Don’t Lose The Trees Through The Forest
Posted Jul. 2, 2009 by Casey Flanagan
Filed under: Planning / Research, Trends
In our ongoing pursuit of actionable insights, we track trends. Like the fact that in the last month, the 55+ crowd on Facebook increased by about 76%. That’s staggering for one month. It’s led to a tectonic shift. There are now more people over 35 on Facebook than under 24. Let’s hold on while all the college kids reading this immediately shut down their Facebook accounts. Okay, ready? Back to it.
Huge, big, cultural-shifting numbers are great. But the promise of tracking – particularly when it comes to social media – is that we can pinpoint… people.
So, headlines-be-damned, we can learn things like: There are 3,100 people in Portland, Maine who “like coffee” enough to make it a part of their Facebook profile. And that number jumps to 10,920 people for Portland, Oregon.
For a brand that understand where it’s going and how to get there, the possibilities – and opportunities – are endless.
2 Responses to “Don’t Lose The Trees Through The Forest”
Posted on Sep 5, 2009 by Dick Papke
Mr. Flanagan…I’m interested in your conclusion concerning the example of the Facebook/coffee example in your 7/2/09 post. If it was that you’re more likely to find dedicated coffee people in Portland OR than in Portland, ME, you would be wrong. The Portland ME DMA has 239,300 people over 12 while its OR name-equivalent has 2,078,300. That’s 1.3% for ME v. 0.5% for OR…over a 2 1/2 times advantage for ME. “Headlines-be-damned indeed”. Looks as if the reputed Pacific NW coffee love may be be a bit overblown, at least in one random comparison.
Reminds me of the story of the six-foot statistician who drowned in a stream that averaged three feet deep.
Posted on Sep 14, 2009 by cflanagan
Thanks for commenting, Dick. Though I hope I’m not the six-foot statistician in your example. I only claim to be one of those things.
My point of this post was actually not about comparing anything at all – despite the potentially misleading use of two different Portland statistics. It was that while all of the comparative data we read about is great and interesting, one of the often overlooked benefits of social media is that you can identify, target and reach those 3,100 people in Portland, Maine (or 10,920 people in Portland, Oregon).
Hope that helps to clarify. Please let me know if you’d like to discuss any of this further.