Well it’s this really…

As social media grows at a rate unseen even in ‘online’ terms many are asking the question what is the value of social media and is it all worth it?

Well I could ramble on for hundreds of words (never recommended) or you could just spend four minutes watching the following video and then probably come to the same conclusion that most do.

Points the video shows include

1. social media has overtaken pron as the #1 activity online
2. radio took 50 years to reach an audience of 50 million. Facebook too 9 months to have 100 million subscribers
3. If Facebook were a country then it would be the fourth largest nation in the world
4. 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a source of employment
5. & 80% of Twitter uses access the service through their mobiles

That Social Media is

• new
• exciting
• relevant
• interesting
• creates engagement
• builds communities
• and gives the user exactly what they want.

…Now if anyone was to tell you that online would help you do that 5 years ago, then you’d have jumped straight in. Welcome to the future. Viva la revolution…

You know how it goes, you spend a lot of time on the web, keeping up with news/views and comment. This always leads you to blogs. media sites et all…but why oh why do so many on line journalists (that’s all of us my friends – this is 2010, we ALL publish now) have to write a million words per article.

blog support please

A million words may well be an exaggeration, but based on some of my experiences this week I’m not that far away. I kid you not that some word counts have broken the back (and my spirit) of over 4000 words. Does anyone really think that visitors to that page, a page that had done the hard work by drawing them in and getting them there, want to read WAR & PEACE before moving on to their next scheduled task; hopefully not planned until next summer.

And tell me where i go wrong, but isn’t one of the biggest USPS of the Internet is that we can get our information quickly.

Once we get to that information 9 times out of 10 we want to read and digest that information quickly. So come on bloggers and professional journalists, we’ve all heard the old adage but …less really is more

Are you trawling the internet for anything, just anything that’ll help you swerve through the mindfield jargon and rubbish.

Fear not here are some links to answers to some of those questions you’re all asking:

Question: search engine opitmisation – what’s right and what’s wrong?

go to: http://tinyurl.com/6ahfgy

Twitter: What’s it all about?

go to: http://news.cnet.com/newbies-guide-to-twitter/

What’s the best browser, and why?

http://hubpages.com/hub/What-is-the-best-browser

A new user guide to Facebook required?

http://news.cnet.com/newbies-guide-to-facebook/

Youtube….I’ve heard about it but what exactly is it and what will I get from it?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

NOTE: wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is great for almost anything you need help with. Simply type in the word/description and a detailed result will appear.

What is wikipedia?

Wikipedia (pronounced /ˌwiːkiˈpiːdiə/ or /ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdiə/) is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project. The name “Wikipedia” is a portmanteau (a combination of portions of two words and their meanings) of the words wiki (a type of collaborative Web site) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.

Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world; anyone can edit it. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference Web sites, attracting at least 684 million visitors yearly by 2008. There are more than 75,000 active contributors working on more than 10,000,000 articles in more than 260 languages. As of today, there are 2,820,243 articles in English. Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world collectively make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to augment the knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia…

As an on line marketeer Twitter has been on my digital radar for some time. But as the saying goes ‘ a funny thing happened a few weeks ago’.

Here in the UK it all of a sudden became the buzz word. This wasn’t across a few months or weeks though. It literally seemed to be what everyone was talking about. My recollection of those events (sounds like I’m about to recall the announcement of a war or royal wedding…worry not!) are

that traditional media started to tweet.

Radio DJ’s …

Talk show hosts …

TV presenters….

newspaper columnists…

…They were all at it!

twitter

Now I’m not sure if an email went round (how very antiquated!) suggesting that it was time to get ‘down with the kids’ and get on the trendy bandwagon but something definitely happened. Now instead of hearing who’s on a talk show from a trail I find out direct from the host via a tweet; actors tell me their next play and where i can get tickets from and even anti virus software vendors tell me of latest patches and updates all from twitter.

How did I live without it? Already within 3 weeks the first thing i do when i wake up is check on Tweetie (http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/ – my iphone app that gets me into my tweet community within seconds) and i now just check it at the end of the night…just in case i miss the post (tweet) of the day.

I’ve even signed up to a Tweet support course, which by the way is fabulous, that takes me through and guides me day-by-day for 100 days on best practice. http://www.nikkipilkington.com/social-media-marketing/tweetmentor-a-business-on-twitter-aid-and-help-twitter-for-business-help for more details.

But is it all worth it?

Well time will tell and your feedback is welcome. within three weeks I have 443 people who read what i say and I read from over 580 other people. Not all are listening and i don’t pay attention to everything i see, but so far there is a network or intelligent, interesting and fun people who i would never have known.

gamble?

Say what you like about it…it’s a geek thing! and just pick up the phone and talk!  etc…. but right now I like it, and much more important than that is that I think it’s here to stay and as my dad would say > if you don’t buy a ticket you’re not going to win the lottery.