Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Global Web Index (GWI) has released their annual report detailing the difference in media consumption behaviors from consumers. It examines how media consumption is evolving globally, across age groups, and between countries. It also gives insight into how traditional media forms, like radio, television, and press, differ from those online.

Consumers were asked to estimate how much time they devoted daily to the following activities: internet usage (PC, laptop, tablet), television, radio (traditional or online), press (traditional print and online), gaming (via consoles), and social networking.

On a typical day, internet users now spend over six hours online.

Smartphones are becoming ever more prominent within this; since 2012, daily time using the mobile web has jumped from 1.24 to 2.01 hours, with the share of internet time captured by smartphones rising from 22% to 33%. In regard to age, 16-24s are the heaviest daily users of the mobile web, clocking up 3.25 hours.Compare this to the 55-64 age group who only clocks a modest 0.58 hours and we can begin to understand why mobile usage is on the rise: the younger generation enjoys their mobile devices....

...Businesses are using social media, but consumers don’t seem to be taking much notice, a new study by customer experience strategy, design and research company Fifth Quadrant has found, with businesses blamed for not being where the customer is.

The report titled ‘Emerging Consumer Channels: Social Media, Web Chat and Smartphone Apps’ has found that more than two-thirds of businesses were using some form of social media to communicate with customers, but only one third of those customers using the channel returned over the past three months. The issue seems to lie in which sites are popular with consumers versus which sites businesses are predominantly using, suggests the report....

A recent study shows that fewer than one-third of big brands that have Twitter accounts answer customer tweets. They interact more on Instagram or Pinterest....

"Leaving a tweet unanswered is more damaging than not having a Twitter profile at all, but many businesses learn this lesson too late," he says.

Even more confounding is that Twitter seems to be alone among social networks in that regard. Though fewer retailers are active on Pinterest and Instagram, most of the ones that have active accounts on those networks regularly interact with customers.

So what's the reason so many tweets directed at retailers engender no reply? Social media experts have a few theories....

Each new year offers new possibilities, and considering that so much happened in 2012, it's a good time to think about what the next twelve months will bring us.

There are so many different areas that you could cover, but here are what I believe will be the trends that will define social media in 2013:

-       Return of location

-       Reclaiming of data

-       Improved image editors

-       Focus on retention, not growth

-       Foundations for social research

-       Rise of augmented reality.

...The lack of consistent correspondence between Twitter reaction and public opinion is partly a reflection of the fact that those who get news on Twitter – and particularly those who tweet news – are very different demographically from the public.

The overall reach of Twitter is modest. In the Pew Research Center’s 2012 biennial news consumption survey, just 13% of adults said they ever use Twitter or read Twitter messages; only 3% said they regularly or sometimes tweet or retweet news or news headlines on Twitter.

Twitter users are not representative of the public. Most notably, Twitter users are considerably younger than the general public and more likely to be Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party. In the 2012 news consumption survey, half (50%) of adults who said they posted news on Twitter were younger than 30, compared with 23% of all adults. And 57% of those who posted news on Twitter were either Democrats or leaned Democratic, compared with 46% of the general public. (Another recent Pew Research Center survey provides even more detail on who uses Twitter and other social media.)...