As part of this month exploration of Twitter I’ve come across a really smart intuitive on-line tool for reporting Social Media metrics: SWIX (Social Web Index).

SWIX allows you track several Social Media Campaigns.  It simply enables you to track how you are doing, and where to focus your attention.  It very easy to configure the tracking “pods” for RSS Subscribers, or RSS Hits of your Blogs; or track the number of Twitter Followers or Friends over This Week, This Month, Last 3 months, … all constantly updated.  There’s also a  whole batch of different tracking pods available.  So you can track Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Analytics, Flickr, … SWIX also provides a Social Media Dashboard to which you can choose which metrics you have reported – numbers and charts.  Well worth exploring!

There’s also the obligatory YouTube video – enjoy …

What is the average age of the reader of your blog?  Or, what’s the age distribution of the readers of your “competitors” blog, tweets, Facebook page …

I’ve been exploring Google’s Ad Planner to find an answer to some of these questions.  With Ad Planner you can:

“Identify websites your target customers are likely to visit

• Define audiences by demographics and interests
• Search for websites relevant to your target audience
• Access unique users, page views, and other data for millions of websites from over 40 countries”

It’s the last bullet point above that I’ll be exploring in this post.

As a starter let’s consider some Social Media sites: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn – well that should be the majority!  The overall age distribution for these Social Network sites for the UK, and the US (for comparison) is:

Drilling down on the UK users only, and to enhance the comparison I’ve added  “Club Penguin” (Disney’s: “virtual world for children” UK users only), and “Age Concern” (soon to be called “Age UK”: “… to promote the well-being of all older people …”):



No surprises for Club Penguin with, for the UK, 50% of it’s users (“unique visitors per month”) being under 18.  And, for Age UK the majority, nearly a quarter, of its users are aged 55-65, with 55% of them being over 45 years old.

But what of the Social Media sites and UK users?  For Twitter (UK) over half are aged between 25 – 45 years old, with the majority, nearly a third, being 25-35 years old.  This is almost repeated for Facebook (UK), and LinkedIn (UK) but in the latter case over three quarters of it’s UK users are aged between 25 and 55 – which is not surprising given the use of LinkedIn.

When compared with the US, however, you’ll find that the majority users are older for all three Social Media sites.  With over a quarter of the majority of users of Twitter (US), and just under a third of the LinkedIn (US) users, being aged 35-45.  Surprisingly, the majority age range for Facebook (US) is older than Facebook (UK) with some quarter of the users being 45-55 years old – though this may be a reflection of the origins of Facebook in the US.

When the population size (“number of unique visitors per month”) is included a representation of age distribution of Social Media users for the UK and US can be derived.  From Ad Planner the number of “users” are: Twitter (UK) – 3.8 million, Twitter (US) – 21 million; Facebook (UK) – 25 million, Facebook (US) – 130 million; and LinkedIn (UK) – 2.4 million, LinkedIn (US) – 16 million.  Giving an age distribution of Social Media users by Country:

This shows a distinct bias!  The majority of Social Media users in the UK are aged 25-35 years, whereas in the US they are significantly older being 45-55 years old.  A calculation of the average ages gives; Twitter: 37 (UK) – 39 (US), Facebook: 36 (UK) – 38 (US), and LinkedIn: 40 (UK) – 45 (US).  So quite similar bias towards the older users of Twitter and Facebook in the US, but with a significantly older  user of LinkedIn in the US.

Finally, when gender is included another significant difference is apparent between the UK and the US users of Social Media sites:

For both Twitter and Facebook some 60% of the Social Media users in the US are female.  This is almost reversed for the UK with 57% of the Twitter users, and 45% of the Facebook users, being male.  For the US the bias is less obvious with an almost equal distribution of the genders accessing LinkedIn (52% female, 48% male).  Whilst the majority of UK users of LinkedIn are male at 59%.

The Google Ad Planner site also displays traffic statistics including the daily trend in visitors over a set period (1 year).  For example, below is the traffic statistics for Twitter for UK visitors for the year ending February 2010.

That all goes to show that Google knows a great deal about us! (see: “A special report on managing information: Clicking for gold“, The Economist)

A Norwegian Consumer Protection Agency has just won a three year legal battle with Apple.  Flush with success the Agency are now targeting Facebook, followed by Twitter, followed by LinkedIn, followed by …

The Agencies battle was specifically against Apples iTune, the online music store.  Following the intervention of the European Commission, Apple are required to change their DRM (Digital Rights Management) terms of reference.  The Agencies contention was that iTunes terms of reference were rarely read, rarely understood, and were not in line with even the most basic off-line contractual and privacy laws.  Essentially, Apple has no unilateral right to change the terms of reference at any time, and no unilaterally right to terminate a contract at any time.  Similarly, users had no right to know what information is stored about them, where it’s stored, and no right to correct wrongful on-line information stored about them on iTunes (e.g Data Protection Act)

The Agency, in preparing their case, conducted a year of research of the use of Social Media networks in Norway.  They found that some 96% of 15-30 year old are members of at least one Social Media network.  The also observed a 20% increase in the membership of Social Media networks by over 51 year olds.

Source:  Matthew Magee, Out-Law Radio (the podcast can be downloaded here).  Out-Law Radio is part of the International law firm, Pinsent Masons LLP.

I use it so I must recommend it.  But, actually I do think it is the best of breed platform for Blogging, and probably the most popular blogging platform.

Now a Blog is your Real Estate,  your property that is fixed in location, on the web.  Your blog’s content is not like your content in LinkedIn, Facebook, or even Twitter – for it’s accessible by search engines, and not closed like those other forms of social media – you don’t have to login to view the full content.  So to be fully visible on the web you must have a Blog, and your choice of Blogging platform is critical.

So, here once you’ve got WordPress installed, are two links to get you started.  From Lifehacker (tag line:  Tips and downloads for getting things done) is The Beginner’s Guide to Tricking Out Your WordPress Blog, and from Mark Ghosh’s WeblogToolsCollection Schwag is WordPress for Beginners.

Of course, you must then install the All in One SEO Pack (SEO: search engine optimization) for a properly “executed SEO techniques will bring your website increased exposure, recognition, and will generate free traffic“, and Google XML Sitemaps a plugin that generates a XML-Sitemap of your blog that supports “Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.”

Then it’s just a matter of regularly generating interesting content, and “they will come” … easy – in’it.