Social Media (Facebook & Twitter) Replacing Email:
Due to this increased use of social platforms and the changing demographics Gartner predicts that by 2014 20% of business users will be using social networking services for communication instead of emails. The value to marketers is that when positive engagement happens over social media platforms it has a multiplier effect that email does not. Inversely this also applies to negative experiences and is something that marketers have to be prepared for.

Implication: Marketers are working to understand and engage with their customers through these platforms. This includes the role that it has as it relates to CRM and customer service activity.

Social Media Behavior Insights & Marketing:
Given the growth of social media use, specially Facebook with over 500 million global users, consumers are providing a wealth of data that can provide marketers with key insights for product development, marketing messaging optimization and advertising targeting. These opportunities go beyond the traditional demographic targeting of the past as consumers are now publicly sharing their interests, behaviors and social connections.

Implication: Marketers can actively listen to consumer online conversation for key insights; begin to engage users based on their expressed interests and leverage social network platforms and features (such as Facebook Social Plug-in) to scale branded online experiences to the users’ social network.

Mobile Web Becomes a Priority:
Given the current rate of adoption mobile web access is expected to overtake fixed internet access by 2014. This is driven by the mainstream adoption of smartphone devices (such as the iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows), the introduction of “broadband” mobile access (wi fi, 3G+) and affordable mobile data rate plans.

Implication: Marketers need to priorities their mobile web experience with a focus on optimizing the creative, content and context for what they provide to end users.

Location Based Mobile Check In Services:
Given the advent of services such as Facebook Places, Foursquare and Gowalla, marketers are able to begin to directly connect physical customer activity to digital experiences. Though these services customers are able to verify their specific location and share their experiences within their social network

Implication: Marketers can begin to offer incentives for location / retail specific activity, this includes driving initial customer engagements/trial and rewarding loyalty behavior. This activity also provides a platform for a force multiplier given the activity is shared within the network.

Online Video Consumption:
Online video consumption continues to grow with over 85% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewing online video in August of this year. Of this, video ads accounted for over 10% of all videos viewed. Sites such as YouTube and Hulu are offering improved content and advertising opportunities while subscription video services such iTunes, Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon are offering consumers a strong alternative to traditional network and cable networks.

Implication: Marketers are beginning to think about how they can create video content that is relevant in the context of the online experience. This goes beyond just leveraging traditional commercial assets to more effectively engage consumers on an ongoing basis.

Sources:

http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/02/facebook-twitter-email/

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1293114

http://gigaom.com/2010/04/12/mary-meeker-mobile-internet-will-soon-overtake-fixed-internet/

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/comscore-releases-august-2010-us-online-video-rankings-104090133.html

• More than 400 million active users, 50% who login each day
• Average user hases 130 friends
• Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
• Average user becomes a fan of 4 pages per month
• Average user “Likes”9 pieces of content per month

The most amazing use of multitouch I’ce seen to date.

The key here is that the this is the easy part of a social media strategy. It’s what comes next that really matters to driving success in social media.

For me the telling number is at the bottom; whereas, 22 links appear on Reddit before Digg compared to 6 links appearing on Digg before Reddit.

While everyone is aware of the popularity of social media consumption by consumers there are important differences in how small business approach the use of the channel as compared to larger corporations.

Key Insights:

• Small business are more focused on investing in efforts where there is a direct return:
  While large companies may execute social media programs out of a sense of obligation (i.e. to seem innovative, because competitors are doing so, because it is part of their stated department responsibility, etc) small businesses will generally only focus time on where they feel they will get legitimate value (i.e. revenue) in return.

  This is also driven by the fact that small businesses are often times resource constraint, thus making it difficult to allocate resources to focus in incremental activities that do not have an obvious, positive and immediate impact on the core business. This compared to larger companies who can hire (through direct resources, vendors or agencies) resources to focus on broader activities.

• Small business marketing is more direct and local:
  Given the small business (and their owners) are often closer to the customer through direct interactions and operating specific locations, they are also often more involved with customer service and location specific marketing efforts.

  This is translating into small businesses using social media channels (such as Facebook and Twitter) to provide support to their customers and social mobile services (such as Foursquare) to offer incentives for customer visits.

  Often times small businesses also have clearer value from customer review sites such as TripAdvisor, Yelp and Angie’s List as they have a direct impact as to the perception of their operations on consumers. Many times, given limited marketing dollars, these may be the primary channels in which consumers learn about these companies.

• Small business customer scale and focus drives small business approach to social media:
  Given that small businesses are often focused on a specific offering (compared to large mass market corporations) and specific locations, they are often times able to focus their social media activity to specific categories of conversations and geographic focus. This allows them to be as relevant as possible to their target market.

Opportunities for small businesses in social media:

Promote through small business blogger outreach:

• Target influential small business bloggers to seed content within the small business blogosphere
• Provide incentives to bloggers, like discounts to their readers or exclusive content that they can’t find anywhere else
• Contribute useful content to the blogs, like advice for small business owners or news about upcoming events

Address small business audience through current social channels:

• Use current Facebook and Twitter accounts to reach out to small business owners
• Create a small business tab on fan page with exclusive small business content
• Create two-way conversations with Facebook and Twitter updates by asking small business owners questions and including them in the overall social media conversation.

Create group and messaging in LinkedIn:

• Being a major influencer in the ecosystem and the largest professional social networking site, LinkedIn could be an effective way to reach small business owners.
• Create a small business group and invite small business owners to join.
• Create conversation with small business content and tips with group members right where they network with each other.

Partner with current small business community to promote the brand/service:

• Explore the possibilities of becoming a partner with an already-established small business community, such as OpenForum.com.
• This will give exposure in a channel that small business owners are already actively using.

Picture Source: Ted.me