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Entries tagged as ‘Social Media’

Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh)

May 5, 2010 · 91 Comments

By Erik Qualman

It’s amazing how fast the world of social media moves!  As many of the statistics from the original Social Media video have changed, I took a moment to refresh the video with a few new statistics and graphics.  Thanks to all of you for your support in making the first Social Media Revolution and Social Media ROI videos such a huge success and I hope that you enjoy this refresh!

Stats from Video (sources listed below by corresponding #)

  1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
  2. 96% of them have joined a social network
  3. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
  4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
  5. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
  6. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
  7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
  8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
  9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
  10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
  11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China
  12. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
  13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
  14. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
  15. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the  populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.  Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
  16. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
  17. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
  18. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
  19. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
  20. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
  21. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
  22. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
  23. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
  24. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
  25. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour
  26. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
  27. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
  28. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
  29. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
  30. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
  31. Only 14% trust advertisements
  32. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
  33. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
  34. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
  35. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
  36. 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
  37. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
  38. We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
  39. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
  40. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
  41. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years
  42. Bonus: comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network

Social Media Statistics:

Below are the sources I used to compile this video.  Keep your feedback/questions/challenges coming as it will collectively make the next video better – be social.

A huge thanks to all below:

  1. Source: http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/broker http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.php  [roughly 52% based on table data] | 2010 U.S. 310,232,863 | 2010 World 6,814,609,654 | 30 and under: 3,548,760,268 / 6,814,609,654 = 52% http://sasweb.ssd.census.gov/idb/worldpopinfo.html
  2. Source: Grunwald Associates National Study – Trendsspotting Blog | Millenials Conference
  3. Source: Hitwise Intelligence Heather Dougherty http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-dougherty/2010/03/facebook_reaches_top_ranking_i.html
  4. Source: Huffington Post
  5. Source: McKinsey Study also posted by David Dalka
  6. Source: First Stats: United Nations Cyberschoolbus Document
  7. Source for Facebook Stat: Facebook Timeline http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?timeline Feb 2009 175 million users – Feb 2010 400 users:
  8. iPhone Stat: Apple
  9. Personal Quote
  10. Source: Facebook and world population data
  11. Source: TechCrunch
  12. Source: U.S. Department of Education Study
  13. Source: Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey
  14. Source: Inside Facebook Blog
  15. Source: Twitter & World Population Data [Pulled 4/11: Kutcher & Spears 4,743,902 and 4,689,808 = 9,433,710] – note it’s not the combined populations of the countries listed
  16. Source: The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/feb/08/facebook-rise-mobile-web-use
  17. Source: Metro Commuter Newspaper
  18. Source: USA Today: Should Colleges Start Giving iPads to Students? http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-04-05-IHE-colleges-give-iPads-to-students05_N.htm
  19. Opinion, not a statistic
  20. Source: TGDaily
  21. Source:  Mashable by Ben Parr
  22. Source: www.wikipedia.org - calculated based on # articles per language category; Colorado State University Wikipedia Accuracy Study; open debate and of course very biased information is also found on this Wikipedia Accuracy page.
  23. Source: China Internet Information Center, Technorati, Wikipedia
  24. Opinion, not a statistic
  25. Source: ClickZ Stats SES Magazine June 8 page 24-25 Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards, Xavier Lanier Turning Blogs and user-Generated Content Into Search Engine Results
  26. Calculated based of Wikipedia article data found at www.wikipedia.org
  27. Source:  TechCrunchThis says 4 weeks so I may have been a little off here as my source at Facebook had said 2 weeks adjusted above
  28. Source: Marketing Vox and Nielsen BuzzMetrics SES Magazine June 8 page 24-25 Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards, Xavier Lanier Turning Blogs and user-Generated Content Into Search Engine Results
  29. Opinion, not a statistic
  30. Source: July 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey (actually 90% now – updated above but video still shows 78%)
  31. Source: “Marketing to the Social Web,” Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing  2007
  32. Source: “Marketing to the Social Web,” Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing  2007
  33. Source: Starcom USA-TiVo
  34. Source: Mashable
  35. Source: Solutions Research Group
  36. Source: Facebook Stats
  37. Opinion, not a statistic
  38. Opinion, not a statistic
  39. Opinion, not a statistic
  40. Opinion, not a statistic
  41. Opinion, not a statistic
  42. comScore
  43. Music in video provided by Fatboy Slim “Right Here, Right Now” (1999) – if you like it buy the single

To watch videos with millions of YouTube views and deservedly so, please check out Karl Fisch and Scott McCleod’s Did You Know? And Shift Happens videos on YouTube.  If you are like me you will love them!

Also, if you haven’t seen Marta Kagan’s “What The F**K is Social Media” presentation,  it’s amazing! Many of the same eye-popping facts are contained in it – as well as many more.  Plus, it does a much better job of providing insight than my video which is designed to grab attention.  Kagan’s presentation informs, check it out!

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Categories: Social Media · Uncategorized
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New “Shift Happens (Did You Know?)” video shows the “shift” is to social media

September 24, 2009 · 9 Comments

Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod are globally recognized and applauded for their “Shift Happens (Did You Know?)” video series.  An updated 4.0 version was released on September 14, 2009 (see video below).  I’m a big fan of these videos and this latest one has some great graphical treatments (XPLANE) and as we’ve come to expect,  some very salient information.  Some interesting information about the video can be found at The Fischbowl.

The most intriguing item to me with this latest release is the amount of time/content devoted to social media.  In the February 08, 2007 version of “Shift Happens,” which has received over 4.8 million views, a mere 20 seconds of the 6:06 was devoted to mentions of social media, or roughly 5.5% of the content.  Whereas this latest version dedicates roughly 29.4% of the air time to Social Media (75 seconds of the 4:15 video – note the last 30 seconds are credits so I removed from the baseline).  So we have gone from 5.5% of social media content to 29.4% of social media content for one of YouTube’s most popular technology videos.  The new video covers such things as Dell selling $3 million dollars worth of computers on Twitter to Wikipedia being in 200 countries.  So, yes my friends, shift does happen (thanks Karl!).

Many have asked for the data and video of Social Media Revolution so I have posted again below:

Data for this video can be found on this post: Statistics Show Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think

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Categories: Social Media · Uncategorized
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Jewish Targeting on Facebook

July 21, 2009 · 4 Comments

Today, MediaPost’s David Berkowitz, has an irreverant look at Facebook bombarding him with Jewish advertising: socialnomics-book-cover-3d-spineOy! Facebook’s Jewdar Returns .  Some ads Berkowitz receives from Mayor Bloomberg are even in Hebrew.

It’s interesting for me to see that Facebook is trying and learning from error that cobbling together certain relationships (if I’m a fan of the Yankees Page and also live in New York then I must be a Yankees fan).  As Berkowitz acutely points out is that isn’t always the case.  While I applaud Facebook with being aggressive they should stick to what already sets them apart – the data that they do have absolute certainty about.  Specifically when I got engaged it made sense to receive targeted advertising around flowers, wedding planners, etc.  Or knowing that I’m an Alma Mater of Michigan State University and the University of Texas, I do enjoy being alerted of new jackets and golf shirts for these schools.  Once Facebook masters this then they should start branching out, but until then it can leave a bad taste in people’s mouth as Berkowitz has found out first hand.

Categories: Facebook · Social Media
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Top Social Networks by Country

July 2, 2009 · 1 Comment

Top Social Networks by Country

Top Social Networks by Country

Vincenzo Cosenza took data from Google Trends and Alexa to compile a map of the largest social networks by country. Facebook dominates in most countries and is growing, but in China social netQQ still dominates.  Orkut still dominates India, but word on the street is that Facebook is starting to be the top choice amoung the Technorati.  Friendster has faded in all but the Philippines and MySpace is trailing in all but Guam.  If anyone has more updated data or map, please let me know!

Categories: Facebook · Social Media
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Will subscription based newspaper models work online?

June 18, 2009 · 1 Comment

There is an article by Media Post’s Gavin O’Malley today that piqued my interest  Brill’s Content Model .  The article details that media entrepreneur Steve Brill on Wednesday implored media publishers to shed their collective “inferiority complex,” and start charging subscription fees for content. “The world you helped to create needs to be fixed, and it needs to be fixed now,” said Brill.  Brill further went on to indicate:  “How can Amazon be extracting 70% of subscription fees and controlling the consumer relationship?” Brill asked.  Rather, Amazon should make its money by selling Kindle devices, and leave the subscription fees to the publishers. “It’s like if Sony told HBO that it wants 70% of what people pay for its content because people watch it on a Sony television.”

Here’s my take:

Subscription models often block viral activity

Subscription models often block viral activity

1.  Subscription models will be difficult because there is too much great content out there.  Even if you have a subscription model, there will be a blogger that pays for said subscription that can then in turn repost the main quotes/ideas soon after.

2.  Subscription models go against the viralness of social media.  If I read a great article and want to share it via Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, etc.  A subscription road block would prevent it from spreading properly – hence the non-subscription article or blog would win in that scenario, as there is no roadblock. 

One possible model is to to give 70% of the article away for free and the ability to get the 30% via a subscription.  Similar to ESPN”s “IN” subscriber model where I can read about a football recruit up to a point, but if I want to see more video, etc. Then I pay more.  Some people would be willing to do this.  This isn’t a new model by any means, it’s a premium model.  When reading the WSJ today I click to send the writer a note and it said I needed a subscription to do this.  That is just plain dumb to not allow your customer based to engage with the writers unless you pay.  If someone wants to contact me via this blog I love it, it makes the writing better and the readers have great ideas.  The last thing I would to would be require you to subscribe in order to contact me.

3.  Agree with Brill that Amazon’s Kindle is raking it in right now.  Very similar to iTunes for a long time charging 99 cents per song for every song.  The cost of Kindle downloads as well as the percentage going to Amazon will come down dramatically, but in the mean time, while Amazon has an advantage, they are going to take it.

4.  At the end of the day, it’s not what newspapers/writers want, it’s what the user wants.  People are willing to pay for stuff if there is value.  A user based approach is a very simple formula that many bright minds miss when they get confused by technology, which seems to occur more often than it should.

Categories: General Web
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Twittering Teens? – Other Topical Questions

June 15, 2009 · 8 Comments

The questions keep growing as more people join the social media fray. It seems socially appropriate that we take some time to go over three of the most common questions that your

Twittering Teens; Not Yet

Twittering Teens; Not Yet

friends, bosses, co-workers, or even you might be asking.

What Social Media Should I Use? 

When it comes to social media, it isn’t one size fits all. The beauty of search and social media is that it often can poke holes in your marketing positioning — being quite candid — it will often point out to your brand brethren that it may be too fluffy or broad.

In the book “Made to Stick,” authors Chip and Dan Heath point out a very salient point. They suggest that you should be able to describe your core positioning in movie trailer type format:

  • “It’s ‘Die Hard,’ but on a bus.” For those Keanu Reeves fans out there, that would be the movie “Speed.”
  • “Red Bull that tastes like Coke” equals Jolt Cola.
  • “Southwest for the Northeast” equals JetBlue.

 

This isn’t an article about brand positioning or marketing platforms, but it’s important to point out that often you’ll need to take a step back (properly define your market position as social media and SEO will point out the holes) to take two steps forward when it comes to social media.

You need to define your niche, as being well rounded in a social media world can be death. A great quote from Bill Cosby — who would have thought we could tie him into a social media article? — “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

Assuming you have a well-defined position, you can then determine which social media makes sense for you. It’s best to start with a social media program that you feel has the best chance for success and be quick and light.

MySpace could be most appropriate for a new rock band. Twitter may be the first social media venture for those highly focused on customer service.

Each social media platform has its own unique offerings and demographics. It should be easy to determine which is most appropriate for you, but if you struggle, the Forrester Groundswell Profile Tool (based on the book co-written by former Forrester analyst Charlene Li), helps identify where your best chance for success will be, based on your demographic target. Li Evans goes into more detail in “Do You Know Where Your Audience Is?“

Do Teens Tweet?

Because of Ashton Kutcher’s and Britney Spears’ well documented use of Twitter, teens are more aware of it, but only the early adopters are using it. They may use Twitter or other micro-blogging tools in the future, but not now. They use the status updates on Facebook, which is a form of micro-blogging.

Also, keep in mind that anyone under 20 doesn’t really see much use for e-mail. They view e-mail as an action tool — a tool needed to respond to something usually work related. Or as an enabling tool — needed to set up accounts on social media sites.

The use of e-mail is becoming even less now that their parents and grandparents are starting to use social media. Remember, the fastest growing segment on Facebook is females age 55 to 65. Primary communication tools: text messages, video/Skype, IM, and Facebook.

Teens still care about privacy, but their privacy is much different than other generations. For example, they have no issue telling the world they’re out of town, whereas previous generations would have the neighbor get the mail and set up light timers.

How Big Will Bing Be?

It’s good to see that someone (Microsoft) is pushing Google with their launch of Bing. However, while it has some social elements (most popular searches now, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn showing high in the results, etc.) it doesn’t push the envelope enough to give Google a legitimate run for their money.

If Microsoft were able to improve upon and integrate their Live CashBack program functionality into Bing, then that would make it much stronger. I strongly believe that the next game changer in search will be:

  1. Integrating my social graph’s reviews/purchases around products/services.
  2. Ability to give some money back to the user for a search purchase/review.

Compete data showed the activity on Bing was a small blip the day it launched, but then it was back to business as usual: Google (73.2 percent) Yahoo (16.5 percent) Bing (5.7 percent). We’ll see if Microsoft’s planned $80 million to $100 million ad campaign has any affect. Television advertising didn’t help Ask.com a few years back, and they even used monkeys.

Speaking of going bananas, I’m sure there are plenty more social media questions out there, so please feel free to send them my way, via comments below or Twitter @equalman.

Categories: Social Media · Twitter
Tagged: , , , ,

Social Media Interview with TripAdvisor’s CEO

May 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Steve Kaufer is the energetic founder and CEO of highly successful TripAdvisor, whose suite of companies attracts nearly 32 million monthly visitors. He also finds time to raise four children and is an active board member for the charitable organization Caring for Carcinoid Foundation(CFCF). Since its inception, CFCF has awarded over 4.5 million dollars in research grants to leading scientists at renowned institutions.

Under Steve’s guidance, TripAdvisor has been able to carve out a defensible and almost monopolistic position when it comes to travel reviews. TripAdvisor, with over 20 million reviews and opinions, was practicing the principles of social media long before it became the buzzword of the day.

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Steve and discuss the impact of social media.

Erik Qualman:TripAdvisor has been highly successful and profitable and you were acquired by Expedia in 2004. Where did the idea to start TripAdvisor come from, and how did it all start?

Steve Kaufer:It started in 1999, when I was trying to book travel and couldn’t find any helpful tools like a TripAdvisor to help during the decision process. So, like many tripadvisor-logoentrepreneurs, I decided to fill a void in the marketplace. I had three co-founders, Langley Steinert, Nick Shanny and Tom Palka, and we officially launched tripadvisor.com in October 2000. Since that day I’ve tried to always maintain a view point from the customer.

EQ:It seems that TripAdvisor was ahead of the curve in terms of implementing some social media-like functionality? Any insight?

SK:One thing that we have always found is that user-posted pictures are always more popular than the professional beauty shots. Users find these to be authentic and an augmentation to the beauty shots. Now that more and more people are sharing photos via Facebook, mobile, etc. this part of our reviews will only increase in value.

EQ:What is one of the key insights about TripAdvisor that many of us might not be aware of?

SK:The popular belief that people only take the time to post something when they want to vent or discuss a bad experience is simply not true; at least in our experience. The majority of our over 20 million reviews and opinions we have received on TripAdvisor are positive ones. People are simply compelled to give back to a community that has given to them.

EQ:Recently, TripAdvisor has enabled the ability for hotel sites, airline sites, etc. to integrate some of the TripAdvisor review content onto their sites? Why?

SK:Again this decision harkens back to a user perspective. If I’m a user and I’m looking to book a hotel and I’d like to have some quick and salient user review information, this makes it much easier on me to have it all in one location.

EQ:This makes sense. In my mind it’s somewhat similar to what the major television broadcasters are wrestling with. Many major networks are requesting and in some cases suing the likes of YouTube and Hulu to remove their content for fear of losing viewers on their site, yet this is the almost the reverse of that, you are happy for others to post your content.

SK:We are fortunate to be profitable with our business model, one that has been based on putting the user first. This isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s not an issue where if a user sees our information on another site they don’t need to visit TripAdvisor. In some instances this will be the case, but in others the customer will require more information and will visit TripAdvisor to obtain it. Or they may visit TripAdvisor after they return from their trip to post a review. Also, in many cases, the user on said hotel or airline site will be exposed to TripAdvisor and our clients for the first time. Keep in mind that all this information has links back to our site and also is branded with TripAdvisor.

EQ:That is a good point and one that sometimes companies get confused with when faced with new technologies. It’s not necessarily where they see the content, it’s that they see the content. I always scratch my head when someone like the Associated Press asks Google not to list their stories anymore. Companies that truly get it are actually paying experts for search engine optimization so that they rank high in Google. Or this weekend for the Masters, they only streamed 4 holes online during the Phil vs. Tiger match-up. It seems like you would want to increase your viewership across every platform, rather than making an AOL-like walled garden mistake.

Erik Qualman: In regards to the explosion of social media, everyone is talking about Facebook, Twitter, etc.; why now?

Steve Kaufer: Many have covered that we are all inherently social animals, which is true to some extent, but I think one of the real overlooked beauties of social media is the passivity of it. Unlike e-mail that requires a response, with a site like Facebook, friends or relatives can passively observe, and share without having to interrupt someone else.

EQ:It’s my understanding that TripAdvisor has benefited from the explosion of social media.

SK:We’ve had some notable wins in particular on Facebook and YouTube. On Facebook, we launched our Local Picks restaurant reviews and ratings application in the fall of 2007. The application easily enables the sharing of culinary opinions among friends. We were able to grow our offering from less than 100,000 establishments to nearly 500,000 in approximately 15 months. Our Cities I’ve Visited and TravelPod’s Traveler IQ applications have also been successful. Note: Active monthly Facebook users: Cities I’ve Visited — 1,794,279; Traveler IQ — 112,921; Local Picks — 16,218.

EQ: I know that I became addicted to the Traveler IQ application and had a little competition going with my wife and we each had our own respective cheat sheets.

SK:You weren’t alone. We are astonished at the amount of time the users interact with these applications — sometimes hours at a time, which is great brand exposure for TripAdvisor and TravelPod. These three applications I mentioned total about 2 million active monthly users on Facebook. And for the Traveler IQ and Cities I’ve Visited, we take comfort in knowing that we are helping to further the geographical education of our users.

EQ: This is true, I now know where Christmas Island is located (note: off the Northwest of Australia). And, what about YouTube?

SK:On YouTube, we were able to do a short two-minute video with celebrity Rosario Dawson and that has attracted over a million views.

EQ: What has been the secret to your social media success?

SK:I have a sign outside my door that says “Speed Wins.” That is our motto when it comes to social media as well. For every success you see, we’ve had plenty of items that we tested and didn’t work out. You really never know what the next big thing will be. In the Cities I Visited development process, my team estimated it would take four months to build. I put a challenge for us to get it done in four days, and we met that challenge. On the successful YouTube video, we originally launched a similar video with me as the spokesperson and that received an unflattering 1,000 views. It’s apparent that YouTube viewers find Rosario more appealing to listen to than myself.

EQ:Do you see the next step for TripAdvisor to integrate tools like Facebook Connect that will enable users to easily see reviews from their friends along with reviews from people that they don’t know.

SK: Again, it will all come back to the user. If the users find this sort of connection helpful, than, by all means, we will look to integrate such tools to benefit our users. It’s important to note that the comfort of being fully transparent varies from user to user. For some users it’s no problem, while other users don’t want their identity to be known and it may, in fact, affect how they review a particular travel experience if there is a chance it could go massively viral with their name associated with it.

EQ: You were captain of the fencing team at Harvard. Do any of the skills you learned while fencing transfer to your current role?

SK: Not sure how much is transferable, but possibly:

  1. Needing to anticipate your opponents moves and strategy.
  2. You need to be nimble.
  3. The competitive nature and learning what it takes to win.

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Stephen Kaufer BIO

Kaufer co-founded TripAdvisor in 2000 with the mission to help travelers around the world plan and have the perfect trip. Under Kaufer’s leadership, TripAdvisor has grown into the largest Web 2.0 company in the northeast and the world’s largest travel community, with more than 25 million monthly visitors, nine million registered members and 20 million reviews and opinions. Kaufer hasalso built the TripAdvisor Media Network, acquiring 11 leading travel brands, and has expanded the TripAdvisor brand into France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Spain, and the U.K. Kaufer and his co-founders sold TripAdvisor to InterActive Corporation in 2004, which later spun off its travel businesses to Expedia, Inc., and Kaufer has continued to run day-to-day operations. Prior to co-founding TripAdvisor, Kaufer was president of CDS, Inc., a successful independent software vendor specializing in programming and testing tools. Previously, Kaufer was co-founder and vice president of engineering of CenterLine Software, where he led the development of several award-winning programming environments. Kaufer, winner of the 2005 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, holds several software patents and has spoken at dozens of travel and high-tech conferences worldwide. He is on the board of directors at Glassdoor (www.glassdoor.com), a job review site; CarGurus (www.cargurus.com), an online automotive community; and the Caring For Carcinoid Foundation (http://www.caringforcarcinoid.org), a non-profit charity dedicated to finding a cure for Carcinoid and Neuroendocrine cancers. He has a B.S. in computer science from Harvard University.

Categories: Social Media
Tagged: , , , , , ,

Everyone is Tweeting, but is anyone listening?

March 27, 2009 · 4 Comments

I just returned from Search Engine Strategies New York and the major topic was Twitter.  Now, this was helped by the fact that the week was kicked off by an energetic opening keynote speech  by Twitter guru, or addict, depending on how you look at it, Guy Kawasaki.  Guy had over 100,000 followers prior to his keynote and now has 94,850, which is very interesting.  You would think the opposite effect would occur.  However, perhaps some thought Guy may have been pushing the line of spamming just a bit.  My sense is that he is not, because, if you don’t like it you can always un-follow Guy.  Unlike e-mail where anyone can spam you, in Twitter you need to be following someone in order to receive messages.

Britney Spears is popular on Twitter

Britney Spears is popular on Twitter

Whether Guy or Brittney Spears or Lance Armstrong  have 94,000 or 550,000 followers, they are A-Listers and people want to hear what they have to say.  It’s not because it’s Twitter, it’s because most of these celebrities previously had a platform.  Now, there will be a few new “A Listers” that result simply from Twitter, these will be few and far between however.  Guy Kawasaki is being helped greatly by Twitter, because he is being aggressively smart.

But, what about the rest of us?  If we have 1,500 followers are any of them really listening?  I’d argue that most are likely not.  However, it is still a huge marketing tool and the nobodies are now the new somebody for the following reason.  Twitter is free.  Hence, if you have 1,500 followers and are a local plumber, most likely most aren’t listening.  However, as long as at least one person is that is all that matters, because of the simple fact that it’s free.  If that one person has a plumbing issue, you as the Plumber now have a shot, especially if you acquired these followers simply by limited your search.twitter.com query to people within a 25 mile radius.

The biggest use right now is 1) big businesses following what is being said about their company – see Zappos, JetBlue, Comcast, etc. 2) Celebrities catering to their following by giving realtime updates – see Lance Armstrong Twitter’s about collarbone 3) Individuals attempt to promote themselves, generate a following and make money

And it’s the last point that may eventually cause Twitter to become Tiresome.  Just like on Facebook you X out the person that is constantly talking about their turtle, bad hair day, etc. on Facebook, the same holds true here.   Is Dale Carnegie rolling over in his grave, because everyone on Twitter is trying to be heard, when the key to winning friends and influencing people is actually listening?

Part of the reason that Twitter is so popular is that some of it’s effectiveness and cool factor is aided by the fact that not everyone is on it.  What could I possibly mean by this?  In January we sent over 6,000 students (via Smithsonian Student Travel) on educational tours to Washington DC for the historic inauguration.  In the past it would have been difficult to get major media outlets attention.  However, it was easy to do with Twitter.  NPR, MSNBC and PBS immediately replied to our tweet, expressing interest in hearing from our middle school student travelers and their teachers.   Now, only two months later.  I’ve #JetBlue about my concern that their TVs may not work for my flight this afternoon and this is crucially important as I booked on JetBlue soley for the reason that I could watch MarchMadness on DirectTV.  My concern was that the TV’s only worked about 50% of the time on this route and could they try to take steps to ensure they would be functioning…instead of hearing tweet, tweet, I heard cricket, cricket.  It was cool when companies and even CEO’s could respond real time, and some still do, but as more and more people join on Twitter that one-to-one will become less and less until the companies can ramp up.  And unfortunately instead of getting a witty and salient reply from a CEO or well-informed employee that took Twittering up with consumers because it was cool, you will most likely get a reply from a call center in New Dehli (should we call them Tweet Centers?).

Now, before I get tons of hate mail, there is a need for micro-blogging tools like Twitter, but it’s somewhere in-between poor e-mail (Google’s Eric Schmidt’s words) and the Greatest Thing ever.  I still tweet, because the upside is still greater than the downside, and oh, by the way please follow me @equalman.

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President 2.0

November 26, 2008 · Leave a Comment

John F. Kennedy was helped into the White House by the increasing popularity of a new medium: television. The same can be said about President-Elect Barack Obama, who was greatly helped by a new medium: social media.

Colin Powell’s October 19 endorsement of Obama was posted on the Web within minutes. This election forced traditional broadcasters to quickly adjust how they covered election news; otherwise, people would find and get the content elsewhere (YouTube, Wikipedia, blogs, podcasts, etc.). Hence, after Powell’s endorsement on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” NBC had it ready to go on msnbc.com.

NBC was also wise enough to post the clip before the show aired on the West Coast. Obviously, they learned from their prior mistakes with the summer Olympic coverage. It’s essential that traditional broadcasters embrace social media, otherwise they will be overrun into oblivion.

Users look at several media sources in combination to formulate an opinion. Networks that recognize this and attempt to work effectively with the new forms of social media will survive.

“We should be careful of these zero-sum games where the new media drives out the old,” Andrew Heyward, a former president of CBS News who consults for the Monitor Group, told the New York Times. “I think what we see is growing sophistication about making the channels work together effectively.”

Social Media as a Strategy, Not an Afterthought

Perhaps due to his large appeal to younger audiences, but more likely due to limited funding at the outset of his campaign, Obama embraced social media from the beginning. He knew he had a chance to dominate this medium over his Democratic opponents, whereas dominating traditional media (newspapers, television, radio) would be far more difficult against his well-known opponent, Hillary Clinton. Because of the hard fought primary battle, he was already in a great social media position when he won the nomination and entered the presidential race.

His social media followers and supporters didn’t go away. Rather, they grew substantially and contributed in record sums — with $5 and $10 donations quickly adding up to a multi-million dollar advertising arsenal.

By the time Obama was elected, he had more than 3.1 million fans on his Facebook fan page. This number didn’t include the various other fan pages and groups like “Students for Obama,” “Pride for Obama,” “Michelle Obama,” “Florida for Obama,” “Michigan for Obama,” “Pennsylvania for Obama,” “Women for Obama,” etc.

This is in stark contrast to John McCain, who had 614,000 supporters for his fan page the day of the election and whose next-largest fan page was for his wife Cindy with only 1,700 fans. On MySpace, Obama had 833,161 friends to McCain’s 217,811 and this disparity held true on Twitter where Obama attracted 113,000 followers to McCain’s 4,650.

Looking to YouTube, the disparity was even greater near the election. The barackobamadotcom YouTube channel had more than 20 million views, whereas the johnmccaindotcom channel had just over 2 million views. A year and a half before the election, a very attractive and slightly talented girl released the “I Got A Crush…on Obama” video. Items like this helped fuel “Obamamania.” This video was viewed 11.5 million times by Election Day.

Again, in McCain’s defense, his voting base skewed older and they don’t use these tools as prevalently, if at all, but what a huge advantage for Obama. Obama used social media to his advantage in the Democratic and national races.

Lessen the Violent Swings of Broadcast News

This leveraging of peer-to-peer communication helped mitigate the violent swings that can be caused by traditional media, and is one big reason why he overcame the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy.

“No one knows the impact of quasi-permanency on the Web yet, but it surely has changed the political world,” said Allan Louden, a professor who teaches a course on digital politics at Wake Forest University. “The role of gatekeepers and archivists have been dispersed to everyone with Internet access.”

Obama’s team also creatively provided their own footage of things that the network would die to have, such as behind-the-scenes items showing how the man acts when the lights aren’t on and how he interacts with his family and those closest to him. These had decent production quality, but even if they had the money, you wouldn’t necessarily want top level editing since that somewhat destroys the authenticity of this grassroots piece you’re attempting to create.

“I have been an Obama friend since early on,” said social media user Lance Muller of Decatur, Georgia. “In social media, he actually pokes you and sends memos and stuff. I don’t know if it is really him, but it makes you feel more in touch with the process. The campaign was genius to utilize the social network.”

Country’s First CTO

Knowing that social media users rely on the general freedom afforded the Web, the Obama camp smartly appealed to their base by introducing a chief technology officer position to the president’s cabinet. The main role of the CTO is to “ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century.”

Advertisers need to become more providers of content. Obama’s campaign did just that when they placed ads pushing an early voting message in EA games, most prominently in a racing game called “Burnout Paradise.” These games are socially interactive, and users are able to compete with each other around the globe. Obama’s campaign for this particular campaign targeted them to players in 10 battleground states.

The key to this form of advertising: it provides benefit to the player of the game. It appears more real-time with seamless and wireless updates to the game to allow for such real-time product placement. In this case, the product placement was Obama with the specific message of early voting.

While social media isn’t the entire or even main reason Obama was elected (e.g., economy), it’s probably one of the main reasons why he was even at the “dance” in the first place.

Can your business and marketing efforts learn from how Obama was able to build his “brand” from obscurity to the Oval Office using social media?

Categories: Social Media
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