DreamGrow Social Media

North Dakota is embracing social media

Among hundreds of other cities, companies and states, the state of North Dakota is also on the bandwagon of social media now.

Their tourist agency has gained presence for the state in almost all of the available social media channels, the main ones being facebook, youtube and twitter.

At rulegendary.com , people are asked to write about the experiences they have about North Dakota and then link back the URL with their story. The story can be written in a blog, made into a video or a photograph.

They are also giving out prizes to the first 10, but you can argue about the prize itself – being a T-shirt picturing North Dakota. Leaving out the prize though, North Dakota is doing a great job here. They have over a thousand followers on Twitter, and the amount of fans on Facebook is also growing near to that.

Since the campaign itself is relatively new, we have no data on the success of it yet. But seeing the amount of followers they already have in Facebook and Twitter, North Dakota has definitely done well. They are answering questions, engaging in conversations and telling it all about the latest activities in their state.

If the rulegendary.com campaign will be a success, they will also have great video material to put up on video sharing sites like Youtube. North Dakota is definitely going the right way here.

Research: Student Grades Not Affected By Social Networking

The study “Social Networking Usage and Grades Among College Students” (PDF) finds that students who heavily engage in social networking do just as well academically as students who are less interested in keeping in touch with the medium.

The study indicates that social media is being integrated with rather than interfering with students’ academic lives. College students have grown up with social networks, and the study shows they are now simply part of how students interact with each other with no apparent impact on grades. – UNH adjunct professor Chuck Martin

It seems that most of the time that is used for social networks comes from TV, idle surfing, and gaming. This way the time spent on social networking sites could be said to be a “higher quality” activity. The time for studying and other important thing stays the same.

The research shows that there is no correlation between the amount of time students spend using social media and their grades. Grades followed similar distributions for all colleges.

63% of heavy users received high grades, compared to 65% of light users. 37% of heavy users of social media received what were defined as lower grades and 35% of light users fell into same category.

The study showed that Facebook and YouTube are the most popular social media sites, with 96% of students saying they use Facebook and 84% saying they use YouTube. 20% said they use blogs, 14% use Twitter, 12% use MySpace and 10% use LinkedIn.

89% of students use social networks for social reasons and 79% use them for entertainment. 26% of students use social media for educational reasons and 16% for professional reasons.
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Image credit Mary Gober

Resources: How to Use Social Media?

In my search for different cases of social media I have stumbled on a lot of lists about organizations using social media. To make them easier to find I post them all here for reference. Special thanks goes to Peter Kim for starting the huge list in A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples.

A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples. Pure gold! 1,140 examples at the time of this post. You can sort them by company name, type of social media, industry and country.

Ray Schiel’s list of uses of social media by category: online video, applications, widgets, social networks, blogging, podcasting, crowdsourcing, bookmarking and tagging, microblogging, photosharing, wiki, virtual worlds, mashup, word of mouth, pr, etc.

26 Social Media Marketing Examples in Detail on Ignite Social Media’s blog. 22 cases analyzed four more to go. This list goes deeper and gives an overview of what’s really happening.

Social Media Blogs Top 200. Learn from the gurus and improve. The list uses PageRank, FeedBurner, Alexa, and Technorati, the average number of comments for ranking.

The Top 50 Social Media Blogs Of The Year EvanCarmichael.com has created a list of great social media blogs.

15 Top Social Media Agencies. Who are the top dogs on the business. Learn guys. Social media companies can be research focused, software heavy, app developers, monitoring services or consulting firms. The social media agency is one that helps companies extend their brand and marketing through training, long term strategy, and execution.

It’ll take a lot of time to go through all that material but if you know a really good resourece then please add it in the comments.

Advertising spend on the top social network and blogging sites increased 119 percent

Time spent on social network and blogging sites accounted for 17 percent of all time spent on the Internet in August 2009.

“This growth suggests a wholesale change in the way the Internet is used,” said Jon Gibs, vice president, media and agency insights, Nielsen’s online division. “While video and text content remain central to the Web experience – the desire of online consumers to connect, communicate and share is increasingly driving the medium’s growth.”

Online Display Ad Spending on Top Social Network Sites More than Doubles in August 2009.  Year-over-year, estimated online advertising spend on the top social network and blogging sites increased 119 percent, from approximately $49 million in August 2008 to approximately $108 million in August 2009. The share of estimated spend on these sites has also grown, increasing from a seven percent share of total online ad spend in August 2008 to a 15 percent share in August 2009. via Nielsen | Nielsen Reports 17 Percent Of Time Spent On The Internet In August Devoted.

Social media will dominate small business marketing within a year

Within 12 months, a full 82 percent of businesses will be using social media to promote their brand and the goods and services they offer consumers. Findings indicate that even though marketers will be turning more and more to social media for brand-building, many are still unsure how to begin or measure the effectiveness of this burgeoning media. For small business owners, the choice is clear — jump on the social media bandwagon or be left behind. via Social media will dominate small business marketing within a year.

Study Measures the Chatter of the News Cycle

For the most part, the traditional news outlets lead and the blogs follow, typically by 2.5 hours, according to a new computer analysis of news articles and commentary on the Web during the last three months of the 2008 presidential campaign.

The finding was one of several in a study that Internet experts say is the first time the Web has been used to track — and try to measure — the news cycle, the process by which information becomes news, competes for attention and fades. via Study Measures the Chatter of the News Cycle – NYTimes.com.

PDF: Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle [Tracking new topics, ideas, and “memes” across the Web has been an issue of considerable interest. Recent work has developed methods for tracking topic shifts over long time scales, as well as abrupt spikes in the appearance of particular named entities.]