Overview
Social media has become a vital resource and it is no longer considered as just another option in reaching the customers. More than ever, people are spending time online and the majority of it is spent on browsing and surfing through social networking sites – Even reports from Morgan Stanley in 2010 stated that social network users surpassed the number of email users in July 2009 where it indicated 820 million social network users compared to 800 million email users at that month – Now it might be even more.The TNS "Digital Life" survey of internet users around the world found in September 2010 that on average, surfers spent 4.6 hours a week on social sites, compared with 4.4 hours on email, the most common internet activity.
Businesses across all industries are realizing the potential social media holds.Business use of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking tools is expected to increase 10%-30% within 2011 according to figures from the CIO insight in 2010.
Reports from Burson-Marsteller in 2009 stated that 79% of the largest Fortune 500 firms use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or corporate blogs to communicate with customers and other stakeholders. Social media is not just a way of reaching customers – it’s a way of gathering real time information, customer behavioral, enhancing reputation, making dialogues and conversations, and much more.
According to the McKinsey Global Survey in 2009, 69% of respondents report that their companies have gained measurable business benefits from social technologies, including more effective marketing, more innovative products and services, better access to knowledge, lower costs of doing business, and higher revenues. Security for Business Innovation Council states the security can’t just block the use of social networking sites anymore. The benefits, including lowcost ways to recruit employees, distribute marketing materials, and enable employee networking, are simply too great.
Facts about Facebook* According to the latest data from Facebook, it now has more than 595 million users with the average user spending 55 minutes each day on Facebook.
* There are over 5.3 billion "fans" on Facebook with the average user becoming a fan of two pages each month. The average user clicks the "like" button 9 times each month. (Facebook, 2010)
* As of July 2009, more than five million Facebook users update their status each day. Around 250 million users log onto Facebook on a daily basis. (Econsultancy 2010)
* More than 25 billion pieces of content such as web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums are shared each month on Facebook. (Facebook, 2010).
* There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. (Facebook 2010)
* People who use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users. (Facebook 2010)
* According to Syncapse reports in 2010, a Facebook fan can be worth about $136.38, and that fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using a brand along with 41% more likely than non-fans to recommend a fanned product to their friends. It also stated that an active fan may participate with a brand thirty times and make ten recommendations in a year.
* According to Nielsen and Facebook, 2010, when someone "likes" a brand’s Facebook page, purchase intent increase 4 times versus a regular Facebook ad, and there is a 24% increase in the number of users engaging with a Facebook ad campaign due to the social ads.
* 54% percent of companies have at least one Facebook Fan page. (Burson-Marsteller, 2009)
* According to eMarketer and Morpace 2010, a Facebook friend referral makes two-thirds of US Facebook users more likely to purchase a product or visit a retailer and that fan pages are used by 41% of US Facebook users to display their favorite products.
* More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries are on Facebook. (Facebook 2010), and 52% of social networkers had friended or become a fan of at least one brand. (Anderson Analytics, 2009)
Facts about LinkedIn (source: LinkedIn, 2010)
* LinkedIn now has over 85 million users in over 200 countries
* A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of the members are outside the U.S
* Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members
Facts about Twitter
* Nearly one in five Internet users are tweeting on Twitter or using another service to share personal and business updates, or to see updates about others. (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2009).
* According to the latest statistics, Twitter now boasts over 175 million accounts, along with the number of Twitter users increasing by 370,000 every day
* The number of tweets per day is constantly growing, from 35 million tweets per day in February 2010 to 65 million tweets per day in June 2010. (Econsultancy 2010) – and to Twitter gets 95 million tweets per day as of Dec 2010
* The number of daily Tweets has grown more than twenty-fold in the past year, from about two million a day in January, 2009 to nearly 50 million a day in January 2010.
* The median age of a Twitter user is 31. (Pew Internet and American Life Project, 2010)
Conclusion
It’s very much the time now to start on all these three social media tools – Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN. Social media has hit the whole globe with no doubt. Organizations throughout various industry sectors are now allocating and setting up budgets, plans, policies, and strategies to tackle and squeeze the opportunities these tools offer. Having gone through the facts above, don’t you think that our local organizations need to act right now on this? These are the top three tools but yet, there are much more social media tools – Oh wait, before going for the others, has the local organizations even start up on these three top social media networks – atleast one of them? Do your search, I bet a majority of organizations in Sri Lanka – almost all – has even no clue as to what thesetools are. My advices to these organizations are – get into it – build knowledge and resource – stop being too internal oriented – and overall stop being stubborn!
About the author:
The writer is an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and provides advice and ideas on industry, marketing, strategy, communications, digital and social media, and strategic reputation. You can reach him on thanzyl@msn.com. You can now follow him on @Thanzyl on Twitter.
Courtesy - The Island
