RM Blog

Email still top sharing tool

By Geoff Plewes

Despite the ongoing trend towards leveraging new, social, web 2.0 technologies for marketing, email still holds strong as the leading information sharing tool online. This study seems contrary to a study from earlier this year that reported social networking had surpassed email usage. For the advertiser, I’d argue that on its own email is still more effective than any given social network.

Major Findings of a recent Social Twist study reveal:

• Despite the social media revolution – traditional forms of networking like email and instant messaging continue to be the most popular mediums of sharing content across the Internet. Nearly 60 percent of overall sharing happens over emails.
• Since it opened itself to all age groups in September 2006, Facebook has displaced MySpace as the most popular social networking site especially when it comes to sharing content online.
• It is clear that Twitter is perceived to be a news broadcast platform and not a “sharing” platform. It enjoys only 5% of “shared information” traffic among popular social platforms.
• Bookmarks are rapidly losing their significance in the social media space. Only 2% of shares happen over Bookmarking sites.
• Google’s services like Google Bookmarking, Google Talk, Gmail, and Blogger have failed to replicate the brand’s search engine success online, especially when it comes to ’shared information.’
• LinkedIn, as a networking site, ranks the lowest when it comes to social media sharing.

See the study summary at http://bit.ly/43T6eY

This offers an excellent contrast to another study from March 09′ that told us that social networking had surpassed email in terms of popularity. http://bit.ly/3zKoyf . The key thing to note is that social networking surpassed email in terms of time spent, which isn’t necessarily a measurement of a communications channel’s effectiveness.

The Nielsen Online study cites Japan’s social network Mixi as an example of why social networking is eclipsing email – because the Japanese, especially the youth just want to connect with each other, says Alan Hshieh of Harvard University, in an interview with the BBC, September 16, 2009. “When you look at Mixi profiles, most users don’t even have a profile picture and only 7% of users show any of their content outside, even to their friends. Facebook lets people create a bold news broadcast about themselves, whereas Japanese and Korean users just want to connect with each other.”

My experience with using social networks for advertising has shown that this is fairly universal. People are spending significant time in social networks, but within them they’re not responding to ads in large numbers. The lesson here is that a traditional approach to display advertising doesn’t work well in social networks, even though some of their reps seem focused on selling this approach. Don’t get me wrong – there are many ways to use social networks for marketing and advertising (think: PR and outreach, and leveraging their technology investment for your online tactics), but don’t forget that email still leads the way for word of mouth, as opposed to staying in touch with friends.