Social Media Facts

Many of you know that one of my passions is introducing small businesses to social media. Ever since I fell into this niche, I have studied social media statistics and seen first hand how participation can help companies grow. Word of mouth has become World of Mouth through social media sites. I'd like to share with you some statistics and facts about the world of social media. If you think social media is a fad, you'll think differently after reading this.

• Twitter now has over 75 million user accounts, but only around 15 million are active users on a regular basis. I believe this is because people are using Twitter as a information hub.

• LinkedIn has over 50 million members worldwide, an increase of approximately 1 million since July/August last year.

• In January of this year, Facebook had in excess of 350 million active users on global basis, but continues to grow at approximately 40% every 6 months. This means there are closer to 500 million active users today. 50% of active users log into the site every day.

Can you see why Facebook is my favorite? I hope Sven Johnston doesn't beat me to a pulp for saying that next time he sees me. I like LinkedIn too, Sven! Big fan!

Now for some interesting facts:

• This year, Gen Y will outnumber baby boomers - 96% of them have joined a social network.
• Social Media has overtaken p/o/r/n as the #1 activity on the web.
• 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations - only 14% trust advertisements.
• Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the world's 4th largest.

# of years it took to reach 50 million users:

• Radio = 38 years
• TV = 13 years
• Internet = 4 years
• iPod = 3 years

As a business owner, if you're not a player in the social media space, you're not long for this economy. It has become imperative that small businesses participate on these sites in order to develop those much needed relationships to build clientele. I enjoy teaching people how to leverage this medium.

Check out this Facebook business page that I created for Skytek Digital Media. They have utilized their page appropriately and consistently, providing their clients and prospects with great content. It warms my heart to see a start-up company embrace social media as they have, and with only one hour of training from Wicked Marketing.

Tipping points are created all day, every day on social media sites. In the near future, we will no longer search for products and services - they will find us via social media. Social media isn't a fad, it is a fundamental shift in how we communicate.

All This Telephony? For Free?

I recently ran into a gentleman (same guy that told me about mobile QR codes) at a networking meeting who was praising a new application. The more he told me about it, the more I thought this would be a great thing to share with my clients and friends.

I am a big advocate of customer service, and this application just might be a telephony revolution! I'm talking about Google Voice. This application will transcribe your voice mail so you can read them during meetings. You are then able to text a reply sooner than if you had waited until after the meeting was over. It also allows you to create one number to which all your other phones are connected. This feature enables you to receive all calls from where ever you are and block some or all calls when unavailable.

The best and unique feature is the ability to create personalized greetings for each of your contacts. Let's say you have two businesses, but you don't want just one greeting for everyone who calls. You can record several greetings and assign them to each individual contact. You can even say "Hi, Jim! Sorry I missed your call! Please leave me a message and I'll call you back as soon as I can!" and assign it to your buddy Jim's number. Now, how cool is that?

And, yes, it's absolutely free!

There are many other features that you can learn about by going to www.google.com/voice. I encourage you to check it out!