articles

• South Korea declares war against Internet porn
• David Cameron 'orders new curbs on internet porn' - Telegraph
• The Personalities of Porn Stars

In A Buying Mood - Pinterest Vs Facebook

If you are selling something and planning to use social media to do so, does Facebook or Pinterest offer the best chance of delivering what you want?

New research from Bizrate Insights has found that 69% of consumers who have visited Pinterest discovered something they then purchased or wanted to purchase.  This compares to only 40% for Facebook.

Large version

Even more compelling was the finding that 70% of consumers use Pinterest to get inspired about things to buy and 67% use this social media platform to keep track of things they like.

You may use Facebook more to maintain friendships, but Pinterest is clearly out in front when it comes to selling. Both are sites which online consumers use to connect with people who have similar styles and interests. Pinterest though is more often used as a destination for shopping inspiration, tracking, and product discovery.

It also seems that brand building is better on Pinterest than on Facebook.  Bizrate reports that:

"A greater percent (55%) of Pinterest users have engaged with retailers and brands via Pinterest, compared to the percent of Facebook users that engage retailers or brands on Facebook (48%).  But how customers engage differs for each of the two platforms.  Pinterest users are more likely to be “Creators”: adding and sharing retailer/brand related content, while Facebook users are more likely to be “Participators”: interacting with promotional activities developed by retailers and brands."

Large version

The reach of Facebook still blitzes Pinterest but awareness of the latter is trending upwards rapidly.  36% of online consumers had heard of Pinterest in March but by August this figure had risen to 46%.

The reports data from September 2012 showed that 63% of online consumers had a Facebook account and only 15% had a Pinterest account.  Facebook is not sitting twiddling its thumbs when it comes to luring purchasers. They are testing a new feature, "collections", that lets users create wish lists of products by clicking on "want" or "collect" buttons.

PCWorld believes that the want button, if adopted permanently, could drive a lot of traffic to brands on Facebook and encourage impulse purchases.  They could be correct in this assumption and if it does it will have some serious implications for Pinterest.

But Pinterest is on the right growth projectory with a recent ComScore study putting it in the top 50 most-visited Web sites in the US for the first time, with 25 million unique visitors in the month. Ranked at 50th it still has  along way to catch Facebook which is ranked 4th in the same survey.

Related articles

• Pinterest drives more than window shopping
• Pinterest stats: does it really drive more sales than Facebook?

Going Down The 'Googla' - Bottom of the List For Sharing Stories

Google claims 170m Google+ users but other reports have said it is a ghost town, so what is the truth?

Findings released appear to confirm the latter – despite its large number of accounts the platform is bottom of the list of social network users’ favoured channels.

Social media agency Umpf analysed 100 random online entertainment, health, business, technology and general news stories and looked at how many times each story was shared by Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter users.

The findings show Twitter as the most active social network for sharing stories, followed by Facebook in second, LinkedIn third and Google+ last:

1. For every 100million users of Twitter, 197.3 people were likely to share an online story
2. For every 100million users of Facebook, 41.8 people were likely to share an online story
3. For every 100million users of LinkedIn, 15.2 people were likely to share an online story
4. For every 100million users of Google+, 6.0 people were likely to share an online story

Whilst Google+ is the second largest of the four in terms of official users*, and despite it arguably being the best placed of all four to succeed – it was created by Google post-Twitter, post-Facebook and post-LinkedIn, and designed to be the most socially-integrated network (“Online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.”) – it performs the worst.

Jon Priestley, of PR and Social Media agency Umpf, said: “Our findings clearly show a gulf between Google+ user numbers and their willingness to share online content, particularly when compared to rival platforms such as Facebook and Twitter".

'Like' Chocolate? So Does Facebook

If your Facebook content strategy is to pepper your text with words such as 'Like' then you may have to think again.
According to a recent report from Sotrender, “like”, and similar call-to-action words such as “look” and “click” no longer encourage engagement as they once did.

After analysing 111 UK Facebook pages that contained 2800 different posts, across four different industries they came to the realisation that while pictures and graphics work best, there were some some words that draw a better response than others.

Among those ranked highly by Sotrender are chocolate, cream, daily, most, shop, winter, wardrobe, and today.

Other key findings include:

• Using catchy words in posts doesn't seem to increase engagement as Facebook users become 'immune' to constantly repeated phrases
• For food brands words that express emotions draw a higher response rate
• While providing links in Twitter posts works well this survey found that doing the same in Facebook drops fans’ engagement to below average

Source: Sotrender

• A picture is worth a thousand (or so) words when it comes to engaging with people on Facebook. Asking questions in posts works but an image or graphic is far more effective as the chart below shows.

Source: Sotrender

The recently introduced Timeline in Facebook has also had two beneficial effects:

• Posts now have have a longer shelf-life
• Engagement has increased for individual posts 

"80% of all comments are made in circa 8 hours and 30 minutes (2 hours more than before Timeline)" - Sotrender.

But don't fall into the trap of posting too often. Less is more, and too many posts over a short time period could well result in a loss of interest and, by extension, fans.

Related articles

• Facebook Users Like Food Pages

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• Study shows Facebook Timeline extends post lifetime, increases engagement by 13%

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Global Social Media Check Up 2012

As this presentation shows companies have adapted their marketing practice to embrace the use of social media.

A couple of key findings:

• Twitter is the most popular social network among Fortune‘s Global 100 companies.
• 79% of company Twitter accounts engage users using @mentions
• Pinterest is being increasingly used to highlight products and services in a visual manner
• Twitter is the most popular network for company use in Latin America
• Many companies are using more than one social media account on the same network. This is especially so in Europe where there is the challenge of multiple languages
• Companies in Asia are using different channels to communicate
• Mobile Web, Visual Storytelling and Social Enterprise are the three big trends in the Asia Pacific region.

The presentation can be downloaded here.

The Emperor's New Clothes - Is Facebook An Illusion?

Seeing The 'TV Light'

A large segment of the population don't bother too much about TV watching. They are often referred to as 'Light TV Viewers'.

31% of the18 to 49 age demographic spend an average of 39 minutes per day watching TV, so where can advertisers get better bang for their buck?

Google would have you believe that they and YouTube are better options for advert retention. TV by itself misses a whopping 63% of this target market, but with the addition of online there is a 27% increase in brand impression rate.

Why Pinning Is In Your Best Interest

Source: Experian

Those of us who are early adopters of Pinterest will have noticed a dramatic rise in activity from this social media channel in recent months.  As the above chart from a recent Experian study shows, Pinterest has clearly captured the interest of global users and no doubt the developers GooglePlus are looking at this surge with some envy.

Pinterest has leapfrogged Google Plus and is now the third most popular social networking site behind Facebook and Twitter. There were 11.7 million visitors to the site in January of 2012.

It is in the top ten websites for Hitwise's Social Networking and Forums category and from January to February of this year its growth grew a whopping 50%.  Not a bad result for a platform that only started in March of 2010.

As Experian points out, this growth is part of a much wider societal trend. "Users are increasingly more comfortable with recommendations from friends or other users when they come through social personalisation".

The shift in social media is away from just linking with friends and more towards common interests.  This means that brands and retailers need to carfeully consider what boards they will deploy and what products or images they will pin.

Choosing a category that can be associated with your company's products and service, but is not necessarily produced by the company can be challenging but is not insurmountable. A provider of IT services and solutions might might choose to pin 'Gadgets as in the example here. Gadgets are one of the more shareable items on Pinterest.

The second thing to remember is that any image you choose to pin or share needs to be of quality and immediate visual appeal. Close-ups rather than distant images, good colour rendition and optimisation should all be considered when selecting.

If you pin 'quality' you will be associated with it and vice versa. And be positive in your comments section, making sure that you use the edit function for each image once you have pinned it to link back to where you want the viewer to go. Always credit your image sources.

When using Pinterest for marketing purposes it should also be remembered that:

• Women use it to a far greater degree than men (68.2% of users are women - other studies put this figure as high as 80%). 
• 50% of users have children
• Home décor, crafts, fashion and food dominate the pin boards
• Users spend far longer on Pinterest than they do on most other social platforms  - 15.8 minutes, compared to Facebook (12.1 minutes) and Twitter (3.3. minutes).  Only YouTube captures interest longer (16.8 minutes)
• 25-34 is the dominant age demographic for Pinterest users
• 28% of users could be termed well off, with incomes over $US100,000.
• Sharing by re-pinning is by far the greatest activity rather than using a browser pin marklet.

Stats source: Modea

Remember that while Pinterest is a fast mover it still has a long, long way to go to make any headway against Facebook which will shortly reach 1 billion users and has 26.4% of all referral traffic (Pinterest, Google Plus and Twitter are all below 4%).

Finally here are some recent findings from Dan Zarella of Hubspot based on a data set of 11,000 pins. These can provide some guidance when you are aiming for maximum reach on Pinterest:

• Descriptions about 200 characters long are most re-pinnable
• Pins about food are very pinnable

  

• Aim to write "likable" content rather than "commentable" content for repins
• Taller images are more repinnable

Dan Zarella - Hubspot

Hubspot

 Related articles

• Experian: Pinterest is third most-visited social site
• Pinterest climbs to third most popular social network

Internet Usage Predictions for this Year

See a larger version here

Although we are nearly two months in to 2012 it is interesting to note that some are predicting global internet growth of more than 3% this year.  In the past five years internet usage has grown a whopping 121% showing just how reliant we are on it in our daily lives.

By the end of this year almost 76% of the world's population will be on the internet and according to the infographic more than half of us will suffer from a malady termed 'e-anxiety' if we can't check our email or Facebook page.

40% of us will be accessing social media from our mobile phone and it is predicted that there will be 62.8% more Tablets users with the majority using the iPad.

Related articles

• Internet Usage on Smartphones Continues to Climb (marketingpilgrim.com)

The Growth of Social Media

A couple of interesting observations can be made from this chart, recently release by Search Engine Journal:

• 75% of brand “likes” are coming from advertisements 
• Mobile access to Facebook accounts has grown 200% in a year.
• The 50-64 Age demographic have recorded the sharpest rise in growth over two years
• 80% of companies use social media for recruitment and 95% of them use LinkedIn

Click on the Infographic to see the larger version

Time is On Your Side - Part Two

Social Media

A recent 'The Science of Timing' seminar for Hubspot's Dan Zarella suggested the following optimum times (US times - Central and Eastern Standard Time Zones) to be engaged:

Retweets by the Hour - Dan Zarella

• Retweets of your content from Twitter

2-5 PM provides the greatest number of  ReTweets and you get more during the day than during the night.

Later in the day (5 PM) and later in the week are the dominant times for retweeting,

You need to pick the optimum time for the time zones of your target market and this may vary from the above.

Use this free tool to determine the best timing for retweets of your content - you could well be surprised.

Interestingly the study also shows that those who Tweet about 22 times daily have the most followers so I suggest that if you are using an automated service such as Twitterfeed you should adjust the settings to this posting amount.

Using Google Analytics timing reporting mentioned above you will also be able to see the number of referrals from Twitter to your web site.

• Facebook

Facebook sharing happens most during the weekends.

Less is more with Facebook postings and once a day, or once every second day, yields the best results

11 AM is the time when most people read content on Facebook. 2 AM, 5 AM, and 7 PM are the next best times which could mean some adjustment of corporate sleep patterns!).

• Email

Most bounces are recorded at 6am. and 5 and 7 in the morning have the best opening rates.

97% read their email in the morning, and 95% read it in the afternoon.

Weekend email has an open rate of around 42%  but note that abuse reports are also highest on Saturday and Sunday, 6 AM being the peak for this.

As with Twitter automation, you can set you email programme to deliver it into inboxes at the best time to capture the attention of your target audience.

• Blogs

Mornings are best for people who view blogs; 80% do so during this time.  The percentage drops to 60% during the afternoon, half (50%) read them in the evening and only 40% do so at night.

More men (60%) than women (50%)read blog posts in the evening, so demographic targeting is important.

Viewing rate is highest on a Monday (130 average) but tapers of a little on Tuesday. From Wednesday to Friday the average levels out at an average of 120 views. Saturday and Sunday's average views are lowest (80). Comments i.e. feedback, is higher in the weekend.

10 to 11 am has the most blog views, averaging 190 and the lowest blog viewing rate is at 5 am(65)

The Science of Timing

Time is On Your Side - Part One

Social and online media is all about engagement; more often than not in realtime.  If you are posting on social media sites at times when your target audience are away doing something else then you have a problem.

More of a challenge are enterprises who persist in following their business hours for online activity instead of adopting those of their audience.

While it is true that you need to be where where your market is, it is equally true that you need to be there when that market is digitally engaged.  Logistical challenge aside, consideration of time zones is a must if your business is not locally focussed.

While you can schedule your blog postings to publish at specified hours and use third party platforms to spawn your company RSS to your twitter account on a sequential basis, but do you really know that this scattergun approach is reaching your audience?

This is the first of two articles on timing and what it could mean for you.

Let's Start With Web Sites

Google Analytics should be now be a 'given' for all web sites.  To accurately gauge the times when people visit your site you need to enhance the Analytics reports and fortunately (if you are using Firefox as your browser) there is a free way of doing so. Here's how:

1. Download the Greasemonkey addon for Firefox 
2. Now add the Google Analytics Report Enhancer script (you will be prompted to accept this)
3. Open your Google Analytics window and in the left hand column click on 'Search Engines'

Click on Search Engines

 

Click on Source

  

Click on Time

You can do the same for 'day of the week' . As a result you now have a good idea as to which days andwhat times people are making greatest use of your site.  Check out not only 'visits' but also 'new visits'. Adjust the period to get monthly and annual rates.

Related articles

• The New Google Analytics Available to Everyone (analytics.blogspot.com)

What A Difference A Year Makes

Click on the chart to see the larger version

A year on year analysis of social media from January 2010 clearly demonstrates the rapid growth of the major networks.

While Wikipedia is chugging along with 5,000 new contributors Facebook continues to blitz the opposition, signing up 290 million new accounts over the same period.

Note also that users accessing Facebook on their mobile device has grown by over 200 percent to 200 million.  This growth trend will continue

Another significant mover has been the professional network, LinkedIn with a 100% growth and Flickr has now features 5 billion images, which represents a 25% increase in their activity.

Related articles

• 2011 social media statistics show huge growth (browsermedia.co.uk)

Eggs In Social Media Baskets

Is Social Media worth the cost?  Social media is a two-way communication medium and use it effectively businesses need to invest in listening capabilities that capture the activities of their existing or potential customers online.

This more often than not means a subscribing to a specialist engagement dashboard / console, such as Radian6 ($US600 per month - video below), and employing dedicated staff to monitor the Buzz and respond.



Radian6 Promo

Recent research of 10,000 online shoppers by ForeSee Results suggests that the ROI (Return On Investment) for more traditional forms of advertising is better than social media.

As the methodology of this survey is not fully explained it would wise not to take these results at face value.  They do however provide a contrary view to the usual social media argument. Not everyone has achieved success through their social media strategies and some of these results could help explain why.

Forsee results found that more visits to retail / ecommerce websites are influenced by more traditional marketing tactics than social media. Promotional emails (19%), search engine results (8%), and Internet advertising (7%), all had more influence.

UK Respondents

US Respondents

In an earlier post I talked about the importance of email - "email remains a potent weapon in the digital marketing arsenal".  This study would seem to bear this out.

Customers and prospects prefer to receive email communications and according to the study, a very small  8% of online shoppers responded that social media was their preferred way to interact with a retailer.

 Even though just 8% said social media was their preferred method, more than half of all respondents indicated that they would be willing to connect using some form of social media.

Facebook was a clear winner (40%) while Twitter registered only a 4% preference

The other thing to remember  is that many businesses still don't know how to use social media effectively to promote their brand or online offering.  Social media awareness varies greatly between countries.

If customers are not used to finding social media options embedded in a web site and/or used by a company, then it is hardly surprising that they show a preference towards the tried and true email, website and snail mail.

I certainly would not right off social media on the strength of this study but it is a reality check.

At a recent roundtable conducted by a UK agency, MyClicks.org.uk,

"the majority of the participants, around 75%, were satisfied with their use of social media tools, including social networks, online video, blogs and podcasts. Around 30% stated that social media would be a key element in their communication strategy when preparing 2011 budgets, with the remainder preparing to continuing to ramp-up their presence using these channels to a greater or lesser extent."

Related articles

• Study Shows Social Media Impact Lags Search and Email (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Social media drives 3% of traffic to e-commerce sites: survey (econsultancy.com)