The first Newcastle radio survey of 2010 has been a very good one for the ABC but costly for the commercial broadcasters.

AM talk station ABC1233 increased their Monday to Sunday share by 1.2% to claim third place overall, dislodging 2HD. Aaron Kearney’s breakfast program had the biggest gain, moving to second place with a gain of 2.3%. ABC1233′s weekend results were similarly impressive as they became the Hunter’s favourite Saturday / Sunday station with a gain of 3.9%, leaping past both NXFM and KOFM.

ABC’s national youth network, Triple J also had a great survey with a 2.4% gain overall to take it in front of  NEWFM.

The survey wasn’t a good one for Newcastle’s 4 commercial stations.

KOFM dropped 0.2% overall but lost 2 points in the crucial breakfast slot, losing their #2 position along the way.

NXFM retained their #1 position overall but dropped 4.3% in doing so. Likewise the NX breakfast had a big drop of 4.3%. In fact, NX had big drops in every slot, which must be of concern to station management.

2HD continued its long slide but the biggest issue is their breakfast show. Luke Grant was controversially sacked as 2HD breakfast announcer late last year and his replacement Brent Bultitude has seen the show fall further in the ratings to now be a distant 4th. SIDENOTE: Luke Grant is now on air in Melbourne at MTR as part of the biggest radio re-launch of 2010.

Longtime struggler NEWFM was the only commercial station to actually see gains, rising 1.5% overall and 0.9% in Breakfast. This will be encouraging for the station but the fact remains they are still a very distant 6th in this market and have a long way to go until they are competitive.

Its been a strange survey and the question seems to be: why are the commercial stations falling while ABC rises?

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Popularity: 4%

NLYZR website analysis tool

I’m very proud to announce that the latest, fully-automated version of our NLYZR website analysis tool is now live.

The team at Sticky launched the original NLYZR 12 months ago and in the ensuing year we tested and reported on over 3000 websites from around the world. Using that experience, we have been able to fine tune and improve our NLYZR reporting to the stage that the Free Web NLYZR is now a fully-fledged web application.

Free Web NLYZR provides a detailed report in around 30 seconds. The report is more SEO focussed than the previous version, covering your site’s on and off site optimisation plus factoring in your results for a nominated keyword search. Basically it tells you how well optimised your website is.

The Free Web NLYZR is just one part of our overall NLYZR Suite. Clients use the full range of tools to receive detailed website reporting and advice such as:

• Keyword selection and ratings

• On-site analysis and recommendations

• Off-site analysis and recommendations

• Rank reporting

• Competitor analysis

We use these tools to assist clients to significantly improve their search rankings, build website traffic and convert traffic into sales, leads and inquiries.

Please feel free to use NLYZR to test your site any time and if you have any questions or feedback we’d love to hear it. The more sites we test, the more feedback we gain, the better the system becomes.

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How does your website look on an iPad?

Here’s a little test to do when considering an agency for your digital marketing.

Grab an iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone and enter the agency’s URL in the browser. If the agency understands web marketing then their website will display seamlessly.

Unfortunately many agency websites will not display seamlessly, in fact they may not display at all. That’s because they have built their websites in Flash and Apple products are not Flash enabled.

We tested a bunch of agency sites on our new iPad yesterday and the results were alarming. Here in Newcastle 4 of the leading agency websites couldn’t be viewed at all while another 2 had serious formatting issues.

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Source: Adnews

Australia has the second highest social media penetration in Asia Pacific region (89.6%) with Facebook the number one site, according to new figures from comScore.

Australia fell just behind the Phillipines for social media penetration (90%) with internet users averaging 21 visits in February 2010 at 3.8 hours per visitor.

The report into social networking activity across the Asia-Pacific region – excluding China – found half (50.8%) of the total online population in the region visited a social networking site in February, reaching a total of 240.3 million visitors.

Facebook.com was ranked as the top social network across most regional markets including Australia, however the site was pipped to the top spot by Orkut in India, Mixi.jp in Japan, CyWorld in South Korea and Wretch.cc in Taiwan.

Across the region internet users averaged 2.5 hours on social networking sites during the month and visited the category an average of 15 times.

“While social networking continues to be one of the most popular and fastest growing Web activities in the world, its dynamics in the Asia-Pacific region exhibit significantly more individual market differentiation than in other global regions,” said Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for Asia Pacific.

“In some markets, such as the Philippines, Australia and Indonesia, social networking is one of the most popular Web activities reaching nearly 90% of the entire Internet population, while other markets report less PC-based social networking penetration, which can often be attributed to the high propensity to engage in social networking via mobile devices in these markets.”

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The Toowoomba property market received a significant boost when Dan Dwan and Markus Eames established the Colliers International office last year.

Colliers International Toowoomba specialises in Commercial, Industrial, Retail & Residential property in Toowoomba and surrounding areas. They represent property investors, developers and occupiers in local and global markets and offer service ranging from Facility Management, Project Marketing to Sales and Leasing.

Toowoomba is a diverse real estate market with everything from modern offices, pubs and clubs to rural retreats, resorts and retirement villages. Dan Dwan and Markus Eames focus on delivery the best reals estate advice and service in the region.

Note: this post is a search engine optimisation test.

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During February 2010, more than 9,200 participants joined ‘FebuSave’, a month-long national savings campaign created by ANZ to encourage Australian women to develop a regular savings habit. It was part of an innovative social media campaign that delivered some impressive results.

SOCIAL MEDIA CASE STUDY
Client: ANZ Customer Segmentation
Campaign: FebuSave
Time Period: Mid December 2009 – Mid March 2010

ANZ launched a new nationwide campaign to encourage women to develop a regular savings habit following research that found 53% of women do not save money on a regular basis.

Research commissioned by ANZ into the savings habits of women found:
• One in five women surveyed said they typically spend all their pay packet or regularly dip into their savings for basic living expenses.
• More than half (58%) have less than $5,000 in savings and 33% less than $1,000.
• 51% of women would last less than three months on their current savings if they lost their job and still had to pay their usual bills.

In an effort to raise awareness of these issues in the community and encourage Australian women to set financial goals and take action towards achieving them, ANZ created ‘FebuSave’ – a month-long savings initiative that ran from 1st to 28th February 2010.

At the end of the month, FebuSave participants reported back on how they performed against their savings goal, with three ‘FebuSave’ participants being rewarded with $5,000 in an ANZ savings account of their choice.

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Popularity: 2%

Coming soon, Age of Conversation 3

The latest edition of the exciting collaborative Age of Conversation marketing book series is about to go on sale with the release of “Age of Conversation 3: Its time to get busy” now at the publishers.

Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton have had the monumental task of compiling and editing the contributions of around 170 authors from around the world and now the book is close to release.

Very soon you will be able to purchase it directly from Amazon or a number of other online book stores. The new cover was designed by Chris Wilson. And the new website was created by the hard working team at Sticky.

There are some extremely talented marketers contributing this book so I can’t wait to read it myself. Stay tuned for more announcements soon, but in the meantime you can meet the authors:

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Popularity: 10%

source: Sydney Morning Herald 12 March, 2010

There’s been a decided shift in television viewing numbers already in 2010 and it seems to be a nationwide trend. Here in Newcastle we have been intrigued by the difference in audience numbers this year compared to the same time last year.

So far there seems to be an average of 20,000 less viewers per top 10 program than for the corresponding week in 2009. For example the #1 program in Newcastle for week 10, 2010 was The Mentalist with 84,000 viewers. The #5 program was NBN  Saturday News with 67,000 viewers and the #10 program was Talkin’ Bout Your Generation on SC TEN with 55,000 viewers.

IN 2009 for the week ending 3 March (corresponding week) here are the numbers: #1 Underbelly on NBN with 124,000 viewers, #5 RSPCA Animal Rescue on Prime with 86,000 viewers and #10 CSI on NBN with 75,000 viewers. Of course, Underbelly is a standout ratings winner but the #1 program last week had less viewers than the #5 program last year.

As you can see there are about 20,000 less viewers for the main Free-to-Air channels. And this is happening every week.

Now the national media are picking up on the trend. The rest of this post is taken from today’s Sydney Morning Herald.

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Is now the time for new kind of communications business that connects marketing specialists with corporate marketers?

Its been obvious for a while now that the generalist media era is coming to an end. No longer do a handful of large media outlets determine our news and entertainment the way they did during the last century. Increasingly we are turning to a multitude of specialist media providers to satisfy our many needs. Media consumption is splintering so rapidly that it’s difficult to keep track of the vast array of options available to us.

Marketing "connectors" assemble teams of specialists

One hangover from the generalist media era is the full-service agency. Whilst “everything under one roof” may have been feasible when there were only a handful of media options, in 2010, with a ridiculous number of feasible marketing options available….Free to Air TV, Subscription TV, Radio, Digital radio, Press, online press, outdoor, SEO, SEM, social media, inbound marketing, micro sites etc…. its seems ludicrous to believe that one shop can do it all.

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some of the Colliers International riders in Tour de Kids

I had the distinct honour of participating in the Tour de Kids charity ride from Melbourne to Sydney last week as part of the Colliers International team. Part of my job was to cover the event online for Colliers and demonstrate how effective modern mobile and web-based tools can be.

We decided to keep things simple by setting up a Posterous site to post all the daily updates and photos then compliment it with a dedicated Twitter account.

It couldn’t have been easier. Another Colliers rider and I were able to post directly to the website from our phones. The PicPosterous iPhone app meant that I could post images and short descriptions immediately from anywhere on the ride, allowing those following the event to gain almost real-time access.

We also pointed visitors and Twitter followers to the donations page of Tour de Kids urging them to support the riders. We felt it was important as a charity event to encourage donations whilst people were engaged rather than delay action.

It worked extremely well with riders raising more money for Starlight Foundation than ever before in the ten year history of the Tour de Kids and generating a considerable amount of media coverage.

Tour de Kids Peloton - photo by Steve Ferguson

All-in-all it was a great example of how easy it can be to engage and share online.

On a personal note, the Tour de Kids was an amazing experience. The people who rode and ran the event were extremely generous, paying their own way and raising almost $500,000 for seriously sick kids whilst enjoying the highs and lows (literally) of pedalling 1200km in 7 days. Meeting some of the families who Starlight help and hearing their stories was truly moving and was a reminder of how lucky most of us are to be in good health.

Congratulations to everyone involved.

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