Friday, February 25, 2011

Social Media Factoids of the Week

Facebook


1. The average Facebook user has 130 friends.

2. More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) is shared each month.

3. Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application.

4. More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month.

5. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook.

6. There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

7. People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users (think about that when designing your Facebook page).

8. The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.

9. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.

10. There are more than 1 million entrepreneurs and developers from 180 countries on Facebook.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

What Social Media Rarely Does

Social Media will not lead to instant clients.  If you are looking to put up a Facebook page and get instant clients, well good luck.

There is an old marketing adage that says a consumer must come into contact with your brand seven times before he of she will make a purchase. That’s what your social media CAN do.

As Shama Hyder Kabani says in her book “The Zen of Social Media Marketing,”

Ideally the formula works like this:
CONSUMPTION OF CONTENT + TIME = CLIENT

Time is a variable.  Some people may buy right after sampling your product or service.  Others may need much longer. 

Newsletters, calls, webinars, emails, ads and websites are all influencers for that first purchase decision.  Once they have made that move, it’s your offering that will make them clients.


Friday, February 18, 2011

Webinars, Webexes and other Webbed Presentations

In the last few weeks I've decided to jump into the deepend of the webinar pool. I've helped produce three webinars now.  The one on H1N1 was particularly fun.  At first, I found that it was a really cool, new media that plays to a very diverse audience.  This week, however, I realized that the "new" word doesn't apply.

There are dozens upon dozens of companies doing webinars.  For those of you who haven't gotten your webinar doctorate yet, a webinar, Webex or online presentation is basically a PowerPoint presentation given over the computer. It can be on any subject and there is a webinar on just about everything out there, from rocket science to science fiction. What's great is that it has an unfettered potential for reach.

Here are some of the traits the best webinars have in common:
1. They don't just  read the slide (this one applies to any presentation).
2. They use fun graphics, humor and charts to make it as visual as possible.
3. They have a theme and an outline.  Nobody likes to listen to someone rambling.
4. They give critical information and not just a sales pitch of where to pay for critical information.
5. Most important, there is call to action and follow-up. 

Here are some of the worst traits of webinars I've seen:
1. They start slowly.  Start with a bang or else your audience is already checking their inbox.
2. The speaker isn't flexible enough to make it interactive.  Don't just answer questions at the end, use questions.
3. Roll with it.  If a slide doesn't advance or if there's an issue, just keep going.  If you spend a whole minute stopped, trying to figure out the program, you've lost your audience.
4. Practice. Show the presentation to an internal audience so if you stumble it's not in front of possible clients.
5. Energy, energy, energy.  Your audience can't see you.  The only way for them to stay engaged is through your energy and passion.