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Posts Tagged ‘using social networks’

20 Jan 2010

Although you probably guessed as much, people who occasionally update their Facebook status or post something on Twitter represent a significant portion of the online community. And today, Forrester pegged the exact portion at 33 percent.

Forrester’s been classifying online people as inactives, spectators, joiners, collectors, critics, and creators for quite some time, and its statistics regarding these groups have provided valuable about how the online landscape is changing.

The problem, as Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff noted earlier, is that these categories didn’t leave much room for normal Facebook and Twitter users.

So the conversationalists classification was introduced to represent Twitter users and Facebook users who make at least one status update per week. Exactly 33 percent of online folks should fall into this grouping, and Bernoff added, "They’re 56% female, more than any other group in the ladder."

Also, "While they’re among the youngest of the groups, 70% are still 30 and up."

The above diagram pretty well shows the breakdown of other groups. Now we just get to sit back and see how quickly people travel up the ladder as the social Web gains momentum.

Related Articles:

> Twitter Earns Itself A Candy Heart Phrase

> Employers Using Social Networks To Screen Employees

> Content Can Now Go Viral More Easily With Facebook

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Tags: A Candy Heart, candy heart, exact portion, facebook, Forrester, Josh Bernoff, nbsp, online, quot, social web, twitter, using social networks

Businesses Need to Formalize Their Social Media Policies

In: web resources

14 Jan 2010

According to a new study, enterprises continue to deploy social networking tools at an increasing pace. At the same time, though, this Cisco-sponsored study also found that a surprisingly small number of businesses have implemented formal processes and policies related to their use of social media. IT departments have also been left out of the loop when it comes to the adoption of social media tools. Only 10% of the respondents currently involve their IT departments as primary decision makers when it comes to choosing technologies for externally facing social networking initiatives.

Sponsor

This study was sponsored by Cisco and carried out by the IESE Business School in Spain, the E. Philip Saunders College of Business at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the U.S. and the Henley Business School in the United Kingdom. The researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 100 companies in Europe, Asia and Africa. These businesses were selected because they were early adopters of social media tools.

Most of the interviewed companies are using social networks (75%) and micro-blogging tools (50%) as their primary tools to reach their audiences. The study found that social networking tools like blogs, Yammer, Facebook and Twitter are now being used by almost every department in these businesses.

The Honeymoon is Over

As Neil Hair, assistant professor of marketing at Rochester Institute of Technology and one of the lead researchers of this study told us yesterday, it is also important to note that “the honeymoon period” for social media in the enterprise is coming to an end. Early projects were often led by one or two early adopters who were enthusiastic about the possibilities of using social media tools in their companies. Now, more and more companies are seeing social media as an integral part in how they communicate with customers and vendors.

Missing Pieces: Governance and IT

Only 1 in 7 companies have formalized a process for adopting and deploying these tools, however. Only 1 in 5 of the interviewed companies have created internal policies that govern the use of these tools by their employees. As the researchers noted, quite a few companies struggle with finding the right balance between “the social and personal nature of these tools while maintaining some amount of corporate oversight.”

Very few companies (1 in 10) report that their IT departments are directly involved in their social networking initiatives. As these tools become more important, however, the the demand on IT to integrate these tools into the existing infrastructure will surely rise as well.

Discuss

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Tags: Africa, Asia, business, business school in spain, E. Philip Saunders, Europe, Neil Hair, networking, networking initiatives, philip saunders, rochester institute of technology, school, Spain, Study, U.S., united kingdom, Use, using social networks

The Marketing Worth Of Twitter and Facebook

In: web resources

12 Jan 2010

As marketing professionals, we usually have to justify ourselves to our bosses, our clients and everyone in between—especially in the less-tested, sometimes-hit-or-miss arena of social media. But now Ad Age wants accountability, too, as they ask “if you’re getting enough out of all the volunteer work you do for Biz & Ev and Mark,” or, more specifically, “Are we all just toiling mightily to make a bunch of rich nerds (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his employees and investors, Twitter’s Biz Stone and Evan Williams and their employees and investors) richer, while we impoverish ourselves?”

That’s both a literal and a figurative question, since using those social networks is exactly what makes their founders and investors money (well, sort of), and, as the argument goes, we’re essentially a volunteer labor force creating content for these sites—an interesting point. Meanwhile, using social networks (at all, as the argument here seems to go) means sacrificing time (true), actual interactions (possibly true but not always)—and our very souls and identities.

They mean this to be a discussion on a personal level, since a central thrust of the argument is that these social networks have sacrificed so much of our privacy that we’re allowing them to steal (don’t we call that “giving” in English?) “the sole ownership of our own thoughts, emotions, personal expressions, etc.” from us (yes, if I post “I’m sad” on a social network, that means that they also own my emotion…. right….).

Of course, if you’re using Twitter and Facebook as a marketer, you’re there looking for business ROI from publicity—being public. Ad Age (you know, “Advertising” Age? About . . . could it be . . . advertising?) does acknowledge that social networks might work for these purposes, if they’re worth the sacrifice:

If you’re a brand marketer, chances are good that you’re extracting real value from investing time and energy in social media (and you’re happy to have consumers volunteering their time to be your “brand ambassadors” or whatever you want to call them); good for you. (And if you’re a consumer who gets off on connecting with big brands — or just wants to interface with customer service in a forum, like Twitter, where certain marketers seem to be hyper-responsive — well, good for you too.) In general, if you’re soft-selling something — like content or an idea — that can benefit from free publicity, Facebook and Twitter are your friends. Even if, well, they’re the two-faced sort who think nothing of riffling through your handbag or backpack when you get up to go the bathroom — you know, glad-handing “friends” (those are air quotes) who are obviously using you for something, only it’s not always entirely clear what.

Um . . . I hate to bring this up, but aren’t we as marketers just using our social networks as those same kind of “friends” (and possibly even the friends and fans we acquire on those social networks)—we’re just using them as the means to an end?

I do agree, of course, that on a personal level, excessive use of social media can rob us of time and valuable interaction with the people we care about most. It’s good to examine our relationship with the Internet and social media on a personal level and decide whether it’s really worth the time and effort we put into it, or if we might put that time to better use. While that’s the brief summary of the argument at the conclusion of the article, the main thrust is that using social networks is such a great sacrifice of ourselves (even without a time investment) that it’s not worth it.

What do you think? Do you demand ROI from personal social network use? Or are you glad that most people don’t ?