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Social strategy by the numbers

April 14th, 2010 Posted in Business Strategy

A few weeks back, Jason Falls posted a great article, “Why Social Media Purists Won’t Last“. Here’s the money quote:

As a result, the social media purists have laid down the law and, so, to participate in social media as a business, you must do things like, “participate in the conversation,” “engage your customers,” and “talk with us not to us.”

I’ve got news for you. In the world of business, all that talk will get you exactly nowhere. Conversations do not ring the cash register. Engagement does not sell more product. Talking with people just means you have to take time to listen which prevents you from spending valuable time selling more product.

My business partner, Sean O’Driscoll likes to tell the story about doing research while he was still at Microsoft about what “Joining the conversation” translated to. He found out that he would have to find a way to staff up. Way, way up. His research told him there were more than two billion conversations a year around Microsoft.

Social tools are, without a doubt, powerful in ways we’ve only began to discover. But we have to start thinking (and acting) differently, more considered. Here’s a few questions for you and your business, and some numbers that you should know as you consider your answers.

Are you paying attention to the right social tools?

4 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (October 2009).

2.5 billion – Photos uploaded each month to Facebook.

Seriously, why aren’t you doing more with Facebook?

350 million – People on Facebook.

50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.

84% – Percent of social network sites with more women than men.

Are you still putting value in your email campaign?

90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.

247 billion – Average number of email messages per day.

27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)

Why are you so scared of open source software?

46.6% – Percentage of Web sites run by Apache (open source)

21.0% – Percentage of Web sites run by Apache’s closest competitor, Microsoft IIS

13.9% – The growth of Apache websites in 2009.

-22.1% – The growth of IIS websites in 2009.

Are you remembering the rest of the globe?

57% – Percentage of Twitter’s user base located in the United States.

Are you considering video, and the places people *actually* watch it?

1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.

182 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).

Are you properly contextualizing your opportunities?

83 million – The number of active monthly users playing Farmviille on Facebook

75 million – The total number of registered Twitter accounts

—

The point here is that there are no easy, obvious answers when engaging in social activity online. We may hear a lot about the latest hot new tool or Web site from the experts, but unless you’re fully researching all of your opportunities (not just the new, cool ones) and unless you’re comparing that activity against your business objectives, it doesn’t matter how cool Plancast or Foursquare or Chatroulette is. While I point out the numbers above about email, check out this chart Morgan Stanley Internet Trends report (via Fred Wilson). We’ve just recently seen social networking activity surpass email.

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That said, the issue today isn’t whether or not to engage, it’s where and how. Keeping abreast of the trends is crucial to both growing your business and beating back competition. I doubt I have to convince any businessperson alive that social tools and activities are a big deal. But it is important to remember that this stuff isn’t easy, no matter what anyone tells you.

For more data on how companies are leveraging social media, check out this great infographic.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 at 11:42 am and is filed under Business Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • jmctigue

    My take from your post is that we can't be everywhere at once, and unless we have unlimited resources, nor should we try. Instead we should find the best channels and use the most effective, depending on our overall marketing strategy. The one I struggle with is e-mail, since it's so pervasive yet seems to be so universally hated as a marketing channel. Perhaps that's just my own bias.

  • http://www.tomnjudy.com/strategist Tom Bennett

    Jake,
    A lot of the 'purist' language you call out at the top of your article serves a useful purpose. What seems to be platitudes to the well trained ear are still news to many who have yet to even consider what Social Media is. We are still ringing the bell for many companies, who are immersed in an old industrialize way of thinking, marketing and creating mindshare for their audiences.
    Yes, to turn any of this into action that makes dollars is a different game entirely. The SoMe leaders are busy moving on and actualizing this point of view, but don't forget that to change many minds, one needs to constantly un-train corporate marketers and accountants who only think in terms of short-term ROI. I firmly believe that to make any of the SoMe values stick, we need to tell this story over and over, and in some cases innovate in a way that helps other people see the value in it.

  • http://www.communityguy.com Jake McKee

    Tom,

    I hear what you're saying, but I think that the platitudes that once served a purpose when this stuff was *entirely* new are just getting well worn and irritating now that most marketers, hell most business people have heard a lot about social. Or have tried a few things in social. Or who are dying to try something out but haven't yet figured out how to convince their boss.

    Sure there are still pockets of people who simply haven't heard anything about social, but those pockets grow smaller by the day.

    The point I was trying to make is that the pace of discussion about real business reality doesn't seem to be keeping pace with the knowledge growth of most marketers.

    Thanks for the thoughts!

  • http://www.3hatscommunications.com davinabrewer

    “It's where and how.” As a solo PR, ITA. It's about strategy, targeting: the right audiences with the right messages using the right tools and channels. If your potential customers are not using SM, yes you still need to listen to the “conversation” but it's not going to win you new business, and a slick SM campaign probably won't help you reach that audience. You need to invest time and resources to marketing where those customers really are. FWIW.

  • ChristineT

    These numbers are stunning, and relevant of course if your clients live in the world of B2C. My current client (B2B space) is lucky to get dozens of mentions in a month. (I see the monitoring reports.) Clearly, this client (still in start-up mode) needs to talk and act in ways that makes his business more “conversation worthy.” They tweet, they've got a Facebook business presence, but their content development and marketing strategy are under-resourced, hence they don't produce much that their customers or partners can discover or want to talk about or respond to.

    So whenever I see numbers like these that are so clearly coming from a consumer world perspective, I remind myself that it's harder, albeit worthwhile, for B2B enterprises to figure out how to operationalize those aspects of social media that are appropriate for their business and marketplace. You certainly don't do it because of the numbers…