Did you know that Hillsborough County has a fan page on Facebook?
And a Twitter feed.
And a YouTube channel.
And the Budgeting department has a blog.
Found at Sticks of Fire
The Perils of Ignoring Social Media
A social media consultant tells us of his client – the owner of a small restaurant – who’s foray into social media wasn’t what you would call “positive.” It seems a customer of the eatery experienced some bad service at the place, and told his Twitter followers. I’ll let Media Badger tell you what happened next (the emphases are mine):
… Over the next 2 hours over 50 people within the city, and over 20 from outside, had engaged over this “discussion” with many relating their negative (and a some positive) experience with this restaurant. After the third “tweet” I started to follow the discussion, then started to track if it went elsewhere… It did. It hit Facebook and by 3PM that afternoon it had reached 3 bloggers within the city, whereupon several readers of those blogs also commented. The discussion ran to more general comparisons of bad gustatory experiences locally and other fine establishments were bashed as well. Yet the focus remained on this one particular establishment.
Our estimate of reach by 5PM that afternoon was about 4,000 eyeballs in Nova Scotia with 90% of them in the Halifax area. Now, we’re a highly connected city with 5 universities of international renown and a strong financial sector and economy. But we’re only about 400,000 people…
[The business owner]… noticed a 50% drop in business in that time period.
This story shows how Social Media has an impact at your local business whether you participate or not. Luckily, the client in this case was at least paying attention to what was being said, was able to address the shortfall in service, and he recovered.
Do you know what’s being said about your business? Contact me, and we’ll find out together.
Pepsi To Bet $20M on Social Media
After 23 years of advertising on the biggest broadcast of the year, Pepsi has decided to skip the Super Bowl and spend $20M on a Social Media Campaign.
They want to have a positive impact in your community, and want your ideas on to do just that. Each month, users will vote on the best ideas, and those with the top votes will receive grants of $5,000 to $250,000 – spending well over $1,000,000 each month – to help that idea get off the ground.
It’s an interesting campaign, and perhaps a more interesting experiment in advertising.
Are Businesses Using Social Media Properly?
Tampa Tribune reporter, TBO.com blogger and social media enthusiast Jeff Houck recently interviewed Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk. Jeff wanted to know if businesses are using social media properly?
The short answer? No.
The longer answer? Not even remotely.
Here are a couple quotes from the article on TBO:
- Too many [business owners] use electronic platforms like billboards.
- Business owners lack creativity in using online tools.
- “A restaurant, instead of going online and talking about food, is blasting out coupons for lunch menus. They’re selling instead of being involved. This isn’t the Yellow Pages.”
- Businesses worry too much about what they’re going to say instead of listening.
- Business owners lack patience. They think it’s all going to happen for them in five minutes.
- “Legacy is more important than currency. Businesses aren’t willing to invest the sweat equity long term.”
- “Every answer you’ll get from me on most questions is ‘content.’ Anyone who says they do Twitter instead of blogging is an idiot. Your story needs a home.”
- “Business owners don’t recognize how much of social media is customer service.”
Read the entire story online, and if you are really interested, listen to the entire interview: Jeff Houck’s Table Conversations podcast with Gary Vaynerchuk.
Find Someone Who Really Knows Social Media
Thinking about jumping in? There are a bunch of great folks around here who understand social media. Unfortunately, there is a bigger bunch of folks who just want to get your money, so please be careful.
Here is Geoff Livingston’s Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert Is a Carpetbagger:
- When asked about listening, gives you a blank stare.
- Converses at people instead of with them on social networks
- No tangible past experience delivering return on investment either for themselves or others
- Doesn’t understand how social media integrates into larger corporate communications or business strategy
- First recommendation is to blog
- Believes in delivering messages
- Will ghostwrite blog posts and other social content for you
- Is willing to impersonate you online in social networks
- Trots in “social media expert” for sales meeting
- Their blog is less than six months old or has no comments
- Blog only has links to traditional 1.0 media sites
- Cannot host conversation without constantly interjecting self into said conversation
- Talks about cultivating your personal brand
- Will not allow employees to participate in larger conversation
- Will guarantee results without any prior experiences
- Just added new social media department
- Recommends Facebook Group as first tactic
- Defines social media as only tools (Facebook, blogs, Flickr <INSERT SHINY OBJECT HERE>) as opposed to conversations with communities
- First campaign involves a contest without a strategy
- Doesn’t know what Technorati is
- Talks about applying mass communications theory
- Posts less than five times a month on their blog
- Thinks social media is about creating content
- Suggests publishing promotional copy as social content
- Believes social media is the sole terrain of either PR or advertising
current social media updates
Have you ever wondered how fast social media is growing in real time? So has Gary. He created a constantly updating page of the latest statistics in social media and web use. Check out Gary’s Social Media Count:
Gary’s notes on the statistics:
I quickly built and coded the app based on data culled from a range of social media sources & sites at the end of Sept 2009…
The social web has exploded in the last year and below are some of the key data points that the ‘Gary’s Social Media Count’ is based on (many will be updated!).
- 20 hours of video uploaded every minute onto YouTube (source YouTube blog Aug 09)
- Facebook 600k new members per day, and photos, videos per month, 700mill & 4 mill respectively (source Inside Facebook Feb 09)
- Twitter 18 million new users per year & 4 million tweets sent daily (source TechCrunch Apr 09)
- iPolicy UK – SMS messaging has a bright future (Aug 09)
- 900 000 blogs posts put up every day (source Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008)
- YouTube daily, 96 million videos watched, $1mill bandwidth costs (source Comscore Jul 06 !)
- UPDATE: YouTube 1Billion watched per day SMH (2009)- counter updated!
- Second Life 250k virtual goods made daily, text messages 1250 per second (source Linden Lab release Sep 09)
- Money – $5.5 billion on virtual goods (casual & game worlds) even Facebooks gifts make $70 million annually (source Viximo Aug 09)
- Flickr has 73 million visitors a month who upload 700 million photos (source Yahoo Mar 09)
- Mobile social network subscribers – 92.5 million at the end of 2008, by end of 2013 rising to between 641.6-873.1 million or 132 mill annually (source Informa PDF)
- SMS – Over 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008 (source Everysingleoneofus sms statistics)
As more and more folks use social media, and make online purchases, your organization must have a presence.
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