Monthly Archives: February 2011

Applications, Digital Marketing, Social Media

Why should you use social media

This is a simple question. I am shocked when I hear business units tell me they do not need to use social media in order to help out their campaigns. It is really quite frustrating. Part of the reason to have a campaign is to get the word out on a product or service, to increase business, brand and market share. Right now, there is a great medium for that, and it is social media.

Mashable posted a great article titled 10 Fascinating YouTube Facts That May Surprise You. On number seven, the article give a very eye opening stat on YouTube:

As of February 2011, YouTube has 490 million unique users worldwide per month, who rack up an estimated 92 billion page views each month. We spend around 2.9 billion hours on YouTube in a month — over 325,000 years. And those stats are just for the main YouTube website — they don’t incorporate embedded videos or video watched on mobile devices.

490M unique users per month?! And that is going to the YouTube site alone, this does not count any type of embedded videos on other sites, or mobile! How could you not take advantage of a medium like YouTube? However, that is not all. Look at a couple other social media avenues, Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook boasts over 500 million users. Facebook Statistics gives us some good insights:

  • More than 500 million active users
  • 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
  • Average user has 130 friends
  • People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
  • Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events
  • Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month
  • Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites
  • There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
  • People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

TechCrunch’s article on Facebook stats states that “149 million Americans now actively use the social network (as of 2009, the network had 100 million active users in the U.S.). And 70 percent of these active users in the U.S. log on to the social network daily”. According to the numbers for just the US, 149M * .70 = 104M active daily users.

Compare that to the recent Super Bowl in the United States. The last Super Bowl drew a viewership average of 111M viewers. The average cost for a 30 second ad during the Super Bowl is $3M, to reach 111M viewers for 30 seconds one time a year. CNN-Money did an article explaining how the ads are worth the money, and they are, as people do watch for the ads, and then talk about them. Now where do they go to talk about these ads? They are not picking up the phone and just random dialing the phone book. They are going to Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter is no slouch on the social media front. As mentioned above, it helps to perpetuate the talk. The Next Web posted an article on the stats. Some of the highlights:

How many people visited Twitter.com in January worldwide? According to comScore it was nearly 75,000,000 . . . According to Compete Twitter.com received some 23,500,000 visitors. This puts the US market at around one-third of the Twitter user base . . . According to Twitter today some 50 million tweets are sent a day

I took a quick look around two Twitter accounts for stores (the Gap and Old Navy). They use the Twitter account for announcing discounts, new products, new designs, new blogs, mags, etc. That is going to 56k people for the Gap and 33k people for Old Navy to the people who directly follow the accounts. This does not include the millions who watch the public timeline. Just for a few words to type, that may take 30 seconds. A lot cheaper than a Super Bowl ad.

While these are good, I am not advocating abandoning the other avenues, like TV spots, newspapers/magazines ads, billboards, etc. They all have their role as well. But to ignore social media because you may not understand it, or it is not the traditional marketing methods, can really stifle the growth, and could even leave you way behind. The Super Bowl reaches 111 million people one day a year. The ads cost $3M per 30 seconds. It is a great avenue if you can afford it. Twitter reaches 75 million visitors a month. Facebook has an average of 104 million active users per day. It costs less to use the social media avenues, it reaches more people per day. Why should you use social media? Because that is where your customers are.

Applications, Ideas and Sorts

Focus on the result

I have been taking the last week to review my posts and see what I have written. And I must say I am really long winded at times. So in an effort to make more posts, and to keep them more targeted, I am going to do my posts with a clear focus on what I want to convey. No more side trips. I will explain things, but keep it a little simple as well. I am also going to focus on a few new topics. I have mainly focused on PHP items, and will still do that. I am also going to branch more into the social and digital marketing areas. In my current occupation, and career path, I am still doing code, but I am seeing the code I am writing with a little more focus. What I am writing goes directly to some kind of marketing, whether it be subliminal marketing, or superliminal marketing, the applications I am writing all go into that. So I have been exploring the different areas more and more.

One area is the social aspect that can be built in to the applications. Do these even work, or is it worth it. This focus will be mainly on the applications like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. At times I will also examine other areas, but those will be the main focus. Some will be about code and integrating the Graph API into sites. This is ongoing right now with my name site (www.stephenhird.com). In this application, I am building a basic online resume that can be updated via an admin inteface, and then connect the jobs, interests, and schools with the Facebook API. This is an example site, and the actual real world application of this theory is highly unlikely. When I was thinking of this, I really thought of how many people are on Facebook. If I were to link my previous employers, schools, interests it may help. It will only allow those who link to my application to connect, but it can show prospective employers, headhunters, etc a list of their network that may have worked with me, gone to the same school, etc. Yes this is a double edged sword, as some connections of this person viewing my resume may not be a good reflection. But, if you have nothing to hide from your previous work or school history, it should be fine. And as this is just an example exercise that I am posting about, it will give ideas and different methods to help integrate the Graph API with a code base.

So with this in mind, I have linked my Hirdweb application on the menu. But please also check out the Hirdweb Page on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Hirdweb/140356864345

Please visit this and interact, I am always looking for some good ideas, and feedback. I will never claim to be an expert in anything. I will only give you what I know, and sometimes I may be wrong (just ask my wife). But I will always be honest and if I am wrong I will say I am wrong. And now, I will also start focusing on the result of the post, the message of the post and the idea being conveyed.