Thoughts on Facebook’s 5th Birthday

On Wednesday, February 4, 2009, Facebook (FB) celebrated its 5th birthday.  Who could have guessed that this company, founded in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a then 20-year old undergrad, would grow so fast to become the social networking and Internet phenomena that it is today?  Although not the first social media networking site of the twenty first century, FB is indeed changing the way marketing and advertising is strategized, just like social networking is revolutionizing the printed news media (See http://tinyurl.com/cvovvj).
 
Just after lunchtime on January 8th, CEO Zuckerberg announced on the company’s blog the near unthinkable – the website had just added its 150 millionth member.  “If FB were a country, it would be the eight most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia, and Nigeria.” he wrote.  Incredible.  In August 2008 the site’s 100 millionth user signed up (Facebook blog).  This means that since then approximately 374, 000 people have signed up… every day!  According to ReadWriteWeb.com Myspace took 3 years to reach it’s 100 million members, while it took FB 4yrs and 6 months to accomplish the same milestone.  However, where MySpace’s numbers are declining (Mashable), FB is fast gaining ground.
 
This exponential growth shows that social utility sites such as FB works better as more people become members.  The more members, the more value added.  This is the classic Network Effect.  Some sources estimate that more than half of all FB users sign in every day.  According to FB more than 3 billion minutes are spent on the site each day!  A statistic to make your manager cringe!  (The Network Effect again – you go there ’cause all your friends and family are there already.)

It’s a marketer and advertiser’s dream – a captive, easily reachable audience meeting in a central location.  Not only that, but FB’s search options enable you to zoom in on extremely specific target audiences, or FB groups.  In addition, what makes social media – and FB in particular – so unique, is the “place” - or psychological mindset of your audience – where you meet them at.  “FB is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family, and coworkers…”, states the official FB Company Factsheet.  Visiting FB is like relaxing on the couch and watching a TV sitcom after a day of grind at the office.  Your mindset is different.  You are ready to meet people.  You’re relaxed and more accepting of outside influences and suggestions.
 
From a business perspective FB presents a definite paradigm shift with regards to marketing and brand management.  FB is a platform that facilitates the sharing of information through social interaction, in a trusted environment.  It is certainly not an advertising and marketing platform.  It is also not a tool for listening to and tracking consumers of your brand.  It goes beyond that, it is about engaging your audience and becoming one voice in a thousand.  It’s about putting the “social” in front of “marketing”.
Apart from some remarkable responsive corporations like Coca-Cola and BMW, the corporate world is too slowly waking up to FB’s possibilities.  Everyone wants a part of it, and no-one wants the competition to have the first say in the global discussion forum that is FB.
 
But fools are rushing in.  Many companies, large and small, are setting up their business presence on FB, instead of tasking expert communicators with the job.  The wrong message could cost you, and public opinion (read FB-opinion) is a fickle thing.  Let the experts take care of your online corporate socializing.  You’ll thank them.
 
Contact SCC for a free consultation.

By Marco Bouwer

Building Your Twitter Following: It’s All About Planning

Getting followers on Twitter is relatively easy, but what is really important in making Twitter a worthwhile experience is the type of followers you get – and the type of “Twitterers” you yourself follow. In the 3rd quarter of 2008, I was resting solidly at 70 followers, and had grown to that level after several months (I joined in January 08). I decided then that Twitter could really be a good tool for me, but I did realize that in order to beef up my presence, I would need to increase the number of people I was following, rather than keep my up-until-then more “passive” approach to attracting followers – listing my Twitter account link in my email signature. I had watched other users randomly follow, follow, follow, getting quickly to one of the Twitter follow limits of 2000. Sure, they did get some follow-backs, and had hundreds more followers than my 70, but to me, it seemed like a “quantity over quality” sort of following that would not add value in either direction.

So I set out to follow people in areas specifically of interest to me, so that when I read their Tweets in my friends’ timeline, I would get information relevant to me, both professionally and personally. First, I made a list of keywords. Here are a few of the ones I listed for my professional interests: Creative, Web, Design, Entrepreneur, Social Media, Online, Blog, Blogging, PR, journalism…all in all, I listed about 25 or so. Personally, I am interested in progressive politics, wine, dogs, animal rights, and restaurants, so I made a list of words in those areas. Finally, I was interested to connect with “Tweeple” in certain geographic areas: New York City, San Francisco, South Florida (Miami, Miami Beach, Ft. Lauderdale), Toronto, Vancouver, Washington DC, etc. Onto the list they went. When my list was complete, I utilized two tools to connect with these types of folk: The Twitter Search feature and Twitter Grader. The Twitter Search tool is amazing; you can search by a single keyword, but what is really helpful is the Advanced Search option. I highly recommend it. I found the Twitter Grader helpful to keep an eye on my ranking compared to other users, but what was very helpful to me was the recommendations of people to follow at the bottom of my “stats.” Some were not relevant, or didn’t have a high enough ranking themselves, but with each “refresh” I found at the very least one person that would be a good “follow fit” for me.

In a few short months, I not only went from a solid plateau of 70 to almost 1000 followers (maybe it will hit the big milestone by the time this goes online!), but – even more important – the tweets in my friend feed are completely customized to my personal and professional interests. To me, that is the biggest part of what makes Twitter such an incredible tool.

Looking forward to connecting on Twitter!

(ps – leave your Twitter address in the comments if you’d like a follow!)

Guest Post: 20 Things You Can Do to Make Your Website Google Friendly

I consider myself to be a very active participant of the new “social media revolution,” and agree that social media has the ability to attract and engage internet users in a way that SERPs (search engine results pages) or paid search results cannot. However, I think it’s important for us to avoid getting so caught up in the social media whirlwind that we forget about good old fashioned SEO (search engine optimization). Think about it this way: When you go to your financial advisor, he would never recommend that you put your entire net worth into a single stock. Well, any good internet marketing consultant will tell you the same thing about your online marketing strategy. The most effective strategies are those which are well diversified between social media, natural search and paid search.

In today’s post, we are going to focus exclusively on the natural search piece of the puzzle. (Since paid search would require its own post, hopefully Stylo Creative will invite me back in the future for a post that focuses exclusively on paid search. )

Having spent the past nine years as a search marketing professional, I can tell you with absolute authority and conviction that a well targeted SEO campaign will result in highly targeted traffic and conversion (which in turn will add to the bottom line of your business).

To get you started in the right direction, I have assembled a list of twenty ways you can make your website more Google friendly (which will also help benefit it’s rankings in Yahoo and MSN). Before we dive in, I want to point out that this list assumes you have done keyword research to identify your target keywords. If you haven’t taken the time to do that, bookmark this page, research what keywords you should optimize your website for, and then come back to this list and dive right in:

New Research: With Economy Rattled, Marketers Spending on Content/Social Media

Junta42 blog: New Research: With Economy Rattled, Marketers Spending on Content/Social Media.

And this is why we do what we do. We specialize in providing the written content that gets results – and that’s good for your bottom line!

juliensharp | Twitter Grader 97/100

juliensharp | Twitter Grader

Posted using ShareThis

The above links (the announcement that I have hit a 97 out of 100 Twittergrade*) is an example of a complete integration of several social media tools: Twitter, TwitterGrader, ShareThis, WordPress…all working seamlessly together to help me build my social profile across several platforms, not to mention in front of many potential new clients!

This is also the way everyone will be communicating sooner than you may think! At Stylo Creative Communications, we can help you build your social footprint!

* Yes, I am a Twitter Geek, and you should be too. More on that in a later post but, for now at the very least, visit Twitter and secure your name – or your business’s name – it’s free! And if you follow me, I’ll follow you right back! Don’t worry, it will make sense after you use it a bit…)

Build Your Social Capital Ahead of the Masses (and They’re Coming!)

I remember taking a job as an HR Manager for a medical billing company in 1993. The company had grown suddenly and they needed someone to manage the new hiring that was taking place and to set up some HR systems, handbook, training, etc. All the employees had computers, but they were dummy terminals that worked on the billing software running from a mainframe. No one had a personal computer. I was shocked. It took me some bit of time to explain to the 59-year-old president why at the very least I needed a PC, and actually why he needed one as well. Good times. I finally got one, and so did he. I set us up on email – on Prodigy!  I taught him how to use the PC and, though he probably used it more for practicing on beating his score on solitaire more than doing serious business on the non-billing computer, he was soon emailing away and keeping in touch with his clients regularly that way.

This was my first experience dealing with the great Generational Technology Divide.  Realize, I was not a techie, and I certainly didn’t do anything technology groundbreaking. And certainly I was not one of the first people to have/use email. In fact, I was very happy to admit that I was in the “second wave” of adopters, a bit behind the true “technorati.” But…I learned from this experience that while there were a lot of people who were using it as a very helpful business tool, there were hundreds of thousands who were still completely in the dark about what an impact email would have on every aspect of our professional and personal lives…the “third wave.” With that in mind, I helped quite a few clients in the early 90s learn to embrace email.

And that is how I feel today, with the gaining popularity of social media. Sure, there are a lot of social media “superstars” and I learn from them every day. But – also every day – I realize how many people out there are not even sure what social media is, exactly, much less how to use it to their business advantage.

When they ask why they should bother with all of this “stuff” and worry that it is is just time-consuming chatting, etc, I simply ask them to take a look at the numbers; an excellent example of these lies in these stats:

LinkedIn

Nearly 60% of LinkedIn users have high personal incomes and hold executive-level or consultant positions, Nov 10th, 2008, LinkedIn, Anderson Analytics.

Stats from CEO: 8 million to more than 30 million, while the staff has expanded from 60 to 370 employees, CEO alludes (but doesnt confirm nor deny) that revenues are $75 (million) to $100 million, The average age is 41 years old. The average household income is $109,000; 76 percent of them have a college degree or a graduate degree. It’s pretty evenly split between men and women, slightly more men. Forty-eight percent are outside the United States, from 07 to 2008. Nov, SFGate.

Facebook

Facebook usage skyrockets from election activity: Includes specific usage numbers, fans and supporters, Nov 5th, Source: Zdnet

Facebook 18 Million Unique Visitors in UK, top 5th overall web property, Sep-Aug 08, Source: Comscore

More than 120 million active users (does not indicate measure of active), Facebook is the 4th most-trafficked website in the world, More than 400,000 developers and entrepreneurs from over 160 countries, Over 52,000 applications are currently available on Facebook Platform, Nov 2008, from Facebook Stats Page

If the numbers are right, Facebook’s online users have grown by 30 million in the last four months, up from 90 million users in early July 2008. That means that Facebook is growing much faster than the 250,000 new users per day that the company had previously estimated, Nov 3, 2008, Epoch Times

Twitter

Global visitors to Twitter rose almost fivefold to 5.57 million in September from a year earlier. Nov 12, 2008, Comscore via BBC.

The numbers speak for themselves.  People are online…and they are going to stay online. The time is definitely now to begin to establish your social media presence. Whether you are working in one of the world’s largest companies or a solo entrepreneur, everything is equalized in the social media space.

My tip to you today is this: The second wave of adopters is moving full force. You really don’t want to wait to be in the yet-to-come MASSIVE third wave. You’ll be missing on the earlier opportunity to build your social presence online ahead of them all.  

Please fee free to forward this tip to your colleagues, clients, and others in your network. Stylo Creative Communications is happy to help by providing written content for blogs, profiles, and other social media outlets, and by growing our clients’ online social media capital through relationship building and reputation/community management.

We’ll see you out in the social network sphere!

(Start by following us on Twitter – we’ll happily follow back!)

This article will also appear on the blog of SEM-Group, and will be featured in the online magazine NetworkingNow.

Update from Miami Beach

Stylo Creative Communications continues to move forward in development. We have expanded formally in Miami with the addition of some new team members and will be adding their professional stories to the Team page soon. It will be nice to have some help because it is a challenge to complete the business plan while promoting the business and – um – actually doing the work that comes from the promoting of said business. Tomorrow I will be attending the annual Miami-Dade BNI Holiday meeting. It was perfect timing to be here this week for that meeting. I was a member of BNI here from 2003-2006, and then joined when we moved to New York City after that. It has brought me so much business it’s incredible. Also, nearly all the Stylo strategic partners (and all of the writers so far) have come from BNI relationships. So I will get to see a lot of familiar faces and also introduce our new Miami-based partner, who will be marketing social media and communications services in the South Florida region. On Sunday, we’re back in New York City and have a good few projects awaiting attention, most of which should keep us all out of trouble until the holidays.

We hit – and passed - our 200th follower on Twitter today. (Hope you will visit Twitter, join, and follow us!).

It happened while I was stuck in the office on a beautiful day, so was a great consolation prize!

Job Insecurity Overload? Maybe It’s Time to Bootstrap Your Entrepreneurial Spirit.

Every day the news is the same: People are losing their jobs. It’s even happening at Google! For example, on the night I was approached about writing my book on setting up an online networking business, I called my mother to tell her the news. She was on the phone with her best friend, whose son had just lost his job. He has three kids, and had had an excellent career for several years with a major financial services company. One day, with no warning, senior management called in 80 people in his division and fired them all. The man is extremely disillusioned with the lack of security in large corporations, and has decided to start his own business – and wants to do something internet-based.

Truly, the days where a person went to work out of school for “the company” that would take care of them by rewarding good service with a steady – and steadily increasing – salary, benefits, and pension for the rest of the employee’s working years is a thing of the past. Other than those executives at high in the ranks of major corporations, the rank-and-file employees see very little growth in salaries that do not keep up with the cost of living.

For most career-aged Americans, today virtually the only way to control the amount you can make is to work for yourself. With the right tools, knowledge, and self-discipline and perseverance – not to mention today’s user-friendly technology and the explosion of the Internet – the best way to achieve financial success is to become the master of your own professional universe.

Many people became successful from the “first wave” of Internet businesses. But a whole new wave of opportunity has just begun to flow, and early-adopters of the newest technology and Web 2.0 have got an incredible opportunity to reach the heights of professional and financial success.

The Stylo Creative team can help you set up your social media campaign at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. It’s what we do – and we love it.

A Blog is a Great Way to Talk to Your Customers

Did you know that 77% of all Internet users read blogs? Well, they do.

As posted on Brandtracks (emphases from Stylo):

Take a look at these stats as of March 2008:

• There were 184 million blogs worldwide
• In the US alone, there were 77.7 million unique hits compared to 41 million visitors for Facebook and 75.1 million to MySpace
• 77% of all Internet users read blogs
• Over half of all businesses in North America don’t have a blog. That means that just under half of all businesses do. If you don’t, guess who’s talking to your customers?
• Blogs offer a channel for you to provide an instant voice to the conversation. While a personal blog can share the latest pictures of a newborn baby instantly to friends and family all over the world, a business blog works on the same premise.
• 46% of all bloggers are professionals. They are writing a corporate blog or about their industry or offering opinions about products, even the ones you sell. This equates to just over 84.5 million bloggers that are business bloggers. That’s 84.5 million businesses talking to your customers.
• Online sales in 2007 totaled $260 billion. Blogs are known to increase awareness of new products and services. That means 1 out of 2 companies are losing a large part of $260 billion dollars of online income.

Blogging is a great way to reach your audience. Stylo Creative Communications writes for blogs. We match writers experienced a specific industry with clients in that industry looking for writers! It’s a win-win.

Weekends? What are they, anyway?

I haven’t had a real “weekend” in over a month. As a business owner, I usually end up doing something work-related at some point during the weekend. But the last three weekends were beyond the norm. The first of these was spent entirely on addressing the copyeditor’s changes to my manuscript, and to organizing and labeling the over 40 diagrams and image files I have put in the book. The very next weekend was devoted to prepping for a major project for an exciting new client: Doing PR writing for a surgical CME meeting that would be taking place the following Thursday, through the weekend…my third weekend consumed with work.

That’s okay. I am happy to have begun work with such a great new client; I enjoyed the project. It is nice to have finished all this work right before Thanksgiving.