If you have any doubts that the social media wave is here to stay then maybe Nielsen’s latest findings will make you a believer.
According to the Nielsen Company recent studies show that the time spent by people from U.S., U.K., Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, France, Spain and Italy in social media sites have gone up by 82% compared to last year: up from an average of 3 hours per person to 5.5 hours per person. In addition to this the number of people (unique visits) logging in to social media sites has also gone up 242,039,00 to 307,428,000.
Australia leads in the average amount of time spent per person at almost 7 hours (6:52:28) while United States lead in the number of unique users at 142,052.
The trend is of course good news to social media marketers from all over but despite this good news it is good to remember to be strategic in your social media efforts so as not to waste your resources. Your strategy should not only include the choice of social media platforms to use but also the form of your marketing (good old ads, tweets, etc.) and the actual content of your ads. Make sure you continue to supplement your social media efforts with other marketing methods that work for you. Remember success in social media circles isn’t your end goal, your efforts in this area should mesh with the rest of your business strategy so as to get the best results possible.
The news is plastered with everything that’s been happening in Haiti and while it’s been shocking, sad, and tragic the support and goodwill that people from all over the world has shown is very heartening. It shows that we care.
In the midst of all these we can see just how much social media is becoming more and important in our daily lives. Even before the news went global on the TV people already began posting about the quake right after the event. We can not discount the role that the internet and social media played in recent events.
This is why I believe it is a good time to reiterate my call for businesses to use social media more and more for their charity work.
However, in light of what happened and is happening to Haiti I want to encourage businesses to redirect customers to trusted charities working in Haiti. You can go to Google’s Disaster Relief page for this. This is not only to lessen your load, after all it is no easy task to organize this things, but also to allay your customers’ fears of being scammed to rest.
Don’t just give to charity but provide a way to make it easier and maybe more rewarding for people to give. You can do this by simply providing a link on your site, retweeting and posting charity links on your social media accounts, giving discount coupons to givers, or selling limited edition Haiti products (100% goes to charity!). Every little bit counts!
I’ve been trying to write here for a couple of hours now but was distracted by the repetitive Christmas music drifting in from outside. Luckily they played the song “feed the world…don’t they know it’s Christmas time…feed the world…” I don’t know the title of the song and have no plans of Googling it up. My point though is that the song gave me some inspiration on what to write about.
It’s almost New Years eve and I’m pretty sure that though majority of the world is on a break lots and lots of people are still online checking out their Facebook and various social media accounts, greeting one another Happy New Year and maybe even doing some belated Christmas shopping. That is of course great news for social media marketers. However, after hearing the song I was suddenly reminded of the other things we should be doing.
It is the holiday season and yes we should be enjoying it; and for those with businesses, maybe milking it for all it’s worth. But what’s the sense of it all if we turn a blind eye to those going hungry halfway around the world…or sadly maybe just a few blocks away (Yes. Do we remember the homeless man on New Years Eve?). I don’t want to spoil anyone’s New year but it IS time we feed the world.
I hope that this new year we’ll be seeing more businesses using social sites not just to boost profit but to engage in charitable work. After all if you look at it in the practical side it will help your business’ image so it can only be a win-win situation.
Let us harness the power of social media not just to grab but also to give. Here’s to a prosperous year to all of you!
Scott Monty, Ford Motor’s social media head, recently wrote an article that reminded me how easy it is to get tunnel vision. Admittedly, I focus all my energies on the “most popular” social media sites namely: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Bebo. I dabble with other social media sites (who doesn’t watch YouTube?) but lately these three have been the only ones I have been really putting significant effort at least when it comes to business. My excuse for this one is that at least these four are the ones that are really popular among my target market. However, as Mr. Monty reminds us, “Facebook does not rule the world. At least not yet.”
Anyway here’s a quick guide on the other social media sites you should be paying attention to and pouring some effort in based on the country/region your business operates in. Please note that both the map and the table is from Scott Monty’s blog. Visit the blog for the interactive map.
According to the Strait Times a survey of 100 small and medium enterprise businesses from 5 countries in Asia showed that 72% of the businesses use social media platforms like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Facebook is in the lead among the social media platforms with 79% of the business users citing Facebook to be at least one of the platforms where they have an online presence.
One of the reasons for the enthusiasm of businesses to go online to market their products and services is the comparatively low cost of online marketing. Small to medium-sized businesses that can’t compete with big firms in more traditional advertising channels such as the television and full-blown media campaigns find that they are able to reach a lot of their target market via social media.
However, despite the rising numbers of businesses in Asia that have presence in social media platforms the actual conversion rate is remains problematic with only 12% of the surveyed firms getting more than 50% of the sales inquiries online.
This fact does not dampen the enthusiasm of the businesses though with 80% of the surveyed businesses signifying intention to increase their budgets for social media marketing in the near future.
One thing’s for sure though as Asia and the rest of the world gets even more wired we will see even more businesses jumping on the bandwagon.
Though metrics for evaluating the effect of social to businesses are still questionable, businesses everywhere are hopping onto the social media bandwagon. As we all know though if everyone’s starting to pay attention, though we don’t have neat round figures to prove that something is good or beneficial, then something must be right about that thing.
When it comes to social media businesses usually get easily convinced because social media does answer their needs. Feedback is also obvious despite the lack of traditional statistics that old fashioned media such as TV and radio campaigns can easily show to prove the effectiveness of the campaign. The reason for this is that with social media, feedback is gotten directly from the consumers/target audience so that whether the aim is to build brand awareness, reputation, and/or simply connecting with costumers, businesses worldwide can see/feel the response.
Furthermore there really are business success stories that we can read about daily wherein the business cites their social media campaign as one of , if not THE reason for their success. A good example of a very recently published success story would be the Martell Home Builders, a construction company that “is on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube; runs a blog; and lets buyers follow their home construction progress online, get pictures, and post comments.” They have not only succeeded in engaging their customers in the building process but also gives their customers peace of mind that they will be able to deliver their promise of being able to build new homes within 99 days.
Success stories are great but as always businesses should remember that the success is not only due to social media presence but a social media campaign that has clear goals and creative twists that’s centered on products/services that are of real value to customers.
Google launched its Social Media Search last Monday. The social search engine is still in its experimental stage but it is already available for everyone. Below is a video of the search demonstration.
Here are some of the features of Google Social Search listed on their help page:
1. Finding relevant public content from your social circle – Content will be sourced from your friends’Google and other public profiles, websites, blogs, status updates, tweets, reviews, and Google reader subscriptions. 2. Filter search results to show those that are really only in your social circle. 3. Ability to expand your social circle – You can do this by creating a Google profile (if you don’t have one already), adding content to your profile, subscribing to blogs via Google Readers, add contacts in other social network sites, spreading the word to your friends.
In the next few days I will be playing around with the social search engine then share my thoughts with you.
We know how mundane Twitterers’ updates can be but I never really realized just how boring most people’s update have are.
A recent study conducted by the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology revealed that the top five most frequent postings include the words “working,” “home,” “work,” “lunch,” and “sleeping”. According to the study the reason for the mundane postings probably hinge on the fact that “while microblogs do not obligate a reply from followers, posting on a daily basis is important for sustaining the interest of others” because of the pressure to post frequently they concluded that postings end up mundane, especially since they say that microblogging “is a hobby that seems to require a significant investment of time which many cannot afford.”
As a consequence of this mundane internet chatter via microblogging sites such as Twitter and Jaiku, only a few of the microbloggers actually end up dominating the microblogging world. In fact the same study showed that in Jaiku “a small supercore of the Jaiku population received over 50% of all comments in the system, while a large part of newcomers found it hard to build and keep an audience and dropped out quite soon after registering.”
What this means is that “business microbloggers” need to realize that they need to really make an effort not only to post frequently in Twitter and Jaiku but to also make sure that they don’t end up with mundane/repetitive posts. It should be a goal of the business to make it to the “supercore” of microbloggers because that is where the power lies.
News Blaze recently reported a new social platform for artists and art lovers called TheArtistFinder.com.
TheArtistFinder.com, as the name implies, is a site where you can browse at the work of artists worldwide, click on the artist whose work catches your eye, and get information (links to sites) on where you can buy that artist’s work or contact that artist.
According to BoundlessGallery.com/TheArtistFinder.com President Luke Terpstra the website is designed to “to support original artists online.” He also says that the “online marketplace [is] changing from the old guard of big one-stop shops like eBay and Amazon, to a new order where the actual site you buy from matters less than finding the perfect product. “ Since artists usually have their works displayed/scattered on different websites, consumers have to either hunt down each site to be able to view their favourite artists’ works before deciding on which artwork to buy or settle for the handful of choices available in the current site they are on. This is why TheArtistFinder is very useful because it gives consumers a convenient way of finding all the other available works of the artist they like. No more need to use search engines to hunt artists’ works down since they have a one-stop shop where they can find all the contact details they need.
As you can see social platforms are getting the nod from all kinds of industries, now including the art industry. With this development we can only wait and see how else social platforms will be used.
Last time I warned about being selective of what you post on your social media account for your career’s sake but now an even more pressing reason to be careful about what you post online has emerged – safety. According to a report from Legal and General there is no doubt that criminals (especially burglars) can use and are using things they get from people’s social media accounts to find targets. Yes criminals can surf too!
Here are just some of the findings:
* 38% of users of sites such as Facebook and Twitter have posted status updates detailing their holiday plans and a third, 33% of people have posted status updates saying that they are away for the weekend.
* Nearly half, 48% of respondents have no worries about the security or privacy of social networking sites.
* Of all social networking sites, Facebook creates the most concern with 46% of respondents feeling that there are some security and privacy risks.
* The younger you are, the more likely you are to give information away concerning your whereabouts, with nearly two-thirds, 64% of 16-24 year olds sharing their holiday plans – which could be a cause for concern for parents.
* 34% of respondents have seen somebody else’s phone number posted on their social networking profile.
* Nearly one in ten, 9% of respondents have included their own phone number and 5% have included their address in the personal information section of social networking sites visible to friends.
* Some people are sharing mobile numbers and addresses directly with strangers: 6% have written their phone number and 3% have written their address “wall-to-wall” or on pages open to those who are not accepted contacts.
* Men are more blasé about personal information – 13% have included their mobile number on their profile compared with just 7% of women and 9% of men have included their address compared with just 4% of women.
* 70% of users think that social media sites are a great place to share photos of their cool new purchases and presents.
All these info may seem innocent enough to you but remember that’s because you are innocent but for burglars they’re huge neon signs saying “I’m ripe for the picking!”
If you have any doubts that the social media wave is here to stay then maybe Nielsen’s latest findings will make you a believer.
When I wrote my post, 
According to the 
We know how mundane Twitterers’ updates can be but I never really realized just how boring most people’s update have are. 
News Blaze recently reported a new social platform for artists and art lovers called 
Last time I warned about being selective of what you post on your social media account for your career’s sake but now an even more pressing reason to be careful about what you post online has emerged – safety. According to a 
