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Social Media in Australia Introduction Social media is evolving and growing from strength to strength. However, at Results 2Day, we often hear a number of objections to using social media as a source to garner information for Australian businesses. Perhaps there is still a level of uncertainly regarding how usable and reliable social media information is for Australian businesses. In this e-­‐book, we will attempt to answer some of those skeptical opinions. We reviewed a number of surveys including the most recent Australian Yellow Pages survey entitled: YellowTM Social Media Report 2014 to address the following skeptical opinions: 1. Social media is not representative of the whole market, it is used primarily by young people, which skews the information retrieved 2. Many people use social media worldwide, however, most users are from the U.S. very few Australians use social media 3. Most Australian social media usage is Facebook and privacy settings do not allow us to scrape this information. 4. There is no value in a follow/like. My type of business is not one that people are interested in liking/following. 5. The primary reason that Australians use social media is to talk to friends and therefore little business information exists 6. Very few Australians use social media to research products and services 7. Social media is for building awareness, not for increasing sales We hope you find the answers interesting. Whilst some of the negative assumptions are true, others are not at all. 1 www.results2day.com.au
OPINION 1 Social media is not representative of the whole market, it is primarily used by young people. We hear this opinion often, therefore the table below is surprising, since it indicates the majority of Australian social media users are aged above 40. source: Yellow Pages
20% of Australian internet users aged 65+ access social media daily source: Yellow Pages
The table below further splits Australian users into age groups and social network sites source: Yellow Pages
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OPINION 2 Many people use social media worldwide, however, most users are from the U.S. very few Australians use social media. “Among Internet users, some 69% use social networking sites such as
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, up from 65% last year.” (source: Yellow
Pages)
“As of January 2014, 74% of online [US] adults use social networking
sites” (source: Pew Research Centre)
In addition, there is a larger population in the US: 320 million*, versus Australian: 23 million**. Therefore, from these statistics, we can agree with this opinion. There is significantly more social media data from the U.S. than Australia. However, since 69% of Internet users in Australia, use social media, we can also assume that there is relevant Australian information available on social. This fact does emphasise the need to utilise a tool that garners only Australian information. Otherwise, the information could be misleading. The table below shows social media usage by state and social media site: source: Yellow Pages
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OPINION 3 Most Australian social media usage is Facebook and privacy settings do not allow us to scrape this information The table below attempts to answer this opinion and indicates the Australian usage of social media across different social networks. source: Yellow Pages
Source: EY Digital Australia: State of the Nation 2014. Consumer survey
Yes, it is true, that most Australian social media usage is Facebook, by a significant portion. However, there has been a small decline in Facebook usage and growth in other social media platforms (see the diagram below). The diagram below indicates the social networking sites change in usage over the last three years: 4 www.results2day.com.au
source: Yellow Pages
“Facebook continues to dominate as the most used social networking
site, being used by 95% of social networking participants, which was
unchanged in the past year. While Facebook was the most common social
networking site across all age demographics, the highest usage rates
were amongst those aged over 50, with those users not as likely to use
some of the newer platforms as their younger counterparts. “(source: Yellow
Pages )
So even though Facebook is the largest social media site used in Australia, the next question is, what proportion of users utilise Facebook for information on businesses/brands? The graph below shows how Australians use Facebook: Source: EY Digital Australia: State of the Nation 2014. Consumer survey
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Whilst Facebook is by far the largest proportion of social media usage in Australia, Results 2Day has found some very informative and useful information in forums, blogs and comments. For example, when looking for financial information, many Australians use these social sites to gather investment advice and guidance and reveal a great deal of information in the process. Lets see how different age groups use different social media sites: source: Yellow Pages
How do these figures compare to the US? Source: Statista 2015 As you can see, Australia has a higher Facebook usage per capita than the U.S., however, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram usage is higher in the U.S. than Australia. Although Facebook usage, is lower per capita in the US, this percentage is leveling off and the trend may indicate a decline in the future. 6 www.results2day.com.au
OPINION 4 There is no value in a follow/like. My type of business is not one that people are interested in liking/following The value of a like or follow is very difficult to quantify and is different for all businesses. Results 2Day suggests using links to your website to try and quantify how many people actually come from social media sites to learn more about your business. However, even this metric can sometimes be misleading. (See the statistics found in opinion 7. So lets see what consumers want from businesses/brands that they follow. The diagram below answers that very question: source: Yellow Pages
We can see that garnering likes and followers on Facebook may yield a return. From the graph above, we can see that 49% of Australian social media users want to obtain product information from those businesses they follow. In addition, from the graph in opinion 3 entitled “ How do you use Facebook?” 18% of Australians want to review or communicate with brands and another 18% want to learn more about brands. 7 www.results2day.com.au
Lets see if your buying demographic is following brands or businesses in the graph below: source: Yellow Pages
Is your business type one that is largely followed by social media users? The first diagram is Facebook business categories and the next is Twitter business categories: source: Yellow Pages
source: Yellow Pages
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OPINION 5 The primary reason that Australians use social media is to talk to friends and therefore little business information exists The table below highlights the reasons Australians use social media: source: Yellow Pages
Therefore the first part of opinion 5 is true. Australians do primarily use social media to catch up with friends and family. However, the next part of the opinion: therefore little business information exists … leads us to the next opinion… 9 www.results2day.com.au
OPINION 6 Very few Australians use social media to research products and services source: Yellow Pages
As we saw in the previous answer, the primary purpose for Australian's usage of social media is to connect with friends and family. However: "three in ten Australians use social media for commercial
purposes" (source: Yellow Pages)
In addition, there is a marked increase in social media usage to follow brands (14% increase) research product and services (8% increase) and provide reviews on products and services (nearly double). Lets see which types of businesses are researched through social media: 10 www.results2day.com.au
(source: Yellow Pages)
The table below shows types of businesses that were last searched for by survey participants: (source: Yellow Pages)
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OPINION 7 Social media is for building awareness, not for increasing sales. We hear this opinion often at Results 2Day. Therefore the information here is very interesting. (source: Yellow Pages)
There has been an increase in the use of social media usage for research that has lead to a purchase (5% increase). However interestingly, there has been a year on year decline in the resulting purchase being made online. Therefore businesses may not realise the correlation between social media and increased sales. Social media is now a significant path to purchase. Overall, 30% of
social media users report that they use social media to research products
and services that they want to buy, with 63% of those that use social
media to research purchases reporting that their last research resulted in
a purchase, up from 58% last year. Of those purchases, just under half
were made online, with the majority made “offline” highlighting the
importance of social media for “bricks and mortar” stores. (source: Yellow
Pages)
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Summary More than two thirds of Australian Internet users use social media (69%) and this is increasing. However, a large proportion of this use is Facebook, which is a difficult site to scrape for information due to privacy settings. However, there is a marked increase in Australians using social media to research products for purchase and place reviews, with three in ten Australian using social media for commercial purposes. This information indicates that there is commercial application for social media data in Australia and it is growing. If would like to learn more about how to start using social media for Enterprise Listening, you can read my blog: Getting Started with Enterprise Social Media Listening or contact Results 2Day at: [email protected] or (02) 8354 1554 *Australian Bureau of Statistics Population clock as at March 12, 2015 13 www.results2day.com.au
**United States Census Bureau population clock as at March 12, 2015 14