Times have changed. I’m not weighing in to a gender debate, but we ladies have a lot on our plates. We’re busy building a career, making a home, raising kids, nurturing our relationships with our friends and family, trying to fit in some exercise (or spending time feeling guilty about not doing any), dabbling in our hobbies, trying to contribute to our communities and fitting in some sleep (most of the time).

As a general rule, we enjoy the juggle and relish in our many and varied different roles, but one casualty of the circus act has been the traditional construct of ‘community’. Often we’re too busy to really engage with the other families that live on our street, we’ve moved away from our parents and, as much as we’d love to help out, much of the voluntary work we once did (manning the canteen, working on community projects) is gradually being outsourced due to dwindling numbers of mums who are available to lend a hand.

But we’re resilient creatures. We find ways of making it work. And one of the ways we’ve managed to stay connected is through our social media networks. According to ‘Reaching Empowered Women Through Social Media’ released by Forrester in April 2009 (NB: Empowered women are women ages 25 to 54 who feel that the Internet helps them manage their family life):

“One-third of empowered women use social networking sites mainly for communication compared with 23% of all online adults. Nearly one-third (32%) of empowered women will actively go to friends’ pages on social networking sites to keep in touch, compared with only 21% of all online adults.”

As women, we like to share and we yearn to be connected, so we have created new communities to fill the void. Social media mums are not desperate housewives. We’re busy people looking to engage with our friends and families and meet new, like-minded people.

For marketers, it is crucial to take heed of this. You’re not a voice on TV in the background while we’re doing the ironing and making dinner. Often, we’re logging on to Facebook in the slivers of downtime we get during the day and tweeting while we’re on the bus to and from work. We write posts on our blogs when the kids have gone to bed to share our experiences and promote conversation with our network. And we’re doing this for one simple reason.
To engage.

If you want to promote your product to us, it must be relevant. Shout at us, and we’ll regard you with disdain. In fact, it would be no different to someone approaching a group of women at a cafe at lunchtime and asking if they would like to see a demonstration of your new vacuum. Bah-bum. We’re sooooo not interested.

Here’s a good example of effective marketing to social media mums. Finish Quantum recently ran a sponsored spot on the uber-popular social media mum Mia Freedman’s (@miafreedman) blog, Mamamia. All they did was offer her readers a sample of their new product, but they did it by weighing in on a topic that has many social media mums buzzing (and furiously tweeting) at the moment – MasterChef. What was posted what nothing short of a well-written, press release that showed insight into the behaviour and interests of the audience. Mia’s followers were musing over their messy kitchen, how they wash their dishes (if they’re a ‘rinser’, or they simply dump the dirty dish in the machine and hit go), who will take out the MasterChef title… The most interesting thing though is that they were also were falling all over themselves to claim their sample.

The key for marketers is to spend time to get to know their audience and to make your communication with that audience as relevant as possible. Participate. Join in. You never know, you might even have some fun.

You will win the hearts of social media mums if you can enrich our online experience by helping us connect with like-minded people: provide platforms for us to share what we know, learn what we don’t and give us ways to help us manage our busy lives.

It’s worth the time, patience and effort. Remember, more often than not, we’re the ones buying the groceries!

Simply… put our needs before yours, and you’ll see results.

Cheers,

Sarah (@SassieqQ)

* Image sourced from: workitmom.com

In an attempt to claw back some of the audience that has been rapidly falling over the last year MySpace has shifted its focus to become more of an entertainment portal.

This sets the platform apart from competitors Facebook and Twitter which focus on members updating each other with short sound bites of information. MySpace will now focus more on what people are into as opposed to what they are doing (a shift anyway from being focused solely on user generated content).

Advertising on the site is also to become more entertaining – on the weekend just gone a giant wolf took over the homepage to further add to the hype and anticipation of the Twilight- New Moon movie.

Movie advertisers frequent the MySpace homepage but this is the first time a takeover of this extreme has occurred on the site. With some calling it a “highly intrusive” placement it will be interesting to see what the My Spacers think of it…no doubt it further fuelled the excitement of Twilight fans who have already been able to watch the movie premiere’s red carpet event on the site, follow the stars who regularly update their statuses and sample the movies soundtracks.

I think this type of interactive entertainment led advertising and content is a good move on MySpace’s part. There isn’t any room left in the Facebook/ Twitter world so this gives them a point of differentiation and importantly provides the audience with an experience.

By Claire ‘Coops’ Cooper (@ccoops)

An AIMIA event last week, Getting Inside Gen Y, tackled how marketers can connect with Generation Y in this age of rapid change and information. It raised some interesting viewpoints and also sparked an interesting debate. Here’s a little food for thought from Emily Birch – Client Services Director, Digital Marketing.

Who are Gen Y?

According to OzTam, people born between 1976 and 1990 are officially ‘Gen Y’. This opens up a conundrum for brands trying to connect to these folks, as a 19 and 32 year old are likely to have different lifestyles, interests and desires. One approach offered was to segment Gen Y into the life stages of high school, university and blue collar, however from my perspective this seems a little too broad and out of date – Gen Y have grown up and left high school!

Do we really need to segment or categorise Gen Y? The beauty of social media is that it provides an opportunity for marketers to observe people’s behaviour to gain insights. Does it then matter if a person who loves Burton snowboards is 19 or 40 years old?

Future of Facebook

Facebook’s phenomenal success (currently over 6.9 million members in Australia and growing daily) has allowed marketers to reinvent their digital marketing strategies. With the Facebook Connect API, brands can engage with niche audiences who pass messages by word of mouth via functionally like automatic wall posts when they become a brand fan, or interact with pages or applications. In addition, the competitive CPCs on advertising make Facebook an attractive channel for brands wanting to target specific audiences.

There is some evidence out there to suggest that Gen Y are starting to lose interest in Facebook due to information overload and, let’s face it, when mum ‘pokes’ you it’s game over! Inside Facebook has reported that over 30% of members are over 35 years old and this demographic has the highest growth rate.

Gen Y Consumes 36 Hours of Media Each Day

This statistic is extreme (although the source was not revealed!). Assuming the younger generation still has to sleep to stay alive and the world still operates based on 24 hrs in day, Gen Ys are seriously multi-tasking and consuming media from multiple channels concurrently.

As I almost qualify as a Gen Y, I measured by own media consumption on Friday last week and calculated a total of 19.5 hrs (combination of iTunes, radio, Internet, TV and mobile phone). I work in the digital industry and still don’t make it close to your average Gen Y.

Is 36 hours a day of media consumption sustainable? Fast forward 10 years and I think there is going to be a shift in behaviour, with Gen Ys starting to seek a more simplistic lifestyle. Brands will need to be ready for a shift from generation ‘wired’ to generation ‘chilled’.

In summary, to understand Gen Y (or any generation) we need to observe people’s behaviour in social spaces, listen to what they are saying and develop insights that brands can use to provide relevant content or tools that truly add value to people – whether to entertain, simplify life or to educate. People are cramming their waking hours with information from multiple media sources, so brands need to focus on cutting through all this noise to build engaging, on-going and trusted relationships.

How many hours a day do you spend consuming media – are you ‘Gen Wired’?

Follow Emily on Twitter: @toadstuff