Social Media Growing Strong
If you have been a regular to our blog the past few days, you will notice a lot of the discussion is trending around social media. There is no question that social media is growing strong and we will continue to see growth for a long period of time. The question that remains – when is social media going to overtake our other sources of conversation and interaction?
In its latest report, Neilson found that in 2008 people spent more time on social networking sites and blogs than person email. This marks an important turn in our young internet history, a turn that should be analyzed carefully by companies. I thought Marshall from ReadWriteWeb summed the findings up fairly well:
Our take away from these findings? People prefer the clean, controlled, multimedia and publicly social experience of social networking communication over the relatively open, individualistic and spammy medium of email.
Interestingly enough, the tools we are using to monitor and search the web are changing as well to include more social media sites. According to this AdAge article, Facebook has surpassed Google in sending traffic to some sites:
But since the beginning of the year, Facebook has become a bigger referring site than Google to a number of sites, including gossip sites PerezHilton.com and Dlisted, mom site CafeMom, Evite, video site Tagged.com, and, yes, Twitter.
It seems these sites may have a large presence on Facebook, utilizing Facebook Pages as a resource for new and returning visitors. It only seems natural, however, that Facebook would be generating traffic – what with its 180 Million registered users.
It will be interesting to track whether people start putting more of their advertising efforts into these social media giants. Will the search-marketing dollars follow the social media traffic?
~Crystal
on March 12th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Crystal,
I agree that it will be interesting to track whether companies start putting more of their advertising efforts into social media giants—It is good to know that as SEM professionals your firm follow the trends—such as Neilson’s statistic that more people spend time on social media than internet—since eMarketers typically still chose email as the best way to advertise. (1)
It would seem that the platforms are bracing themselves for a new era of advertising. Take for example Facebook’s new pages being optimized for social media marketing platforms (2) or Twitter’s alleged ‘sponsored users’ (3) that will appear following their launch of the real-time search tool (4). In a recent interview, Twitter CEO Eric Schmidt did allude to a potential for increasingly MoSoSo software advertise through tweets using real time location (5) (from my understanding).
Also, because of the recent eMarketer report that indicates an increase of SEM through 2013 (6), hopefully L3 communications has nothing to worry about.
Certainly, Crystal, many people will be seeing where search-marketing dollars will be going. For me, I think it will be more interesting to follow how companies use an integrated marketing communications approach to reach various niche constituencies while simultaneously presenting a consistent brand image through its advertising messages. But on the other hand, it is possible we will see brand image and advertising become increasingly more social as well (7)—the most recent/prevalent example being the Skittles Wiki home page. (8/9)
–Megan McQ, DC
1. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=100360
2. http://mashable.com/2009/03/04/new-facebook-pages/
3. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/07/eric-schmidt-tells-charlie-rose-google-is-unlikely-to-buy-twitter-and-wants-to-turn-phones-into-tvs/
4. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_begins_rolling_out_search_and_trends.php
5. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/07/eric-schmidt-tells-charlie-rose-google-is-unlikely-to-buy-twitter-and-wants-to-turn-phones-into-tvs/
6. http://www.emarketer.com/Reports/All/Emarketer_2000559.aspx
7. http://personalbrandingblog.com/using-twitter-for-personal-and-business-branding/
8. http://www.skittles.com/
9. http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/about_that_skittles_site_lets_all_take_a_deep_breath/
on March 12th, 2009 at 8:13 am
As evidence of your article (and all our chatter on it the last week) – last night Procter & Gamble held their long awaited “Digital Hack Night” to which they invited 40 of the top digital media executives (and 100 P&G marketing directors) to a social media battle of sorts. The challenge? Which team can sell the most $20 t-shirts for charity with $1,000 media buy limit? The exercise not only raised $50,000 in charity; but was a ‘crash course’ in social media applications for the consumer product conglomerate. Read more about “Digital Hack Night” at AdAge. With savvy big-brand marketers like P&G and Mars (Skittles) leading the way, I think a veritable social media revolution is full swing. My question is – how long before people become wary of big brands posing as personable? When will social media be just another commercial that you fast forward through?
on March 13th, 2009 at 10:10 am
It is interesting to note what sites found Facebook as a more powerful traffic source than Google. It seems the brands that appeal to the demographic most actively involved in social media are finding it as an invaluable traffic tool, while others might have a harder time making an impact on these platforms.
I think Lindsey brings up a good point as well, it will only be a matter of time before more companies are following in P&G and Skittles’ footsteps. I foresee it being a nuisance if a company does not run play it right. TiVo might have to come out with something for us to sift through these new social media commercials!