The United States of Facebook

Interesting statistics of Facebook users versus the United States population.

By the Numbers: Facebook vs The United States [INFOGRAPHIC]

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Are You Treating All Your Social Media Channels The Same?

Social media marketing is getting easier every day, especially with great tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck that simultaneously spread your message across all your social channels.

A recent study by ad network Chitika suggests that broadcasting the same message across the various social networks may not be the most effective way to engage your customers.

The study noted that the type of information consumed on four popular social networks – MySpace, Digg, Facebook and Twitter – varied by network.

Twitter users were significantly more interested in news, while MySpace users had a penchant for gaming and entertainment.  Digg users had the greatest interest in news, celebrity & entertainment, and gaming, while Facebook users were interested in news and community.

Just like your audience varies on different social channels, the information they desire is different as well.  So if you are treating all the channels the same way, you may be missing the opportunity to truly connect.

Social media is about creating a forum to communicate with your audience, listening to them, and providing them with information they want to receive. Doing so creates interest, trust and ultimately evangelists.

By engaging your audience with relevant messaging, you can learn what they what they want from your company, what you are doing well and where you can make improvements.

Passive social media gives you the ability to listen to your audience and understand their wants and needs.  Listening can help your company become more efficient, more innovative and more customer-focused.  And when that happens, both your company and your customers win.

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Let’s Make Sure This Goes Viral

Have you ever uttered the words “this is going to go viral” or know someone who has? Are you amazed at how a video of a kitten playing the piano can reach 3 million people, but only 15 people view the corporate video you posted on YouTube – and 12 of those people are employees or relatives?

Why some things go viral can’t always be explained; however, in the book “The Viral Loop“, Adam Penenberg does a nice job discussing how businesses can create success by knowing what a customer wants and creating an environment that encourages people to share.

Penenberg gives real world examples like Twitter, Facebook and Ning as well as Tupperware – one of the earliest examples of viral marketing.

“The trick is they created something people really want, so much so that their customers happily spread their product for them through their own social network of friends, family, colleagues, and peers.”

The key to success is designing your product or service the right way.

As you start looking towards 2010, take a look at this book to see how you can apply some of its principles to your business.

The Power Of Being Passive In Social Media

To me, marketing through social media falls into two camps: Active and Passive.

Active is when a company disseminates information through channels like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs.

Passive is about spending time listening to what consumers are saying about your company, your products, your competitors and your industry via social media.

In their efforts toward active social media marketing, companies post press releases on Facebook, put commercials on YouTube and talk about how great their service is on their company blog.

The greatest challenge, however, is making sure you have a large enough audience to warrant implementing a social media marketing plan. Spending hours on your company’s Facebook page to market to 75 “fans” is not a good use of your time.

Creating a strong passive social media strategy, on the other hand, can provide you endless insight into your audience and help you develop a more strategic active strategy.

Tools like Tweefind, Technorati, BlogSearch, plus searching YouTube and Facebook, can help you find out what is being said about your company in social media.

Passive strategy is also monitoring your competition. Techrigy and Vitrue can provide you a picture of what your competition is doing in social media.

This type of social media monitoring will bring you closer to the consumer.  You see trends being created, identify problem areas and monitor consumer reaction to product changes.

This information allows you to improve your products and will drive your active strategy when, for example, you respond to consumers to help educate them on why you may do certain things.

Passive social media marketing in action:

A client of mine manufactured clay poker chips, so we monitored blogs, forums, etc. and found out people liked the chips, but didn’t like the powdery residue on the chips.  The powder was there to protect the chips during shipping and went away after playing with the chips a few times.  Upon our recommendation, they began including a note in the poker chip case explaining the residue and those comments went away.

If your company wants to develop a social media strategy, start with a passive strategy first.  Figure out what is being said and who’s saying it.  Once you have that knowledge your active strategy will be more compelling and successful.

The next hot thing in marketing

In the latest issue of Fortune magazine, prominent people talked about the best advice they ever received. Lauren Zalaznick, President, Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, NBC Universal, stated the best advice she ever received was to listen.

Great advice – probably the best for anyone in marketing. And with today’s social media tools, it is now easier than ever.

Twitter:  Peter Shankman (twitter.com/skydiver) tweeted about the great service, but poor wi-fi, at a hotel he was staying at.  Someone at that hotel was monitoring Twitter and immediately had the problem resolved.

Facebook: Totino’s Pizza has 47 fan groups on Facebook where people talk about their favorite pizza, best toppings to add to a pizza and products they don’t like.  Think about how much the Totino’s product team could learn about their evangelists without paying a dime for formal research.

Rating Sites like Yelp, Kudzu, City Search: Ratings sites allow people to post what they like and don’t like about your company.  If you aren’t getting five-star ratings, do you know why?  Looking at your customer reviews will let you know what you are doing well and where you need improvement.

Blogs & YouTube: People are passionate.  And now they have the tools to express their passion through words and video.  What are bloggers writing about your company?  Have people posted videos about your service?  Remember the YouTube video where a Comcast service tech fell asleep on the couch while waiting on the phone for Comcast technical support?

Every day I am asked how to use social media for marketing.  My response? Listen to your audience.

Marketing Checklist

We get so caught up in the day-to-day crises of our jobs we often forget the communications basics.

Use this checklist at the beginning of each week to keep tabs on your company and your competition.

Your Company

• Check all the links on your website to make sure they are still live
• Search your company on Google, Yahoo, etc
• Search your company on blogs through technorati or blogsearch
• Update Google Alerts
• If you are using paid search like AdWords, test different terms. Test ad content.
• Monitor web traffic
• Update your blog
• Determine what to post to Twitter this week
• Update your Facebook page

Your Competitors

• Check your competitor’s websites
• Check your competitor’s web traffic on Compete.com.
• Search your competitor’s on Google, Yahoo, etc
• Search your competitor’s on blogs through technorati or blogsearch

Starting the week off following this checklist gets this out of your way and, more important, gives you time to work on anything you might discover.