Twitter:Wikipedia::Facebook:?

There is an interesting article on Mashable today about a Harvard Business School study (http://bit.ly/1Gs40W) done on Twitter users. (Side note: Is this what they do studies on at B-school?? Um, why do I not go there...)

Key Finding: 90% of tweets are posted by 10% of twitter users. For comparison sake, Based on eyeballing the graph, it looks like Facebook is around 90% of use from 55% of users.

More shockingly - The median number of lifetime tweets per user is 1. Of course, most people's lifetime is only a few months. But the point is a very small number of users are doing all the work.

So what does that mean? Most twitter users are using twitter to listen. Not talk. It is a place to collect information, easily digestible updates on things you are interested in.  This can include friends, industry trends, wine. In some sense an analysis of the people follow could you a pretty good sense of their top interests.

What does this mean for brands? I think it is good news - It means a good place to talk to your consumers. Assuming of course you have something to say. It is also a good medium to easily identify your most engaged (good or bad) consumers. In terms of how to use it - don't expect a lot of collaboration or RT (retweeting for the non-twitters out there) from your audience and take that into account when developing your strategy.

All that aside, if you take nothing away but this I will be happy: Social Networks are different there is likely no such thing as a one size fits all approach to social media. Not every brand has to be on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace & etc. Pick what works for you and develop your strategy appropriately. 

What if no one comes back?

One of the things I find so fascinating about social networks is the fact that they are powered entirely by and valued entirely on their users. I wrote about this last year when I was blogging more and I will write about it in the future I'm sure.

Facebook is theoretically valued at $10 billion. Not because of the services it can provide or the goods it sells but because of the people that hang out there. What happens if another product comes along that better suits their needs? What if no one comes back tomorrow? How much is it worth? This goes for all social networks, not just Facebook.

I've noticed lately that very few of my friends update their profiles anymore. It makes me wonder whether users are starting to use Facebook differently than they have previously. I have no data so I don't know, but anecdotally I think they are using it more & more exclusively for posting photos and keeping in touch (via status updates or wall posts)- not so much for the profile aspect that started it all. With the seemingly recent boom of Twitter, I've been thinking a marriage between Flickr & Twitter could provide a killer platform for that with many more features.

Is the next user revolt just around the corner? And is there a challenger waiting in the wings for any of the top sites? Who knows but in the meantime I'll be waiting in anticipation.

A bit more reading for ya...
http://mashable.com/2009/05/16/why-revolts-occur/

More on listening...

Came across a sweet video with some other people talk about the importance of listening. An interesting point I didn't make in my last post. Listening to how your customers talk about you can help you understand how to talk to your customers.

Enjoy.

Sit back and listen

I've been doing a little thinking on social media as I have been working with many clients over the past few years that don't know how to approach social media and/or are scared silly about letting go control in the social media space.

Here's how I see it.

Traditional advertising - and I'm including standard digital banners/sites in the mix here because at this point, that's traditional- is about brands talking and consumers listening (hopefully).

Social Media Marketing, on the other hand, is about consumers talking and brands listening.

Some people & brands think that stretching your brand tagline on to a social network site counts. I tend not to agree. Simply advertising "relevant" ads on the right side of Facebook - does not count as social media marketing in my eyes.

Its about creating environments & bringing together communities for consumers to discuss or interact with something important to your brand. As the creator of this space you can have an influence - all power is not lost. You can set the mood, select the topic, create the surrounding content. But you have to let your customers talk. Companies invest mucho $$$ in research every year to get to know their consumers yet often balk at creating social media places where their consumers can go - where subsequently they can see what they are doing and hear what they are saying for little to no cost.

There is so much power in social media & networks because brands now have a way to hear what their customers are saying so they can respond appropriately. The example that comes to mind is Dominos. After the recent video of employees doing not so nice things with a customer's pizza circulated around YouTube, the CEO released a statement about what the company was doing to respond to the incident on the very platform that got them in trouble in the first place. Brilliant. What would really be awesome is if his response was the top related video that appeared at the end so all viewers would instantly be able to hear the companies response after watching the debacle.

Only a small % of your audience is going to actively participate in social conversations about you. Most are only going to listen. But the talkers are the ones who will either champion your brand to your networks or trash it. If they especially love something about you or especially hate a feature of your latest product, not only should you want to, but you need to know. Get in the conversation and listen.

5 Reasons to be terrified of Google Wave

http://bit.ly/13IpbE

Is it just me or is the fact that Google Wave lets everyone see what you type character by character, including edits, totally not OK? This is the one that scares me the most.

One of the beauties with online communication is that you don't have to think before you type because you can go back and edit. Does this change the game? Or are they just not explaining it well?

Facebook App Interaction: Omniture + Facebook

Measuring Facebook applications with the data they provide is not all that useful. For a network valued on its customer data, there is not much terms of application data. They will tell you how many people interact with your application or use certain features of it (e.g. become fans), but are unable to (or won't) tell you what people do within, how many news feed stories they post, who these people are, etc.

This is a new space and I think Facebook can be a bit misleading at times about what it can provide. I'm not saying they are lying but because many marketing execs don't fully understand media analytics, when FB says they can provide stats, the execs think they can answer lots of questions. But, when the times comes that they get the business questions, they aren't left with any answers. Or at least any that have real business impact. Face it, Facebook apps have evolved way beyond visitors being an insightful metric.

In order to comprehensively measure FB apps third party vendors need to be involved. There are a few out there right now, one being Kontagent which is also able to provide viral metrics. But today, Omniture announced that they had released code to measure Facebook Applications. The major implication of that being, if you already use Omniture on your companies website, you can seamlessly connect FB app interaction to proceeding site actions and purchases.

This statement comes with about a million caveats, but I'm saying it anyway - it is getting easier to tell your clients how much $$$ social media can generate. Let's hope, at least for Facebook's sake, that dollars are indeed coming in.

Vatican 2.0

For an entity that can seem so out of touch, the Vatican has taken to using social media to reach out to the younger generation through YouTube, Facebook, and the newly created iPhone app Pope2You.

The app lets you view pictures of the Pope, send virtual postcards to your friends and read his speeches. Somehow I think many young people will use the app with a hint (or more) of sarcasm, but it is pretty promising to see that the Church is taking some steps to stay current.

The Catholic Church is about as old school as they come. So, for all brands out there that are hesitant to enter the social media market bc of it's supposed level of risk, I say - if the Pope is already doing it, you're officially behind the times.