Forrester finally does social technographics for Canada and guess what? We are extremely social.
Maybe it’s got something to do with all the time we hunkered down and crouched over our keyboards during the cold winter months, but Canadians are the most active social networkers of any country in the Western world, according to the results of a new survey.
More than half of all Canadians (57%) surveyed said they are active users of social networks such as Facebook and MySpace — primarily Facebook – compared with 51% of the online population in the United States and just 38% in the United Kingdom, according to the report from market research firm Forrester Research Group.
“We know how popular and successful Facebook is in the U.S. and how popular these networks are in parts of Asia, so to see that a higher percentage of Canadian online users were visiting and using social networks every month than any of the other markets, that’s pretty impressive,” said Forrester principal analyst Nate Elliott, the lead author on the study.
Kinda surprised that we are bigger social networkers than in the US. Dunno if I should be.
More:
The study also found that 79% of Canadians take part in social media at least once a month, whether they’re checking Facebook, uploading a video to YouTube or posting ratings and comments on a blog.
About 18% of Canadians are described as “creators,” because they write a blog or upload videos, while 28% of Canadians are “critics” who post ratings and reviews on things like newspaper Websites. About 64% described themselves as spectators — they only read and watch social media content — while 21% said they don’t take part in any social media activity at all.
Actually I’m not sure how meaningful it is to say that almost 80% “take part in social media,” since these days, anyone online is reading blog content — whether they realize it or not — and practically everyone online watches video from YouTube. But anyhow.
When I sent this news to my government colleagues, one replied back with another quote from the report’s author:
“I can’t imagine a marketer who would ignore something that this many Canadians are using,” said Nate Elliott, principle analyst [sic] at Forrester and author of the report. “If you are not participating in social media right now as a marketer, then you are late.” [my emphasis]
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