The Psychology of Sharing
We share a lot online, almost to the point where it feels excessive. Is it vanity, self-expression, or more?
It turns out there isn’t just one type of sharer on the Internet. People share information with others for a number of reasons, at various times during the day, and with differing intents. And people even choose not to share things they’re too embarrassed or scared to share.
To understand why people share online, we pulled up all of the latest and greatest studies on the arena. Here’s what we found.
New Trends in Privacy Management on Social Media Sites
Social network users are becoming more active in pruning and managing their accounts. Women and younger users tend to unfriend more than others.
About two-thirds of internet users use social networking sites (SNS) and all the major metrics for profile management are up, compared to 2009: 63% of them have deleted people from their “friends” lists, up from 56% in 2009; 44% have deleted comments made by others on their profile; and 37% have removed their names from photos that were tagged to identify them.
Some 67% of women who maintain a profile say they have deleted people from their network, compared with 58% of men. Likewise, young adults are more active unfrienders when compared with older users.
A majority of social network site users – 58% – restrict access to their profiles and women are significantly more likely to choose private settings.
More than half of social networking site users (58%) say their main profile is set to private so that only friends can see it; 19% set their profile to partially private so that friends of friends can view it; and 20% say their main profile is set to be completely public. Women who use SNS are more likely than men to set the highest restrictions (67% vs. 48%).
Half of SNS users say they have some difficulty in managing privacy controls, but just 2% say it is “very difficult” to use the controls. Those with the most education report the most trouble.
AD AGENCIES STRUGGING TO EVOLVE IN DIGITAL AGE
Clearly, there are many new challenges in the agency business relative to client/agency relationship management, account servicing, performance measurement, and accountability. In addition, a great deal of new contenders are keen to displace ad agencies in taking a strategic leadership role by helping global marketers embrace integrated, multi-channel digital marketing practices that blend both offline and online elements for greater market impact, engagement, and response.
How To Create A Triple-Threat Content Strategy With Twitter, Tumblr, and Your Content
Written by Lexi Lewtan a blogger in New York City for the Content Strategist.
Any brand with a decent digital strategy is currently interacting with readers on a couple different digital platforms.
But while certain updates, like newsletters, work independently, there are other platforms that work beautifully in tandem. Instead of updating these accounts in isolation, each interaction helps grow the other ones.
Our favorite platform partnership is the Twitter-Tumblr-Content approach. Because the three mediums vary in formality and length, they bounce off each other quite well.
Here’s how to use the three platforms together — and to make sparks fly….Continue reading
Retailers Shut Facebook Storefonts Amid Apathy
Excerpted from Bloomberg By Ashley Lutz - Feb 17, 2012 12:00 AM ET
Last April, Gamestop Corp. (GME) opened a store on Facebook to generate sales among the 3.5 million-plus customers who’d declared themselves “fans” of the video game retailer. Six months later, the store was quietly shuttered.
Gamestop has company. Over the past year, Gap Inc., J.C. Penney (JCP) Co. and Nordstrom (JWN) Inc. have all opened and closed storefronts on Facebook Inc.’s (FB) social networking site.
Facebook, which this month filed for an initial public offering, has sought to be a top shopping destination for its 845 million members. The stores’ quick failure shows that the Menlo Park, California-based social network doesn’t drive commerce and casts doubt on its value for retailers, said Sucharita Mulpuru, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts…Continue reading at Bloomberg
Ogilvy & Mather Staffs Up in Social Media and Youth Marketing
By STUART ELLIOTT for the New York Times February 13, 2012, 9:00 AM
One of the biggest advertising agencies, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, is starting practice units that are devoted to helping clients navigate two areas that are rewarding but confusing: social media and youth marketing.
Ogilvy & Mather, which is part of WPP, the world’s largest ad-agency holding company, is to announce the formation of the social media unit, called Social@Ogilvy, on Monday morning.
The other unit, Ogilvy Youth, is in a nascent stage, or, in keeping with the vernacular of younger consumers, “in beta.”
The new units join others at Ogilvy & Mather that are devoted to areas like cross-cultural marketing (OgilvyCulture). The formation of the units is indicative of efforts by large ad agencies to adapt to the rapidly changing needs of marketer clients, who must grapple with the seemingly continuous changes in consumer behavior.
“Thinking across the disciplines is critical,” said Miles Young, global chief executive at Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide in New York. “You have to redesign your agency around content and domains.” …blah, blah blah
Click here to continue reading.
For even more laughs, click here to see the “tragically hip” Ogilvy Youth Tumblr
How Americans Use Their Phones to Assist With Purchasing Decisions
Image : DiverseImages
More than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store during the 2011 holiday season to seek help with purchasing decisions. During a 30 day period before and after Christmas:
- 38% of cell owners used their phone to call a friend while they were in a store for advice about a purchase they were considering making
- 24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store
- 25% of adult cell owners used their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else
Taken together, just over half (52%) of all adult cell owners used their phone for at least one of these three reasons over the holiday shopping season and one third (33%) used their phone specifically for online information while inside a physical store—either product reviews or pricing information.
Detailed findings—online product reviews and calling friends for purchasing advice
There are a number of demographic patterns in these survey findings. Specifically:
- Cell owners ages 18-49 are significantly more likely to use their phones for online product reviews than are cell owners ages 50 and older. Cell owners ages 65 and older are especially unlikely to do this—just 4% did so this holiday season.
- Urban and suburban cell owners are roughly twice as likely as rural cell owners to have recently used their phone to look up online reviews of a product they found in a physical store.
- Non-white cell owners are more likely than white cell owners to look up online product reviews, and those who have attended college are more likely to do so than those who have not.
Brands Want Content Curator Jobs
Digital media has emboldened many brands to consider themselves publishers. After all, American Express has credibility on financial matters and Coke has a network 36 million Facebook fans. Who needs publishers to serve as intermediaries?
The problem is publishing is a lot harder than it looks, or rather it’s a lot harder to do it with the consistency, day after day, that’s needed to build a long-term audience. That’s leading some brands to hook onto the idea that their role lies more in the curation of content.
Curation is the vogue digital term for the ability to not only aggregate and distribute carefully selected information, but also to provide a unique voice on top of the original pieces of information. In the age of Twitter and Facebook, it seems like all the world is curators now. Brands want in on the action.
Brands are trying to establish themselves as trusted sources of information. Hop onto Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr, and you’ll see brands that gather up articles from all sorts of publications and push them out to their followers. For example, look at IBM’s Tumblr, A Smarter Planet, which is a stream of curated content focused on areas of Big Blue’s core competencies. Or there’s American Express’ Open Forum Tumblr (yes, Tumblr is apparently a good platform for curation) that has cultivated a business community online by providing relevant tools and information to help business owners succeed.
“If a brand is an expert in a certain topic, their reputation might make them a credible source of information,” said Neil Chase, svp of editing and publishing at Federated Media. “But if a company that makes toasters gives health advice, they might not be credible. If they’re sending out recipes, that’s a reason to trust them.”
