Is social media a fad that businesses should avoid? Think again or drown – is the message of the Social Media Pool graphic and it’s quite compelling. Facebook is growing faster than Google ever did. Twitter might be the ultimate Networking site. Check out Oliver Blanchard’s Basics of Social Media ROI.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this subject and success/failure stories…
While Twitter has seen a huge explosion in use, one must ask, who is using it? The common assumption is that the Millienials, teens through mid 20s, are the users, as they are the most active segment in social networking.
The Shocker: While 99% of people ages 18-24 use social media, only 22% use Twitter.
On Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim blog, he break it down further:
Of the 22% that do use Twitter:
The Takeaway: While Millenials do use Twitter for social networking, and even following their favorite actors or musicians, it seems that companies may have to evaluate if it is really worth their while to promote on Twitter. For many, it would be time, energy, and money better spent elsewhere.
Twitter has become increasingly popular as a news source. While microblogging is anything but content rich, it’s true value added is in its ability to be up to date by the minute. While in most cases this is not very important to people, there are situations where by the minute is imperative.
There supposedly was a situation at the Twitter Headquarters in San Francisco where the world earthquake spiked as a keyword. The staff was perplexed, until the earthquake shook their office less than a minute later. The Tweets were faster than the earthquake! Less dramatic examples of this can be found. One is how today many people are following and tweeting about the California State Supreme Court decision regarding Proposition 8. A lot of Californians are anxiously awaiting to hear what the decision will be.
The larger rammifications of this has dual consequences. First of all, people will be less likely to turn to print when knews finds them in real time, rather than seeking it out on their own. The downside is that is drastically changes the business model for traditional print, and even online publications. Furthermore, a societal side effect would be that news would become less analytical, and much more decontextualized. Anger towards this technology may be the only thing that Neil Postman and Rupert Murdoch have in common.
As the different technologies online become decreasing tied to the youth or the Millenials, new demographics can both be focused on in marketing research, and targetted in content generation. Social Media Marketing guru Scott Monty shares with his blog readers about the bourgening market of moms. He says:
There’s no question that so-called “mommy bloggers” are an interesting demographic. Recent statistics show that there are more than 36 million of them online, and they definitely wield influence in purchasing power. Which is why many companies think this community can be a key in their word of mouth efforts.
However, he points out the fact that these broad segments also have high diversity within themselves. Nonetheless, marketing research about the internet use of a specific demographic can also reveal how to market to them, or what advertisements will speak to them based on their values, and unmet needs.
The Takeaway: Now that the late adaptors are joining the chorus of social networking, how you can you address their new unmet needs in the online world? If you figure it out, you could be creating the next big thing to an underexploited niche market.
For those of you who are managing one or more online marketing campaigns, you may want to consider using multiple identities for your work. One reason is simply to separate your work social networking from you personal life. On most sites, my family and friends find me by my real name, Frankie Fredericks. However, I do most of my online marketing work with psydonyms. This allows me to both keep my private life private, and save my friends from seeing how obnoxiously frequent my use of Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, and Twitter is.
Just make sure that when you are using multiple identities, that you are keeping within the limits of laws regarding spamming (everyone hates spam, don’t be part of the problem!), and also be sure to play by the terms of use for the sites that you use. This is speaking practically, as if you use an account for much activity, breaking one rule that leads to the deletion of your account could cost you hours and hours of lost work.
For more reasons and ideas about using multiple identities, check out this post on the blog SEO Smarty.
In the previous post regarding Marshall Mcluhan, we talked a bit about interactivity as a means of evaluating media. As said, the internet is a tricky new world where interaction can be built in many new ways. Traditional media outlets, like television, radio, and print, are very much a one-way conversation, with them the outlets feeding content to us, the media consumers. the interesting thing to watch is when traditional media outlets begin exploring new media, and trying to figure out how to effectively choose and place content in new opportunitities.
I read one prime example of this on the Sublimal Pixels blog by Manny Marrero. In his “Open Letter to Channel 10“, he fumes about his passionate disgust for how the local television network has botched their campaign on Twitter. Not only does he admonish them for their flood of follow/unfollow moves in an attempt to bolster numbers, but he also calls them out on not utilizing the medium of Twitter. Rather than creating a space to interact with their audience, the station simply feeds their newslines into posts, without responding or interacting with their “followers.”
The Takeaway: Before you can effectively market on a specific platform, website, medium, etc., you must know what the experience is for their users. Only after understanding the platform which you are working with can you adjust the message to fit the medium. This includes making it cooler/hotter, or more less interactive.
The Web Uncovered