Want Proof? ROI? its in the numbers…

Social media is an ever increasing hot topic of the digital world and I often get asked about the various statistics involved. This in itself is fairly difficult, as the online sphere is constantly shifting, evolving and growing at an amazing rate. But I put together some stats for a recent speaking engagement with a focus on Australia…. they are interesting (and hopefully useful) facts and figures…..

But if you dont wont to wade through the numbers and need to be convinced … just watch the latest video from Socialonmics above.

Bear in mind that given these are figures from July a lot of it is likely to be obsolete -  but it is indicative, I think they’re a great way of demonstrating the impact that social media is having in the marketing, sales and client service landscape.

YouTube

* If YouTube were a country, it would be the third most-populated place in the world.

* 20 hours-worth of video is uploaded to the site every single minute.

* comScore recently announced that the site had surpassed 100m viewers in the USA alone. They also reported that this US audience consumed over 6bn videos at the beginning of this year.

* According to Youtube themselves, over half of users visit the site at least once a week

Facebook

According to Facebook’s internal statistics:

* The site has more than 250m active users globally (now November 09 – 300 mill)

* More than 120m users log on to Facebook at least once each day and more than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day. Combined, more than 5bn minutes are spent on the site on a daily basis.

* The average user has around 120 friends on the site.

* Every single month, more than a billion photos are uploaded to the site.

* More than 50 translations are available on the site, with more than 40 in development.

* Mobile is a big issue, with more than 30m active users accessing the site through mobile devices. It’s well documented that users who access Facebook through mobile devices are almost 50% more active than those who don’t.

MySpace

* Although now overtaken by Facebook, MySpace is the second largest social network, experiencing in excess of 60m unique users each month.

* MySpace apparently reaches 30% of UK adults aged 15-24 – it’s been suggested that its as common to have a MySpace account in the UK as it is to own a dog.

• According to Knol, MySpace has more than 115m active monthly users globally with, on average, 300,000 new people signing up to the site every day.

Twitter

* Over the past twelve months, Twitter’s year-on-year growth rate has broken the 1000% barrier.

* The company holds exact numbers close to their chest, but it’s estimated that Twitter currently has between 6 – 10m global users and this is growing rapidly.

* According to a recent report on Twitter usage by Sysomos, 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity and that 72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009.

* The same report found that over 50% of all updates are published using mobile and Web-based tools, other than Twitter.com’s own website.

* It also found that Tuesday is the most active day for Tweeting, followed by Wednesday and then Friday.

* Hitwise recently reported that one out of every 350 website visits in the UK is via Twitter, but barely 5% of users currently go to an online retail service through the medium.

* Not really a stat, but still quite a cool piece of info: Twitter is now officially a term in the English Dictionary.

Other General Stats

* Social networks and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities online, including beating personal email. 67% of global users visit member communities and 10% of all time spent on the internet is on social media sites.

* If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.*

* 80% of companies use, (or are planning to use), LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees during the course of this year. The site has just celebrated reaching its 45-millionth membership.

* Around 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week during campaigns, with 39% using it for 10 or more hours per week.

* It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took four years to reach 50 million people… In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.

* Wikipedia currently has more than 13 million articles in more than 260 different languages. The site attracts over 60 million unique users a month and it’s often hotly debated that the information it contains is more reliable than any printed Encyclopaedia.

* The most recent figure of blogs being indexed by Technorati currently stands at 133 million. The same report into the Blogosphere also revealed that on average, 900,000 blog posts are created within a single 24-hour period.

* It’s been suggested that YouTube is likely to serve over 75 billion video streams to around 375 million unique visitors during this year.

* The top three people on Twitter (Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears) have more combined followers than the entire population of Austria.*

* According to Socialnomics, if you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia, you would earn $156.23 per hour.

* The online bookmarking service, Delicious, has more than five million users and over 150 million unique bookmarked URLs.

* Since April this year, Twitter has been receiving around 20 million unique visitors to the site each month, according to some analytical sources.

* Formed in 2004, Flickr now hosts more than 3.6 billion user images.

* Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs.

Here are So9me Up to Date and Local Australia figures

At yesterday’s Digital Marketing and Media Summit in Melbourne there was a session by Mark Higginson, Director of Analytics at Nielsen Online.

Mark shared some interesting new research from Nielsen Online today about Facebook and social media usage here in Australia:

* 8 hours/month:  Australians spend on average 8 hours/month on Facebook

* 29% = Facebook: Nearly 30 percent of all time online in Australia is spent on Facebook

* Australia Leads: Australians spend more time on average per month using social media (any social media site, not just Facebook) than any other country (7:12 hours/month per Australian on average)

* 8 million Aussies: the current number of facebook.com users is 8 million Australians/month

* 13.7 million overall: there are 13.7 million active monthly Internet users in Australia

I think these statistics are remarkable because they show that Australians are doing more than checking out sites like Facebook and Twitter, setting up an account, and then abandoning the sites after a short amount of time. That’s a common refrain of non-believers out there. We Australians are, as Mark correctly observed, addicted

LinkedIN

50 million members worldwide

Average age 41

60/40 Male/Female

Average salary $109,000

Representing 200 professions in 120 countries

Highly self regulated … all white collar professionals

In  Australia membership approaching 1 million

In South Australia  around 30,000 growing at close to 1,000 per week

Just appointed their first employee in Aust – the ex Aust CEO of Yahoo Aust!!

… and released new features to integrate with Outlook and Twitter

LinkedIn Gets Serious in Australia

LinkedIn now integrated with Twitter and increasingly with Outlook

My favorite Social Network – LinkedIn has recently announced some great new free features and recently released some integration with Twitter and MS Outlook.…  making it an even more essential tool for business.

It is also certainly growing rapidly in Australia … at last.   In the past 12 months this growth has been over 10 percent and the number of Aust based members is heading towards 1 million.

The appointment of the first LinkedIn Aust employee – Cliff Rosenburg is a sure sign that they are about to ramp up their local efforts in marketing terms.

Cliff as a former MD of Yahoo! Australasia was reported as saying his priorities include “building out our diverse business model comprising subscriptions, advertising and enterprise software licencing.”

With 52 million members worldwide, comprised mainly of white collar professionals, LinkedIn is a tremendous base for building business and accessing a vast variety of expertise worldwide.

It is also free but charges for use of some extended tools and facilities for additional networking and collaboration…. but i suspect the vast majority of the 52 million members are using the free version.

The company, established in 2003 remains privately owned having raised over $100 million from some major investors including publisher McGraw Hil.

If you arent using LinkedIn you should be …. if you joined and have done nothing much since you should be building your profile and network as it is a very valuable tool once you make it a habit!

Keeping it Simple … but not too Simple

 

If you are not convinced click to watch this video

Quite often I am asked what we do and how we do it.  People are very keen to know about Social Media but few still see the benefits and especially the need to hire someone like us to help.  So I thought I should write a little about the what and how of our approach.

 

These days Websites are all about Web 2.0 (The read write web) and interactivity between business – clients, prospects and stakeholders in general.

We specialise in developing the content once we have the structures right  (read write Website, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blog etc..) …. but more so our aim is to teach our clients how to take care of good up to date content themselves rather than relying on us. We are all about helping our clients to build their brand but in doing so access their clients and prospects directly with a view to building direct sales.

While we rely heavily on Social Media we also aim to leverage Traditional Media (not paid advertising tho) to support our image building and brand awareness activities.

And its not all about Marketing and Selling  its about improving our clients’ business in the ways that it interacts with people. Social Media/Networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blogging) provide the tools and tactics to supplement marketing communications, sales and client support activities which these days are merging into one – Inbound Marketing… people doing business with people they like!

Some months ago I wrote a free eBook (The Grumpy Old Managers Guide to Social Media) with my daughter and business partner Nikki to help show business the What, Why and a basic How of Social media for business.  Our aim was to keep it simple and from this we have developed a simple methodology for implementing and managing it.

The process we work through with our clients is pretty simple

• We run a seminar/workshop  “Is Social Media Right for you/your business/sport/charity/association etc” to cover in broad terms the What, Why and How others use it and end with some what ifs for your business

• We develop and define a Pilot project at a minimal cost, which aims to produce measurable results and establish the structures which can be used for a broader implementation over time

• We teach our clients how to develop, manage and maintain content (written, video, images, voice etc) which can be used in a variety of ways (blogs, newsletters, articles, eBooks) and places (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Newspapers and Magazines) and where to look and more so, listen for business and the opportunity to engage in conversations with clients and prospects With  the aim to develop over time long term trusted relationships and develop clients who act as brand ambassadors and evangelists.

Once we have completed the initial project we aim to hand over to the client as soon a practical and take a background role as a mentor and coach — providing ideas and enforcing some discipline to stick with it for long term results.

Our key mantras are :

Say what you be ….  But be what you say

Talk about the benefits you bring to others (clients, community etc..) not about your business
and preferably have others (your clients) do the talking for you.

Above all keep it simple and highly cost effective and make it a sustained effort not just a hit and run project.

We see the use of Social Media as not only assisting in Brand development and reaching potential “buyers” directly but also in establishing our clients as Thought Leaders in adopting new ways to do business.

I suggest to all of our potential clients that they down load the book…. check out some of the links (all avail from our website) and we get together asap for a coffee and explore the possibilities.  Demand for our services has grown dramatically in the past month or two as people in Adelaide begin to realise they need to at least find out what all the fuss about Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Blogging etc  is all about ….. in a business sense.

And I recommend that everyone I meet goes to YouTube and searches Social Media Fad and then watches the Video titled is Still think Social Media is a Fad?

 

What do Apple Macs and IBM Mainframes have in common …… Everything!

IBM System 360 Model 40 - 1970

After 40 years in and around the IT industry I recently made the made  the move to an Apple Mac …. and I love it.   Why? Because it’s simple, easy to use and it works with no hassles!!!

The second best Personal Computer I have ever had was an IBM PC (varying models  through the 80s and mid 90s). Having worked for most of my IT career for IBM specific software developers (eg McCormack and Dodge/Dun and Bradstreet Software), major IBM users (eg Chrysler, Mitsubishi) and/ or IBM Value Added resellers and business partners (eg Neller Software) I was somewhat biased towards IBM!

The first computer I worked with was an IBM System 360 Model 40 – a mainframe that filled a room and required special flooring, sealed room etc and had as much grunt as the mobile phone I had 10 years ago!! It rarely broke down but when it did an IBM Engineer was on the spot within the hour (he even had his own small office in the computer room) and he was backed by an escalation procedure that saw an “expert” from the development lab, on a plane from the US if the problem was not resolved in 24 hours.

It ran an operating system designed for the hardware or was it vice versa… and while slow it was very reliable.

Likewise the IBM PC was not the sexiest on the market (although I think the IBM Thinkpad I had in the late eighties was as good as any PC I ever saw) but it was solid and reliable plus it was backed by a great warranty program!!

The IBM PC was also designed specifically for the operating system.   Then along came the clones … which set out to be cheaper and in some cases matched IBM for reliability etc.  But over time the picture became fuzzy – how do we know what hardware works best with what Chipset and what version of Windows … we dont.  So we take a punt based on what we hear and sometimes we get it right.

And then there is an alternative …. which most in the Corp world (weaned on IBM and mainstream computing) disregarded as something for boffins, graphic artists, uni grads (who got them cheap) and anti IBM/Microsoft zealots.

But that’s changed dramatically— some recent surveys show that a very high percentage of senior execs in major US Corps are using MAC for one reason… they are reliable and easy to use!!

Why is this and what does it have to do with IBM mainframes …. well it seems to me it might have something to do with the fact that MACs run an operating system designed for the hardware … or maybe Apple develop operating systems to suit the hardware … or maybe it’s both. Just like IBM used to do!!

But at the end of the day they deliver what most of us want … simplicity combined with effectiveness and efficiency …..  and if you still hanker for a Windows fix the MAC runs Windows as well side by side with the proprietary MAC OS Operating system…. so you can’t lose!!

Have I seen the future of email………..maybe???

In my last blog I talked about where email might be going …  and now I might have seen the delivery of a vision much broader.  I have become one of the chosen few given the opportunity to try  a pre release version of Google Wave ….   I think that means help find the bugs for them!!

A former colleague in the US and now “business partner” (we re-discovered each other on LinkedIn a few months ago) has provided me with what I now know to be a scarce as hens teeth invite to check it out.

Certainly it promises much as Google say it is “what email would look like if it were invented today as opposed to almost 40 years ago!!

In essence it enables groups to edit, collaborate, discuss and develop documents simultaneously online.  On my first look it certainly isnt intuitive … you wont get far until you RTFM (thats read the …. manual for those who dont have an old fashioned IT/MIS/DP/EDP/ADP background).  It looks great but provides no prompts or ideas about what to do.

But there are already some extensive guides available online …  So first do as I am doing get hold of one and work through it.  I will be using Wave on the project I am working with my man in the US on and will provide feedback as i go.  If you want an overview and sneak peak check out the videos on YouTube… there are predictably plenty!!

But I think I have now seen the future of email … and I think I love it.        

Love to hear from anyone else out there who has had any exposure to The Wave!!!

Wether you have a testimonial or an acrimonial love to hear it!!

The Death of Email (as we know it)

Some months ago I was predicting the death on Email and Websites with the growth of Social Networks/Media.  But as was pointed out what I was predicting was the death of those tools as we have known them.

I have been using email for over 25 years – prior to the Internet (as we know it) so feel well positioned to comment there.  It was a great tool when it was just on what we now know as an intranet.  I was working for Dun and Bradstreet Software (the then biggest business software company in the world – it was very pre SAP) and the email network was based on our world-wide IBM mainframe based system, so I could communicate directly with anyone in the company anywhere in the world.

So whats changed – well now I can communicate with anyone anywhere in the world (if I know their address) but apart from that the basics of email are still pretty much the same.

If you dont believe email (as we know it) and we are about to move to a new and smarter form of email then ask anyone under 20 if they use email.  The answer will almost certainly be NO.

They do but they just dont recognise it ….   They use Facebook, Myspace etc as an all-encompassing communications system with their world and only their world.  A bit like out old mainframe system – if they are in the address book we can reach them if they are nt we cant.

So they use a combination of email with integrated address book and broadcast tools (The Wall in Facebook) and then meet others in Groups.

All pretty sensible really – a close environment that keeps the spammers out ….  that means you can publish all those jokes and funny videos that clog up my email every day in a place where I can come and look if I am interested.

So those Grumpy Old Managers who are banning Facebook while they sit in their offices reading their mates’ joke emails need to take the blinkers off and look at where Social Networking is taking email (as we know it) and understand its potential for their business. Incidentally these were probably the same GOM’s that banned email (until their mates told them they could send great jokes), mobile phones (until their mates told them they could send great jokes using text messages) and spreadsheets (until their accountant told them they were useful!!) when they first became available!!!

Recently I had a colleague ask me to distribute an invite to my contacts about an online seminar he was arranging with Joe Abram (of MySpace fame) to my contacts .  He said so that he could track which of my invitees “attended” I should cc him in on all the emails.

When I told him I would contact most of my colleagues using LinkedIn he was at a loss to come up with an idea to replace his cc plan!!

So what I need now to replace email (as we know it) is LinkedIn with some of the features of FaceBook or perhaps FaceBook without all the crap!!

Tomorrow I will give my thoughts on the death of Websites (as we know them) but in the meantime read Shel Holz latest Blog Deathwatch: Static Destination Websites as this will form the basis of much of my opinion!

I have to agree with Shel its not the death of a tool but perhaps the end of an era.  And st the end of the day its about the content not the tool anyway!

Are you LinkedIn or just in LinkedIn

When I first discovered LinkedIn  and subsequently joined I was aware of the basics and not much more.

But in the past couple of years I have used it extensively and gained some great benefits.  Of all the social media/networking we use for ourselves and our clients LinkedIn has delivered the best tangible results.

We have made some great industry connections locally and internationally and as a result we have developed some major international business opportunities.

When I first started I really used it sparingly just to find people I knew and Linked to them never thinking that I actually had a development opportunity/responsibility in growing the potential power of LinkedIn.

So now I have invited everyone in my address book to join (something I felt uncomfortable doing initially) so that they can share in the value and I also tell everyone I meet in business I will invite them to join and why … and do so as soon as I get back to the office.

But it seems most of these people are not sold on it.  So often I see profiles that are basic token efforts with no more info … why would I be interested in that person?  Then there are the people I do know and invite to join a group or become more involved by sending them a message and then never get a response.

Either they have never gone back in since joining or they dont have their LinkedIn email alert on to notify them they have a message.

There are a few basics that can provide great value (such as logging into LinkedIn each morning and check your updates)  but it seems these days with so much going on unless people are shown “hands on” how to use some of the new tools they never get past first base … if they even get that far….. and never realise the possibilities!

So I wonder of the 50 million plus in LinkedIn how many are token members.  It would be great to get some stats based on the % complete  indicator one day.

In the meantime I will do my best to get more people I know more engaged … because I think it could be good for thema dn their business/professional lives.

I need to listen to my own advice

If you want to succeed with social media you need a plan which includes developing content, blogging and distributing your thoughts to those that may be interested……   thats I what I tell others.

Well for the past month like many of my clients and prospects I have been too busy being busy to focus on whats important and as such I broke the habit and then found it too hard to get back…. but now I am back to practice what I preach!

They say timing is everything … don’t they?     Yesterday I was sitting making a list of blog topics and working out what I should be saying to back up The Grumpy Old Managers Guide to Social Media and along came Chris Brogan to the rescue.

If you are interested in the how and not just the why of Social Media you must subscribe to Chris Brogan’s blog as he provides the help you need and generally when you need it.

So I was delighted to read www.chrisbrogan.com/how-to-blog-almost-every-day as it provides some guidelines, tips and a potential structure to support my blogging effort and those of my clients.

We have developed a simple methodology fro Grumpy Old managers to get started with Social media a and we certainly be adding some of the ideas we have picked up from Chris to it … with full credit to him of course.

But more about that soon….   in our quest to turn the Grumpy Old Managers of the world into the Not So Tribe

Vitaminwater Gets Facebookers Brainstorming on a New Flavor

Vitaminwater ventured into the world of crowdsourcing Tuesday with the launch of a new a Facebook application in which users compete to create the energy drink’s newest flavor, even down to the bottle design, to the tune of a $5,000 prize.

Vitamin Water's New Facebook App

The new “flavor creator” app features a cartoon of a lab-coat-clad woman who instructs users to vote on their favorite flavor or combination of flavors, based on the most buzz-worthy results culled from online sources like Google News and the food photography blog Foodgawker. Ginger, for example, takes the top slot for generating buzz online.

Users can play games and take quizzes about their fitness levels to determine which kinds of vitamins and minerals should be part of their new concoction, and can also team up with other Facebookers to design a bottle for the new drink. “We’re basically handing over the control and the lab coat to our fans,” said Eric Berniker, a senior vice president of marketing for Vitaminwater. “It’s one of the hottest brands with youth, and of course, Facebook is a great way to connect with them.”

The winning flavor will be selected by country singer Carrie Underwood and rapper 50 Cent, and will hit store shelves in March of 2010. The rapper, also an investor in Vitaminwater, has already co-created his own grape flavor, “Formula 50,” and allegedly raked in some $400 million when Coca-Cola acquired Vitaminwater’s parent company, Glaceau, for $4.1 billion in 2007.

Vitaminwater is far from the first brand to seek online fan participation. The online T-shirt company Threadless paved the way for companies to benefit from the idea of consumer-as-designer, scoring big with its crowdsourcing business model of rewarding the top user-submitted T-shirt designs.

And this isn’t the first time Vitaminwater has used a social-networking presence to gain fans. It launched its Facebook page in February and has more than 400,000 fans. During the NCAA basketball tournament in March, it devoted television airtime to plugging the page. In May, Vitaminwater worked with MySpace Music to offer a free song download with the purchase of a bottle of its new Sync flavor.

The Vitaminwater line markets itself to health-conscious consumers, with its emphasis on vitamin and mineral combinations for specific benefits like “focus” and “endurance.” Earlier this year, the Center for Science in the Public Interest filed a class-action lawsuit against Coca-Cola on the grounds that Vitaminwater made deceptive claims about the drink’s health benefits.

Marketing on Social Networks: Branding, Buying and Beyond.

A tool for every purpose

Though social network advertising gets a lot of attention, it is only one of many ways marketers can reach customers on social networks. Social networks can be used for branding, improving customer loyalty, lead generation, direct marketing and e-commerce.

“The beauty of social networks is that they are a place where nearly any marketing goal can be achieved, with nearly any marketing tactic,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, “Marketing on Social Networks: Branding, Buying and Beyond.”

Common wisdom over the past few years has been that people are interested in interacting with social network friends, not marketers. Not so, according to Anderson Analytics’ May 2009 survey—52% of social network users had become a fan or follower of a company or brand, while 46% had said something good about a brand or company on a social networking Website—double the percentage who had said something negative (23%).

In a December 2008 MarketingSherpa survey of social media marketing professionals, 92% of respondents said social media marketing was effective at influencing brand reputation and 91% said it worked for increasing brand awareness. These executives found it far less effective for generating sales leads or increasing online sales.

However, savvy marketers are demonstrating the effectiveness of using social networks for direct marketing and lead generation as well. Brand pages and applications can be vehicles to deliver coupons and offers to consumers to drive trials, store traffic and response. A July 2009 Starbucks promotion, for example, distributed coupons for a free pastry via Facebook and other social outlets. The chain was soon one of the top trending topics on Twitter and the top brand on Facebook, with more than 3.7 million fans.

In terms of e-commerce, few retailers are currently selling products directly through social networks. But the pending launch of Facebook’s virtual currency will make it far more appealing for this purpose. Meanwhile, e-tailers can take advantage of services such as Facebook Connect to allow users to share information about their browsing and purchasing activity on an e-commerce site with their social network friends.

Measuring social media success remains difficult for marketers. Many of the metrics that marketers can track on social networks today involve what is called “soft ROI”—which does not show up in the bottom line. But a study from the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint, along with a separate study from Razorfish, indicates that the stronger a brand’s social media presence, the better the brand performed—whether measured in conversations or in financial performance.

“Social networks are a constantly changing database of consumer sentiment, attitudes and information, and marketers today have only the earliest glimpse of the potential,” said Ms. Williamson. “Companies that want to maximize their presence on the social Web must take advantage of social networks in all stages of the purchase funnel, from awareness to learning to buying to loyalty.”

Maximize your social network marketing. Download the new eMarketer report, “Marketing on Social Networks: Branding, Buying and Beyond,” now.