The Social Media Revolution Will Not Be Televised But it Will be on Your SmartPhone

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Social media, social media, social media: it seems like social media is all anyone ever talks about anymore when it comes to online marketing, or even marketing in general. These days, it’s practically more common to hear spokespeople say, “Visit us on Facebook at ____” than it is to hear them say “Visit us online at ____” or “Call for a free catalog”. With so many people talking about social media and clamoring to be in the front seat of the social media bandwagon, it’s hard to sort out exactly how social media has already affected businesses, and what changes might be expected for the future.

Almost one in five human beings on the planet who have access to the internet have a Facebook account. Meanwhile, there are 65 million Twitter posts each day, and 2 billion YouTube video views per day (Source: ReadWriteWeb.com). However, what does all of this mean for the way we conduct business? Furthermore, how will social media continue to evolve in 2011? Here are a few ideas about the changing face of social media, and what it means for both marketing professionals and the bottom line of businesses everywhere.

As a culture, we have experienced several profound shifts in the way we receive and process information about our world. The first shift was from word-of-mouth gossip to slightly more reliable newspapers, an era that lasted until television took hold and men like Walter Cronkite helped us to watch and interpret the news of the day. In the last several years, the shift has clearly been away from television and towards the internet. TV news is scrambling to hold onto its piece of the pie by offering online video, blogs, Facebook pages, and ongoing Twitter conversations. However, the next step is from the computer to the smart phone.

At the moment, only 21% of mobile phone users own smart phones, but this will change in 2011. According to the Nielsen blog, the US market will have more smart phones than feature phones by the end of the year (Source: CyberJournalist.net).

Social Media and the Smart Phone revolution: other facts marketers should know

1. According to its forecast, IDC says the number of downloaded mobile apps is expected to increase from 10.9 billion worldwide in 2010 to more than 76.9 billion in 2014. In addition, worldwide mobile apps revenues will experience similar growth, surpassing $35 billion in 2014.
2. Email access is declining for computers, but rising for iPhones
3. Close to 40% of Facebook users access the social network through their phone (Source: Facebook.com).
4. 200 mobile operators in 60 countries are deploying and promoting Facebook mobile products (Source: Facebook.com).

To join in the rush to integrate Social Media with Smart Phones, businesses need to do three things

1. Make sure that their existing social media is mobile-friendly.
2. Test web and video content on mobile devices.
3. Successfully communicate to their customers what available apps and other mobile goodies they have available, and make it readily accessible.

Broadcast Yourself via Social Media

[4thwebvids video=”Pblj3JHF-Jo” embeddedHeight=”295″ embeddedWidth=”480″ autoplay=”false”]

YouTube’s longtime slogan, “broadcast yourself”, will be more relevant than ever as online videos multiply like overactive rabbits. Video content online has taken off in the last two to three years, but in 2011 expect it to get even bigger. October 2010 alone saw 5.4 billion video views worldwide, including 2 billion views on Facebook. (Source: ComScore.com).

Businesses forget about YouTube as a social media outlet at their own peril. Just as companies that were painfully behind the times in the early 2000s claimed they didn’t need a website, companies today will fall behind the times if they don’t have a YouTube channel, or some other way of promoting video content and integrating it across multiple online marketing channels.

Facts about online video every Social Media marketer should know

1. Nearly half of business executives age 40 and under report utilizing video to help them make decisions about vendors – this number will only increase as 20 somethings and 30 somethings climb the corporate ladder (Source: eMarketer.com).
2. 90% of videos watched online are watched on YouTube (Source: SocialMediaB2B.com).
3. The average consumer watches 182 online videos every month (Source: DigitalBuzzBlog.com).

What does this mean for businesses? If they don’t have video on their website now, they will by the end of 2011, unless they want to look like a dinosaur.

The World Will Be Different in 2011, But the Same

As Mark Zuckerberg told Time in his Person of the Year interview, humans “parse data” via the algorithm of relationships. That is the key fact, he says, that has made the social networking revolution possible. People don’t want an internet full of strangers; they want the internet to feel as cozy and safe as their living room.

Zuckerberg sees the future of Facebook as an entity that is more and more woven into the very fabric of the internet. If he’s right, one day online users might surf to a site like CNN.com, and instead of seeing comments on news stories by strangers, comments by their Facebook friends might pop to the top of the list.

As the Person of the Year honor and recent Golden Globes for The Social Network clearly demonstrate, Zuckerberg’s way of approaching the internet have struck a chord with the citizens of the digital world. Social media has fundamentally changed the way we think about everything – from how we keep in touch with grandma to how we buy new shoes – but what hasn’t changed is why social media is so popular. Ultimately, it is Zuckerberg’s insight that we “parse” the world through our relationships with others that is the golden goose laying the golden eggs of social media marketing.

Businesses that want to succeed with social media marketing in 2011 must always remember this basic fact: fancy Facebook landing pages, high-quality videos, and constant Twitter updates are not what their customers are looking for. What they are looking for is a way to connect, a way to interact, a way to feel like they “know” the people they are buying from. In other words, businesses would do well to keep in mind that the first, most important word in “social media marketing” is still, and always will be, “social”.

Facebook Sun Sinking? Twitter Star Rising?

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Here’s today’s Facebook / Twitter riddle: What number do you get when you combine the populations of the states of Oregon, Oklahoma, Connecticut, Kansas, and Kentucky? Answer: Seventeen million, or the number of Americans who use Twitter (Source: ConvinceAndConvert.com).

Granted, proponents of Facebook scoff at the number 17 million; after all, Facebook boasts 500 million users, making 17 million look like a very small number. Meanwhile, social media experts like to complain that despite the number of Twitter accounts, many of them are not considered “active” like Facebook. They are accounts held by people who rarely tweet. Some have even claimed that Twitter was strictly a 2009 phenomena, and that Twitter is entering a long, slow decline that will eventually lead to its extinction as another internet species that just didn’t work out. (Friendster, anyone?)

However, Twitter is paying no attention to the naysayers; it is continuing to grow and continuing to prove itself a relevant part of the social media landscape. As one example of its relevance, residents of Egypt and other countries in the Middle East have been using Twitter to quickly disseminate information about the Egyptian crisis and general political unrest there (Source: Mashable.com).

Twitter naysayers might also be interested to learn that Twitter activity is growing, while Facebook activity is falling off. In recent months, Facebook has faced a 22% drop in time on the site per person, per day. Facebook has also seen a 26% drop in uploaded photos per month (Source: Blog.Hubspot.com).

In February 2010, Twitter hit 50 million tweets per day. In September 2010, that number had risen to 90 million tweets per day. In January 2011, Twitter reached 110 million tweets per day, with 200 million registered accounts.

Twitter’s growth isn’t limited just to the United States, although certainly Twitter usage continues to rise overall in the US (especially in western states – see the Hubspot link above). Just recently, Twitter added Korean to the languages users can tweet in, and as a result they experienced a 3,400% increase in Korean language tweets in 2010 (Source: Forbes.com). Twitter is also rapidly gaining ground in Japan.

New accounts, tweets, and languages aren’t the only signs of growth at Twitter. In an era where even Silicon Valley is experiencing massive layoffs, Twitter actually doubled the number of its employees between December 2009 and December 2010 (Souce: Forbes.com).

For Businesses, Twitter Followers Might be Better than Facebook Fans

The statistics mentioned above aren’t the only ones marketers should pay attention to. Even though they may not be tweeting about it, Twitter users are following brands far more rabidly than any other social media users. Consider that 49% of Twitter users follow companies or brands, but only 16% of social media users overall follow companies/brands. In fact, people using Twitter are three times more likely to follow their favorite brands with Twitter than Facebook users (Source: ConvinceAndConvert.com).

A report by ExactTarget reveals even more interesting differences between Twitter and Facebook users when it comes to interacting with brands. Here are a few of their findings:

• 37% of Twitter users say they are more likely to purchase a brand after becoming a follower, versus 17% of Facebook users
• 33% of Twitter users say they are more likely to recommend a brand after becoming a follower, versus 21% of Facebook users
• 49% of Facebook users said they were not more likely to purchase a brand after becoming a fan, and 47% said they were not more likely to recommend a brand after becoming a fan
• Daily Twitter users were twice as likely to purchase a brand than daily Facebook users

(Source: eMarketer.com)

Twitter may become more popular than Facebook thanks to Smart Phones

Expressing yourself with 140 characters or less is especially convenient when you’re using a phone to do the expressing. With small screens and still maddeningly small letters, not to mention the occasionally annoying predictive text, the less you have to write with a mobile device, the better.

As more and more people turn to their mobile devices, tablet computers, and smart phones as one of their main sources of internet access, expect Twitter usage to grow even more. Already, 63% of Twitter users are accessing social networks through their phones (Source: ConvinceAndConvert.com). Since smart phone sales are expected to dominate the mobile device market in 2011, Twitter is likely to also win big.

Facebook fans: Don’t Leave Twitter Out

Although more than half of Twitter users don’t tweet themselves, this doesn’t mean they’re not reading the tweets of the people or businesses they follow. As the numerous statistics above show, average Twitter users might not be contributing much to the conversation, but they are certainly listening in.

Marketers and business owners should keep this in mind when they consider which social networks they use to actively promote their brands. With Mark Zuckerberg on the cover of Time magazine, it might be easy jump on the Facebook bandwagon and forget about Twitter. Instead, Facebook marketers should reconsider their Twitter strategy and figure out how to get the most out of each 140 characters.

1.5 Billion or 75% of Everyone with Internet Access Use Social Media

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75% of everyone with an Internet connection access social media sites around the world. That’s 1.5 Billion people. In 2010, this incredible number meant that for one minute out of every four and a half minutes that people around the globe were online, they were on a social media site. Overall, the globe increased the average amount of time it spends on social media sites from three and a half hours to six hours from 2009 to 2010 (Source: NielsenWire Blog). In 2011, we should expect more of the same, until eventually every – or nearly every – internet user is also a social media user.

Social Media is all anyone ever seems to talk about anymore

Since social media is all anyone ever seems to talk about anymore, especially when it comes to marketing, let’s first define what social media actually is. To put it simply, a “ social media site” is any site wherein the content is driven by internet users, as opposed to a site where the content is directed by a business entity.

For example, a personal blog where there’s an ability to post comments or otherwise interact online with the author is a social media site. By contrast, HuffingtonPost.com is not a social media site per se, but it certainly blurs the line between a traditional site and a social media site, because it is a place where readers are encouraged to comment and dialogue about what they read.

Wikipedia.org is a classic example of a social media site. Its content isn’t controlled by any one individual, but is created by, reviewed by, and revised by Wikipedia users.

Although it’s often forgotten in the social media discussion, flickr.com is another social media site that actually holds the #3 spot in the social media world on Alexa, right after YouTube and Twitter (Source: Prevolac Media Blog).

Social Media vs. Social Networking vs. Social Bookmarking

Another place where social media neophytes tend to get confused is within the various terms that are similar, but different. What is the difference between social media and social networking? What exactly is social bookmarking? Understanding these differences is crucial when preparing a social media marketing campaign; marketers shouldn’t treat social bookmarks the same way they treat social networking, or social networking the way they treat generic social media.

Social networking is a social media site where people go to connect with businesses or individuals, make friends, meet new people with similar interests, or find a date. The most famous social network of them all, at least for now, is Facebook. With 600 million users, a figure that represents a quarter of all internet users, Facebook is the king of social networking. The king it dethroned to get there is still nobody to laugh at – MySpace still has 57 million users in the US alone (Source: Research-Write.com). Twitter is also considered a social networking site, and although its popularity has declined, it’s still very important, with 50 million tweets every day (Source: Twitter.com).

Although Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter are “the big three” in social networking, there are a dozen other social networking sites, some of which you’ve heard of, and some of which you haven’t, that still make an impact on the way people receive, digest, and act upon information. Here are a few of them:

• LinkedIn — Social networking for white collar professionals, mostly used for business-related networking. 80 million users.
• BlackPlanet – A social networking site geared towards African Americans. 20 million users.
• Classmates — Designed to help people re-connect with long-lost school pals. 50 million users.
• hi5 — Popular in Asia and Latin America, but virtually unknown in the US. 80 million users.
• Orkut — Owned by Google, this site is used mostly in India and Brazil. 100 million users.
• Skyrock — A French-speaking social network. 22 million users.
• Tagged — An increasingly popular social network, Tagged has also earned a controversial reputation for its email marketing. 100 million users.
• Bebo — More popular in Britain than in the US, Bebo was once a major player but its membership has been decreasing. 117 million users.

(Source: Wikipedia.org)

Social bookmarking combines the original, pre-search engine “internet directory” with social media. In other words, it is a list of sites or posts recommended by the member users. The most popular social bookmarking sites, with estimated monthly visitors in parentheses, are:

• Digg (27.5 million)
• Yahoo! Buzz (16 million)
• reddit (15.5 million)
• StumbleUpon (15 million)
• delicious (5.5 million)
• mixx (2.6 million)

(Source: eBiz MBA Knowledgebase)

One viral Digg, Buzz, or Stumble can easily earn a website hundreds of thousands of visits.

Some Social Media sites should not be ignored

The sheer quantity of social media, social networking, and social bookmarking sites out there can easily overwhelm marketers and business owners attempting to forge a new social media marketing campaign.

Simply put, no marketing campaign can include every social media site – nor should it. LinkedIn might be right for some businesses, but not for others; YouTube is important for video sharing, but it’s far from the only place where people watch online videos. Marketers must be smart, and instead of blasting their message across all social media platforms, they should take a targeted approach based on the demographic they serve. Some of the statistics might come as a surprise.

For example, social gaming, such as Farmville on Facebook, skews towards women in their 40s – a statistic which might surprise some marketers who assumed games were only for teenage boys (Source: GigaOm.com). Likewise, marketers who want a YouTube video to go viral should aim it at bloggers 35 and under, as these are bloggers most likely to embed a YouTube video on their blog (Source: ReadWriteWeb.com).

Ultimately, the success of social media marketing has always hinged and will always hinge on marketers’ ability to create a marketing message that strikes a nerve with the target audience. However, marketers can only strike that nerve when they meet the right online users in the right setting with the right message. Understanding who these influential users are and where they can be found in the complex parallel dimension of social media is the bedrock of effective social media marketing.

1.5 Billion or 75% of Everyone with Internet Access Use Social Media – Another article on Social Media from 4thWeb.

Study Indicates Social Media Pays

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New Study Indicates Social Media Pays; Wetpaint and Altimeter Group Find Correlation Between Brands’ Social Media Efforts and Financial Performance

A new study from Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group confirms that deep engagement with consumers through social media channels correlates to better financial performance. The ENGAGEMENTdb study showed significant positive financial results for the companies who measured as having the greatest breadth and depth of social media engagement. These “Social Media Mavens” on average grew company revenues by 18 percent over the last 12 months, while the least engaged companies saw revenues sink 6 percent on average over the same time period.

The ENGAGEMENTdb study reviewed more than 10 discrete social media channels, including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, and discussion forums for each of the 100 most valuable brands as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking. Activity in each channel was ranked for depth of interaction on measures that corresponded to that specific channel. Scores for overall brand engagement ranged from a high of 127 to a low of 1. The top 10 ENGAGEMENTdb brands with their scores are:

Starbucks (127)
Dell (123)
eBay (115)
Google (105)
Microsoft (103)
Thomson Reuters (101)
Nike (100)
Amazon (88)
SAP (86)
Tie – Yahoo!/Intel (85)

Qualities of Success

Companies that scored well in the study generally have dedicated teams, however small, active in the social media channels they utilize. The study found that the most successful teams evangelize social media across the entire organization to pull in a broad range of stakeholders. These companies view social media as an indispensable tool to help them achieve results, and their approach is conversational. This mode of operation differs from the approach of traditional communications and early corporate blog experimentation, which emphasizes messaging and talking points.

“This is the first study of this depth on the top global brands and we think the results provide a good guide for corporations and brand marketers in every industry,” said Charlene Li, Founder, Altimeter Group. “The success stories we have uncovered provide a blueprint for companies making decisions about how to best apply their marketing and consumer relations resources.”

“The ENGAGEMENTdb study goes a long way towards validating the importance of social media for business,” said Ben Elowitz, CEO of Wetpaint. “The closer any company is to its customers, the better, and it’s hard to argue with the ability for social media to create such proximity. In this day and age, companies should feel much more comfortable investing in social media — the correlation to results is so clear.”

Four Quadrants of Engagement

While each company in the study received a quantitative score, the ENGAGEMENTdb study revealed that companies fell into four specific categories in terms of their breadth and depth of investment in social media channels — Mavens, Butterflies, Selectives, and Wallflowers.

Mavens — brands that have made social media a core part of their go-to-market strategies and are very active in many channels; usually driven by dedicated teams assisted by company-wide awareness and participation.

Butterflies — brands that recognize the need to be in many channels but have only met with real success in a subset of their activities; these companies are usually spread a bit too thin.

Selectives — brands that focus on just a few channels and excel in those; these efforts are usually initiated by an internal evangelist.

Wallflowers — brands present in only a few channels and very lightly in those; these brands are sitting on the sidelines and are wary of the risks. They are still trying to figure out the best next steps and investments in social media.