The Web Uncovered

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:

• 85 percent follow friends
• 54 percent follow celebrities
• 29 percent follow family
• 29 percent follow companies

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.

Besides the tried-and-true recommendation or reference letter that runs about a page and is mailed (or, sometimes, emailed), there is now a new breed of recommendation “letter”: brief personal and professional endorsements on business and social networking sites such as LinkedIn. 

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.

While online marketers are still determining the best practices for online marketing, the Federal Trade Commission is also figuring out some details regarding regulations governing online marketing.  Blogger Jordan McCollum explores these new policies in the blog post “Are You Breaking the Law with Social Media Marketing?”

The key phrase that the FTC is pushing is:

If you’re being compensated to talk about someone’s product, then you need to disclose it.

There are various implications and applications of this philosophy.  For more details see the original post here.

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.

On our weekly Tuesday radio program, Rick Rovigno and the group discussed Linked In and the possibilities for building an effective professional network. Last week’s discussion revolved around the basic functionality, building a profile, and various applications like blogging and recommendations. This week, we discuss 10 rules of etiquette to excercise on Linked In…that will help you gain an advantage when it comes to finding a job and making a great impression within your network and the Linked In community. Have a listen…