Women Put Trust in Social Media

According to The 2009 Women in Social Media Study of the 79 Million women online, over half are taking part in social media on a weekly basis. This study by BlogHer, iVillage and Compass Partners also showed that 64% of women are nearly twice as likely to use blogs than social networking sites as a source of information. 43% Use social media for advice and recommendations and 55% for opinion-sharing.

Social Media Activities include:

• Social networks (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn)
• Blogging
• Reading blogs
• Posting to blogs
• Message boards & forums
• Status Updating (e.g.Twitter)

Companies looking to tap into women for product advertising shouldn't question whether or not to enter social media. The real questions should involve "How to connect with my target audience?" and "What can I offer them via social media".

The study is definitely worth reviewing:

Source:http://www.blogher.com/files/2009_Compass_BlogHer_Social_Media_Study_042709_FINAL.pdf

Dell uses Twitter for $3M in Additional Sales

A great story broke today about Dell Computer's use of Twitter to help stir up an additional $3 Million in sales since 2007. @DellOutlet, Dell's Twitter account, has been providing exclusive deals to its followers, as well as answering questions from users.

Dell has over 640,000 Followers looking for updates from Dell about new product offerings, specials, and promotions.

From Dell's blog post regarding the success... "Twitter has had numerous opportunities to bring in revenue. However, they currently do not charge companies for the usage of their service. With a growing amount of companies embracing the web (and more specifically, Twitter) in order to reach out to customers and promote their products, this could be one of the better opportunities for Twitter to make money, should they decide to take this one up."

Here is a link to the Dell Story

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/06/11/delloutlet-surpasses-2-million-on-twitter.aspx

Interesting Stats regarding Twitter

Found an interesting post, showing sound astounding facts about Twitter, and wanted to share with world. I have to say before you read the stats it is important to know that Twitter is just a tool in social media, Twitter has helped change the way we communicate. There will be something that comes and is better than Twitter, but people's desire for information at their disposal, from multiple authors is a trend that will continue forever.

Research by Sysomos Inc.

Authors: Alex Cheng, Mark Evans, and Harshdeep Singh

• 72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009.
• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people.
• 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity
• New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston; while Detroit was the fast-growing city over the first five months of 2009
• More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
• Of people who identify themselves as social media marketers, 65.5% have never posted an update
• Of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people. This compares with 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people.

The Appendix where this research was taken:

http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/appendix

Twitter Alone is Not Enough

A recently published study by Nielsen stated that more than 60% of US Twitter users fail to return back the following month. With only 40% of Twitter users being "loyal", marketers should be cautioned that Twitter, although growing at an incredible rate, is still only one piece of the total social media puzzle.

Marketing executives are looking to Twitter, the 140-Character micro-blogging site, as the answer to all their company's social media needs. The true of the matter is that social media involves a lot of work and hours, with more and more companies employing "community managers" to handle all of the companies social media tasks at a full time level. These managers Tweet on behalf of companies and manage brands in all social media by monitoring and responding to what customers and others are saying about their company, product, or service.

When companies and people are beginning their involvement in social media, it is important for them to be monitoring and reviewing the following:
-Facebook/Myspace/LinkedIn, etc
-Blogs, Micro-Blogs (Twitter)
-Message Boards /Wiki's
-Social Bookmarking & Sharing sites
-YouTube/Video Sharing sites