The Value of Social Media

When clients ask me if social media works I have a few answers for them: if they were to go to a work function and brought business cards and stood in the corner not much would happen. if they made a point of saying hello to a lot of people and asking interesting questions and sharing interesting services and giving out their business card they'd have much more chances of getting a call for their business services. Same thing with social media. Follow topics, get involved, spend time and it works gr8! The other point I make is that if a client joined a gym and spent five minutes one time per month they would see no results. BUT! If they got involved, spent time and applied themselves, results would be evident. That's my two cents about why I spend so much time on social media. Cheers, Dorri

Monitor Daily and Stay Current

In order for social media tools to work for your business, you've gotta be putting in the time. Think of it as a networking party. If you stand in a corner, and wait for someone to come to you, not much will happen. If you get out there and engage others in conversations and hand them your card you greatly improve your chances of growing your biz at the party. Same thing is true online. It's important to be on there daily. Reach out to others. Learn, listen, grow. It is so fun when you stop worrying if you're wasting time. You're not. You're networking, marketing and promoting.

Wondering what to tweet about?

Twitter is about networking. People are far more likely to work with friends, or friends of friends, or referrals. Twitter is a great way to expand your network. Tweet about topics that interest you. Search under "find people" for those topics. Join lists. Invest time. Be interesting. If you're trying to get somewhere with work try to stay away from horridly boring topics like what you ate for lunch, or how you feel. Talk about current events, technology breakthroughs, politics, business. In other words, tweet about things that would interest you. The more time you spend on twitter the more your following will grow. Think of it like going to the gym. If you go for 5 minutes one time per month the results will be practically nil. Same with twitter. Spend some time, read tweets, click on links, read blogs, check out websites and when you join lists see what others tweet about. Have fun!

Numbers show more time spent on social media sites

Nielsen Online shows big increases in global audiences for social networks. Time spent on Facebook and Twitter is up 82% from last year. Facebook is still the top social site. Stats from December 209 show 206.9 million unique visitors. Time per person spent on social networking sites has been steadily on the rise since 2007. People in the U.S. continue to spend more time on social networking—and blog sites—with total minutes increasing 210% year-over-year and the average time per person increasing 143% year-over-year in December 2009. Year-over-year growth in average time spent by U.S. users, for both Facebook and Twitter.com, outpaced the overall growth for the category, increasing 200% and 368%, respectively. Among, the top five U.S. social networking sites, Twitter.com continued its reign as the fastest-growing in December 2009 in terms of unique visitors, increasing 579% year-over-year, from 2.7 million unique visitors in December 2008 to 18.1 million in December 2009. Exciting news for those of us who love social media marketing! Happy Sunday and enjoy your tweeting!

What to say to clients who question the value of social media

If I suggested to clients that they bring business cards to a social gathering I doubt they would argue with me. This is considered a sound approach to networking. If I suggested that they bring business cards to a work gathering they'd say, "Duh." Social Media is basically the modern day equivalent.

1. Social media is used more often than personal email
2. 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs, including microblogs
   
3. Organizations that blog get 97% more inbound links to their website, and 55% more website visitors
   
4. 80% of companies use LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
5. The average Facebook user spends 55 minutes per day on the site

Fun Fact about Brand Reputation

Are you building your brand reputation? If not, it would be wise to start... Dominos Pizza recently learned that the majority of their market had the opinion that their product is lousy. They learned specific details as to why their customers felt their product was inferior against their competitors. Dominos then used social media to their advantage by asking for customer input to develop a new and improved product.
inspired by Pilar Guerra

Twitter Numbers

Looking at user patterns, HubSpot found that Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter, each accounting for 16% of total tweets in the analysis, while 10-11 pm appears to be the most active hour on Twitter, accounting for 4.8% of the tweets in an average day. This info came from TechCrunch.