Is Social Media a Fad?
Or is it the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?

A lot of people are hesitant to make the leap into Social Media because they just don’t see the benefits. People also said that Television was a fad… the same went for the Internet, iPods and even Blu-Ray. Yup, those were fads alright </sarcasm>.

Some fun facts for you about Social Media:

• By 2010 GenY will outnumber Baby Boomers
• 96% of them have joined a social network
• Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year met via Social Media

Years to reach 50 million users:

• Radio: 38 years
• TV: 13 years
• Internet: 4 years
• iPod: 3 years
• Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months
• iPod Application downloads hit 1 billion in 9 months

Other Information:

• If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest
• Chin’a QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services
• 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
• 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online cirriculum
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
• Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway and Panama
• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices; people update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences…
• Generation Y and Z consider email passe
• In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing email addresses to incoming freshmen
• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world
• YouTube has more than 100,000,000 videos
• Wikipedia has over 13 million articles
• Studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica
• 78% of these articles are non-English
• If you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 a per hour
• There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
• 54% of bloggers post content or Tweet daily
• 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
• 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
• People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
• Only 14% trust advertisements
• Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
• 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
• Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
• 70% of 18 to 34 year-olds have watched TV on the Web
• Only 33% have ever viewed a show on DVR/TiVo
• 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video on their phones
• 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
• We no longer search for news… the news finds us
• In the near future we will no longer search for products and services… they will find us via Social Media
• Social Media isn’t a fad. It’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos etc) are shared on Facebook… daily
• Successful companies in Social Media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy… listening first, selling second
• Successful companies in Social Media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertisers

Still think Social Media is a fad?

What did we learn today? Companies that aren’t utilizing Social Media are going to quickly fall to the wayside when it comes to Customer Service. A large number of companies use Social Media as alerts for poor customer satisfaction and even have response teams to address issues as they arise.

Large numbers of people turn to Social Media, especially Twitter’s “Trending Topics” and Facebook “Statuses” as a source for breaking news. Large news providers like CNN, CBC and BBC are turning to Twitter as a way to keep people informed.

Did you know that many of the largest newspapers in the world are preparing to be paperless within the next 10 years?

So who can benefit from Social Media? Absolutely anyone! Small companies can keep clientele informed of specials, Realtors can post new listings, big corporations can monitor customer satisfaction, restaurants can monitor reviews… the list goes on and on.

Still on the fence? That’s your loss.

Wanna chat about Social Media? Want some advice on the subject? Feel free to drop me a line or comment below… whatever floats your boat.

Source: http://www.socialnomics.com

On Tuesday of this past week I got a phone call at the office from a reporter from the local Fredericton newspaper, The Daily Gleaner. He was looking to speak to a graphic designer about what they do and to comment on the industry. I just so happened to answer the phone at the time and was more than happy to help him out.

On Wednesday, reporter Chris Fox came into the office and interviewed me and was followed a short time later by a photographer who took some pictures.

The end result was this article that ran on Saturday, August 22, 2009. For the most part everything was great in the article except for two minor things. The first being that I don’t “handle all the programming and coding for the entire operation.” He got that part mixed up with freelance (for friends and family). I worked with a great team of programmers at Red Cow, Oliver Dueck and Sean Dunphy who have the hardest jobs of them all, they have to make my coded sites actually work. Without them, Red Cow wouldn’t work nearly as well.

The second issue was a mix up of timelines. The article states that I work at Red Cow and teach in the evenings, which is true, but the next paragraph jumps back in time 4 years to when I was doing my Bachelor’s degree and decided that I didn’t want to get into teaching, which is about all you can do with a History Major. It’s a little awkwardly worded but past that, it was good.

I first read the article online when I woke up that morning because, of course, I was incredibly exicted. It wasn’t until later in the day when I grabbed an actual paper copy that I noticed I WAS THE WHOLE FRONT PAGE OF THE BUSINESS SECTION! It was pretty frickin’ cool.

Wait… why are you still reading this? Go read the article!

Back in June, good friend Jason Wilson approached me about the creation of a website that would be a showcase “for the creatively gifted.” The website just officially launched this past Friday, August 14th and has already received some press.

The Bugle Observer in Woodstock, NB ran an article on Jason and Unfiltered Smoke on July 28th in which I get a mention.

He’s been meeting with Robb Clarke, a friend and webdesigner, concerning the look of the website.

You can read the full article here:
http://bugleobserver.canadaeast.com/rss/article/742262

If you want to check out Unfiltered Smoke you can do so by clicking here.