Posts Tagged "Research & Trends"
Everyone’s a celebrity: 10 pop culture trends that defined the decade
Celebrity is no longer reserved for the select few that walk red carpet and get stalked by paparazzi. The era of social celebrity is here and continues to draw attention. A recent CBC News post by Greig Dymond highlighted 10 terrific examples of this trend — where, thanks to social media, anyone among us can reach celebrity status.
This was the decade when everyone became a celebrity. Well, almost everyone.
The past 10 years didn’t invent the concept of celebrity; they just broadened the definition of the term to a ridiculous extent. More people than ever have achieved some minor level of notoriety. As the film The Truman Show shrewdly predicted back in 1998, voyeurism and technology are the twin engines that propelled this shift.
Just ask Richard Heene, now-famous (and infamous) father of the “balloon boy.” His story — a twisted amalgam of reality TV, fame-whoring, all-news channel coverage and breathless tweets — couldn’t have happened in quite the same way 10 years ago. The lines between entertainment, personal narrative and news have become irrevocably blurred.
Here are what he lists as the 10 pop culture trends that shaped the decade.
1. Reality TV
2. YouTube and the art of the viral video
3. Celebrity gawking, 21st-century style
4. The iPod killed the CD star
5. Newspapers in jeopardy
6. Auto-Tune
7. Twitter, Facebook and the explosion of social media
8. The rise of U.S. cable dramas
9. Guitar Hero/Rock Band
10. The rise of “fake news”
Check our the complete descriptions of each trend by reading the full article. Some video clips for each trend can be found here:
Reality TV
YouTube and the art of the viral video
The iPod killed the CD star
Auto-Tune
Guitar Hero/Rock Band
Read MoreDo you want to be a Professional Tweeter?
More and more companies are using Twitter as part of their social media and marketing efforts to communicate with their customers, build rapport, gather consumer-generated ideas and fix consumer complaints. And with that, there has risen a need for Professional Twitters.
According to a survey by Nielsen, Twitter experienced an impressive 1382% growth in the US in the last year, making it the fastest growing network by far. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama. There are over 200,000,000 million bloggers of which 54% are Tweeting daily. So more and more companies are posting job opportunities for the position of the Company Twitterer.
So what would the job requirements look like? Start with experience Twittering and a large following of followers. 850 followers is considered a modest number of followers. Another plus would be experience in handling customers. Personality is key as one of the most important aspects of a great Twitterer is a digital personality. And one should also have a working knowledge of the importance of branding since you in effect would be the brand spokesperson. Excellent writing skills and the ability to hone pithy statements down to 140 characters is also essential. You should also be a quick thinker as things in the Twittersphere happen at lightening speed. Endurance is also critical as the Twittersphere never sleeps. Can you be “on” 24/7 for a global company? One professional Twitter claims that if you don’t respond within 3-4 hours, you might as well not respond at all.
To help you with your Twittering, there are over 140+ Twitter tools out there to help you but the following are the top favorites.
Tweetdeck:
Tweetdeck is a stream management system that allows you to shorten links, upload pictures instantly and give you many ways you manage your Twitter stream.
TweetLater:
TweetLater lets you schedule Tweets and automate things like following people who are following you and send an automatic thank you.
TwitPic:
With TwitPic you can post pictures at the speed of light.
TwitScoop:
Twitter is often beating new channels to the scoop. With TwitScoop, you can watch trends that are happening on Twitter in real time.
TweetBeep:
TweetBeep can ease your keeping up with the Twittersphere by notifying you when someone mentions one of the words or phrases you’re watching.
Intel CMO on Future of Web and Media
This video discusses the changing face of media, technology, TV and what future consumers will see because of the innovation that companies like Intel and others are creating today. Matt Kelly caught Sean Maloney, chief sales and marketing officer for Intel. (Watch this video and read the full article on HowStuffWorks.com)
Read MoreSocial Media, Web 2.0 And Internet Stats
I came across a terrific post from Adam Singer listing some mind-blowing statistics. These numbers tell a very powerful story about the power of Social Media.
As our digital and physical lives blur further, the internet has become the information hub where people spend a majority of their time learning, playing and communicating with others globally.
Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of just how staggering the numbers are of people collaborating, researching, and interacting on the web.
Google search stats:
1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) - approximate number of unique URLs in Google’s index (source)
2,000,000,000 (two billion) – very rough number of Google searches daily (source)
$110,000,000 – approximately amount of money lost by Google annually due to the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button (source)
24,400 – number of people employed by Google (December, 2008)
68,000,000 – the average number of times people Googled the word Google each month for the last year (source: keyword tool)
$39.96 - the average cost per click for the phrase “consolidation of school loans” in AdWords (source: keyword tool)
1,430,000 - the number of Google results for “Robert Scoble”
136,000 - the number of Google results for “Admiral Ackbar”
Wikipedia stats
2,695,205 - the number of articles in English on Wikipedia
684,000,000 – the number of visitors to Wikipedia in the last year
75,000 - the number of active contributors to Wikipedia
10,000,000 – the number of total articles in Wikipedia in all languages
260 – the number of languages articles have been written in on Wikipedia
(source)
YouTube stats
70,000,000 – number of total videos on YouTube (March 2008)
200,000 – number of video publishers on YouTube (March 2008)
100,000,000 – number of YouTube videos viewed per day (this stat from 2006 is the most recent I could locate)
112,486,327 – number of views the most viewed video on YouTube has (January, 2009)
2 minutes 46.17 seconds – average length of video
412.3 years – length in time it would take to view all content on YouTube (March 2008)
26.57 - average age of uploader
13 hours – amount of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
US $1.65 billion in Google stock – amount Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for in October 2006
$1,000,000 – YouTube’s estimated bandwidth costs per day
Blogosphere stats
133,000,000 – number of blogs indexed by Technorati since 2002
346,000,000 – number of people globally who read blogs (comScore March 2008)
900,000 – average number of blog posts in a 24 hour period
1,750,000 – number of RSS subscribers to TechCrunch, the most popular Technology blog (January 2009)
77% - percentage of active Internet users who read blogs
55% – percentage of the blogosphere that drinks more than 2 cups of coffee per day (source)
81 - number of languages represented in the blogosphere
59% – percentage of bloggers who have been blogging for at least 2 years
Twitter stats
1,111,991,000 – number of Tweets to date (see an up to the minute count here)
3,000,000 – number of Tweets/day(March 2008) (from TechCrunch)
165,414 - number of followers of the most popular Twitter user (@BarackObama) – but he’s not active
86,078 – number of followers of the most active Twitter user (@kevinrose)
63% – percentage of Twitter users that are male (from Time)
Facebook stats
200,000,000 – number of active users
100,000,000 - number of users who log on to Facebook at least once each day
170 - number of countries/territories that use Facebook
35 - number of different languages used on Facebook
2,600,000,000 – number of minutes global users in aggregate spend on Facebook daily
100 – number of friends the average user has
700,000,000 – number of photos added to Facebook monthly
52,000 – number of applications currently available on Facebook
140 - number of new applications added per day
Digg stats
236,000,000 – number of visitors attracted annually by 2008 (according to a Compete survey)
56% - percentage of Digg’s frontpage content allegedly controlled by top 100 users
124,340 - number of stories MrBabyMan, the number one user, has Dugg (see updated number here)
612 - number of stories from Cracked.com that have made page 1 of Digg (see all 41 pages of them here)
36,925 – number of Diggs the most popular story in the last 365 days has received (see story here)
Read MoreMarketers, your audience has a big head start…
I attended the Philadelphia American Marketing Association meeting and award ceremony last night in Center City and met some of the most talented marketers in the area. The Keynote speaker was John Owens of ING Bank who concentrated on the importance of social media and marketing. He stressed that it is not going away and you need to be a part of it. He’s absolutely right! ING has a team dedicated to social networking and is brand that “gets it.” As marketing consultants, we have the ultimate responsibility of strategizing, managing and measuring our client’s campaigns in the most effective and efficient way possible. We also tend to gravitate towards media that we’re comfortable with. Time to step out of your comfort zone!
At one point in the presentation Owens kindly asked everyone to stand and cluck like a chicken – which most did (including me, I hate to admit). The point he was trying to make, an extremely valid one and one my father always reinforced (as a Naval Officer), was “never follow.” It’s the easiest way to run your ship aground! Of course, that’s a great life lesson as well but with regards to social media, what works for one brand might not work for yours or your audience. Your efforts must be customized. I know you’re saying “yeah, yeah, yeah, Meg…we know that…nothing new here.” Here’s the kicker, you’re not in control anymore! Your audience is. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be. They are the driving force now and your efforts must be customized to how they want to receive information.
My best advice is to listen. If you didn’t hear that…I said LISTEN! So what the hell does that mean, Meg? It means that your customers/clients/supporters/haters are out there talking about you/your products/your industry/your brand right now. They’re praising you. Hating you. Referring you. Comparing you. You need to know what they’re saying. So listen! There are many free applications out there to do just that. Try Addictomatic.com where you can plug in keywords and see where conversations are happening relative to that word(s). Or buy a “listening” application that is more robust like Radian6 that can measure sentiment, tell you if most people are mentioning you in blogs or on Facebook or Twitter. As marketers, I don’t have to tell you how valuable this knowledge is!
In the end, it all comes down to ROI. With social networking, it’s not as easy as tracking a lead from a website to a sale and generating a cost-per-lead/cost-per-sale. With social networking, you have to determine what a “win” is for your company. Is it exposure that your company otherwise could have never afforded? Is it market research – identifying trends in your target markets? Is it driving traffic? Engaging your consumers? The ultimate “win” is a sale – no doubt – but folks, again, you need to be doing this so don’t use ROI as an excuse. Pick a win and go with it. You don’t have a choice anymore! If you build it, they will not come! You need to go to them and they have quite a head start on you!
Contributed by Meg Ferguson
Read MoreAbout Me
Proud father, devoted husband, Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Big Fuel, a full-service marketing and communications company based in New York that takes brands from Content To Commerce.
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