Social Media compulsion feeds UK online habit!

Latest surveys show Social Media is driving up the UK’s daily web-browse fix to an astonishing 30 hours a week!

As we move into the second decade of the 21st century, it’s the online culture of the blogosphere, Tweetdeck and Facebook where human beings are migrating to habitually work, rest and play.

If you are a business planning your next online marketing campaign, it is useful to know that the results of the study show that, daily, we now spend five hours online and 3 hours at the weekend. Of this, 2 hours relates to professional and business and 3 hours, devoted to pleasure and leisure! This includes online shopping, managing finances, socialising and emailing family and friends.

This shows quite clearly that the Social Media explosion is one of the key reasons why the UK population now spends so much time online. The daily fix is now at record levels with a quarter of adults claiming they need to use the major sites such as Facebook and Twitter at least once a day.

The same August 2009 Consumer Opinion Panel of 2,690 UK adults reports that well over a third of under 25s feel they must log in even whilst on holiday and 41% of over 65s agree that social networking is the future! Developing marketing strategies to cater across the generation gap just got easier! Of the 93% of the population now shopping on the internet, over 38 million people (79%) spend up to two hours searching online!

There’s an awful lot of customer traffic out there and potential customers waiting to be steered to your website! If the above figures don’t convince you to relook at how your website design is performing , perhaps these words of warning will :

There are growing signs of a ‘digital divide’ and the risk of social exclusion for those who are unable or unwilling to go online! As we move further into a digital constructed future, some groups, businesses and organisations are in danger of being left behind.

If Broadband is rapidly becoming an essential utility – as important to our quality of life as gas or electricity – then online presence and the part your website plays in interactively engaging in the social media listening channel, is undoubtedly right alongside!