Social Media and the Interactive Marketing Conference

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May 28, 2008 by James
Filed under: General 

social mediaOn May 15, 2008 I attended the Interactive Marketing Conference hosted by InfoPresse - the subject was Social Media. The event included such luminaries as Chris Anderson, Bryan Segal, Paul Gillin and a panel of experts including Jesse Hirsh, Dawna Henderson, David Jones, Michael Kasprow and Keith McArthur.

I took pages of notes as each presenter addressed the room and shared their insights, views and opinions. Bottom line, the event was well run and worth attending. So for those of you who followed the day on Twitter (yes, I was tweeting from the conference) here are a few key facts I noted during the day:

17 Social Media Facts That You Should Know

  1. 72% of Canadians use the web (about 24Million people)
  2. Women are a growth area online.
  3. 44% of the Internet users are between the age of 35 and 54.
  4. 84.3% of Canadians use social networks.
  5. They spend an average of 6 hrs a month on these social networks and consume 828 pages of content each month.
  6. 51% of social network users are female - they also consume 222 pages more than men and spend an extra 2 hours online.
  7. Canada is a Facebook nation, the USA is a MySpace nation.
  8. 65.7% of Canadians use Facebook each month spending an average of 350 minutes and consuming 725 pages of content.
  9. 35+ is the biggest age growth sector on Facebook.
  10. Online video and multimedia has grown 338% in Canada.
  11. Canadians consume 385 minutes (6h 42min) of video a month.
  12. The average length of a video online is 3.4 minutes
  13. Canadians watch 114.5 videos per month.
  14. 89% of all Internet users have watched a video in the past month.
  15. 57% of all videos are consumed on YouTube.
  16. Blogs reach 64% of all Canadians online. Blogging is growing at almost twice the rate of the Internet.
  17. Social networking and multimedia has a reach of between 85-90% of all Canadians.

Bottom line, if you are not engaged in social media conversations with your marketplace, then you face a very uncertain future. As I’m fond of saying “Be Found, Be Noticed or Be History!”

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Comments

4 Responses to “Social Media and the Interactive Marketing Conference”

  1. Frank Derfler on May 28th, 2008 3:02 pm

    “72% of Canadians use the web (about 24Million people) & 84.3% of Canadians use social networks.”
    James — I know they are not YOUR numbers and you are merely reporting, but I will observe that the percentages… even if they are percentages of percentages.. seem fantastically high. Higher than anything I would have ever guessed. What do you personally think?

    (Although … perhaps “use social networks” includes watching the occassional “passed along” movie on Youtube. ??)

    – FJD

  2. James on May 28th, 2008 3:28 pm

    These numbers were reported to the conference attendees by Bryan Segal, Sr. Director of ComScore Media Metrix Canada.

    The key point of that initial presentation was that Canada is a “wired” leader and does in fact have considerably higher numbers than any other country including the USA.

    Of course, even though 72% of the population in Canada (24M) use the web and “only 61%” of Americans use the web, this means that there are about 200M Americans online.

    This is likely why ‘data companies’ enjoy percentages so much :)

    And your point about what constitutes ‘using a social network’ is fair, it would seem that “viewing videos and commenting on YouTube” are considered fair game. Not quite what I consider a power SM user, but hey… I’m just reporting the news.

    Thanks for the comment Frank.

  3. From the Desk of Janet Barclay :: The Wonderful World of Social Networks :: June :: 2008 on June 16th, 2008 9:43 am

    [...] For some more interesting statistics about social networking, check out James Burchill’s recent blog post on Social Media and the Interactive Marketing Conference. [...]

  4. Internet Adviser delivers reliable marketing results. on August 13th, 2008 5:44 pm

    Now that I\’ve scanned your post, I\’ll take another long read. I\’m also book marking your site.

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