I’m a social media addict – get me out of here!!!!), or not…

Posted by Chris in My Blog & Guest Posts,My Views & Thoughts,Social networks,comment,opinion,what's new on September 4, 2009

Here are some statistics (via econsultancy). Now I know they’re just numbers and you can say they don’t actually mean anything, but surely Social Media is having a major impact on millions of lives.

• Social networks and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities online, including beating personal email, 67% of global users visit member communities and 10% of all time spent on the Internet is on social media sites.

• If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.*
• 80% of companies use, (or are planning to use), LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees during the course of this year. The site has just celebrated reaching its 45-millionth membership.
• Around 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week during campaigns, with 39% using it for 10 or more hours per week.
• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The Internet took four years to reach 50 million people… In  less than nine months Facebook added 100 million users.
• Wikipedia currently has more than 13 million articles in more than 260 different languages. The site attracts over 60 million unique users a month and it’s often hotly debated that the information it contains is more reliable than any printed Encyclopaedia.
• The most recent figure of blogs being indexed by Technorati currently stands at 133 million.
• It’s been suggested that YouTube is likely to serve over 75 billion video streams to around 375 million unique visitors during this year.
• The top three people on Twitter (Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears) have more combined followers than the entire population of Austria.*
• Since April this year, Twitter has been receiving around 20 million unique visitors to the site each month, according to some analytical sources.
• Formed in 2004, Flickr now hosts more than 3.6 billion user images.
• Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active Internet users regularly read blogs

All of this points to a what can easily be called a phenomenon.But we need to answer some questions to help us evaluate our participation.

Is it good for us? Do we benefit personally? Is your Business/company benefiting? What are the returns?

The answers to these questions will depend on what you wanted to get out of it in the first place. From the personal angle, then if you want friendship, participation, one-to-one engagement then it’s for you. But what do you ultimately get back? Some would some a sense of community and belonging but the flip side is that many get lost in cyberspace and forget about reality and previously standard forms of communication such as ‘talking’ and ‘socialising’.

Businesses look for different returns, ultimately revenue and brand following. But the first mistake made is that they jump head first; take the ‘SELL, SELL, SELL’ approach and quickly turn consumers, followers and buyers away. The trick is to build a following by providing information, provoking debate, responding to questions and consumer needs.

Social Media will always be an evolving beast. It will become stronger and maybe even move into a downturn, but when you can for the first time since marketing began we can actively engage on an one-to-one basis with your target audience then it’s definitely here to stay!

Tags: getting the most out of the internet, social media, Social networks