AdNews: 40 Under Forty [14th November 2008]

Welcome to Australia's Marketing Blogosphere, B&T [9th October 2008]

My Top 50 Australian Marketing Blogs got a featured in B&T. Check out the full magazine here, the article is on page 34.

Australia's best business blogs, Smart Company [8th October 2008]

I was listed in 15 of Australia's best business blogs

'Adspace Pioneers

Long-running and regularly updated blog on marketing and social media issues created by Julian Cole, a social media strategist at new agency The Population. His blog is home to the Australian top 50 marketing pioneer blogs list.'

Guest Lecturer, ADMA Certificate in Digital Marketing [7th October 2008]

This is part of the presentation that I prepared for the Digital Marketing course that I lectured.

Social Media Platforms and the behavioural changes

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social media)

MyFace, The Hack Half Hour Show, ABC2

Link to the website

The Inspiration Room, B&T [19th September 2008]

Marketing2.0 and Beyond, Conference [17th September 2008]

What is Social Media? Marketing 2.0 Conference, Sydney 17.09.08

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Photon moves into social media, B&T [8th September 2008]

Backchat, Marketing Magazine [September]

Article in the Backchat section looking at the debate between the value of my NAB Spamming video. Here is a link to the full thread.

Advertising and Marketing in Social Media, AIMIA Conference [August 12 2008]

8 Tips To Social Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Link to site

Top 50 Australian Blogs, Marketing Magazine [August]

Creating Strategic Online Marketing Campaigns, AMI Conference [5th June 2008]

How You Were Misled1

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Face off, Green Guide, The Age [15th May 2008]

Digital strategist and researcher
Julian Cole did his thesis on the way
young people use social networking.
He says security just doesn’t concern
them.
‘‘This generation is much more
forward in the information they’re
giving over to sites like Facebook,’’
he says. ‘‘There’s no reservation in
revealing date of birth, schools,
football teams, even mobile phone
numbers. They don’t have that worry
about security.’’
Mr Cole says that while security
upgrades on social networking sites
now allow you to make your profile
visible only to your network, some
people feel embarrassed about doing
this, preferring to give access to
strangers to gain kudos by having a
greater number of friends.

Facebook: The Broody Teenager, Marketing [May 2008]

Facebook the Broody Teenager!

Julian Cole completed a Honours thesis in Online Social Networks at Monash University and is currently writing his Masters thesis on Blackberry addiction. Julian also works as a Digital Strategist for Naked Communication. He writes the blog adspace-pioneers.blogspot.com and is an active member of STBz.



‘Mum, Dad - get out of my life, you just don’t understand me.’

Facebook users have just thrown the brooding teenagers fit. They have slammed the doors on marketers and told them there is as much chance of me becoming Facebook friends with your brand as there is with me being entertained by your annual report.

Like good parents, marketers have tried to have a go and failed and now are probably moving on to try to save the younger child/newest trend or just giving up on Facebook.
Which is fair enough, there hasn’t been any real success story of a company marketing through Facebook. However as much as we would like Facebook to go away, it is not going to happen. Facebook is still getting a lot of attention from Generation Y. The average time spent on Facebook is a whopping 14 minutes compared to the average stay on other website that is less than 3 minutes.

In the case of Facebook it maybe that the broody teenager might just be right.

There could be a possibility that we do not know how users are using Facebook. Take a minute to have a guess how much time people spend using Facebook to personally communicate with others, remember this was the original intention of the site?

Personal communication makes up a measly 10%! So what are people doing for the other 90% of time they are on Facebook?

Surveillance ranks as the number one use of Facebook*. Instead of people reading about Britney’s new drug addiction, they are now more interested in finding out on how their old high school friend Anna ended up with her head around the toilet bowl at the local bar last Sunday.

Facebook gives these amateur voyeurs all the tools they could want to find out this information. Whether it looking through friends’ online photo albums or reading other people’s wall comments, there are a number of clues for people to piece together what is happening in their friends’ social lives. The second clincher for Gen Yers is that the source of information is constantly updated and new watercooler gossip stories are being created every minute of the day.

User profiles stand at the centre of this pit of gossip. Information from these profiles is now being used to judge other people’s coolness. There is a certain Melbourne nightclub who chooses their members’ list solely on a person’s myspace profile. Therefore creating the perfect digital self is a time consuming activity. This is the second major use of online social networks. Offline, people make impressions of others on the clothes they wear, the way they speak and the people they hang out with. Where offline you only have limited time to form this impression. Online offers you a rich source of never-ending data to work out whether this person is cool or not - for instance you can search their friends’ lists, read their conversations they have been having with people for the last few years and see all the photographs from all the parties they have been attending. Everyone can now perform their own background checks on new friends.

However there is further explanation for the large amount of time people spend on Facebook, this is explained by a psychological state called flow. The term was coined by psychologist Csíkszentmihályi and refers to a mental state that people get into where they get so involved in one activity that they block out everything else that is happening around them. You have probably more likely heard about this from a footballer being interviewed after the match who dropped the unique line of ‘just being in the zone’ - another example of flow.

There is a high case of people falling into this state of flow because of the way that Facebook is set up. The navigation through Facebook has been set up so that people can go through the site with ease and no direct purpose. The average Facebook page has over 200 links to other pages within the site. Link this with people’s innate desire to know about what is happening with their social circle and you have a big number of people entering this state of flow and spending hours surfing Facebook pages, losing track of everything else that is happening around them.

It is important for companies to realize that Facebook is not just used for personal communication but more like a soap opera being played out in real time. If you can understand what users are doing with the technology, then you are opening the door to a large group of broody teenagers.



• Cole (2007) The Uses and Gratification of Online Social Networks, Honours Thesis, Monash University.

Women in Business, Business, The Age [8th March 2008]

Qoute 'In fact mothers are seizing the day when it comes to online market5ing. Digital Strategist for Naked Communications, Julian Cole, plans online advertising campaigns.
Women's involvement with the internet and IT is changing he says ' A main growth area that didn't exsist five years ago are mothers groups, whihc are social supportive and entrepreneurial for mothers who want to stay home and earn extra money' he says.'

' Julian Cole says these conversational marketing foryums are attracting the attention of nappy brands such as Huggies as sponsors and advertisers. " They enter the conversation by talking about their products and forming ongoing relationships." '

Facing up to the future, Extra, Herald Sun [17th February 2008]

Quote
'A Monash University study found some people were logging into social networks more than 20 times a day.
Researcher Julian Cole said many addicts started because of boredom; diversion became a daily routine.
Mr. Cole said warning signs of an addiction included frequently checking pages, staying online for longer than intended, scheduling life around Facebook and Myspace and experiencing negative psychological or physical effects when the activity wasn't available.'

Queer eye for the pink buy, B&T [16th November 2007]

Quote
'Digital Strategist for Naked Communications, Julian Cole (who has just completed a thesis in social media) encourages gay marketers to use Web 2.0 to reach gay opinion leaders like bloggers Perez Hilton and YouTube’s Chris Crocker and Gay God.

“With tools such as Technorati, which ranks the influence and audience of a blog, it is much easier to find the opinion leaders within the gay community. Companies are starting to realize the power of these individuals and commence dialogue with these influential bloggers,”he says.

Cole predicts conversational marketing and blogger outreach programs will be the big digital marketing buzz of 2008, with the tight knit gay community a target.'

My Vote: SBS Insight [16th October 2007]

I was asked to attend the recording of the SBS Current Affairs show 'Insight' as a Digital Strategist looking at the effects of Politicians Myspace and Facebook pages on the 2007 election.

Watch the 'My Vote' episode here

Today Show Interview: [6th November 2007]

Watch the video of the interview here

November 6, 2007: Researcher Julian Cole has conducted a study on FaceBook and My Space, which has yielded the disturbing results that teens and 20-somethings may be addicted.

More young Australians addicted to online networking, The Herald Sun, The Age, The Australian, News.com.au [5th November 2007]

More Young Australians Addicted to online networking

'A GROWING number of young Australians are becoming addicted to online social networking, according to a new study.' November 5th

Full article

Facing up to the future, Sunday Herald Sun [17th February 2008]

In the Sunday Herald Sun February 17th

Facing up to the future
'It is said to be almost as popular as sex and attracts 250,000 new members a day, but is Facebook a diversion or an addiction? Bryan Patterson reports'

For the full article

Quote
'A Monash University study found some people were logging into social networks more than 20 times a day.

Researcher Julian Cole said many addicts started because of boredom; diversion became a daily routine.

Mr Cole said warning signs of an addiction included frequently checking pages, staying online for longer than intended, scheduling life around Facebook or MySpace and experiencing negative psychological or physical effects when the activity wasn't available.'