Universal McCann has come out with some interesting data on social media use. The data were taken from interviews in 21 countries with 17,000 persons aged 16-54. To qualify for the survey they needed to be “active internet users”: they had to use the internet at least every other day.
What stood out in particular for me working for a large brand with Asian ambitions was:
- There are 184 million bloggers worldwide
- China has more bloggers than the US and Western Europe combined: 42 million (70% of its active internet users)
- 73% of people have read a blog (62% in Australia)
- 36% of consumers feel more positively about companies that blog
- 34% of bloggers post opinions about brands on their blogs
That’s 63 million active internet users worldwide who might blog about you. And when they do, Google will capture that comment for all to see.
Universal McCann believes that eventually everyone will be an “active user”, just as everyone came to watch TV.
There is also FanFou the Chinese Twitter site. There are plenty of people who want to practice English … and with the Zh->En Firefox plugin you can get a great sense of what conversations are going on.