After exploring the social media scenes in Asia, South America, and Europe, the sixth installment of our Globally Social Series will take you to faraway Australia. Often considered as the ultimate travel haven, Australia has many one-of-a-kind natural wonders and unique species of wildlife. When it comes to the country’s social media behaviors, Aussies demonstrate some quite specific patterns different from the rest of the world.
In Australia, Twitter Is Behind Instagram And Tumblr In Market Share
The most well-established social networks, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, are usually the top three dominant players in major markets of the world. But Australia is the unexpected outlier — less than three million Aussies are registered Twitter users, while both Tumblr and Instagram have a user base approaching five million. Corresponding to the overall trend elsewhere, Instagram has shot up its reach in Australia to five million in July 2015 from just less than two million in 2013.
Especially noteworthy about the Australian social media scene is the sweeping success of Tumblr. Often seen as a blogging/social network platform like WordPress, Tumblr generally gets much less attention than Instagram or Facebook from social media marketers. However, if you are trying to attract Aussies, Tumblr is much too important of a social network to ignore. In fact, its founder has commented that Australia “ is one of Tumblr’s biggest organic markets in the world ” when explaining why they chose Australia as the first international market outside the U.S. to roll out their advertising products.
Aussies Are Consumers And Content Creators
According to Nielsen’s 2013 online ratings, WordPress and Tumblr are the third and fourth most popular digital platforms, surpassing Instagram and Twitter among the 14-17-year-old demographic. Blogger, another blogging platform, also has double the teen market penetration rate than Instagram and Twitter in Australia. So the question remains: Why are Australians so fond of blogging? Forrester analyst and Australia native Steven Noble once concluded: Australian consumers are blocking marketing messages and turning to each other for advice. This was based on his 2008 findings that 25% of Australians create their own content, and more than 40% have posted brand-specific commentaries on digital media. Seven years later, this observation seems to still hold true — a July 2015 research done by Waggeer Edstrom Asia-Pacific has found that only about one in ten Aussies are “very likely” to follow brands on social media because they prefer to keep their feeds “personal.” Therefore, the desire to create and share content with their social circles is most commonly manifested in the popularity of blogging. Below is a chart summarizing what types of content are being created across different social channels and what hashtags are frequently used by Australians.
The Hometown Advantage For Australian Influencers
From white-sand beaches to myriad wildlife and the “big red rock” Uluru, Australia has so much to offer for content creators. As reported by BuzzFeed Australia, professional traveler and Belgian Johan Lolos gained 20,000 followers on Instagram within one week thanks to his spectacular images of Australia. Unsurprisingly, Australia is home to a slew of travel influencers and Instagrammers.
Instagram pictures of Aussie professional traveler Lauren Bath @laurenepbath Like other countries, Australia also has its own homegrown answers to Michelle Phan and Aimee Song. Chloe Morello, for instance, is thought to be the biggest Australian beauty YouTuber and makeup blogger who has an incredible engagement level of 15.7%. According to Brand Data, the combined audience base of Australia’s top six social media influencers is even larger than that of highest-rated magazines, newspaper and TV shows there. Thanks to their native advantages, Aussie influencers can easily infuse awe-inspiring sceneries and the irresistibly cute Koala bears in their pictures. The carefree culture of Australia has also given these influencers a natural, down-to-earth appeal and the inspiration to try out new things.
Instagram pictures of Aussie travel, lifestyle, and yoga influencer Sjana Elise Earp @sjanaelise A very recent research study in August 2015 has shown that Aussie consumers are most responsive to advertisements immediately after they share content on social media. This means that even though Australians are more wary of interacting with branded content, marketers will greatly increase their chances of getting their messages across by carefully monitoring what content is being created and liked.
