Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, Youtube, Twitter, Friendfeed, Blogs – State of Social Media

I’ve compared social media to direct mail marketing. Hundreds of social media sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, Youtube, FlickR, Digg, Twitter, Friendfeed, Blogger, and the endless lists – provide means to connect with a community of suspects, prospects, and fans. 

Are these sites all the same?

Each site has it’s own social etiquette, conversation preference, and means to communicate with it’s community. This etiquette changes site-by-site and day-by-day. Let’s examine the current state for a few major sites.

Facebook

Facebook is the largest global social network. Although Facebook started on university campuses as implied by the name, the reach increasingly covers gen-x, boomers, and seniors as the recent graduates have invited the older generation to participate. 

As a boomer, I’ve watched as my connections have grown from a dozen to 350 in eight months. College friends, past employees, lost associates, and current friends have discovered each other via Facebook. In a year, I expect over 2,000 personal connections; and millions indirectly through clients and partners. 

Of course, the latter category is not really a list of friends – more like a direct mail list, as discussed. 

• Facebook imports your email list and connects you with your email contacts.
• Facebook offers networks by school, region, or affiliation; groups by any subject; and fan pages for business entities. Networks are automatic based on your profile. Groups and fan pages can be controlled by Facebook member. 
• Communications occur through Facebook email, discussion boards, wall postings, and shared photos, web page, videos, etc. 
• The mini-feed shares personal interactions on your Facebook profile page. These mini feeds include changes to your profile; postings on discussion boards, walls, photos, videos, games; or personal, minute-by-minute status changes.
• The mini-feed of all your friends is aggregated into a news-feed, personalized for your viewing – as a means to keep up with your friends.
• Recently, Facebook enabled comments on newsfeed items. This becomes a quick way to interact with friends. These comments show on their mini-feed, aggregate into the newsfeed of your friends and the friend’s friends. Thus, they become public conversations shared with friends on both side.
• Most recently, Facebook has released real-time newsfeeds. This means any new information changes the newsfeed without a click. 

After the recent Presidential debate, I logged into Facebook to see the reactions. Quickly, party advocates have already posted articles and feeds on Facebook. Friends comment on the point of view and a lively discussion / argument follows. Some friends participate realtime. Others join days later. 

Facebook enables conversations among friends, friends of friends, and new friends based on shared interests. 

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is also a social network, but more focused on job search and professional connections. Other than a circle of connected friends, LinkedIn has different social etiquettes for reaching out to make friends.

• LinkedIn imports your email list and connects you.
• Traditionally, the LinkedIn profile looks like a full resume – enabling employers and employees to find each other. 
• The Question/Answer board is essentially a forum that allows members to ask questions and receive answers from any other member. 
• More recently, LinkedIn has re-energized their dormant groups, opened group participation to all members, and added discussion forums and shared news. 
• LinkedIn has a newsfeed that is your home page. It shares profile and friend changes, group discussions and comments, and shared news. It does not allow direct comments as an easy step to join a conversation or discussion. 
• LinkedIn content is available to the robotic web, an important distinction for SEM experts.

Both the QA and group forums have been effective means to reach members with similar interests. Unlike Facebook groups where conversations break down into spam and meaningless chit-chat, the exchange is more relevant. Like comments on Facebook newsfeeds, the conversations do become useful.

My personal list started with a couple of dozen one year ago, and has grown to 350. Unlike Facebook with connections to boomer friends, most of the LinkedIn contacts have been new professional affiliations. I expect this list to also grow into the thousands.

FriendFeed

This is a small, but emerging social network. It started as an infrastructure service to aggregate RSS feeds. Like all social networks, the core piece is a circle of friends or fans.

• FriendFeed aggregates all your feeds from blogs, photo share, video share, review share – any site that feeds your participation via RSS. This becomes an RSS feed.
• FriendFeed aggregates all you friends feeds into an RSS feed.
• Your feed or your friends’ feed can be installed as a panel on Facebook.
• Recently, FriendFeed added commenting on incoming articles. Further, their is a beta real time feed.

Essentially, FriendFeed has morphed into a real time, multi-subject chat room. Unlike traditional chat where conversations become meaningless and off-topic, the subject is triggered by the postings from a friend. Comments show reactions and amendments to the posted matter. Thus, comments stay on-topic.

It’s too early to forecast the future of FriendFeed. A-listers, i.e. top bloggers, love their service. The danger is that larger networks could deploy similar features to eliminate the need. Friendfeed’s challenge is to build loyalty and keep the fans at Friendfeed, rather than just a pipe for distribution of information.

Twitter, Myspace, Instant Messaging, Hola-Hoop

Many web features have become hola-hoops like chat rooms, instant messaging, forums, or email groups. Where the conversations could not stay on topic or change with conversation changes, these rooms, groups, and forums have grown and died. 

Today, IM is used by high schoolers to talk about homework. Forums and email groups with niche topics that are still relevant have survived. This includes coding forums. Others that could not sustain the conversation have disappeared.

Twitter extends conversations with SMS postings and reports. They report huge flows that have frequently broken their servers. More challenging than server reliability, Twitter needs to convert idle chatter into relevant conversations. If not, Twitter becomes the next hola-hoop.

Myspace is the largest social network in the US. Much of their traffic is based on social chit-chat, spam, and sex solicitation. Their recent growth is essentially flat. Myspace needs to convert their social network into targeted conversations.

Social network, itself, is not a hola-hoop since it displaces the pain to track email addresses. In a social network, each member updates their own. Connections automatically have updated addresses and phone numbers. This decentralized approach is more efficient than contact lists maintained by each owner.

Conclusion

These are a few of the social media sites on the Internet. Hundreds more have interesting communities and conversations. 

Websites are not the same. Social media marketers need to learn each site’s etiquette and methods. Effective operators know what works with each social network. It’s a dynamic task that changes day-by-day.

Share your knowledge of a community and its etiquette in the comments.

B2B Marketing and Social Media Use

Significant New-Media Platform Use by B2B Marketers

“New” media platforms have become a critical and sizeable component of the marketing mix for B2B marketers, according to a new survey conducted by the ANA (Association of National Advertisers) and BtoB Magazine in partnership with Guideline Inc.

One-third of B2B firms surveyed reported spending more than 20% of their total media budget in new media, whereas only 5% of B2C firms surveyed did the same.

The bulk of new media spending for B2B marketers are for more established platforms, including the company’s own website and email marketing.

The survey, “Harnessing the Power of New Media Platforms,” explores the 15 new media platforms in the B2B market, including social networks, user-generated content, podcasts, and blogging, as well as the seminal platforms such as proprietary websites and email marketing.

Addressing issues relating to B2B marketing, the study also found that based on current usage rates, new media platform categories fall into three distinct tiers:

• Top Tier: Proprietary websites, email marketing, Online Ads, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Webinars
• Middle Tier: Blogs, RSS Feeds, Podcasts, Video On Demand
• Bottom Tier: Wikis, Mobile, Viral Video, Social Networks, Second Life

About 50% of B2B marketers report that the two established channels – their own website and email marketing – will be where most new media dollars are allocated. Given their levels of penetration, top tier platforms will continue to garner the lion’s share of spending on new media.

For B2B marketers, the primary objective for the use of top tier platforms is for “demand generation,” reserving the use of middle and bottom tier channels for “brand building.”

Although penetration levels vary widely across the specific platforms, the survey found that B2B marketers are increasing their use of middle tier media, which should attain at least 50% penetration in the B2B market.

The bottom tier platforms will show strong rates of growth this year, but will not reach a 50% penetration level, according to the study.

The average planned increase for new-media platform spending by B2B companies for 2007 is 11.5%, and only 3% of B2B respondents said they would spend less on new media this year, writes BtoB Online.

About the survey: More than 145 B2B marketers participated in this survey, comprising the ANA’s Brand Leadership Community panel member and BtoB Magazine subscribers. With the objective to explore the dynamics of 15 new media platforms in the B2B market, the research addressed marketers’ current and intended usage of new media platforms, spending, measurement/ROI, resource allocation, and integration with other elements of the communications mix.

B2B Marketers Prefer Blogs, RSS, Podcasts among Web 2.0 Tools

Web 2.0 is transforming B2B marketing with blogs, podcasts, wikis and social networks, which are serving as new way of communicating with customers, prospects and partners, according to “The B2B Web 2.0 Tools Report” issued by Direct Impact Marketing and Buzz Marketing for Technology blog.

B2B marketers have adopted blogs and RSS more than other Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, according to the report; moreover, smaller marketers – the Davids among the Goliaths – are at the forefront: Some three-quarters of surveyed marketers that have deployed Web 2.0 tools are in companies of 10,000 or fewer people.

Some other findings from “The B2B Web 2.0 Tools Report”:

• Nearly two-thirds (64%) of respondents use blogs, 58% use RSS feeds, followed by podcasts (54%), videocasts (43%), social networks and communities (42%) and wikis (19%).

• The most frequently noted blogging services were WordPress (35%) and Blogger (30%), followed by TypePad (19%).
• Users’ favorite RSS readers are those offered by Mozilla Firefox (23%), MyYahoo (20%) and Bloglines (17%).

Lead Generation, Direct Mail, eMail, Word-of-Mouth, Buzz Marketing, Social Media Compared

Much has been written about social media, conversational marketing, buzz marketing, and shared networks. Let’s compare social media to direct mail, email marketing, word-of-mouth, referral marketing, lead generation, coupons, and other traditional marketing.

Let’s simplify.

What is Social Media?

Wikipedia defines social media as:

Social media are primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

Huh!

Let’s try English.

Social media websites enable sharing – Youtube for video; FlickR for photos; Blogger for blogs; Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace for friends; Digg, Stumbleupon for recommendations; Yelp for reviews; … the list goes on with hundreds of sites.

Many support fan-bases, friend circles, or other viral marketing tools that become distribution channels for your marketing messages.

Over one billion people access the Internet daily. More time is spent on social media websites than email, search, and other Internet uses combined.

It’s hot!

What Businesses Want

What’s the relevancy of social media? How do we integrate social media with business?

Any business wants reach, brand recognition, and mindshare that generates more orders. If you can reach 100,000 customers, and have a recognized product or service – then, each time you reach the customer with a message, they are more likely to respond. These orders can be online or offline through retail.

Reach, recognition, and mindshare lead to results. It’s simple.

Traditional Marketing

Traditionally, businesses gather addresses or email addresses and send ; or pay for flyers, coupons, or ads through publishers who have the mailing addresses. These have been high cost, high friction activities.

• A stamp costs $0.39 and is rising. Total mailing budgets cost $2.00 plus and rising.
• Effectiveness of direct mail is declining. Few open unsolicited mail.

eMail collection and management is high friction, high decay, and dropping in effectiveness.

• Users are reluctant to register and give you an email address. Registration is high friction.
• eMail addresses decay 20% per year. An unmanaged list decays to uselessness in two years.
• Spam blockers prevent bulk mailings – most bulk email don’t arrive.
• eMail formatting is limited and complex. No flash, video, or interactive component.
• Few people read the email – deleting without reading.

Not surprisingly, return on investment (ROI) on a direct mail campaign has dropped to insignificance.

Social Media – the Low Friction Approach

Effective use of social media replaces the list building, message sending, and mindshare maintenance functions. A blog is your media archive – with multi-media postings and an RSS subscription mechanism. Your presence at social networks like Youtube, Facebook, or LinkedIn are like magazine racks at popular cafes to reach fans, friends, and interested parties.

• Readers discover you or your products by friending or subscribing. Compared to registration or supplying an email address – these actions reduce the friction to join to clicks – no typing, easy decisions, less commitment.
• Lists are decentralized. Each member maintains their own current address. The connections – whether a friend or a subscription – are maintained automatically. The list stays fresh.
• The lists scale – to millions. With addresses, the cost to mail a million is prohibitive – not scalable. With emails, blocking of bulk mail stops scalability. (ed: Obama leveraged his ad budget with social media to impact 4 million voters per month.)

Like traditional media, the likelihood that a member would see/read a social message is low. However, social media compensates with:

• Scale. Your lists sum to millions of connections.
• Frequency. You can publish 1, 2, … 10 messages a day – thus increasing the chance that a fan would see your message.
• Format. The message can be video, interactive, musical, or otherwise capture the attention of a fan.

Social Media’s Impact on the ROI

The bottomline measures results relative to costs.

Although the creative costs can be the same as traditional marketing, the distribution costs is zero dollars. This means you can send more messages, test messages, and actively manage the message flow with very small investments.

Returns are measurable at each step in the sales funnel.

• Cost per action advertising, such as Google CPC or tEarn CPV, reduces the cost to bring a suspect to your website or blog.
• Low friction capture of prospects increase the likelihood for first stage engagement.
• Frequency of contact builds recognition and mindshare.
• Social referrals from existing customers among your social networks accelerate decisions by prospects to buy.
• Online convenience leads to quicker purchases.

With lower investment and higher returns, social media improves ROI. Most importantly, the solution scales from a few customers to millions.

Conclusion

What is social media? It’s an efficient replacement for direct mail marketing.

Every business needs to learn. What do you need?

Pasta Hut vs. Pizza Hut

Ed: Advertising impact without social media leverage. Imagine the results with planned social leverage.

Pizza Hut made the headlines earlier in the week after rebranding itself as Pasta Hut in the UK. If the move really is just a clever bit of PR, as some people suspect, then it seems to have worked. In addition to significant media coverage, the company has also benefitted online: as the chart below illustrates, yesterday the Pasta Hut website received twice as many UK Internet visits as the Pizza Hut UK homepage. In fact, yesterday was a record day for the restaurant chain online.

Of the people who did visit the Pizza Hut site yesterday, 37.4% went to Pasta Hut afterwards. Overall 6.7% of Pasta Hut’s traffic came from the Pizza Hut homepage. The site’s clickstream also reveals a surprise: as the table below illustrates, 43.9% of traffic to pastahut.co.uk came fromMSN UK, more than 3 times the amount that it received from Google UK. Presumably the company either ran advertising or a paid search campaign on the Microsoft portal / search engine.

IBM Puts Social Media to Work

IBM’s Innovation Jam 2008 shows how far crowdsourcing has come

from VentureBeat by Dean Takahashi

IBM may be throwing a life raft to the stock market today, reporting unexpectedly high quarterly earnings. Still, startups and venture capitalists may care more about the ideas floating at Big Blue’s annual researchcrowdsourcing event, dubbed IBM Innovation Jam 2008.

IBM has been sponsoring the Innovation Jam for a few years now. The company’s researchers, employees and outside experts are invited to join in a virtual brainstorm session. They post their ideas for innovations and then others join in, commenting on the posts and voting for their favorites.

The event taps into the idea behind James Surowiecki’s 2004 bestselling book, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” and the more recent “Crowdsourcing” book by Wired contritubing writer Jeff Howe. Both discuss how the collective instincts of crowds often turn out to be right and encourage companies to harness the power of mass collaboration systems like the Internet to solve difficult problems.

IBM started the Innovation Jam in 2001, subscribing to the belief that public discussion of research ideas could solve problems faster than IBM’s own researchers tackling them secretly. In 2006, the company invested more than $100 million in ideas, and created 10 new divisions spawned during the proceedings.

This week’s event had nearly 55,000 participants from IBM registered and another 5,200 outsiders. Participants sign a waiver that turns all ideas expressed into public intellectual property. The winning ideas can get funding, but, in contrast to InnoCentive started (and now spun off) by Eli Lilly, the contributors of the ideas are not rewarded directly. “Web 2.0 comes to the enterprise” solutions, like Innovation Jam are now increasingly common at places such as Hewlett-Packard and other companies.

Ed Bevan, an IBM manager of innovation and market insight, said that this year’s jam was smaller in sheer numbers compared to the 150,000 participants in 2006 because it was more focused on the enterprise.

I logged into the jam session, which took place over 72 hours this week, and was floored by the sheer bulk of information. There were 29,499 posts from more than 84,000 login sessions divided into 2,750 themes and 2,310 threads. That doesn’t include chat sessions, a new feature this year, Bevan said…