Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

I find myself using Facebook only a few times a week now. But when I use it, I now feel I get a great benefit from it, with only a little effort. It has not always been like this.

In the beginning I used Facebook every day, several times a day. It was important for me to study and understand the tool, as fast as possible and as extensive as possible. I’m a web professional so it was kind of mandatory…

After a while it all turned into a big overload. A time consuming activity with little real benefit. For a few months I was “all-out”.

Then (now), suddenly messages started popping up in my mailbox with a “normal” frequency and suddenly the messages were more relevant and tangible.

It seems like not only I, but also my friends and family, have matured in the use of Facebook. Gone are most of the “too much fun / spam” things, and suddenly it all got more relevant.

I use Facebook less, but get greater benefits than before, with less effort. So do obviously my friends and family. We all use the tool less, but more importantly we still use it, and we enjoy it more than before.

No wonder that the number of Facebook users in Norway are increasing again, after a few months with little or no real growth in numbers.

Social media like LinkedIn and Facebook provide for more segmented and relevant marketing, through their intensive and extensive mapping of personal interest.

Unfortunaltely, they are all focused on American standards and the English language, which are limiting the potensial results for e.g. Scandinavian advertisers.

Let me give som examples:

Linkedin.com segment their users in American business sizes. The interval 1-10 employees are their lowest segment, in essence defining a startup company. In NOrway the business sizes are different, because the amunt of people in the nation is smaller, making the markets smaller too.

If I was to market startups I would like to target companies with 1-2 employees, maybe 1-3, not any more. Combine that with the linkedin parameter “Owner” and we have a good case.

The reason for me reacting to this, is that I and an email dialog with linkedin.com about a markleting campaign, and their price were 6 times what we normally pay. Their reason was better targeting, which could have been the case, but for Norwegian startups it really isn’t.

Another case is Facebook. They have very good segemntation on age, that give me value, but the interest section doesn’t give any utility. Why is that? Because Norwegian users use Norwegian terms, and such does not fit into the English language categorizing supplied by Facebook. I can guarantee that there are thousands of Norwegian Facebook users interested in Business, but that’s not the term we use… The consequence is that Facebook cannot offer me the targeting value of interest that it can in English speaking markets.

Will something change? Norwegians have the highest interenet penetration in the world (88%) and the second highest Facebook penetration (22+ %) in the world, only beaten by Canada. Unfortunately we’re only 1.000.000 millon users and 4.5 million people, so we are rather small in absolute numbers…

The next web analytics wednesday in Finland will be held on 27th of February at Sanoma building. Steve Jackson from Satama will speak about measuring success of social media. A very interesting topic followed by Tommi Lehtonen from Whitevector. He will present how to measure social media’s effects on brands. This is excellent chance to get new ideas and meet the experts with relaxed atmosphere. See the below:

I just checked some stats about Facebook through their advertising application. There’s now more than 1.000.000 profiles in Norway. When you make it relative that’s an overwhelming 22% of the population (4,7M).

Sweden has about the same amount of profiles (1M), but with a population double the size the relative situation (12%) is not as extreme.

As far as I can see, only Canada has a higher relative position with its reach of 24% of the population.