Google is becoming irrelevant. Facebook is where people send increasing amounts of their online time. As we have pointed out earlier the main thing that is working for Google is search. Their social pushes with Orkut and Google Wave haven’t had much success.
Facebook on the other hand is having a search component missing from internet domination. Facebook’s search sucks. It is really really bad even finding their own pages and giving relevant results to users. This could be solved with Bing. Facebook’s part owner Microsoft could lend its declining to be used as a search engine inside the social network.
The Facebook’s interface update last week hints at this possibility as the search box was promoted to the prominent position in site’s header. Now Facebook has a lot going on for them and snatching search from Google doesn’t seem really far fetched. With its user-base over 400 million and growing at a rate almost 20 million a month Facebook is the biggest threat Google has ever faced.
Now Google is throwing it all in. Trying to convert GMail with its 150 million users to a social site seem to be their last countermeasure against Facebook. As they can’t break the user experience for the whole user-base the changes couldn’t be too great. The other obstacle, Mashsble points out, is that you probably have thousands of email addresses in GMail and only fraction of those are people you would like to share your status updates with.
So, we have to wait and see what the coming week reveals. Tuesday is the day if Mashable is correct. I have to admit that I am a bit skeptical and I think that Google’s chances against Facebook are really slim.
True fans are the people who really like you and won’t miss the opportunity to tell others about you. A recent study from PostRelease reveals that a place to look for brand advocates could be online forums.
Online forums are one of the first tools of social media. Early web-based forums date back as far as 1996. Our experience from running online forums the core users are very opinionated and very loyal. Usually a community develops around forums with regular users.
The new study shows that their influence reaches online and off. The users of online forums post reviews, share links, organize offline meetups and proactively recommend a purchase more often than regular internet users. About one fifth of Americans contribute to forums.
Some of the results from the survey:
79.2 percent of forum contributors help a friend or family member make a decision about a product purchase – compared with 47.6 percent of non-contributors and 53.8 percent overall
65 percent of forum contributors share advice (offline and in person) based on information that they’ve read online – compared with 35 percent of non-contributors and 40.8 percent overall.
66 percent of forum contributors post online ratings/reviews of products/services, compared with 16.8 percent of non-contributors and 26.4 percent overall.
57.7 percent of forum contributors proactively recommend that someone make a particular purchase – compared with 16.9 percent of non-contributors and 24.9 percent overall.
43.6 percent of forum contributors share links to articles about new products or with reviews of products – compared with 12 percent of non-contributors and 18.2 percent overall.
35.6 percent of forum contributors attend an offline event or meet up where people with similar interests or who share the same hobby connect – compared with 13.8 percent of non-contributors and 18 percent overall.
20.6 percent of forum contributors publish a blog – compared with 2.1 percent of non-contributors and 5.7 percent overall.
18.8 percent of forum contributors take an active role in organizing an offline event or meetup for a group that met originally online – compared with 2.4 percent of non-contributors and 5.6 percent overall.
So it seems a really good idea to find the forums relevant to your business and identify the key players in those forums. Here are some free tools that will get you started.
Boardreader
BoardReader can be used to find and information on the forums and message boards. Boardreader uses proprietary software that allows users to search multiple message boards simultaneously.
BoardTracker
A search engine in the ‘traditional’ sense. All the information in our database is from forum threads only, all extraneous text on a page is excluded by default which allows use to return even more relevant results without the ’spam’. Corporate users can arm their sales and marketing staff with BoardTracker accounts to give them essential business intelligence.
A formula for generating ad agency new business through social media. This presentation concentrates on ad agencies but can be use for mos t B2B marketers.
7 Key Findings On The Use of Social Media And E-Commerce: New Study. Online retailers have been rushing into using Social Media as the next big marketing thing and yes it is showing some promise. A recent study by Compete which evaluated online shopping trends, unearthed some interesting findings about the use of Social Media and online shopping, especially about Facebook and Twitter.
Case Study: Social Networking Does Work. M+R Strategic Services released their 2010 NonProfit Social Media Benchmark Study: An Analysis of Growth and Social Engagement Metrics for Nonprofit Organizations. The findings in the study are quite re-assuring for some of the best practices we already know.
Paul Gillin’s Guide to Choosing Social Media Tools. Most companies have the same problem: They’ve dabbled in blogs, Twitter and Facebook fan pages but after several months they lack traffic, followers and fans. They’re frustrated and confused. Wasn’t this supposed to be a cheap and easy way to build their brand and bring in sales? Social media demands a strategy, and that’s where businesses usually don’t go far enough.
B2B Case Study: How to Get Started in Social Media. The second in a series of “How To’s” to help you add social media to your integrated marketing communications program. Integrated Marcom Minute interviewed Katherine Watkins, Marketing Communications Manager, Eastman Chemical Company, to learn how she and her marcom team integrated social media into their marcom mix.
Adopting Social Media in the Enterprise. Most enterprises have made attempts at dipping their toe in social media mostly by establishing a presence on what we will call the “free social web” – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. While these social outposts are extremely important for branding and driving traffic to an enterprise’s web site or online community, they are difficult to measure and track and, most importantly, it’s difficult for the brand to own the conversations happening within the broader social web.
Facebook is 6 years old and reaches this week 400 million users. As Mark Zuckerberg announced this is almost twice the number they had a year ago. But the important thing is that the last 50 million users were added in about just 65 days. The growth from form 300 to 350 million took a whole 77 days. The average pace for the last 150 million users has been about 22 million a month.
Last year we predicted that Facebook will hit 700 million this year. We did some calculations and found that this is not entirely impossible. Now, looking back we see that Facebook went from 200 to 400 million with an average pace of 19,1 million users per month. Drawing a straight line from now to December 31 will give us a user base of 610 million. So, our initial 700 million is entirely possible.
The question now is if any of the big non-Facebook countries (China, Brazil, Russia, etc) will start to join up in big numbers. This may speed up the growth significantly. Facebook should start seeding by paying the user to join up in these countries and to reach the tipping point.
Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study about internet and social media use among Millennial generation by situating it within similar data for adolescents and adults older than 30. The data on teens is drawn from a survey conducted between June 26 and September 24, 2009 of 800 adolescents (ages 12 to 17). The adult data are drawn from a survey conducted between August 18 and September 14, 2009 of 2,253 adults (age 18 and over). Here are some of the key findings:
Blogging is down among young adults
One of the findings is that young people are blogging less than they used to. 14% of online teens say they blog, down from 28% in 2006.
Also the commenting activity is lower as 52% of teen social network users report commenting on friends’ blogs, down from the 76% who did so in 2006.
In 2009 15% of internet users ages 18-29 maintain a blog —a 9% point drop in two years. However, 11% of internet users ages thirty and older now maintain a personal blog (7% in 2007).
Social networking sites’ usage numbers
73% of wired American teens use social networking websites. 55% of online teens used social networking sites in November 2006.
47% of online adults use social networking sites, up from 37% in November 2008.
72% of online 18-29 year olds use social networking websites, significantly higher than the 40% of internet users ages 30 and up who use these sites.
Adults are increasingly fragmenting their social networking experience as a majority of those who use social networking sites – 52% say they have two or more different profiles.
Among adult profile owners 73% have a Facebook profile, 48% have a MySpace profile and 14% have a profile on LinkedIn.
Teens are not using Twitter
8% of internet users ages 12-17 use Twitter. Older teens are more likely to use Twitter than their younger counterparts; 10% of online teens ages 14-17 do so, compared with 5% of those ages 12-13.
Young adults lead the way when it comes to using Twitter or status updating. One-third of online 18-29 year olds post or read status updates.
Mobile
Three-quarters of teens and 93% of adults ages 18-29 now have a cell phone.
Internet usage
93% of teens ages 12-17 and young adults ages 18-29 go online. 74% of all adults ages 18 and older go online.
48% of online teens have bought things online: books, clothing or music, up from 31% in 2000.
Gartner released a report “Predicts 2010: Social Software Is an Enterprise Reality” in which analysts offer predictions for the next five years. Concentrating on social software Gartner stresses five key points.
1. By 2014, social networking services will replace e-mail as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users.
This prediction is matches our own view of changes brought on by mass adoption of social networking sites. (Social Media Replaces Email and IM and 22 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2010). Gartner predicts that by 2014 about 20 percent of business users will use social networking sites as the hub of their business communications. We believe this number to be even higher as social networking companies will push to make this happen. On the other hand email provides will seek out ways to turn their user-base to social networks. These trends will blur the line between social and email.
2. By 2012, over 50 percent of enterprises will use activity streams that include microblogging, but stand-alone enterprise microblogging will have less than 5 percent penetration.
Our view is that in-house corporate microbloging platforms will not see wide spread adoption. The main reason for this is that small user base will not generate enough social chatter to keep the interest up. The second obstacle in the adoption of private microblogging platforms will be the resistance from employees who see it as another “time waster”.
3. Through 2012, over 70 percent of IT-dominated social media initiatives will fail.
Well, this is a bit of a no brainer. We have seen it in our work and we firmly believe that IT-people should be kept away from making decisions about marketing communications. As Gartner puts it:
When it comes to collaboration, IT organizations are accustomed to providing a technology platform (such as, e-mail, IM, Web conferencing) rather than delivering a social solution that targets specific business value.
Social media communications is a business process. This process needs tools that come out of IT-department, but they do not define those processes. Business side must be very careful not to bend under the pressure from IT about what can or cannot be done.
4. Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.
Yes, mobile is big! It will get BIGGER. But the user experience on different devices will (hopefully) be driven by delivering the best user experience, doh. Gartner suggests that people are more productive on smartphones than on PCs due to better user interfaces.
The experience with these tools for all who use them will enable the user to handle far more conversations within a given amount of time than their PCs simply because they are easier to use.
We believe that small devices have inherently worse user experience than their desktop counterparts. This ensures that full size computers will continue to provide superior user experience. This will hold until we have perfected voice commands, HUD-glasses and other wearable computing technologies.
5. Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity.
The Gartner’s number 25 percent seems reasonable, but the reasoning does not. Privacy concerns will not hold people from analyzing social data. Lack of knowledge and initiative in the enterprise will do that. Our personal information is mined and analyzed in countless places and most of us don’t care. Agreed, social is more personal than that, but we believe that a lot of the benefits can be dug out from anonymous statistical analysis that doesn’t invade privacy. For more sensitive information consumers can trade privacy for benefits.
Social networking is in it infancy and the next few years will see a lot of change. How we communicate with friends and businesses, new business models and processes, new hardware technology, user interfaces, etc. But at the core of it is our need to communicate and belong. So, there.
I got cold and some idle time. To pass time I browsed Amazon to check out what’s hot on the social media marketing shelf. Get some of these and you will get new ideas and tactics you can implement right now.
Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion by Gary Vaynerchuk, rating 4.5/5. This book isn’t interested in making unrealistic promises while glossing over the work involved. Making a living by building content around your passion isn’t simple and it doesn’t happen overnight. What it is, however, is fulfilling and in most cases just as profitable, if not more so, than your previous job.
Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah, rating 4.9/5. Stop pushing your message out and start pulling your customers in. People are now increasingly turning to Google, social media, and blogs to find products and services. Inbound Marketing helps you take advantage of this change by showing you how to get found by customers online.
The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success by Lon Safko, David K. Brake, rating 4.7/of 5. The book will show you how to build or transform your business into a social media—enabled enterprise where customers, employees, and prospects connect, collaborate, and champion your products, your services, and your way of doing business.
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff, rating 4.6/5. Two of Forrester Research’s top analysts show you how to turn the force of customers connecting to your own advantage. Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li show how leading companies are gaining insights, generating revenues, saving money, and energizing their own customers.
Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business by Erik Qualman, rating 4.6/5. Social Media isn’t just for the Next Generation – it’s for every generation. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a media professional, a college student or a mom, social media will shape your future. Don’t be overwhelmed by it; read Qualman’s book instead.” – Jane Wooldridge, The Miami Herald
Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin, rating 4.1/5. Tribes will make you think (really think) about the opportunities for leading your fellow employees, customers, investors, believers, hobbyists, readers. . . . It’s not easy, but it’s easier than you probably imagine.
The Social Media Marketing Book by Dan Zarrella, rating 4.8/5. This book guides you through the maze of communities, platforms, and social media tools so you can decide which ones to use, and how to use them most effectively.
Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day by Dave Evans, rating 4.5/5. Put the buzz about your business to work for you. This comprehensive, perfectly paced guide will teach you how to make social media an active part of your marketing plan so that you can turn customer conversations about your brand, product, service, and company into a sustainable competitive advantage.
I couldn’t pass the opportunity to share this clip. It is, of course, blindingly obvious why this short film got viral. If you show a model like that you are half way there, but having a point will get you ahead of the pack.
Google is becoming irrelevant. Facebook is where people send increasing amounts of their online time. As we have pointed out earlier the main thing that is working for Google is search. Their social pushes with Orkut and Google Wave haven’t had much success.
True fans are the people who really like you and won’t miss the opportunity to tell others about you. 
Pew Internet & American Life Project 
4. Within five years, 70 percent of collaboration and communications applications designed on PCs will be modeled after user experience lessons from smartphone collaboration applications.
I got cold and some idle time. To pass time I browsed Amazon to check out what’s hot on the social media marketing shelf. Get some of these and you will get new ideas and tactics you can implement right now.
I couldn’t pass the opportunity to share this clip. It is, of course, blindingly obvious why this short film got viral. If you show a model like that you are half way there, but having a point will get you ahead of the pack.
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