Back in September I went to a presentation of the Global Web Index, a research service providing leading edge data, insights and thinking on web behaviour, social media, motivations and impact from 16 key markets and 32,000 consumer surveys. It was thoroughly interesting stuff as it reminded me, importantly, that whilst the digerati here in London might be at the cutting ede of digital and social media most people around the world aren’t. The data was fascinating as it reinforced what people across the world actually use the social web for and guess what; it ain’t Twitter!…It’s not even social networking, actually. Turns out video sits pretty as the most popular social web activity, along with webmail, using forums and chatting on instant messaging clients.
Future Web, Global Web Index, 23rd Of September. Global Social Media Trends.
Moreover, if you begin to break all of the Global Web Index data down by age, demographic, nationality and you begin to see all sorts of eye-brow raising things that reinforce the fact that *gasp* Twitter isn’t the start and end of social media. Joking aside, what is important to take away from this is that it is so so so SO important to bear all of this data in mind when you are considering the type of social media campaign you want to run. Don’t decide you want to build a mega-hyper-super-vampire app for Facebook if your target audience are actually all watching videos on YouTube and don’t set up 17 Twitter accounts from various members of your brand if your audience are all sharing photos on Flickr.
What the Global Web Index presentation did was serve as a wonderful reminder that great social media ideas start with having a well defined target audience and understanding THEIR behaviours, not deciding what behaviours you want them to assume. We can all sometimes be a little guilty of getting carried away with the latest technology, as early adopters, and forget the long tail of mass adopters and what it is that they need from a brand.
