June 23, 2011
Minority Children & Media: A Racial Discrepancy
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that youth spend more time using media than any other activity in their day. And for some reason I had always assumed that kids consume media targeted towards them pretty evenly regardless of their race and ethnicity. This 2011 Northwestern University study did a very succinct job of telling me I was totally wrong.
Turns out minorities consume an average of four and half more hours of media a day than their white counterparts (most of it in television). “Four and half HOURS?!” I thought. I wish I could find time to watch America’s Got Talent let alone an unabridged DVD of Lord of the Rings!
Now, admittedly, this study would require hundreds of pages from many other studies to provide a comprehensive analysis on this sensitive topic. There’s no way I can possibly try to tackle all the reasons why this racial discrepancy exists, but I can offer you the study’s highlights:
• Minority youth consume four and a half more hours of media daily than White youth even after adjustment for socio-economic status
• The smallest discrepancy is for video games, with minority youth only playing half an hour more per day than White youth
• 84% of Black youth, 77% of Asian youth, and 64% of White youth have a TV in their bedroom respectively
Filed under: Uncategorized
Tags: Media, Northwestern University, Race, Research
May 24, 2011
All views are not created equal: How to make sure your digital content hits its target
An eyeball is an eyeball is an eyeball. Falser words were never spoken. Every time I hear someone brag about the success of their digital creative by pointing simply to the number of fans they have on Facebook as proof, I want to poke mine out. Sure, determining the impact (and value) of “engagement” with digital content in social media is still tricky, but when it comes to measuring exposure to content through social media campaigns, old rules still apply – the quality of eyeballs can’t be overlooked.
A recent post column in AdAge (Sorry, but Counting Facebook ‘Fans’ or Video Views Won’t Help Your Brand), correctly identifies a troublesome practice that too many marketers follow – using topline metrics like the quantity of Facebook fans or video views as the only measures of success rather than also considering the quality of these impressions and engagements. It’s this question of quantity versus quality on which the effective analysis of social media impact hinges.
A look at our analysis of traditional media metrics is instructive. We needn’t necessarily change how we look at data when it comes to examining quality of impressions. Neilson and other auditing systems allow us to look at demographic information to see how efficient our ads have been in reaching the desired target audience in traditional media. In much the same way, many of the major social media platforms now offer a tremendous amount of data about users who engage with our content. Facebook and YouTube insights offer demographic information on fans as well as viewers of ads. Twitter has been the slowest to offer robust analytics, but recently announced intentions to do so in the near future. (more…)
Filed under: Communications, Research and Evaluation, Social Media
Tags: evaluation, facebook, Research, Social Media
April 17, 2011
The Weekend Worker Gets the Worm
Buddy Media recently released “Strategies For Effective Facebook Wall Posts: A Statistical Review.” As stated in their blog:
“We analyzed all Facebook Wall posts from the Buddy Media Platform by a sample size of more than 200 clients over a two week period: January 30, 2011 – February 12, 2011. “Likes” and comments made to these posts were also analyzed.
This sample size represents the world’s largest brands in the entertainment, media, retail, automotive, business and finance, fashion, food and beverage, healthcare and beauty and travel and hospitality industries.”
One of most interesting findings was that brands miss out on a lot of action by not posting on the weekends or after work hours. As stated in the report: “Brands that posted outside of normal business hours had 20% higher engagement rates on their posts.”
The question here is — are people more active at these times because that’s when they aren’t overwhelmed by brands? If all brands get hip to the weekend action could this change? Whatever the case, I say we should benefit from this new insight while we can.
In addition to posting on the weekends, the study found that posting near the end of the work week – Thursdays and Fridays – is also more effective. So don’t post your best content for the week on Monday, drop the big news later in the week, or Sunday, if the time peg allows.
Suddenly community managers’ hours are looking more like the service and entertainment industry, which makes sense. I know that scheduling posts may sound like a good solution here, but I think that’s not ideal. Because it’s engagement we are after, posting and then responding in real-time to those who engage is key.
Another interesting finding was that you need to ask for what you want. Imagine that! It sounds so obvious, but not a lot of people do it, including myself. So may I say now, like the Ad Council on Facebook, comment on this blog, follow us on Twitter, please and thank you!
Finally, I believe what could be the best way to pump-up engagement is to have more interactive opportunities on your Facebook page through developing custom pages. This is exactly what Buddy Media does. Recently Buddy Media has become a partner of the Ad Council and taken another step towards becoming an affordable tool for social marketers. So if enough of us get on board, the next report could give us specific results for nonprofits and the like. In this respect, I find Buddy Media to be the biggest finding.
Filed under: Research and Evaluation, Social Media
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