In 2011, 63.7% of US internet users will use social networks. Key trends include the slowing growth rate in usage, the rising sophistication of the social networking audience, the dominance of the youth market, the battle between email and social networks, and the increase in mobile social usage.
What is the ROI (define) for social media? It’s zero. That’s because there’s no such thing as “social media.”
People’s conversations are not media; they can’t be purchased as such by advertisers. In other words, people don’t talk whenever advertisers want them to and they won’t say whatever advertisers tell them to — so it isn’t “media” like TV, print, and radio.
If you treat people’s conversations as media, you’d be doing it wrong. Social marketing done right means asking for and respecting people’s conversations and giving them a public place to talk so others can hear. If the advertiser’s product is already great, much of the conversation will be positive. But even if it isn’t the advertiser will have the benefit of free “product research” because people will give them ideas for improvement.
Untargetables are hard to reach. Unreachables are not reachable by traditional advertising media or channels.
read more about the ROI of social media on ClickZ … http://www.clickz.com/3633341
Many clients have asked about social media benchmarks or social marketing benchmarks. They ask things like how many fans should they have on Facebook? They are concerned if they cannot project 1 million fans on their fan page.
But that is because most clients are coming from a reach and frequency background. Some have moved to unique visitors, pageviews, and time on site. But what is more important today is not that people get to the site or the time they spend, but what they do … so social intensity is a benchmark which captures the quantity and frequency of social actions like sharing, discussing, commenting, voting, etc. All of these actions lead to value that accumulates for other future visitors to the site.
social networks – the places where people go online to socialize
social actions – the act of socializing on social networks
social intensity – the frequency and quantity of social actions; this can/should be a new KPI (key performance indicator) for marketers to assess whether digital marketing efforts are working and yielding positive results against business objectives
social networks – the places people go to socialize like Facebook, MySpace, etc.
social actions – the things people do when they are on social networks
social marketing – the act of stimulating more social actions that yield awareness, purchase, and advocacy/loyalty for brand advertisers
social media – it’s NOT media, so stop using the word media! (see Social Networks Aren’t Media – http://www.clickz.com/3631391 )
Dr. Augustine Fou is an expert in digital strategy and social media marketing, with over 15 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience. He now serves as digital strategy advisor to global brands and their agencies shifting dollars more aggressively into digital channels.
http://twitter.com/acfou
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The Grand Unified Theory of Marketing
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