On Internet Business

Social Media Revolution – fact or hype?

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Social Media

This video makes some pretty big claims for social media and the way it will affect the business world.

80% of companies where, and of what kind, are using LinkedIn to find staff? I don’t think it’s mines or pet-shops or garden landscapers!

Wikipedia is more accurate than the Encyclopaedia Britannica? I doubt that’s true – although Wiki information may be more up to date, the pernicious tendency for people to alter wiki pages without fact-checking, or to post misinformation deliberately means that it can’t be relied on for accurate information. The SEOmoz blog highlighted the problem very well last year.

But 96% of Generation Y joining at least one social media network is a real kicker – if they are going to outnumber baby boomers next year, is your business reaching them, and do you even know what is being said about you on those networks? Do you have a strategy for measuring commentary about your brand, and a system to try and rectify bad information when it gets put out there?

What about those 300 million users of Qzone? Is that kind of untapped market of interest to you? If so, how do you tap it?

If 34% of bloggers post commentary on brands and products, what could they be saying about you? Do you know the key bloggers in your business and understand their purpose? Are you even on their radar? A quarter of online searches produce user-generated content. That means 25% of what people find out about those brands is personal – like word of mouth – and we tend to listen more to personal commentary than anything else. If somebody says they loathe what you do, it has much more effect on you than being told a certain behaviour is not considered generally acceptable. And so it is with brand information – if blogger X says your product is great, that has more effect on people’s thinking than if you do.

A social media driven economy will be more personal, more reactive and more interactive. Those Generation Y users will expect to give feedback not to you, but to the world, and you will be expected to respond.

Are you ready?

Related posts:

1. Microsoft tackles analysing social media Measuring the impact and effect of social media campaigns has...
2. Posterous – small business saviour? Posterous is making news at present and it could be...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.