Sorting Out Social Media

Marketers are desperately trying to make sense of social media. But social media is still in its infancy; a period of creative and commercial confusion. Do we wait-and-see and jump right in?

We are groping our way forward. Some of us are rushing to be the first on our block to embrace the latest and greatest. Many of us are personally playing around with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others to get the hang of things hoping to be able to offer clients and colleagues context and constructive ideas. And still others are waiting to see; waiting till social media attract enough sustained audience engagement, enough measurable and predictable behavior and enough media dollars to no longer be the just the flavor of the week. 

Meanwhile observers -- traditional consumer, business and trade press plus genuine and self-appointed marketing gurus, bloggers and social media pundits of all stripes -- are weighing in with opinions, observations, blovations and data. With as many as 110 million Americans participating in social networks, roughly 60 percent of the online population have embraced social networking. Each person goes to a social network site 5 days a week and checks in 4 times a day so its fair to conclude this is a mass media phenomenon worth following.

Social networks also mirror the real world. Almost half (45%) say they will only link to family and friends. Another 18% will only link to people they've met in the flesh. The technology that extends existing relationships is the driving force. Making new connections looks like a secondary consideration even though 52% have associated themselves with a brand as either a friend or a fan. 

Consider the massive quick growth of Twitter, expected to reach 25 million users by year's end according to their own purloined internal estimates. And they are projecting growth of 250 percent or more for the next two years. Median use is 1 tweet per day and the Harvard Business School projects most users just send 1 tweet per lifetime. 

This astonishing growth has also brought a bail out rate of 60% per month and a registered base where 75% haven't filled out a profile, 55% aren't following anyone or have never tweeted and 52% have zero followers, according to Hubspot.

From a qualitative standpoint Twitter is easy to use but maddeningly difficult to explain. There are a number of conventions that are tough to find out and understand. Users have difficulty getting into it. Non-users are clueless about what it is and why they should care.

Neicole Crepeau has done of series of UI tests and surveys to discover that the interface itself and the labeling of the site contribute to user attrition and session bailouts. Getting started isn't easy. Nicole concludes " Twitter will probably need to lower the barriers to entry and find ways to make itself less intimidating to people, make it easier to learn the Twitter model and easily enable people to see the benefits that can be gained from returning to Twitter on a regular basis." FYI. She's also done similar nose counting and UI assessments for Facebook and other social media like social bookmarking sites.

Anderson Analytics surveyed 5000 social networkers and discovered that your favorite social network says a lot about you and that birds of a feather flock together. 

Facebook is the digital version of Our Town -- average people interested in average things. Facebookers are loyal, late adapters and the population skews toward married white baby boomers who have embraced Facebook as their favorite network and personal CRM tool to keep in touch with friends and family. 

Twitter attracts the hyper-active, hyper connected information junkies eager to know about news, politics, sports, finance and restaurants. They do more, buy more, connect more and invest more time in Twitter than other social network populations. Forty-three percent say they couldn't live without this network which didn't exist 18 months ago. 

MySpace skews younger attracting 67 million of the young, fun and fleeing. This network has the lowest income, the most racial and cultural diversity and a high proportion of singles and students.

LinkedIn, the only network with a higher percentage of men and the highest income group is focused on getting jobs, making deals and doing business. News and sports as well as individual performance-based sports like golf, tennis, yoga and working out are high on their agenda as are gambling and soap operas; classic forms of Type A stress release.

Anderson teamed up with Greenfield Online to create a social media user profile and taxonomy. Take the 5 question survey and find out which bucket you fall into.

Social networks probably have staying power. There will be a shake out as those easily monetized survive and the others fall away. Prices are low and networks are eager to build case studies -- an environment ripe for testing and learning. There will continue to be enormous amount of hype about the social networking trend, companies will start creating social networking policies for employees and the horse race among the players for user growth and investments. 

My best advice ... do both... Jump right in and wait-and-see. Play around. Test campaign ideas and messages. Watch closely. Start collecting friends and fans. And stay tuned. 

Comments

[James439]

I would say that Facebook isn't simply skewed towards the older "average" population but is in fact a good representation of everyone and not "the average." Everybody uses it, and I've noticed college students really using it disproportionately (it started with them, after all). YouTube probably has an even broader user base, since anybody can just step right in and view a video. On both of these sites, I think it's not too hard to reach any sort of group you're looking for, really. And if you're using online video for marketing, why not put your video on all the sites, like Vimeo, Veoh, AdWido, and DailyMotion? After you've made your video, it only takes some more minutes per site to upload it -- and for free!