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

This year was no different. Amongst all the speakers a few really stood out and definitely got me inspired to get out the old pencil and paper, or wacom and photoshop these days.

Frankie Magazine
http://www.frankie.com.au/
Although not exactly my sort of magazine, it was wonderful to hear from the editor Louise on how a small idea she had with friend/collague Lara turned into a hugely successful magazine. How they disregarded certain magazine rules (like never use green on the cover?) and the journey the magazine has taken and how it has still kept strong to their original idea. They even had the cutest little cook book “Afternoon Tea” plus a new version “Sweet Treats”. Beautiful work.

Travis Millard & Mel Kadel
http://www.fudgefactorycomics.com/, http://www.melkadel.com/
Absolute classics! Funniest speakers on the Friday. When one of the speakers starts by snapping open a six-pack of beers you know you are in for something interesting. This couple from LA are well known artists who talked about their love of drawing from an early age and how over the years found themselves always drawn back to illustration and were able to find a market for their passion. From a personal point, I loved the studio they had set up at their home, it seems all they do is draw all day and they have paper and art supplies strewn all over their house (or treehouse as they called it).

Ashley Gilbertson
http://www.ashleygilbertson.com/
The final speaker on the Friday and what a way to end off. A photo-journalist who has focused on the war in Iraq since 2002. From the way he spoke about his time there you could see how much it had affected him and how much emotion and passion he had invested into his work. He mentioned a story of one soldier who had given his life to save his whilst on assignment which is something that is really hard to grasp when you spend each day in an air-conditioned office. He spoke of the soldiers he met and worked with in the highest regard and felt that the general public doesn’t understand or respect the sacrifices these young man and women face and it was this that lead him to do a series of work detailing the rooms of dead soldiers back home. From each photo you could pick up so much about each soldier’s life and the collection was extremely emotional. Truly inspiring work.

Although all the speakers had their own style of presentation, one thing was clear. They all have a huge passion for what they do and even if the work was not to your taste it was hard not to walk out of there inspired. Unfortunately I couldn’t make Saturday, but heard from others that it was well worth going(there was free t-shirts, DAMM!).

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go and start setting up my new studio

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)

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

Who said the banner is dead? I know some creative’s who would love to see it dead, come to think about it so would many viewers, but handled properly and your message targeted to the most relevant customer then you get traction.

Take this little number from Nike although it’s in a 300 x 250 banner they’ve managed to cram a whole mirco site in there, I spent around 5 minutes on the ’site’  (honest, I checked on my Nike watch) I checked out the range the styling, I could even buy the product at this point, now that’s pretty impressive, I got the whole Nike experience in a single banner ad, I also like the fact that the experience comes to the viewer and you don’t have to leave the comfort of your browser unless of course you want to buy and that’s exactly what I did, strong creative, that’s target specific that sells product. Long live the banner.

1. Mobile apps
Goldman sachs estimates 210 million  iphone apps will be dowloaded by 2010. Much of this will be monetized by the emerging mobile ad market, e.g. www.admob.com

2. Video streaming from mobile
e.g. www.qik.com www.kyte.com www.ustream.com
Soccer mums through to corporate presentations will be beamed from mobiles directly to the internet

3. Syndication and widgets
Content syndication will become more mainstream
Value will emerge in personalized aggregation services
Rss will start to include ads (most rss feeds are ad free at present), this will finally convince the major publishers (news sites) to publish full feeds rather than only the article teaser.  e.g. Springwidgets.com/ and Sproutbuilder.com/

4. Location based services
Thanks to the GPS functionality on the Iphone and other smartphones, the use of location based services will rise turning the yellow pages directory listing businesses on their head.  e.g. iloop.com and brightkyte.com, but I expect facebook and myspace to integrate location based services in 2009.
Social recommendations will add value creating a mashup of recommendation & discovery services. e.g. tribesmart.com

5. Social media matures        
2009 will see social media mature as brands, organisations and politicians read about why Obama’s campaign was so successful.

6. Integrated campaign metrics
The holy grail of marketing .. will get one step closer as technology starts to allow a more integrated metrics reporting of campaign media.  This will accelerate the move to digital and digital agencies will start to play the lead role in marketing initiatives & strategy.

7. Personalised Knowledge Discovery
Recommendation engines and personalisation will start to produce some value as people learn about needs they didn’t know they had.
Attention spans will overflow forcing a change in information distribution.  E.g. Twitter will be used for what I call SPR or the “short press release”.

8. Attention Surplus Disorder will be coined as a condition that affects a growing number of people.  Media saturation will start to drive a market for a growing range of filtering services, many of them specialised on a niche topic.

9. Opinion fraud will become common place with companies paying for positive recommendations for their products and services.  Traditional media will continue to publish the worst of these stories, but even that will not be enough to discourage a growing number of companies into this activity.

10. Life Streaming will explode as devices simplify the ability to record experiences. Examples Socialthing.com/ (recently acquired by AOL) and Friendfeed.com/ 

All in all 2009 promises to be an exciting time for innovation and despite the economic climate, I believe that emerging tools will continue to prosper.

With over 1.88 million SMBs in Australia, technology can be used as a competitive differentiator for SMBs competing in the global economy, and the right technology is key to survival. Having worked with SMBs extensively in the past, I know firsthand that SMBs have the greatest technology needs, but are often restricted by limited budgets and a lack of access to IT know-how.  This is a fantastic initiative by Dell that provides a useful resource to help Australian SMBs make the right technology purchase for their business.

I am delighted to be part of this initiative as the IT Expert. Keep an eye out for the monthly articles as they are both educational and informative.

Website:
www.dell.com.au/sb360

First Articles:
Does Social Networking pose a threat to your business?
Boost your business with online technologies

Bio: Pedro da Palma Rosa

I think the desire for ambient awareness is what has driven the popularity of Facebook, which through it’s provision of the news feed feature, is supplying a stream of up to the minute updates on what your friends are doing. In many cases this feed substitutes the need for email.  Twitter is another service which streams snippets of thoughts into a single stream.

Whilst the craving for ambient awareness of our social graph (or friends list) might be strong, it is surprising to me that the use of RSS feedreaders to supply a personalised interest based news feed is still quite low.

Feedreaders such as Feed Demon, Newsgator are free and relatively easy to setup and establish a personalised “Interest based ambient awareness channel”.
Whilst adoption of these services is growing, their usage is still mostly contained to the early adopters.  Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion points points to Forrester research that suggests that feedreader adoption is at 11% up only 2% on what it was 3 years ago.

This has always been surprising to me, and led me to consider some possible reasons.

1. Apathy.  Much like programming the VCR, setting up a personalised RSS folder is one of those things that people just can’t be bothered setting up.

2. Ignorance. Many people are not aware of the benefits that can be gained from doing this, which include a faster and deeper knowledge acquisition of your interest area, perhaps at the expense of general media consumption.

3. Trainers. It takes less than an hour for most people to acquire the skills needed to do an initial setup and learn how to maintain an “interest based ambient awareness” channel. However there is a lack of resources who have the knowledge and inclination to spread this around.

So what needs to happen to bring these services into the mainstream?

1. Mainstream publishers will start to provide “niche ambient awareness” channels.  News.com.au in Australia recently launched a new format which allows some degree of personalisation, and yet it falls short of what can be done with a feedreader.  Personalised start pages such as Pageflakes, Netvibes and iGoogle also provide simple tools which will drive the use of “one click” niche interest feeds. Facebook and other social networks will continue to expand their deployment of “interest based ambient awareness” channels via groups and discovery tools.  Take a look at Radus for a new example that fits this description.

2. Emergence of the RSS salesperson. Too many of the RSS early adopters are what Malcolm Gladwell would refer to as “Mavens”, immersed in a deep knowledge of a certain area, and without the inclination to evangelise their discoveries to the world. I have seen the adoption of personalised feeds spread quickly when a connected salesperson evangelises the benefits.

3. Increased demand for customised social Media monitoring. Working in this area, I am seeing first hand the continued demand to unlock insights that are often hidden from mainstream media services. One of the main tools that I use for this is my feedreader. As the demand increases, I think this will encourage the training of resources in the creation and use of “interest based ambient awareness” channels.

We all have a passion or interest. I would challenge you to discover for yourself firsthand the benefits of getting more deeply engaged through the creation of an “Interest based ambient awareness” channel.

Previous briefing topics have included:

> Social Media and the Conversational Web
> Implementing Content Management Systems for the User
> Driving Sales and Marketing through the Strategic use of  ‘eLearning’
> Usability: its affect on your Bottom Line

Sessions are by invitation and are at no cost to guests. To find out more about the Bullseye Briefings Series and to register your interest please contact: jaquelyn.thatcher@bullseye.com.au or on 03 8620 6200.