Tag: social media study

Social media study sheds some light on the interests of consumers

Digital agency iAcquire recently partnered with SurveyMonkey, a market research firm, in order to shed some light on how people use social media. Years ago, as consumer electronics first began growing more popular, there were concerns that technology would lead to the society’s isolation from itself; people becoming more enthralled by technology and less integrated into their communities and society as a whole. The advent of mobile technology appears to have put those concerns to rest, as smartphones and tablets have enabled people to stay in constant contact with one another no matter where they are or what they are doing. Social media plays a major role in this constant connection.

Social media engagement increased 30 billion minutes between 2011 and 2012

According to a new study produced by iAcquire and SurveyMonkey, the time consumers spend engaged in social media has increased by 30 billion minutes from 2011 to 2012. The two firms have studied the way people use social media, tracking what they share, how they share, and what they search for. The firms also took note of age demographics and which of these demographics favored particular social networking sites.

Older consumers are more connected to social networks

According to the study, those between the ages of 18 and 29 favor Orkut, a social media site operated by Google. Reddit, DeviantArt, and Github follow closely behind. For those older than 30, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter are the most favored social networks. Facebook is not strictly preferred by either demographic, but is still used regularly. The study shows that social media is most prolific among those over the age of 30 and that the majority of all social media users, across all ages, do not use Facebook search or the search functions of other social networking sites.

Facebook begins slipping

The study shows that Facebook is beginning to lose traction with social media users, with its time engagement falling 4% between 2011 and 2012. During the same time, engagement in Google+ rose by 80% and engagement in Pinterest rose a staggering 1,000%. Social media behavior is expected to continue evolving, especially as social networks begin to focus more heavily on the mobile space as a way to engage a new generation of consumer.

A recent study has shown that the increased use of networks in India will soon cause the sector to take off.

Though social media marketing is already a tremendous affair in many parts of the world, it has yet to truly take off in India, where the network influence is still considered to be in its infancy.

A recent study has shown that the use of this communication is finally starting to take its first steps in that country.

That being said, it looks like Facebook is and will continue its dominance over social media marketing in the country. A recent report issued by the Internet and Mobile Association of India has revealed that among all users of social media in the country, 97 percent use Facebook. Moreover, the average frequency of use over mobile is every day of the week.

Though this isn’t surprising to many, social media marketing itself has yet to take off there.

These numbers may seem normal for many countries where Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others have already made themselves mainstream, but this is representing a considerable shift from previous years in India, says the founder of Brandologist, Saurabh Parmar, who is also a digital marketing professor.

At the same time, Parmar has questioned the accuracy of previous studies that have been performed regarding social media marketing and the use of the networks as a whole. In this most recent data from the Internet and Mobile Association of India, the data shows that there are 62 million users of social media as a whole in India. However, according to Facebook’s own data – not used in the study – there are 62 million Facebook users.

That would suggest that every single person who is using social media in India is also using Facebook, and it has called the accuracy of the study into doubt.

The study also placed Google+ as the second most popular place for consumers to be exposed to social media marketing. It said that approximately 35 percent of the number of network users are using that platform. However, Naga Chokkanathan pointed out that “If this is true, then this is a surprise. All along we were thinking that social media are dominated by people from big cities, and we have been targeting content, advertisements and offers for them.” Chokkanathan is a social media and customer experience management consultant.

All in all, what could be agreed upon is that there is a great deal of potential for social media marketing in India, and that the surface has only been scratched so far.