Blog Archives
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!
Why are Nordic marketers troubled by social media?
A segment in the Marketing Monday series at Socialmedianordic.com.
A couple of weeks back, I wrote about a recent study of Chief Marketing Officers where Nordic marketers didn’t rate their own social media efforts too highly. I also promised to offer my thoughts on what the reasons may be – and here are my two cents on the matter: We are intimidated by the impact of social media.
Less marketing,
less measuring
Maybe Nordic marketers have a better picture of just how high the jump needs to be in order to master social media? (Photo from Schnappi at Flickr, CC-BY-2.0)
I do believe that Annika Lidne gets quite a few things right over at Disruptivemedia.se, and that her thoughts on Swedish marketers are probably valid for the rest of the Nordic countries, too:
- Nordic businesses tend to be less marketing-oriented than other European or American businesses, and don’t view marketing as one of the most important business areas – it’s more of a “nice to have”. Some companies’ marketing costs are less than 1% of their total budgets.
- We don’t measure or analyze our social media efforts. Consequently, we don’t know what works and what doesn’t, and this means that our social media marketing may be less focused than elsewhere. (This goes for communicators, too – even though the Swedes are at the top of the European game there, the rests of the Nordics are lagging behind.)
- We are suffering from Facebook blindness. Lots of Scandinavian marketers see Facebook as the only social media arena. So, if they don’t naturally see possibilities within the Facebook framework, they write off social media altogether.
Do Northern marketers simply know better?
But to give credit where credit is due, I believe there may be one more reason why Nordic marketers rate their social media capabilities lower than other European CMOs: We know too much about the impact of the Internet. And then we get scared.
Not only is Internet use sky high in Northern Europe, we also have some of the highest social media penetration rates in the world. Our media are filled with stories about Faceook/Twitter/LinkedIn changing lives/businesses/society (pick your favorite). We cannot possibly discount the meaning of the Internet in modern communication and marketing.
Also, the people in the Nordic countries are so internet savvy, they will have come to expect a lot from marketers (and communicators). We have the affluence, the bandwith, and the skill set to demand a whole lot from brands when it comes to social media.
Are we there yet?
So maybe one of the reasons for the low self-satisfaction scores for the Nordics is just this: We have a more realistic view of what it means to be good at social media. And we know we are really not there, yet. Maybe we have a truer picture of what it will take to get us there, plus a more demanding online population?
What do you think?
Social media in Nordic B2B marketing
A post in the Marketing Monday series here on Socialmedianordic.com
While Scandinavian B2C marketers seem to be quite convinced of the possibilities offered by social media – evangelizing, even – B2B marketers here in Northern Europe are not quite there yet.
Where to begin?
I strongly believe that social media offer great prospects for business to business marketing. We just need to get out of the “we need to be on Facebook, then the world will magically transform into a wonderful and happy place” misconception. Social media may do great things for you, but only if you apply yourself and keep your business goals in mind.
But as an inspiration to B2B marketers in the Nordics, I will start compiling a list of social media B2B efforts in Northern Europe. I have realized that trying to dig out all the examples before ever starting this post would be too daunting a task (see, I do have the occasional insight).
List of social media efforts
Instead, I will start by just posting the ones I’m aware of as of yet – mostly Norwegian examples, since Norway is the market I work in every day. And then I will start expanding the list. Hopefully, some of my Swedish, Danish, Finnish, and Icelandic readers will contribute along the way. Please email me or leave a comment if you have interesting info!
This is just the mere beginnings of a Nordic catalogue of B2B social media initiatives:
- Shipserv : A great example of content marketing for the shipping industry. This case study is carefully documented in a master’s thesis by Haakon Jensen (where there’s more gold to be found for those willing to read the whole thing – download his thesis here).
- Visma, a Norwegian supplier of business software, have built a community for their customers in order to improve customer support and satisfaction.
- Companybook is a Norwegian startup trying to combine social media and business intelligence for businesses. They want to be somewhere between Facebook and LinkedIn – a place where businesses, not people, can socialize.*
- Mintra is an e-learning supplier focusing on the offshore industry. Their efforts in social media have been beautifully detailed in this blog post by digital agency Halogen (in Norwegian, but ask the author Helena Makhotlova for more insights)
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.
Communities for marketing in Northern Europe
Another post in the Marketing Monday series here on Socialmedianordic.com.
Despite the Nordic obsession with Facebook and the media’s focus on Twitter, I like to dive into old-school social media now and then. One of my first forays into online socialization was forums and online communities. And despite not being talked about a whole lot, the communities are more alive than ever.
Screenshot from the Fiskateers community by Fiskars.
Forums and communities
A lot has happened to the forum scene since the late 1990s (the fact that it’s no longer social suicide to admit to frequenting them being perhaps the most important change). Marketers have started to use them – and even build them.
And so I would like to find out which community and forum initiatives are moderated or run by brands/for marketing purposes in/from Scandinavia and the other Nordic countries? Which brands know the value of cultivating a community of those truly passionate about their products or subjects? Be it for business to business purposes or business to consumer marketing, a community can be a powerful thing.
I know of a few:
- Kings Club, Scania‘s driver community.
- Trådsnella, a handicrafts’ forum in Norway run by publishing house Egmont Hjemmet Mortensen.
- Fiskateers, the scrapbooking ambassador network established by Finnis cutting specialists Fiskars.
