Where Australians Go Online

Last week I attended a presentation by Hitwise Asia Pacific on where Australians go online for information, particularly which government sites they visit.

March 2009 data shows the most popular online destinations for Australians are search engines and social networks. Australia has around 6500 government websites and these account for 2.4% of all Australian online visits - higher than the US (1.7%) and the UK (0.9%).

Federal Government websites account for 60% of all visits, State Government websites accounted for 29.7% visits while 6.2% of visits went to Local Government sites.

In March 2009 the most popular Federal Government websites were:

• Bureau of Meteorology
• Centrelink
• Australian Taxation Office
• Australian Job Search
• Australian Taxation Office - Tax Agent Portal

The most popular State Government websites were:

• Victoria Country Fire Authority
• CityRail
• Roads and Traffic Authority NSW
• Better Health Channel
  
• Transport Infoline

With the top Local Government sites being:

• ourbrisbane.com
• Brisbane City Council
• Gold Coast City Council
• City of Sydney.
• City of Melbourne
  

As well as their own online efforts, social networks could provide a key opportunity for Governments to share information with Australians. Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Wikipedia all ranked in the top 15 websites that Australians visited this past March .

Referrals from social networks sites to government information are up 16.1% in the last 12 months.

Get the full report from Hitwise

The Power of Community Relations

Smart organisations instinctively know their survival is linked to their community. And that long term success depends on their relations with other organisations and individuals in the areas and environments in which they operate.

Those same organisations invest time, money and effort in community relations programs and continually look for ways to link to their communities. Effective community relations can increase their visibility and influence and help their bottom line by fending off unwarranted restrictions or criticisms.

Effective community relations gives them a "license to operate".

The University of Canberra apparently understands the power and importance of community. In the past 12 months it has embarked on a program aimed at drawing it closer to those living in Australia's national capital and the surrounding region.

What's attractive about the University's approach is it is simple and seems to be effective. For example this year the University:

• Entered a team in the Mothers Day Breast Cancer Walk joining around 4000 locals to raise awareness of this critical women's health issue. The team's brilliant orange T shirts announced their presence and the University won the award for the education institution making the biggest contribution on Mothers Day to the cause in Canberra.
  

• Is sponsoring (for the second year running) a competition to encourage the development of young Canberra film makers in their final year of school. Run in conjunction with the Tuggeranong Arts Centre the sponsorship connects the University to local schools and, importantly to influential personalities in Canberra's arts community.

• Has established a Canberra Award to acknowledge students who undertake an active program of personal development over the course of their university studies. Through the award students develop their skills by a combination of academic work, paid work experience or voluntary participation in community activities. At graduation they get a certificate of achievement which in today's tough employment market could be just the thing to make them stand out from other job seekers.
  

The community relations program seems to be cutting through. Along with vigorous marketing efforts, this year both the University's domestic and international students enrolments are well up.

(Disclosure: My partner works at the University of Canberra)

Publish Post

Marketing Starts Inside the Organization

Recently we came across this marketing presentation which provides a clear overview of the fundamentals of marketing.

Branding, Culture and Communications

In our workshops for not for profit groups, we cover the relationship of organisational culture, communicating with staff and branding. And we show how all three intersect to present your image to the world.

We came across this very good blogpost on branding and internal culture which is worth a read.

Manage Social Media Before It Manages You

In the past few weeks we've been helping an agency to pull together a social media policy. The intent is to come up with a simple document to guide staff on how and when to respond and contribute to social media when they're on company time.

And last week Australia's biggest telco,Telstra, announced a social media policy for its employees.

With more and more people communicating online, and brands increasingly finding themselves mentioned on Twitter, Facebook etc, organisations interested in protecting their brand need guidelines on how to manage these digital discussions.

We base our approach around a few fundamentals we hope are easy to understand and easy to apply.

• Organisations should be clear about who can represent their brand on social media platforms. Can all staff take part or only designated people. When first starting out ask yourself do you want everybody involved? Or is it better to limit participation to say staff with communications or client service responsibilities? At least initially.
  

• It is in your organisation's interests to ensure the people who represent your online interests have personal profiles on Facebook and other sites that are consistent with what you expect from your spokespersons.
  

• Google never forgets. Staff need to be careful about what they post online. Materiel destined for online audiences must be accurate and respect commercial in confidence, privacy, copyright, trademark and other requirements. It will be an art finding the balance between speed and accuracy.
  

• It can be tempting to respond with sarcasm, fury or even be condescending when commenting on online information you think is misguided, plain wrong or mischievous. Online conversations are easily inflamed so remind staff to keep conversations professional and to the point.
  

Social media is not going to go away. Nor do I think will it completely replace more traditional communications.

Now is the time to learn how to learn to manage social media before it manages you.