Before you start promoting yourself or your company via social media there’s a lot that you really need to know. It’s not as clear cut as some people might lead you to believe; that being said, it’s not rocket surgery (see what I did there?) either.

Without further ado, here are some thing that you need to know about social media before you start promoting yourself using Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.

It’s not as easy as you might think. It requires a lot more effort than just signing up for an account and making the occasional post or Tweet. Social media isn’t like the old standard of creating an ad for television or print and letting the ad do the work. You must constantly be engaging your followers and users and promoting interaction.

That being said, social media isn’t complicated. Yeah, yeah, hold the phone, I just said that it wasn’t easy so why isn’t it complicated? It’s hard work and you need to be on top of things but it’s not overly complicated at all. The underlying principles of social media are pretty simple; sharing, communication, relevance, being helpful, engaging. The major failures out there have come from people’s or company’s inability to share, communicate, be relevant, be helpful and engage their members or followers.

Things can and will go wrong. You can’t forget that things posted on the internet are visible by anyone and everyone. Social media can and will hurt companies. Does everyone remember the infamous Dominos employees in the United States that taped themselves picking their noses and putting it in pizzas? They posted that on YouTube and it immediately hurt Dominos. How about fellow East Coaster Dave Carroll? Dave spent months trying to get United Airlines to fix a guitar that they had broken, when they refused he posted a video on YouTube about the incident (here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo&feature=fvst. Almost immediately United Airlines felt the hit and their stock dropped nearly 20% to the tune of somewhere near $18 million. All that because they didn’t want to replace a $1,500 guitar that they broke. Of course these are all examples of the public using social media to show how the companies had wronged them. Companies should be using social media as a barometer for consumer opinion and acknowledge concerns and try to remedy issues as soon as possible. Use social media as a way to monitor current chatter about yourself or your business. Radian6 a Fredericton based company has made a name for themselves doing just that.

In spite of some of the ads floating around Twitter and Facebook at the moment, social media is not a get rich quick scheme. Doing anything type of marketing via social media requires a lot of time and effort on your part. Personally I’ve been actively networking for about a year now and only now am I starting to really communicate with more people in my field and start to get my name out there – although my name usually incites a “who?” but I digress. Building relationships with others and users takes time and commitment on your end. With millions of people promoting themselves on social media and you need to stand out. It’s all about the quality of your relationships and posts over the quantity of followers and friends. Simply because you have thousands of friends or followers doesn’t mean that you’re doing things correctly. Are they really your target market? Did you start following them or did they start following you? These are all questions that you need to ask yourself.

Can anyone do social media? In short, no. Not everyone is willing to put themselves out there and engage users as much as they should be. Some people just don’t like sharing like others do. Organizations and businesses are often uneasy about the lack of control that social media gives them. The risk of making a very public mistake and having that mistake broadcast world wide in the blink of an eye is something that everyone must be aware of. The other day Scott Stratten from UnMarketing made a great Tweet about posting on Twitter but it applies to all social media. He said “Don’t tweet anything you wouldn’t want to see on a billboard with your name/face/logo/phone # and your mom driving by.” Sure, not everyone can commit to having a presence on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn and others all at once. Try focusing on one or two or if you’re a business, delegate different sites to different people.

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