I am a fairly average American. I spend a fair amount of time on the internet. I write this Blog. I am a member of the Problogger Community, and Viral Networks the social media marketing network. I have a Facebook page and a Facebook Fan Page. I am on Twitter, LinkedIn, Yelp and Plaxo. I have a bit.ly account, and I use HootSuite and TweetDeck, Seesmic, and SocialOomph. I share my location on foursquare, enter comments to other blogs through Disqus, and I use WriteToMyBlog, and Chitika Ads. I Stumbleupon, I Digg, and I'm Delicious. Like I said, I'm a fairly average American spending time on the Internet.
The nielsenwire reports that global web users across 10 countries spent about 5.5 hours on social networks in February 2010, up more than 2 hours from the same time last year.
Overall, Nielsen reports, the active unique audience to social networks grew nearly 30% from 244.2M to 314.5M in the last year. In the U.S., the average active unique audience grew to 149M from 115M in February 2009. As you can see from the chart above, Facebook drew the largest active unique audience globally, and Facebook users also spent more time per session.
So, what does all this mean for you and your business? Personally, I think the benefits of social media have become pretty obvious. Few Marketing Directors still need to be convinced of the need to take advantage of social media. Instead, they are trying to figure out how to use it and what technology they need in their business to use social media effectively.
Chris Allison wrote a blog post sharing “4 Ways to Effectively Use Social Media as a Catalyst.” Chris suggests that social media is not the end nor the beginning of any marketing effort. Instead, social media is a catalyst that works most effectively “when it is finely woven into the fabric of a brand's other activity.” Chris suggests businesses consider Cause Marketing (It makes your business more human), The Offline World (so people understand you're not just in the social media space because it's popular), Media Coverage (because businesses still benefit enormously from traditional media coverage), and technology's role in creating a social media strategy (because every business has to consider the cost of technology). All this takes time, costs money, but must be woven into the other activities of your business.
Just look at the numbers in the charts above. All those people are available to you on the internet for over five hours a month! Social media has become the place for consumers to hang out. Marketing Rule #1 - go to where the consumers are!
“Online Media Daily” wrote an article about a keynote Frank Cooper, senior vice president and chief engagement officer at PepsiCo Americas Beverages gave at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting in February, 2010. His message was that brands need to stop shouting at consumers and pull them up on the mountain to stand side by side. He said social media provides brands an opportunity to connect with consumers. Cooper's desire to build closer relationships with consumers who love Pepsi led to the decision not to run an ad in this year's Super Bowl. He wanted Pepsi to generate deeper connections with consumers through social media. Cooper also spoke about the need to develop mapping tools and improve analysis, a topic I intend to write about in another post.
Social media enables a business to speak directly to its customers. It gives a business an opportunity to directly communicate with the happy and the unhappy customer. It enables a business to respond to a complaint almost immediately while thanking the happy customer at the same time. Like it or not, social media has become an important tool in a businesses' marketing toolbox. Let me know how your business is using social media. If your business is not using social media, let me know why.
