A cracking set of data arrived on my radar today - the Nielsen Q3 2011 Social Media Report.
The key findings being:
- Social networks and blogs continue to dominate time online, now accounting for nearly a quarter of total time spent on the Internet.
- Social media has grown rapidly - today nearly 4 in 5 active Internet users visit social networks and blogs.
- Close to 40% of social media users access social media content from their mobile phone.
- Social networking apps are the third most-used among smartphone owners.
- Internet users over the age of 55 are driving the growth of social networking through the Mobile internet.
- Although a larger number of women view online video on social networks and blogs men are the heaviest online video users overall streaming more videos and watching them for longer.
- 70% of active online adult social networkers shop online, 12% more likely than the average adult Internet user.
- 53% of active adult social networkers follow a brand, while 32% follow a celebrity
- Across a snapshot of 10 major global markets, social networks and blogs reach over three-quarters of active Internet users.
- Tumblr is an emgering platform with an amazing growth rate.
This is positive news for the social media industry and if we combine that with another interesting article from emarketer As Social Spending Rises, Which Metrics Are CMOs Focusing On? we can start to see a shift in the mentality of the cheque writing CMOs.
Two highly interesting statistics being:
"As of August 2011, marketers were spending an average of 7.1% of their marketing budgets on social media and planned to increase that to 10.1% in the next 12 months. Within five years, marketers expect social media to account for 17.5% of marketing budgets."
"Meanwhile, use of sales levels as a metric dropped from 17.9% of respondents in 2010 to 13.3% in 2011, and fewer also measured revenue per customer, with only 9.6% of respondents highlighting that option this year, down from 17.2% in 2010."
This shift is good, the move towards a more customer relationship view of social media is a good trend and long may it continue.