2 Million More Australians Go Social in 2009
Comscore recently released the results of their study on social networking usage in Australia, which found that more than 70 percent of Internet users in Australia visited a social networking site in June, up 29 percent from the previous year:
Nearly 9 million Australians visited a social networking site in June, making it one of the most popular content categories on the Web. Facebook led as the most visited social networking destination with more than 6 million visitors and growing 95 percent from the previous year. MySpace Sites ranked second with 3.5 million visitors, up 5 percent, followed by Windows Live Profile with nearly 2 million visitors. Twitter witnessed the most substantial growth, surging to 800,000 visitors in June, up from just 13,000 visitors a year ago. Orkut also achieved significant growth reaching 252,000 visitors, up 607 percent.
| Top Social Networking Sites in Australia Based on Unique Visitors June 2009 Total Australian Internet Audience*, Age 15+ – Home & Work Locations Source: comScore World Metrix |
|||
| Total Unique Visitors (000) | |||
| Jun-08 | Jun-09 | % Change | |
| Total Internet : Total Audience | 11,044 | 12,386 | 12 |
| Social Networking | 6,862 | 8,857 | 29 |
| FACEBOOK.COM | 3,125 | 6,102 | 95 |
| MySpace Sites | 3,369 | 3,530 | 5 |
| Windows Live Profile | N/A | 1,962 | N/A |
| Bebo | 1,627 | 1,475 | -9 |
| TWITTER.COM | 13 | 800 | 6,122 |
| DEVIANTART.COM | 259 | 505 | 95 |
| DIGG.COM | 329 | 494 | 50 |
| TAGGED.COM | 246 | 475 | 93 |
| Buzznet | 269 | 409 | 52 |
| Orkut | 36 | 252 | 60 |
As Newlight’s digital strategy guy, I’m constantly talking to clients about the importance of these numbers. And I’m still hearing people say things like “I don’t know where they get the time to use Twitter” or “people who live on Facebook have no life”.
Well those things may be true. Maybe you’re right and years from now you’ll be able to say “I told you so”. In the meantime, whether you agree with it or not, your customers are spending an increasing amount of their time on Facebook and Twitter (and, by the way, less time reading the newspaper, magazines, listening to radio and watching TV) and if you aren’t communicating with them on those platforms every day, then perhaps your competitors are.
By the way, have you protected your brand on those platforms yet? We’ve had a number of clients go to set up the Twitter page for their company or product, only to find out someone beat them to it. And it could be a long, expensive slog to get control of those brands back.
Don’t let that happen to you.
Having a Facebook and Twitter account for your company are a good start, but if they aren’t part of a comprehensive and forward-looking digital strategy that incorporates an understanding of social media marketing, they probably won’t be very effective. There are some great examples of companies using social media marketing to actually drive sales. Come along to one of our upcoming pizza and beer nights and we’ll show you how they did it.
