Two new studies of social behavior over everyone’s favorite social networking site were released this week, detailing the nature and extent of sharing links and information on the network.  The network, which grew from 250 million users to 400 million in only the last six months, was the subject of criticism once again this week as users debated the merits of the facelift the site received.

Sharing is caring on the social network

One study, an update on Facebook’s statistics page, indicates that users are moving away from using their statuses to really tell friends “what’s on their minds.”  Instead, people are using Facebook more often to share links, news articles, songs, YouTube videos, and the like.  And they’re doing it a lot.  Five billions links shared a week in the whole of the Facebook network – a staggering figure – averages to 12 shared pieces a week per user.  Facebook also revealed that 175 million people log in to the network each day, meaning just shy of half of all Facebook account holders are checking their friends’s links daily.  This trend points to a great importance on the part of fan pages of businesses to take an active role in the conversation by sharing as frequently as possible.  Sharing content other than promotional status updates has amazing potential to be commented on or liked by other users, thus reposting the article in their news feeds and keeping the fan page in the public eye.  Fandom increased dramatically as well as the number of fan pages doubled in the same time, fuel largely by new pages

for local, small- and mid-sized businesses.

The Facebook Gazette

Facebook called on its users at the end of January to share more news links with friends through their account, a move aimed at undermining the attraction of Twitter and RSS feeds to web surfers looking for quick itemized news updates.  As a result, Facebook has surpassed Google News as the dominant driver of traffic to news sites, currently beating it handedly by sending a 350 people to every news article Google News sends 1 to.

What do these numbers boil down to?

Ultimately these numbers indicate a growing legitimacy of Facebook.  This is not something that happened over night, nor has Facebook replaced the newspaper, but Facebook is nonetheless consistently adapting and evolving and incorporating new features that the community ends up adopting and utilizing with great frequency.  So maybe we shouldn’t complain about the new face of the social network just yet…it appears they know what they’re doing.

In case you didn’t know, we’re in tough economic times.  These economic conditions have drastically cut budgets across the nation and world, leaving meager allowances for marketing and advertising in its wake.

Nonetheless, expectations for 2010 remain optimistic.  In a new study released yesterday, StrongMail reveals nine out of ten business executives plan to maintain or increase their marketing budgets.  Execs aren’t thinking conventionally for the new decade either, instead the survey’s respondents indicated they were open to marketing strategies that utilize the Internet and maximize their dollar.  Next year, 69 and 59 percent of business executives anticipate increasing their email and social media marketing, respectively. Another 42 percent claimed they expect to spend more on search engine initiatives, such as SEO and PPC.  The survey’s results indicate a migration to internet marketing tactics, as advertising and direct mailing initiatives are expected by less than 30 percent of execs.

Furthermore, the study showed a desire among business executives to combine the tested and proven tactics of emailing potential customers with social media.  Execs did not, however, demonstrate uniform confidence about how they would go about implementing such strategies in the upcoming year.  Instead, one out of five executives claimed they had no idea where to begin.  With more businesses seeking to establish an online presence in hopes of finding cheaper alternatives to conventional advertising, it is certain that social media marketing and search engine initiatives will play integral roles in the year 2010.

Not just for elementary school playgrounds anymore, Foursquare, a new online social network/gaming platform, is catching on like the common cold in a fifth grade classroom.  And this isn’t their first venture: just a few years ago, this same crew gave us the mobile social network Dodgeball, which was acquired by Google in 2005, and then later canned.  But unlike Dodgeball, FourSquare presents an expansion to the simple notion of broadcasting your location to your friends.  Foursquare tracks your “check-ins” at various locations like bars, restaurants, museums, retail outlets, and even street vendors, and awards you for such notable achievements as “Gym Rat” (for frequent visits to the gym), “Mayor of ___” (for frequent visits to a certain location), and “School Night” (for checking in late on a weeknight).  These achievements are then published on your personal profile and available for viewing for the whole Foursquare community.

Friends can use Foursquare as a means of finding each other when they’re out as well as compete with each other to get the most badges or Mayor statuses.  One can see how addictive the game could get; similar to Facebook, Twitter, and the likes, users can easily become preoccupied with the number of “check-ins” and forget the real reason they even go out.

The team has also partnered with Twitter as another broadcasting channel for their check-ins, a partnership which spurred some chatter about the similarities between the two social networks.  Mashable blogger Pete Cashmore commented on Robert Scoble’s observation: “Go back three years ago. Twitter was being used by the same crowd that is playing with Foursquare today.”

The application also allows for highly targeted marketing initiatives for participating locations, such as drink specials for the “Mayor” of a bar or reduced ticket prices for those who frequent a specific art gallery.  The novelty in this could quickly wear out, though, as many perceive to be the fate of Twitter’s marketing abilities.

With key competitors including Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite and Google’s Latitude, Foursquare’s path to success won’t be smooth sailing.  But their unique offerings will surely give them a head start against the rest of the pack, and I’m sure we can expect many more great things added to the Foursquare platform in the near future.

With 1.9 million unique visitors per month, you can bet that celebrities all over are jumping on the Twitter trail too.  On an average day, users can expect to find tweets from Britney Spears, Lance Armstrong, Barack Obama, Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Colbert, Shaquille O’Neal and even, MC Hammer.  But the wide array of celebrities on Twitter really extends beyond this.  Some celebs ahead of the curve have already logged on to Twitter, managed their accounts for a while and subsequently deactivated.

So what would drive a celebrity to run away from the free publicity and fame?  Isn’t there always more time to be in the spotlight?  Well, not according to famous teen star, Miley Cyrus.  She claimed that her Twitter account began invading her privacy and putting her personal affairs in public view too frequently—probably right around the time she boasted a following of 2 million.  So she decided to conclude her Twitter affair and kissed it goodbye with a YouTube rap video about how she “stopped livin’ for moments and started livin’ for people.”  You should really check it out if you haven’t seen it— it’s highly entertaining, not to mention perplexing as she is trying to run from the public eye by creating a new viral video.  How ironic.  She should probably stick to acting, but that’s beside the point…

Regardless of Miley, many other celebrities have managed to run successful campaigns on Twitter.  They’ve used them to promote themselves, their songs and shows, grow a fan base, relate to their audience and humanize themselves.  Twitter can actually be a really successful tool for celebrities in increasing their personal brand awareness, just like how companies and businesses use the microblog for viral marketing.

Ashton Kutcher is a great example of this phenomenon.  I’m sure everyone remembers his victory over CNN?  Earlier this year, they we racing to see who could reach 1 million followers first.  He tweeted incessantly and offered a free Guitar Hero to his millionth follower.  Somehow he single-handedly conquered the news super station.  He currently claims the most followers out of any other celebrity on Twitter with 3.9 million fans reading his microblog on a regular basis.  He tweets about 10 times a day and usually adds in a link, either to a website or other profile.  He often interacts with his followers—recently, he replied to a fan’s tweet about his last chemo session with “live strong, Drew.”  Must be why he has so many followers!

However, Ashton Kutcher is not the only celeb using Twitter to show his sensitive side—Tila Tequila has been consistently blasting out posts on her profile page to aid her favorite charity, The Keep a Breast Foundation.  She recently collaborated with artist Randy Janson to create a shiny, red, sculpted version of her breasts to be auctioned off on Ebay.  Tila is a heavy Tweeter, with an average of 143 posts per day.  She’s been publicizing and promotion the auction from her Twitter account, which has apparently created a lot of hype.  There’s only 8 days and 10 hours left and the bidding has already hit $45,000, so if you’re interested, I’d bid now!

So as you can see, celebrities are not shy when it comes to Twitter.  The most successful celebs are the ones with the highest tweet frequency and most user engagement.  But, keep in mind, just because we’re talking about celebrities here doesn’t mean they are all tweeting with the same intentions.  Several news sources in 2009 have conjectured that many stars employ their Twitter profiles as a way of disseminating personal information before the paparazzi can expose it.  Some people may see this as lessening their personal privacy but celebs like Britney Spears, Lance Armstrong and Shaquille O’Neal believe that this is actually a form of privacy control because they can control the accuracy of the information they release.  Although it may deplete the dollar signs of the paparazzi machine, it seems like a pretty good plan to me.

For more information on celebrity profiles, check out Celebrity Tweet.

Last week, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) announced a new set of rules to govern bloggers with a connection to any company selling a product they are writing about. So, how far will the government go?  Right now, it’s unclear, but the guidelines could extend to regulate posts people make on Facebook and other social networking sites.

So what does this mean for our 1st amendment rights?
•    The government will have the ability to further dictate the parameters of individual communication via the Internet.
•    Several new questions arise about what exactly constitutes blogola and disclosure. (For those unblog-savvy types, “blogola” refers to posts made by bloggers who have been given some sort of incentive to post about a product.)  Should the disclosure be written in the post or can it be in the bloggers “about me” page? Is blogola really that different than traditional forms of advertisement and promotion?

However, here at IMI, we do believe that there are two sides to every story:

•    Libel is illegal. Defamation is illegal. Do they still happen frequently?  Yes.  Do they happen on the Web?  Way too often, but it’s not rigorously regulated online at the moment.  These new regulations will hold people responsible for their blog posts, which is a logical extension of current laws surrounding these concepts.
•    Has anyone ever posted anything nasty about you or someone you know on ripoffreport.com, juicycampus.com, etc.?  These sites continue to pop up every day, constantly grow in usage and exposure, and have significantly injured the reputations and careers of many.

So, what’s fair?  What do YOU think?  We’re interested, let us know…

Interested in taking your social media marketing capaign to the next level?  You can gain a vast amount of momentum through traditional social media marketing methods and frankly it is best to start with the basics anyway.  However, once you have an engaged audience, what is the next step?  With a great foundation set and a loyal and engaged audience behind you, you can execute a wide variety of marketing, promotional, and brand building strategies.   So how do you do this?

There are a wide variety of open source applications for promotions, events, fundraising, non-profit causes, etc.  But if you really want to personalize your brand’s social engagement, it should be done using customized social media technology such as Facebook applications and widgets for mobile devices.

Promotional FaceBook applications are designed to engage users, create a fun and “viral” tool that can be shared, and increase the fan base (i.e. you must become a fan to enter the “Video Contest”.  Here is an example of a FaceBook application we built for Hilton Hotels’ Video Vacation Contest where contestants must become a fan and then may upload videos nominating themsleves or friends/family to win a Mexico vacation.  It creats a fun way to involve the fan base and encourage them to “share” the contest opportunity with others.

And then there is mobile marketing and widgets for mobile devices.  Providing your audience with apps and widgets to download is a great added value to any social media campaign.  The audience that accesses their social networks via their mobile device is growing exponentially.  eMarketer projects that mobile social network users worldwide will climb from 243 million in 2009 to 803 million in 2012!  Internet marketing takes on many different forms but unless your brand is at least aware of the opportunities for social and mobile engagement, you are leaving money on the table!

Why Use Social Media?

There are a lot of self proclaimed “social media experts” out there.  I do not claim to be one of them nor do I think most people should ever claim to be an expert at anything.  The term “expert” is used far too frequently in the online marketing world and should be taken with a grain of salt.  The bottom line is that Internet marketing strategies like social media are not complicated when you understand best practices and have a detailed plan.

Social media is one of the fastest growing online marketing initiatives.  The goal of a social media campaign is to create a fusion between PR, networking, advertising, and customer interaction.  A properly managed social media effort will also substantially improve SEO and online reputation management. 

When promoting specific products and services it is important to educate the consumer and build trust.  Social media provides that opportunity to create a conversation and engage the customer in valuable knowledge transfer.  It is important to create a strategy that informs the consumer about the product and provides a plan for responding to any potential negative feedback. 

When engaging in social media you must have a plan.  To execute social media properly, you need a detailed project plan just like you would have for any major Internet marketing initiative.  The following information provides some guidelines for marketers or companies to lay the initial framework for such a plan. 

Social Media Statistics

Social Media Audience
• Today, the social media audience totals 122 million. That is 64% of the total Internet audience!
• Time spent on social networking and blogging sites is growing at over 3x overall Internet growth.

Facebook
• Average user time spent on Facebook grew 566%  (2008)
• Fastest growing social media demographic is ages 35 to 54. Rapidly growing sub groups include women over 55 and young stay at home Moms
• Over 1/3 of all content sharing on the web is done through Facebook and Twitter

 Twitter
• 62% of Twitter users are ages 25 to 54
• 90% are moderate to heavy Internet users

Blogs
• In 2009, an estimated 96.6 million users will read a blog at least once per month. 
• By 2013, that number is expected to reach 128.2 million – which accounts for 58 percent of all U.S. Internet users.

YouTube
• 89.7 unique visitors in April 2009
• 16.6 average daily visitors
• 6 billion videos viewed each month
Mobile Access to Social Media
• eMarketer projects that mobile social network users worldwide will climb from 243 million in 2009 to 803 million in 2012.

Statistics provide by Nielsen Online and eMarketer

The Objectives

The key objectives will be defined by the final strategy.  The recommendations should include components designed to meet the following objectives:
• Provide great depth and breadth of information about the brand’s products and services
• To engage advocates for the product or service who will help create a positive buzz based on verifiable information
• To generate a “conversation” with current and potential customers
• To build on the positive and have a planned response for the negative including immediate feedback and communication of a plan to answer any concerns

The Platforms

The platforms used will be different for every strategy depending on the brand and defined goals.  Some initial platforms widely used include:
• Corporate Blog -  For communicating valuable industry information, answering frequently asked questions, and providing educational content about the brand’s products and services
• Facebook -  For providing an additional platform for communicating the brand message and educating consumers
• Twitter -  For providing an additional platform for communicating the brand message and educating consumers
• YouTube Channel -  To host additional videos about the product, testimonials, and interviews with advocates
• Review & Rating Sites -  To provide a planned strategic response to negative feedback and become involved in the online conversation. 
• Company website and all offline media components -  All social media platforms should be joined together with a centric message and combined with offline media placements

Social Media Archtiecture

NOTE:  New Assets and Existing Assets include any valuable content, articles, reports, videos, or educational pieces that will add value for the consumer base. Global Marketing is representing the incorporation of all offline marketing components.

Social Media Timeline and Editorial Calendar

Social media should not be a “fly by the seat of your pants” effort.  A define plan will ensure a more organized approach.  I recommend having a 12 month plan divided by quarter.  Again, every brand will have a different strategy.  You need to assign the key players that will be involved and make sure everyone is committed to the process.  Once you start communicating with your custoimers effectively through social media, you won’t want to stop anyway!

According to AddToAny over a third of content on the web is shared by using Facebook or Twitter.

Email surprisingly fell to third behind both the social networks individually as a means to share content.

Silicon Alley Insider provided a great pie chart below showing the share of sharing on the web.

We have said it before but its worth discussing again. Online consumer behavior has dramtically changed over the past 12 months. Advancements in technology and various economic shifts have fosted change in behavior and a shift in the demographics. From a marketing perspective, this is important to note because the old view that the Baby Boomer generation isn’t online reading blogs and involved in social media is simply not true any more.

The Baby Boomer generation is the fastest growing demographic on social networks and reading blogs. They are dramatically outpacing Generation Y’s interest in these areas. This is good news for companies seeking new Internet marketing strategies. Companies that target this demographic did not used to have as much opportunity with online marketing, but now the opportunity is there.

Below, we have included a graph from a report by Accenture that shows year over year growth comparing Generation Y and Baby Boomers. The areas include blog reading, social networks, and watching or posting videos online. This opens up a whole new option for brands to engage in social media and online marketing.

Currently, as search engines such as Bing .com (Microsofts new and improved Search Engine) begin modifying their search engine results to include relevant Twitter pages in the results, social media presence becomes that much more important.

According to a recent research survey from eMarketer,  in July 2010 social media spending by businesses will increase 13% from its currents mark in 2009. Statistics listed below.

As we begin to see more businesses enter the social community landscapes  the keys to success will be critical. Keys to success for effective online social campaigns will include constant communication with your consumer, offering relevant and interesting content to fans (Facebook), followers (Twitter), and listening/responding to what your users are saying about your posts and brand.  With the above said, the most important thing to consider is can your business support and maintain a social media campaign.  If so, now is great time to build your presence. If not, now is a good time to look at options of how another resource can help you get there.