Analysts at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley were given a run for their money this month, when 15-year-old intern Matthew Robson produced a report giving unprecedented insight into teenagers’ use of different media, revealing that young people are eager to try new media technologies and switch among them, but that their usage is primarily dictated by their very limited spending power.

Robson “texted a few friends to get ideas” when asked by the bank’s European media research desk to produce an account of his friends’ media and communications habits, and wrote up the report in a single day.

His findings made stark reading for the bank’s clientele. Teenagers see advertising as “extremely annoying and pointless”. They “cannot be bothered” to read a newspaper, never buy CDs or use yellow pages directories, and generally try to avoid paying for anything other than concerts and cinema tickets.

Most teenagers (8 out of 10 according to Robson) are fond of music, but reluctant to pay for it, preferring to download it illegally. He notes that teenagers from high-income families play music on iPods, whereas those from low-income families tend to use mobile phones.

Unsurprisingly, the internet is hugely popular, with most teenagers “heavily active” on a combination of social networking sites. Facebook is the most common, but Twitter has quickly fallen out of favour, since teenagers prefer to use their limited phone credit to text friends rather than updating their Twitter feed.

The biggest challenge in Robson’s report is to advertisers, since it is apparent that teenagers actively avoid advertising, changing channels during commercial breaks, ‘ignoring’ conventional outdoor advertising, and considering online banner ads and pop-ups “extremely annoying”. Robson does suggest, however, that teens might be a lot more responsive to viral marketing and to quirky or unusual campaigns.

Robson’s report has caused a huge stir across the world, with his findings being debated by banks, newspapers and media conglomerates, as well as many thousands of internet users. It remains to be seen whether it will make any difference to the way the media targets the next generation.

A few days ago, we received the following email from Acer, who last year supplied us with some computer equipment:

Hi,

Every month we want to share a bit of us,

enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it!

Click on the image to open the online magazine.

drag and drop the page.

You can always go back to read Acer news by visiting:

LINK

Now, aside from the ghastly grammar and the spurious syntax, we have just one question: who cares what’s happening in Acer?

If there is one thing a company newsletter or email should NOT do it’s to talk exclusively about the company. The reason is simple: it’s boring for the reader. Acer’s online magazine may well be excellent, but we wouldn’t know because we didn’t have any incentive to click on the link.

Something like this might have done the trick, though:

Hi Write My Site,

You purchased a computer system from us last year – thank you, we hope you’re delighted with your equipment.

We’re contacting you today to invite you to check out our FREE online magazine, which is packed with useful tips and advice about how to get the best from your Acer computer system. Inside the magazine you will find:

•    Breaking news of the latest technology in computing, like screens that don’t hurt your eyes and software systems that make your machine run faster.

•    Reviews from our SME customers of Acer products and systems.

•    Special offers available on an exclusive basis to readers of the online magazine.

Take a look today.

So, why is our version of the email an improvement on the original? Essentially it boils down to five things:

1.    It starts with a personal acknowledgement and an appreciation of the recipient’s status, i.e. a customer.

2.    It goes on to explain, succinctly, what’s on offer, why it’s relevant to the customer, and that it’s FREE (still a very popular word, despite its wide usage).

3.    There is a bullet point list of reasons why the magazine is both relevant and beneficial to the customer.

4.    The call to action is straightforward, with none of the “click here, drag there” stuff of the original email.

5.    The tone of the email in general is more personal, more conversational, and more likely to elicit a positive response.

We have today published the results of our blogging survey and we were not surprised to discover that 70% of the small businesses we interviewed struggle to find the time to keep their blogs up-to-date.

We asked 125 small business owners about their blogging habits and found that, while 62% of respondents set up a blog in the hope that it would increase traffic to their websites, only 29% are managing to populate them between one and three times each month. The remaining 71% have admitted they just weren’t able to find the time to maintain their blogs.

The survey focused almost exclusively on very small businesses, as these organisations tend not to be able to afford the ‘people power’ that larger businesses can leverage. 42% of our interviewees were one-man-bands; and a further 43% worked within organisations with 1-5 employees with the remaining 15% working for larger organisations.

The full release is available in our Press section. Please feel free to reproduce as long as Write My Site receives a credit and a link back to www.writemysite.co.uk.