The Social Media Leap (ESOMAR, Berlin 2010)

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WM3 2010 PART 3 / MIGRATION OF TRADITIONAL TO DIGITAL?

THE SOCIAL MEDIA LEAP INTEGRATING SOCIAL MEDIA INTO MARKETING STRATEGY Karen Nelson-Field Gavin Klose BACKGROUND The concept of six degrees of separation is now three The rate of exponential growth in social media surpasses that of any media to date. Facebook alone, in one year, added over 200 million users (Qualman 2009). As at July 2010, from its humble beginnings only five years ago, it claims 500 million unique users. The numbers of unique users across all online social networks is estimated to climb to a staggering 1.971 billion by 2015 (Nuttney 2010) – that’s close to 30% of the world population in around a decade. By comparison television took 13 years to reach a mere 50 million (Qualman 2009). With numbers of unique visitors to social media sites growing by the millions nearly daily, it is not hard to understand why marketers are enamoured with the idea of social media as a staple in their media mix. From a consumer’s perspective such change is positive. We now live in a totally wireless world and have relative autonomy in terms of how we consume media. We can (24/7) subscribe to magazines online, podcast television content, live stream most radio stations and no longer need to wait until 6pm for the nightly news bulletin – we ‘google’ it. Andrew Green of IPSOS Media calls this change a shift from ‘Prime Time’ to ‘My Time’ (2010). Convenience and available technology are the catalyst to such change; our smartphones are now our lifeblood to news, information, entertainment and social happenings. Now we podcast, stream, blog, vlogg, upload, download, SMS and RSS all from the palm of our hand. In the 1950s we had to make an appointment to watch prescribed programming content. In the wake of such convenience, not surprisingly, concurrent media usage is increasing while time spent consuming different media varies considerably to balance time. For example, the time spent using mobile phones and the frequency of use varies significantly from that of traditional forms of media (television, radio or cinema) where usage is typically for a longer duration but with less frequency (Papper et al, 2004, Block, et al, 2009, Hess 2009). After all we still only have 24 hours in a day and actual time spent consuming media has remained relatively stable (an average of just over eight hours in 1999, 2005 and 2009) (Papper et al, 2005, Hess 2009). Apart from such obvious shifts in the way we consume media, the way in which we interact with it has also changed forever. We are no longer simply receivers; rather we are fascinated publishers, broadcasters, opinion leaders, sharers, researchers, advocators and voters. It is the concept of the connection generation (Pintado 2009) in that we crave interaction and connection to each other, to information, to ideas and experiences. Such interaction and connection could suggest that the concept of six degrees of separation is today only three. Copyright © ESOMAR 2010

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