Category Archives: Statistics
Norway: One in three with social media profiles don’t know how to use them
Only half of Norwegian men feel confident they know how to use social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter. But digital literacy is on the rise in the Norwegian population.
Those are some of the conclusions drawn in a survey recently presented by the Norwegian National Institute for Consumer Research, where digital competences in Norwey have been studied. The survey (in Norwegian) can be downloaded from the institute’s website, and national broadcaster NRK has summarized the findings. (Both in Norwegian.)
Below are some of the other findings in the survey.
Banking, shopping lead the way:
Digital literacy for personal finances and shopping are at an all time high:
- 95% of web users can navigate the Internet
- 94% can use online banking services
- 77% say they are competent at shopping online
- 72% can use prize comparison services online
But when it comes to social media, Norwegian Internet users do not think as highly of themselves. Only 58% of web users say they are “good” or “very good” at using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or similar tools. This is still a massive improvement from the same survey results from 2009, when only 33% felt they were skilled users of social media services.
Women rule social media in Norway:
Men feel more comfortable using most digital services – except for social media. When users are asked to rate their own social media skills, the numbers saying they are “good” or “very good” are:
- 66% of women
- 51% of men
Older users go on Facebook, too:
Digital literacy decreases with age. But even in the older age groups, social media literacy is growing:
- 89% literacy under 30 years old
- 69% literacy 30-44 years old
- 46% literacy 45-59 years old
- 30% literacy 60 years or older
So, in fact, three out of ten Norwegians over the age of 60 are quite comfortable using social media services.
Twitter in Denmark doubles in a year
Denmark has seen a whopping 100% increase in Twitter users in the last year. A yearly update by Overskrift.dk shows that Denmark now has approximately 55.000 Twitter users, up from 28.000 users a year ago.
Despite the growth, Twitter activity is still very unevenly distributed among Danes. The 625 most active users, or 1,2 %, create half the tweets in the Danish Twittersphere. In total, the Danes produce 22.000 tweets every day, or more than half a million tweets each month.
Screenshot of Denmark's Twitter queen's profile.
Denmark’s undisputed Twitter queen is tennis professional Caroline Wozniacki, who can boast of having almost 247.000 followers. NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen is a very distant second with just over 27.000 followers.
(A big thanks to Ernst Poulsen for tweeting me the Overskrift.dk update!)
40 % of Norwegian toddlers use smartphones or tablets
Four out of ten Norwegian children under the age of three use tablets or smartphones, a new report from the Norwegian Centre for ICT in Education reveals.
Toddlers are experienced tablet and smartphone users, a Norwegian report reveals.
If you count children aged six or less, a whopping 60 % have used touch-control screens. More than half the children have their touch-screen debut before they are four years old. 14 % of the first-time users are actually just one year old.
- Having evidence that children this young are experienced digital users provides exciting new possibilities for kindergartens and new teaching methods, project manager Barbro Hardersen said to Norwegian news agency NTB.
Norwegian authorities are quite positive to introducing children to technology at an early age. In the current framework for the kindergarten sector, the Norwegian Department for Education states that “children should experience digital tools as a source for play, communication and learning”.
This places new demands on early-education teachers’ digital competences, a challenge the authorities are well aware of:
- If kindergarten employees are able to use digital tools in their everyday work, they can be included in different teaching activities, such as digital stories or films, using GPS, or using applications for themes discussed in the kindergarten. If the child enjoys climbing trees, send a camera up the tree with them so you can watch and talk about their experience from the treetop later on, Hardersen said.
(Photo: David Boyle on Flickr/CC-BY-2.0)
Norwegians most online in the Nordics; Danes come last
ComScore released new Internet usage data for Europe today.
The September data only confirm that people in Northern Europe are incredibly connected. We are online most of the time – although we are smashed by the UK, where users spend as much as 35,6 hours online each month.
But the stats also offer up a comparison: How much time do we actually spend online in Scandinavia?
Since four out of the five Northern Europe countries are included in the data (I guess there just aren’t enough Icelanders?), we can paint this picture of how much time people in the Nordics spend online:
1. Norway: 27.8 online hours per user/month
2. Finland: 24.9 online hours per user/month
2. Sweden: 24.9 online hours per user/month
4. Denmark: 22.2 online hours per user/month
Time online per user in the Nordics, September 2011. Stats by ComScore, graph by Socialmedianordic.com
I haven’t gotten around to thinking about reasons for these differences – if anyone has any insight as to why Norwegians are online 5,6 hours more than Danes each month, for instance, I would appreciate it!
Nordic marketers struggle with social media
Marketers all around the world have a hard time harnessing the power of social media, IBM’s Global CMO study published today reveals. IBM have surveyed 1700 marketing pros all around the globe.
World vs. Northern Europe: 3-0
The stats for the Nordics? Not so good.
Swedish social media pro Annika Lidne has been able to extract the stats for the Nordic countries on the Disruptive Media blog (which is a great source, and you should follow it if you understand Swedish!). I haven’t been able to locate the numbers for the Nordic countries myself, so we’ll have to take her word for it:
According to IBM, the knowledge and skills for social media marketing in Scandinavia and Northern Europe is lacking, compared to the rest of the world.
Not ready, not measuring, not competent
While social media use in Northern Europe is in the top-of-the-world range, our marketers do not feel that they are coping:
- 88 % of Nordic CMOs do not feel ready to fully harness social media. The world average is 68 %.
- 75 % of Nordic marketers feel they are not capable of measuring the results of their marketing efforts. World average: 56 %.
- 88 % of Nordic marketers say they lack the competence and ability to handle the ongoing information explosion. World average: 71 %.
- Nordic CMOs don’t rate social media as an important part of their marketing strategy nearly as often as their international colleagues.
Why? Why? Why?
The possible reasons for this are way too many and too complex to dive into here. For those reading Swedish, the Disruptive Media post lists several explanations.
I think most of Annika Lidne’s insights are pretty valid. And I hope to find the time to give my own two cents worth on the matter soon. Hopefully, by then I will have had a look at the numbers in their original form, too.
What do you think – are the stats true? And what might be the reasons for this discrepancy? Leave your opinions in the comments, please!
LinkedIn: Danes are most connected in Scandinavia
A segment in the Stats on a Thursday series here on Socialmedianordic.com.
It’s time for a look at the more professional use of social media in Northern Europe. Thanks to newly implemented stats at Socialbakers.com (and that all the Scandinavian countries are in the top 50 LinkedIn countries), I’ve compiled a chart showing the LinkedIn penetration in the Nordics:
LinkedIn users in the Nordics. Source: Socialbakers.com
- Denmark: 13.91 %
- Norway: 10,69 %
- Sweden: 8,94 %
- Finland: 6,09 %
The list has no info on LinkedIn use on Iceland. I don’t know whether that’s because Socialbakers don’t have the data, or simply because Iceland doesn’t rank in the top 50 countries. If any of you have the stats, please leave a note in the comments section!
Either way, the interesting question is what we use LinkedIn for, and what the actual use of the service is in the countries (as opposed to the number of registered users). I’ll look into that at a later point in time.
Swedish PR people rock social media
A post in the the Stats on Thursday series at Socialmedianordic.com.
The European Communication Monitor 2011 was published this week, and shows some interesting stats on social media and (some) Scandinavian communicators.
Graph comparing social media use by communicators in Europe. Screenshot from European Communication Monitor 2011.
1. Swedish PR people rule social media in Europe.
The Swedes are top of the class when it comes to measure ROI of communications overall, and outperform their colleagues in other countries in three of the four key areas:
- Social media guidelines
- Tools for monitoring stakeholder communication online
- Setting key performance indicators for measuring social web activities
2. Norwegians are well prepared, but slow to leap into action.
Norwegian communicators rank up there with the best (Sweden, UK, Switzerland) when it comes to implementing social media guidelines and having tools for monitoring online conversations.
But less than ten percent of PRs in Norway have implemented KPIs for their social media work. That’s well behind Slovenia, Spain, and Poland – and Denmark.
3. Danes fall behind in social media
While the Swedes are the pride of European communicators and Norwegians are eager, but maybe not quite there yet – where are the Danish PR people? They are lagging behind the other Nordic countries on all fronts:
Just over 30 percent have guidelines, even fewer have monitoring tools – and very few say they have training programmes or KPIs in place. (Oh, actually, the Danes are slightly ahead of Norwegians when it comes to KPIs , but behind everywhere else.)
Read the report!
How about Finland or Iceland? Well, there are respondents from both countries in the survey, but the graphs aren’t specific on the state of these countries, just “Northern Europe”.
I was just made aware of the report yesterday by friends at the Norwegian Communicators’ Association and haven’t dug through all the stuff there yet. If I find something on Finnish or Icelandic PR people, I’ll be sure to let you know.
And I’ll write up some of the finds on Northern Europe vs. the rest of Europe soon, too – stay tuned. Or, if you can’t wait – download the report here.
Islands are Facebook crazy: Iceland, Faroe Islands top Nordic Facebook stats
New post in Socialmedianordic.com series Stats on Thursday!
A fun discovery: The Scandinavian Northern European obsession with Facebook is most extreme in the west, and diminishes the further east you live.
Islands at the top
According to Facebook statistics from Socialbakers.com, Iceland has the highest Facebook penetration of the population in Northern Europe – in fact, with two thirds of the population facebooking, Iceland is the third most Facebook-saturated country in the world!
Facebook penetration gets less intense the further east you get in Scandinavia (international penetration ranking in parentheses):
- 68 % in Iceland (3. place)
- 60% in Faroe Islands (5. place)
- 54% in Norway (8. place)
- 50% in Denmark (15. place)
- 49% in Sweden (29. place)
- 39% in Finland (43. place)
Facebook penetration in the Nordic countries, according to Socialbakers.com data, September 2011
