Andres Wittermann on international media relations trends

State Of The News Media Just Out

Just found an interesting report on all the developments in the U.S. news media, just – excerpts from the summary:

“Newspaper ad revenues have fallen 23% in the last two years. Some papers are in bankruptcy, and others have lost three-quarters of their value. By our calculations, nearly one out of every five journalists working for newspapers in 2001 is now gone, and 2009 may be the worst year yet. (...) Perhaps least noticed yet most important, the audience migration to the Internet is now accelerating. The number of Americans who regularly go online for news, by one survey, jumped 19% in the last two years; in 2008 alone traffic to the top 50 news sites rose 27%.”

Nothing new really, but very comprehensive reading with great stats.

The Year When Companies Discovered The Social Web

German business newspaper Handelsblatt writes about a recently published survey which reveals that over 80 per cent of the biggest European companies are using social networks and tools like Wikipedia to manage their reputation.

This confirms my observation that over the last 12 months (nearly) all companies have finally realized the power of the Social Web. And although some people may still think the web offers great opportunities to save money - it is more the ability to target certain user groups much more efficiently than ever before which really makes the web interesting. The fact that Wikipedia rules in this research still seems to indicate that the companies are still going for large audiences rather than using the really Social factor in the "new" web.

So, still some wy to go for many it seems.

The survey, carried out by Swedish consultancy H&H, says that the last 12 months have seen a steep increase in companies using social networks to do their PR. The most popular platforms today are Youtube (where many companies already have established their own video channels), picture portal Flickr, presentation portal Slideshare and Apple's audio platform iTunes. Surprisingly (or not), the top target for online PR is Wikipedia though.

Interestingly the research also shows that 90 per cent of the analysts, shareholders and business journalists contacted said they are increasingly using these channels to gather information.

European Social Media PR leader is Siemens, followed by Vodafone and BP. When asked about the quality provided by the ocmpanies, they rated Deutsche Post as the leader.

And yes, here comes the country ranking (how we love it): Quality-wise German companies are best in European Social Media PR, followed by Finland and the UK. If ranked by quantity of Social Media usage France is the leader followed by British and German companies.