Still Think Social Media Is A Fad?

May 11, 2010 By 19 Comments

A recurring topic seems to be whether or not social media is a fad.  Personally, I’d like to think that we’re past having to justify whether or not social media will disappear any time soon.  But then I interact with my circle of family and friends that aren’t marketers or involved with social media beyond possibly looking at friends photos on Facebook and I realize that social media is still an unknown for many.  Do you experience the same frustrations?  Are you constantly justifying why people log into Twitter to tell the world what they had for dinner?

Well, Eric Qualman, author of Socialnomics (affiliate link), is back with a follow up to his original “Social Media Revolution” video and he has some new stats to share in this video.  Did you know that:

  • Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
  • 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. met via social media
  • If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest country behind China and India.
  • In the time it takes to watch the below video, there will be over 100+ hours of video uploaded to YouTube
  • There are over 60 million status updates on Facebook daily
  • To reach 50 million users it took radio 38 years, TV 13 years, Internet 4 years and the iPod 3 years.  Pretty remarkable huh? It took Facebook less than a year to add 200 million users.

These are just a few of the many stats that Eric shares in this refreshed video:

How do you prove to others that social media isn’t a fad?

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Is Social Media A Fad?

November 29, 2009 By 29 Comments

When speaking with people that are outside of the social media, marketing or technology circles, many believe that social media is just a fad.  They think about the numerous news stories about pedophiles on MySpace; don’t understand why you should tell people that you had pizza for dinner on Twitter; and think that Facebook is only for high school and college students.  In order to turn these groups of people into believers, they need stats and case studies.

Well, fortunately for them, there are tons of great case studies such as JetBlue, Comcast, Dell, and Southwest (Chris Brogan keeps a bunch more on his Delicious page).  There are dozens of stats over on sites such as Mashable, ReadWriteWeb, TechCrunch, and a number of other blogs.  For even more stats, enough to make your head pop, check out my Delicious page.  But, unless you keep up on this rapidly growing industry, it can be hard to keep up with the ever-changing stats.

Instead of reading post after post with charts, graphs, and comparisons, I’d highly recommend you check out this video on the social media revolution.  It provides a visual that’s more powerful and easier to grasp than charts and graphs.  I don’t know about you, but spreadsheets, while necessary, tend to put me to sleep.  I tend to retain more via watching videos.  So, I hope this video is helpful to you as well.

YouTube Preview Image

So, what’s your take?  How do you change the minds of those who think social media is just a fad?

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Filed Under: Social Media, Videos Tagged With: , ,

9 Ways to Use Facebook to Connect and Interact

February 9, 2009 By Leave a Comment

facebook-logoFacebook continues to grow at a breakneck pace of approximately 600,000 new users per day along with more than 140 million active users of the service.  With so many features built into the service and many additional features that can be added on to extend Facebook, it is only appropriate to put together a list of the 17 ways to interact on Facebook.

9 Ways to Use Facebook to Connect and Interact

  1. Use the “Notes” feature to pull in your blog feed.  Once set up, it will ping your blog platform and post any new posts as a new note in Facebook.
  2. Share interesting links using the “Share Link” feature.
  3. Change your notification settings to be notified when someone you know has a birthday coming up.  Then make sure you tell them “Happy Birthday!”  It’s a nice surprise, especially if it’s someone who you don’t keep in touch with that often.
  4. Join Groups that you care about and then actually interact in them.  A lot of people join groups but then don’t use them.  These are a great area to network with people who share similar interests as you especially around specific topics.
  5. Upload photos (2, 30, 150, 2,000 or whatever).  It’s a great way to connect with people on a more personal level.  Of course, only upload photos that you’re comfortable with sharing.  If you have photos with other friends that are on Facebook, tag them in the photos.
  6. If you own a company or are responsible for marketing/PR/social media, set up a Fan Page and use it.  Upload photos, videos, send updates to your fans and all of the other great features.  You can even use the fan page to build and publish an ad on Facebook.
  7. Record a video directly into Facebook or upload a couple.  Pictures are a great way to connect but videos are another great way to interact too.
  8. Comment on links, photos, videos and statuses that others post.  Posting on walls is great but try using the “Comment” feature.
  9. Add in other social applications such as Delicious, StumbleUpon, Pandora, Google Reader, etc.  These will post links to your feed when you use those services.

These are just a few of the many, many ways to use Facebook to interact and connect more with your friends.  What are some of the other ways that you use Facebook to be more social?

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Filed Under: Facebook, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Organizational Barriers to Social Media Adoption

February 4, 2009 By 6 Comments

MarketingSherpa has published a new chart showing the organizational barriers to social media adoption.

marketingsherpa-chart

It is not surprising to see that the top 2 barriers are a lack of knowledge and the perceived inability to measure ROI.

When it comes to a lack of knowledgeable staff, the MarketingSherpa team touched on one of the dangers organizations face when searching for social media hires:

A danger to the effective adoption of social media as a marketing strategy is the large percentage of those who consider themselves knowledgeable – but have no social media experience.

This is an issue that is regularly discussed in the blogosphere and on social networks such as Twitter.  We could have an entire conversation on this alone.  [One step these organizations could take is sending their staff to a cool one-day conference where they would receive intensive keyboard-level training (shameless plug)] :)

As far as the inability to measure ROI, the desire for organizations to measure ROI will never go away.  Again, this is a topic which comes up often in the blogosphere and on social networks.  But, a few months ago, Jason Falls explained why it is hard to measure the ROI of social media:

The problem with trying to determine the ROI of social media is you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.

So, what are your thoughts regarding this chart from MarketingSherpa?  Do you think it’s accurate?  Does it represent organizations that you or someone you know belong to?  Let’s talk about it in the comments below.

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Filed Under: Social Media, Social Media Strategy Tagged With: , , , ,