Apps, 'Appless And The Great Unwashed

If you think you are going to make your fortune by producing an app and selling it to the multitudes consider this: out of the thousands of apps available, the average mobile user tends to only use between 22 and 28 apps a month.

Research has shown that young users (18-24) spend more time using apps which comes as little surprise, but they use fewer on average than the 25-34 age group.

Earlier in 2014 comScore released statistics that showed social media apps as being the most popular -  Facebook, YouTube and Gmail.

2013 produced a similar result (see below).

Most popular smartphone apps in the United States in 2013

But if you are thinking of developing an App and want to know what type of app people are interested in, take a look at AppBrian Stats which lists the top Android searches.

Music, hacking and password breaking apps figured prominently when I last looked which speaks volumes (if you'll excuse the pun) for the use of apps in general.

Top  Android searches over the last two weeks

Perhaps the final word on Apps and the pervasive nature of their use in society are the recent findings from a Bank of America study.

Apparently mobile phone users would rather give up alcohol, television or chocolate than lose the use of their mobile devices. 47% of U.S. consumers are so wedded to their smartphones that they couldn't last a day without them.

Bank of America Study

The bank also found that there folk use their mobile banking apps to "perform more sophisticated transactions, such as mobile check deposit" while the younger set would rather forgo using deodorant or toothbrushes than lose the use of their smartphone.

Perhaps it would be wise never to mingle in a crowd of young smartphone users if you are fastidious about personal hygiene!

Related articles

• Apps to Improve Your Commute
• 12 Everyday Mobile Apps To Make Life Easier

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.

Advertising Placement In Asia And Elsewhere?

Wanting to take online advertising in Asia or elsewhere?  Not sure if social media or online versions of newspapers are your best choice? This interactive chart may give you some pointers.

Simply highlight one of the demographic or maximum impressions buttons and you can judge which platforms or media you will be able to use to best advantage.


All statistics are taken from Google's AdPlanner.

Vietnam Thinks Local & Excels In Online Video Use

A recent survey from comScore revealed some interesting data about the popularity and growth of online video in the East Asia region.

In June of this year 83.1 percent of the world’s online population watched online video from a home or work computer. That represents 1.2 billion people worldwide age 15 and older undertaking this activity.

In the same month 197.5 billion videos were viewed online globally.  The average viewer watched 159.4 videos in June of 2012 and it is a particularly popular past time in Asia.

A significant factor in this development has been increased broadband access and content availability which has resulted in higher online video viewing activity.

It should be noted though that these results only present part of the picture, as they relate to video watching using a PC and do not include other platforms or situations such as viewing a video in an Internet cafe, on a mobile phone or tablet.  Given the impact of mobile not having this data included is a flaw.  Where too are South Korean and Thailand both of which are heavy users of broadband & mobile technologies?

The key findings from the survey were:

• Vietnam has the strongest reach of online video viewers in the Asia-Pacific region
• Vietnam has the highest video viewing penetration (89.8 percent ) and  Indonesia  had the lowest (66.9 percent ).
• Vietnam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan and New Zealand all exceeded  the global average for online video penetration
• China was the leader when it came to the largest online video market by audience size.  It hads 266.2 million unique viewers (79.4 percent reach).  Next was Japan with 61.5 million viewers (83.7 percent reach) followed by India with 44.6 million viewers (73.1 percent reach).
• When it came to online video engagement, the average Japanese viewer watched 242.5 videos per month, Hong Kong viewers watched 180.7 videos, Singapore 158.1 videos and Australia 151.4.
• Google sites are the top video destination in Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam thanks to its ownership of YouTube
• Facebook.com ranked as the second largest video viewing destination in the Philippines and the third ranked destination in Indonesia and Taiwan
• VEVO and Viacom Digital were in the top five  video viewing destinations in both Indonesia and the Philippines
• Yahoo! Sites are big in Taiwan, ranking second. Tudou Sites come in 4th ranked and Youku Inc.5th.
• Local providers always excel in Vietnam so it is no surprise that VnExpress, Vega Corporation (Clip.vn) and Tuoi Tre Online securing places were all in the top five in the rankings.

Related articles

• Three Reasons Why Online Video Is The New Direction For Businesses
• Scott Steinberg: Inbound Marketing: 5 Ways to Create an Awesome Online Video Strategy

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

How to 'Socialise' Your Brand

It not a question of simply regurgitating your content into social media. As this infographic shows, the top brands create original content for their social media.

A recent study by Weber Shandwick and Forbes Insights shows that internal focus and consistency of vision are areas where substantial improvement must be made by most brands.

Most executives are still looking outwards to external forces - winning the approval of the right media, achieving a target number of “Likes” on Facebook and dominating coverage of certain topics.  As a result most organizations still struggle to build a brand with a distinctive social identity.

Global brand executives believe that sociability is growing rapidly as a contributor to a brand’s overall reputation, from 52 percent today with a projected estimate of 65 percent three years from now, according to the report.

Yet, a large majority (84 percent) report that their brand’s sociability is not yet up to world class brand standards, despite the fact that nearly all of them (87 percent) say they have a social media brand strategy.

Key Takeaways:

• Put your brands in motion: World class companies do more than build an inventory of social media tools. They apply their tools in more social ways than the average global company. For example, they are 44 percent more likely to offer brand-related mobile content, 43 percent more likely to participate in “check-in” apps, 41 percent more likely to do proximity marketing and 40 percent more likely to have their own branded YouTube channel.
  
• Integrate or die: World class organizations are much better integrators of brand personality — they are nearly twice as likely as other organizations to have a consistent brand personality across all social and traditional media channels and are much more likely to include a social media element to their traditional print or broadcast messaging.
  
• Make social central: 61 percent of world class brands have a dedicated social media strategist or manager, vs. 41 percent of all global brands. According to one global executive respondent, “The most important thing we can do is to centrally plan social media activities across all channels to amplify key messages.”
  
• Listen more than you talk: World class companies fine-tune their messages to customers and integrate what is on their fans’ minds into their brand stories. Nearly twice as many world class brands have changed a product or service based on fan recommendations compared to the average global brand.
  
• Count what matters — meaningful engagement: World class brands place more weight than other brands on their number of contributors when measuring social media effectiveness. Social contributors are ranked #1 by world class companies but #6 by other companies as a key metric.
  
• Think global: Executives managing world class brands consider global reach as important as customer service as a driver of corporate reputation while the average global executive ranks global reach last.
  
• Go outside to get inside: World class companies are nearly twice as likely as average global companies to engage outside support to measure their brand’s social performance.
  
• Be vigilant: To protect their social brand integrity, world class brands are always on high alert. They are 85 percent more vigilant since Wikileaks has been in the news and are 58 percent more likely to be concerned about privacy violations.

View the report's Executive Summary

Related articles

• Could Social Media Devalue Brands? (forbes.com)
• IBM: Companies slow to take on social media (infoworld.com)

On The Shelf

How effective is the links that you have shared? Looking for a longer 'shelf life' for your content?  It might pay to use video as it has been reinforced yet again, that the internet has a very short attention span.

YouTube has a half-life of around 7 hours as viewers need to concentrate more than reading simple text.

The news is worse, according to Bit.ly,  for links posted on  direct web pages and social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter . If you haven't captured their click-throughs when three hours have passed then your chances of doing so get a lot slimmer.  Click rates drop by half after this period of time

Breaking news that generates wide interest has an even steeper drop-off rate. The first five minutes of release results in half of the click-throughs these items will ever receive.

Distribution of half-lifes over four different referrer types. Facebook, twitter and direct link (links shared via email, instant messengers etc.) half lifes follow a strikingly similar distribution

Bity looked at the half life of 1,000 popular bitly links and the results were surprisingly similar.

"The mean half life of a link on Twitter is 2.8 hours, on Facebook it’s 3.2 hours and via ‘direct’ sources (like email or IM clients) it’s 3.4 hours. So you can expect, on average, an extra 24 minutes of attention if you post on Facebook than if you post on Twitter."

Their key finding is "that the lifespan of your link is connected more to what content it points to than on where you post it: on the social web it’s all about what you share, not where you share it!"

Twitter would appear to be the better channel if you want people to view your content quickly.

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

New Publication - 12 Easy and Free Steps to Join the Digital Revolution

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Asian Companies Slow On The Uptake?

Burson-Marsteller 2011 Global Social Media Check-up

Burson-Marsteller’s Second Annual Global Social Media Check-up looks at how Fortune 100 companies use social media, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs.

Twitter has emerged as the most popular. Seventy-seven percent of companies now have accounts, up from 65 percent the previous year.

Burson-Marsteller found that social media has very quickly gone from an interesting emerging communications trend to a critical part of the media landscape, and companies are reacting to that change.

"Last year, our Global Social Media Check-up found that 79 percent of the largest 100 companies in the Fortune Global 500 index are using at least one of the most popular social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blog, but companies were mainly using these channels for one-way communication to broadcast corporate messages.


This year, the study found that the Fortune Global 100 are now more likely to directly engage users on social media, and companies are increasingly “@” mentioning and retweeting on Twitter and allowing and answering posts on Facebook pages. This is a clear indication that companies are now putting resources behind social media monitoring and engagement in a way that they were not 12 months prior. "

So overall the understanding of what social media actually is and its potential has vastly increased in the short space of 12 months.

However there are cultural considerations that have shone through these results.  Asian firms are far more reticent to embrace social media

Aude Lagorce of MarketWatch believes that the reasons behind Asian firms’ slow digital adoption are numerous, complex and vary by geography and industry, but at the root, they are cultural.

Setting up a page on Facebook or launching a corporate blog gives a firm a “face” with its stakeholders, helping to make it seem more approachable, caring and responsive.

This is a paradox given that Asians are early and passionate adopters of digital technology and social media platforms, particularly the home-grown variety.

But as  Kenneth Hong, LG’s global communications director explains: “The mentality in many Asian cultures is that you want to be in control, and taking risks, such as changing your communication strategy, using digital more is, well, risky.”

The hierarchical organisation of many Asian companies is based mainly on seniority and experience. As a result youthful enthusiasm and creativity find it difficult to flourish in such a conservative environment, which in turn hinders the adoption of social media in business.

To put it more bluntly, many of the senior executives are out of touch but do not wish to lose face in the boardroom by broaching a topic which they are not fully conversant with. And if  this digital leadership does not come from the top the lesser ranks are unlikely to blight their careers by raising the possibilities.

Similarly, online advertising spend in Asia lags behind the global trends although a primary reason is a doubt on the return on investment.

However there is a silver lining to the recent recession; it kick started a major advance in online advertising as it proved to be a low cost alternative to other more traditional media such as television. Asian companies were therefore more will to try it out.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Singapore's digital advertising spend jumped 26% in 2010 when compared to the previous year.

Burson-Marsteller’s study showed there was a 6 percent increase overall  in Fortune 100 companies using at least one social media platform. Among Asian companies the increase was 34 percent.

Related articles

• Why Asian firms are wary of social media (marketwatch.com)
• Burson-Marsteller unveils its Global Social Media Check-up (mumbrella.com.au)

Given The Fflick

Another Google acquisition in the bag, this time through its subsidiary, YouTube.  The company has reportedly paid $US10 million for fflick so are they investing in talent or an add-on tool/service?  Most reports suggest both.

YouTube's blog has announced:

" We were impressed by the technical talent, design instincts and entrepreneurial spirit of the Fflick team. As part of YouTube, the Fflick team will help us build features to connect you with the great videos talked about all over the web, and surface the best of those conversations for you to participate in."

It is interesting to note how the social media talent pool ebbs and flows between products. fflick for instance was founded by four former Digg employees.

fflick uses Twitter to analyse and organises comments about movies.  Sentiment analysis is potentially big business and fflick technology could be equally deployed across domains and verticals, anywhere where there is data.

Products, news, restaurants, TV shows, are but a few of the categories where a sentiment analysis can play a role so expect to see Google capitalise fully on its potential. They are aiming to add  a social layer to their products and fflick fits the bill.

Related articles

• Google to Buy fflick for $10 Million [REPORT] (mashable.com)
• Google Prepares To Buy Twitter Based 'Sentiment Analyst' fflick (paidcontent.org)
• Google snags Twitter movie recommender Fflick for $10M (venturebeat.com)

More Just Like To Watch

Social networks continue to grow at an exponential rate but quantity does not necessarily equate to quality.

Social technographics data from Forrester Research shows a growing disparity in numbers between those that join and those who actually contribute or critique content.

Forrester uses these categories in their analysis: Creators, Conversationalists, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives.

Their report summary highlights that while social technology behaviors are at the centre of many strategy discussions around the globe, the focus should be on the changes in consumers' adoption of these behaviors. Consumers continue to sign up for and interact on social networking sites, but other social behaviours that require creating content have seen no substantial growth in adoption since 2009. In fact, some behaviors have experienced attrition. In metropolitan China, for example, Joiners saw an increase of 18%, while Creators decreased by 3%.

For example, while a third of US online users watch video on YouTube only 10% of those surveyed actually upload their own videos to the site.

Reviewing the findings, Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb points out that "Creators" - those who record videos, post blog entries, write reviews and post comments to articles online - are less active this year than they were in 2009, with shrinking percentages of users in the majority of markets studied.

As can be seen from the chart above, Japan showed any growth in content creation, up two percentage points from the previous year while the others did not.

This is a concern as it would appear only existing Creators are contributing and there is little if any new perspectives being added.  As Forrester's Jackie Rousseau-Anderson puts it, "A lack of growth in this area translates into a lack of fresh ideas, content and perspectives."

Critics who provide ratings and reviews are also a declining group, recording flat or diminishing growth globally.

Spectators (the audience for the creators and Critics) are in the ascendant with Australia recording a 3% increase, Europe 4% and Japan 6%.

New users of social networks ("Joiners") records the biggest growth of any segment, with 8% growth in the U.S., 11% in the E.U., 3% in Japan, 11% in Australia and a whopping 18% in metropolitan China. 

Joiners are unlikely to immediately become Creators if they follow previous patterns of use.

So what are we to make of this diminishing 'gene pool' of creative talent in the blogosphere?  It represents an strategic option  for businesses with an online presence to become top of mind.

Given the dearth of content creation, the opportunity is to become the definitive source of knowledge and opinion, driving traffic back to a product or service online.

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• Changes in Social Technographics? (i-programmer.info)
• On Social Networks, Most Still Just Like to Watch (nytimes.com)

Social Australians And Positive Koreans

Image via Wikipedia

I have written before about the need to change the mindset that many CEO's have about the effectiveness of their corporate web site.

The belief that "we build it and they will come" simply does not hold water any more. The term "web site" in itself is very 1990's.

It is the "network" that should be referred to, as the principle of engagement and personal interaction is paramount in building the brand and online buzz.

Being online where your market is should be the primary goal. The principal focus now should be on social media and any corporate web site should also have social media capability.

Nielsen reports that social media now dominates Asia Pacific internet usage:

"Social media usage has seen unprecedented growth in Asia Pacific in the past year and is now one of the most critical trends in the online sector."

The survey found that three of the seven biggest global online brands are social media sites – Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube.

Close to three quarters of the world’s Internet population (74%) have now visited a social networking/blogging site, and Internet users are spending an average of almost six hours per month on social media sites. "

Some Key Findings:

• Koreans are most likely to relay positive comments in any review while the Chinese are most likely to to focus on the negative
• The Koreans are one of the most social engaged in the world
• The Japanese are the world's most avid bloggers and the percentage of twitter users in Japan now surpasses the States
• The Chinese admire grass root celebrities and track them.  The bulletin board is still a dominant platform
• Social media games are big in China and drive new users to to sign on.
• In India Facebook is rapidly making up ground on Orkut as the platform of choice for social networking

But it is the Australians who are the worlds most socially engaged .  Their focus is communities of interest, which explains why 62% of Aussies visited a forum or message board in 2009.  The professional network platform LinkedIn experienced 99% growth in a single year

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• Facebook a threat to Orkut''s market share in India (ciol.com)
• Social networks and blogs influence buyers (newstatesman.com)
• Facebook, Twitter powerful business tools - research group (technology.inquirer.net)
• China group says U.S. uses Facebook to sow unrest (theglobeandmail.com)
• Wildcat: Social Networks/Blogs Now Account for One in Every Four and a Half Minutes Online | Nielsen Wire (nielsen.com)

Two Billion YouTube Videos Viewed Daily

YouTube celebrates its fifth year with a record 2 billion video views per day; yes that's 'per day' not 'per month'.

As they are at pains to point out "that’s nearly double the prime-time audience of all three major U.S. television networks combined."

Interestingly the site is ranked second in Saudi Arabia and fourth in the USA for traffic and according to Alexa, the greatest amount of viewing takes place from school.

 Source: YouTube

The other interesting fact about YouTube is its symbiotic relationship with Facebook which delivers 10% of its unique visitors.

The next step in the evolution of YouTube will be to get into livestreaming with platforms such as Livestream already showing the way.

I am a great fan of Livestream and recommend that people sign up for a free account to get the feel of its studio and channel capabilties.  The potential is for a far more professional media offering than an embedded YouTube video.

It is however worth while checking out YouTube's Channel 4

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• Gravitas ties up with YouTube to offer 500 films (newstatesman.com)
• YouTube Has 5 Year Birthday, Hits 2 Billion Views Per Day (rev2.org)