â–¶ Public Trusts Media in BP Leak: According a recent survey findings by Pew Research Center, the public expresses far more trust in the news media for information about the Gulf oil leak than it does in either the federal government or BP. Survey findings include:
• Fully 67% say they have a lot (20%) or some trust (47%) in information on the oil leak coming from news organizations. That compares with 51% who have at least some trust in information from the federal government and 39% in information from BP.
• The oil leak continues to dominate the public’s news interest. Nearly two-thirds (66%) cite the Gulf disaster as the story they followed most closely—more than seven times the percentage citing the economy (9%), the second-leading story.
• The public is much more interested in the impact of the Gulf oil leak and how far it might spread than in the response by politicians or assessments of blame. Nearly three-quarters (74%) say they are very interested in the impact of the leak on the environment, while 51% are interested in who is to blame for the disaster.
Source: Pew Research Center
â–¶ Online PR Tactics: Econsultancy’s Social Media and Online PR Report, produced with bigmouthmedia, looked at how companies are using online PR tactics and social media sites such as Twitter for marketing and customer service. Findings include:
• The majority (64%) of companies say they have experimented with social media but have not done much.
• Microblogging (i.e. Twitter) is now the most widely adopted social media tactic, used by 78% of company respondents.
• Just under half of companies (46%) are not yet using reputation or buzz monitoring tools to understand what is being said about their brand.
• Nearly a third of respondents (31%) are not spending any of their budget on social media.
• There is a mixed view of the benefits of Twitter, with almost a third of respondents (31%) saying that there are tremendous opportunities available.
• The biggest barrier to better social media engagement for companies surveyed is the lack of resources (54%).
Source: econsultancy
â–¶ Online Community Stakes: The Verizon -sponsored study, “Dangerous liaisons: How businesses are learning to work with their new stakeholders,” surveyed senior executives worldwide on their views of how an emerging group of nontraditional stakeholders is impacting corporate reputation. 33% say that online communities will be their most important category of “non-traditional stakeholder” in five years.
• While NGOs top the list of groups currently most important to businesses (27%), online communities are close behind with 26%.
• 42% believe that online social networks will be the most effective means of communicating with these groups.
• Some 43%, the largest group of survey respondents, see reputation damage as their main risk in dealing with online communities.
Source: Verizon
â–¶ Seniors Comfy with Web: AARP conducted a survey with GfK Group, examining the Internet and social media use of adults over 50, finding that two out of five (40%) of adults age 50 and over consider themselves extremely (17%) or very (23%) comfortable using the Internet. Other findings:
• Most adults 50+ prefer to get their news from print newspapers and magazines (40%) or through a combination of print and online news sources (26%); 10% get their news through newspaper and magazine Web sites only.
• Among adults 50+ who get their news online, one-third use cable news station Web sites and newspaper and magazine Web sites.
• The majority of those 50+ who access the Internet do so from a desktop computer (57%), 26% use a laptop, 4% use smartphones/BlackBerrys, 4% use mobile phones.
• Approximately one-quarter (27%) of all those 50+ use social media Web sites with Facebook being by far the most popular (23%). Among those who say they access the Internet, almost two-fifths (37%) use social networking sites, with almost one-third (31%) using Facebook. PRN
Source: AARP