Social Media

Basic mechanics that fundamentally influence your marketing communication

http://www.personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-count/

Social media evolves at light speed

If Facebook were a country

Facebook-Blog, 2008 World Population Data Sheet

CHINA,1.300 Mn

INDIA,1.150 Mn

USA,305 Mn

INDONESIA,240 Mn

FACEBOOK,350 Mn

BRASIL,195 Mn

PAKISTAN,173 Mn

NIGERIA,148 Mn

The periods in which 50 mn new active users join Facebook shrink significantly over time. By mid-2009, Facebook has 70% of its population outside the U.S.

Global traffic heavyweights have changed significantly within 3 years

Morgan Stanley, Economy & Internet Trends, Dec 2008

Do not produce or buycontent to distribute

Facebook blog/stats

Facebook stats (2009)

2.5 billion photos uploaded monthlyDelivering 600,000 photos per secondOver 170 mn unique logins daily8 billion minutes spent on FB dailyGenerating 25 TB of logfiles daily

55 mn status updates daily14 billion pieces of content (photos,links, notes etc.) shared per month1.6mn active fanpages500.000 active applications

Social networks serve as aggregators of long tail content, private and professional

Long tailShort tail

How would you try and find relevant content among a few billion choices?

Of course: Ask someone who knows. But who knows better?

This guy?

happens to be Andrew Rosenthal, chiefeditor of the New York Times

Or other readers?

New York Times bestseller list

What if you could have the bestseller list of your friends only?

That’s what social media does. With anything, not only books.

Traffic from Facebook – sorry: from friends – is more valuable

What happened? The old scheme

Content producers Distribution Technologies Audiences

Privileged groupdue to financial barriers(technology to produce TV or radio content) ordue to bottleneck oflimited available contentdistribution capabilities

Bottleneck of limited available content distribution capabilities: TV or radio could air “only” 24h of content a day; a newspaper could only distribute x amount of pages a day.

One way, one to all distribution technology

Big, passive group of audiences that serve as recipients only

What happened? Content, Technology and Audiences merged

Content producers Distribution Technologies Audiences

Anyone can produce content with widespread technologies like home computers, mobile phones, digital cameras.

There is no distribution bottleneck. Via Facebook alone (embedded player), Youtube airs 46.2 years of content a day.

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/

Anyone can passively consume content or actively review, promote, judge and comment on content as well as produce own pieces.

Effects on business communication

1: You cannot tell anything to your audiences anymore

Transparent markets where everyone can communicate experiences and opinions do not allow to cover up or hide anything from consumers. Best solution: Sell great products that people really appreciate.

Effects on business communication

2: You do not necessarily need ‘media’ or ‘mediators’ to connect with target groups

Many businesses considered the ones who paid them as their clients – dealers, supermarkets, “key accounts”. But of course, the money comes from us – the “end consumers”. Time to connect with them.

“We’re not in the business of keepingthe media companies alive. We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”

Trevor EdwardsVP, NikeOctober 2007

Effects on business communication

3: Nothing in life is free: You will have to listen to consumers.

A large amount of media budget saved by communicating directly with consumers is best invested in making this communication valuable to consumers.

Effects on business communication

4: There’s no exceptional position for your content anymore.

Your messages need to be at least as relevant as someone’s status updates. And sometimes they better be more relevant than someone’s new baby photos, because this is your competition for attention nowadays.

Someone read a book.

Someone’s on vacation.

Some otherbrand’s message.

Someone joinedsome group.

Someone playsFarmville.

Your message.

Effects on business communication

5: Embrace change. Launch and learn. Make the best of it. Also inside your company.

The effects on business communication go way deeper than just adding a new channel. Organizational structures, processes, operations need to be different from running TV or newspaper ads. Educate your staff to embrace change.

There’s more where that came from.

Credits: personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-countFacebook-Blog, 2008 World Population Data SheetMorgan Stanley, Economy & Internet Trends, Dec 2008New York Times, Living Social, Chitika NewtworkCamel, Coca-Cola, Global Web Indes, E-MarketerFarmville

Other images fromistockphoto.comdreamstime.com