How Are Your Customers Using the Web?

By Rieva Lesonsky

Do you know what your customers are doing online? With the Internet so crucial to marketing today, a clear picture of how your target customers use the Web is essential to success. A recent study by Nielsen, What Americans Do Online, offers some insights.

According to the survey, U.S. Internet users spend more than one-third (36 percent) of their time online communicating and networking, whether it’s by e-mail, instant messaging, social media or blogs.

Use of blogs and social media has increased 43 percent from the same time last year, and now takes up 22.7 percent of time spent online. The second most popular online activity was playing games, which accounted for 10.2 percent of users’ time—a 10 percent increase compared to last year.

E-mail was the third most popular activity, accounting for 8.3 percent of users’ online time—although this represents a 28 percent drop compared to last year. Showing a strong rise? Videos and movies, although they only make up 3.9 percent of users’ online time, grew by 12 percent compared to 2009.

How can these statistics help your online marketing efforts? Here are three tips.

1. Start socializing. If you weren’t already convinced of the value of social media, I hope that “43 percent” increase changed your mind. No small business today can afford to ignore social media—a no-cost way to get the word out about your company, interact with customers from around the country (or the world), and build relationships that lead to sales. Whether you try Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or all three, I urge you to get out there and give social media a shot.

2. E-mail still matters. In fact, while use of e-mail on desktops and laptops declined, use of e-mail on mobile devices increased. E-mail accounts for 41.6 percent of time on mobile devices, compared to 37.4 percent last year. So keep your e-mail marketing efforts going, but integrate them with your newer activities by using e-mail to drive traffic to your social media presence. Also make sure your e-mail newsletters and other marketing messages are optimized for mobile viewing.

3. Think video. It’s still somewhat under the radar, but video can make a big difference in your business. For one thing, including video on your website, blog and/or Facebook page helps you rank higher on search engines. For another, some consumers simply prefer video viewing to reading. And for a third, videos can be a great way to “go viral.” If your video is interesting, funny or useful enough, users will forward it on. Posting video to your website can be as simple as grabbing a Flip video camera and talking about your product, your services or an upcoming event at your business. Now’s the time to start experimenting, so when video really takes off, you’ll be ahead of the pack.

Image by Flickr user Rob Pearce (Creative Commons)

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 28th, 2010 at 10:30 am and is filed under Branding, Email marketing, Marketing, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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