An open letter to social media skeptics
Dear Social Media Skeptics
I know you exist. I recognise that you are out there. I hear your objections, and they aren’t entirely irrelevant. Therefore, please indulge me by allowing me to respond.
Let’s start with some pertinent facts about social media:
- Social media is more than Facebook and Twitter. It incorporates blogging, LinkedIn, YouTube, iPad and iPhone apps, flickr, Wikipedia, and more.
- ‘Facebook’ and ‘YouTube’ were the two most searched for terms in Google in Australia in 2010.
- Social media has overtaken pornography as the number one activity on the web.
- If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest, behind India and China.
- Contrary to popular belief that Facebook is only for tweens, the average age of Facebook users is 38 years old.
- The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year old females.
- There are more than two million blogs in the world – and 34% of bloggers post their opinion of products and brands.
- 78% of people trust peer recommendations, only 14% trust advertising.
Still not convinced that social media is for you? Well, there are some real, tangible, measurable benefits to being active in social media. Here are my favourite three:
- If you are in professional services, you can boost corporate and executive thought leadership – by sharing your industry experience, insight and knowledge, so that people view you and your company as a resource, thereby developing trust.
- You can dramatically increase traffic to your company website. By using social media your presence on search engines will increase.
- Regardless of whether you are B2B or B2C, your clients or customers are now searching directly in Facebook and Twitter for brand mentions as a way to find recommendations about a product or service. If you’re not there, you’re missing out.
And, if you still don’t believe me, take it from author and columnist Erik Qualman:
”We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.”
Yours in socialisation
Anna Streater
facebook.com/annastreater
@annastreater
au.linkedin.com/in/annastreater
