PlanetRussell.net | Michael J. Russell

Socialnomics: The Future is Now

From Erik Qualman’s Socialnomics blog comes this powerful and persuasive video. If, like me, you’ve ever needed to justify an investment in social media services to an organizational decision maker, I have two words for you:

Watch this.

Data/Stats from the Video (sources are listed below by corresponding #):

Stats:

1. By 2010, Generation Y will outnumber Baby Boomers. 96% of them have joined a social network.
2. Social Media is the #1 activity on the Web.
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
4. Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years). Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
5. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest, between the United States and Indonesia.
6. Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services. (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this.)
7. ComScore indicates that Russia has the most engaged 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.
8. A 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out-performed those receiving face-to-face instruction.
9. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum.
10. The percentage of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees?: 80%
11. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old women.
12. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama.
13. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
14. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé. In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen.
15. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Facebook.
16. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube.
17. Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica. 78% of these articles are non-English.
18. There are over 200,000,000 blogs.
19. 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily.
20. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth.
21. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour.
22. Facebook users (not employees) translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks at a total cost to Facebook of: $0
23. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
24. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands.
25. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them.
26. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations.
27. Only 14% trust advertisements.
28. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.
29. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do.
30. Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009.
31. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone.
32. According to CEO Jeff Bezos, 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle device, when available.
33. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
34. In the near future we will no longer search for  products and services they will find us via social media.
35. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
36. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy; i.e.,  listening first, selling second.
37. Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertisers.

Sources:

1. Source: Grunwald Associates National Study – Info highlighted on Trendspotting Blog
2. Source: Huffington Post
3. Source: McKinsey Study also posted by David Dalka
4. Source: First Stats: United Nations Cyberschoolbus Document
   • Facebook Stat: Mashable
   • iPhone Stat: Apple
5. Source: Facebook
6. Source: TechCrunch
7. Source: comScore
8. Source: U.S. Department of Education Study
9. Source: Attempting to relocate
10. Source: Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey Note: 80% will use social networks in their assessment. 95% will use LinkedIn in their assessment. When we revise the Video needs to be updated changing “their” to “a” primary tool need to see if we bump 80% to 95%
11. Source: Inside Facebook Blog
12. Source: Twitter & World Population Data
13. Source: Attempting to relocate
14. Source: Metro Newspaper
15. Opinion, not a statistic
16. Source: TGDaily
17. Source: www.wikipedia.org – calculated based on # articles per language category
18. Source: China Internet Information Center, Technorati, Wikipedia
19. 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
20. Opinion, not a statistic
21. Calculated based of Wikipedia article data found at www.wikipedia.org
22. 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
23. 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
24. Source: Universal McCann’s Social Media Research Wave 3
25. Opinion, not a statistic
26. Source: July 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey (actually 90% now – updated above but video still shows 78%)
27. Source: “Marketing to the Social Web,” Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing 2007
28. Source: “Marketing to the Social Web,” Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing 2007
29. Source: Starcom USA-TiVo
30. Source: Nielsen
31. Source: Solutions Research Group
32. Source: Henry Blodget Silicon Alley Insider http://www.businessinsider.com/henry-blodget-kindle-sales-now-a-shocking-35-of-book-sales-when-kindle-version-available-2009-5
33. Source: Yahoo Finance
34. Opinion from Socialnomics
35. Source: Facebook
36. Music in video provided by Fatboy Slim “Right Here, Right Now” (1999) – if you like it buy the single

Erik’s new book Socialnomics, is due out August 31st, to be exact.  I’m making it a top priority to add to my reading list.

Creating Talkable Brands: Beyond Social Media 101

What makes a brand truly conversation-worthy? Or, If your organization’s social media initiatives have reached a point of diminishing returns – or never gotten past square one, what’s the secret to success? Your mileage may vary,  but the answer may also be pretty straightforward: video.

Courtesy of my friends at WOMMA, I came across this new video of Jeben Berg, Creative Director at YouTube, discussing how to effectively leverage and promote your organization’s video assets. (Yes, a video about video.)

He clearly “gets” the concept of video as an effective means to initiate and focus discussion on brands. He also understands it’s a potent  force multiplier when used in combination with other forms of text-based social media (discussion forums, blogs, wikis) and static web content.

SEO: It’s Not Just for Text Anymore

I think you’ll particularly appreciate his concise summary of what I’ve advised clients: namely, the importance of going the extra mile to incorporate rich, accurate tagging of video (and even the ALT tags for static images) with descriptive Meta keyword data for Search engine Optimization (SEO) purposes, so that your content actually gets found by people who are searching for what you have to offer.

Remember, YouTube’s a part of Google now. Those lovely little video thumbnails that appear in your Google searches are directly keyed to the Meta data you provide. What’s more, your diligence about proper tagging now will stand you in good stead for the emerging semantic web.

Yes, markets are conversations, and conversations are all about ideas, and the actions that flow directly from them: Purchase. Contribute. Enlist. Enroll. Volunteer. Vote.

So, if a picture’s worth a thousand words, video is worth at least ten thousand. Strategically incorporating relevant, high-quality video content is far more than just a contrivance or “conversation starter,” Rather, it can be one of the most effective  (and, yes, authentic) ways to initiate discussion on your brand’s, product, service or cause in online communities of shared interest or practice.  That’s creating a truly “talkable” organizational or personal brand, whose key concepts can be incorporated directly into social/SEO-optimized PR and strategic communications, as well.

Although he doesn’t address it specifically, the inherent, potential Word-of-Mouth/Word-of-Tweet virality of video content is a critical point, here, as well, especially when combined with a specific call-to-action.

Got Video? Unlocking the Value of Existing Assets

U.S. Marine Corps Combat Videographer

In my experience, many organizations have un/underutilized video content they’ve never considered putting online – either on the public internet, or internally, as appropriate. Conference presentations, training sessions (sales, safety procedures), HR orientation and much more can be leveraged for cost savings, knowledge capture,  and to create consistent training protocols.

For one client, I worked with their internal IT, risk management and marketing teams to create a virtual “academy” or “university” (complete with its own  logo done in collegiate-style lettering) within their existing corporate Intranet.  This resource relied heavily on existing, internally-produced video content that was timely and relevant, but had been relegated to DVDs that stayed at the clients’  headquarters, where they had spent most of their time stuck in their cases.

As this organization had 20+ locations, (each of which were sending their management teams and new recruits/hires to the main offices for training), it made economic and operational sense to rip this video content, consistent with its licensing from DVD (and even a few analog VHS tapes) to digital video files. These were then converted to streaming Flash (.flv) web video. This achieved the following:

• unlocked the value of its existing investments in video content at minimal cost
• enabled video to be integrated with socially-enabled intranet and extranet based training resources
• saved over $75,000 in annual travel costs through remote training, and created consistency of information presented

Want to learn more? Get in touch.

In the interim, I encourage you to check out the Jeben Berg video below. It’s 2:30 well invested.