Figures show that Twitter users are not so social afterall. Facts reveal that only 21% of Twitter users are active users. In fact, a total 73% of Twitter accounts have tweeted fewer than 10 times.

Question is, are most Twitterers using the site just to get updated with the latest news? and follow their favorite celebs?

Barracuda claims that there was a follow-only trend which is described as the period in which celebs like Ashton and Oprah helped push the microblogging site into the mainstream. Such period is dubbed Twitter’s “red carpet era,” here are some of the findings:

-49% of Twitter users, and 48 of the top 100 most followed Twitter users, joined during the Twitter Red Carpet Era, indicating the significant impact celebrities have on the social networking landscape as they bring their real-world fans over to Twitter.
-The Twitter growth rate spiked at 21.17% in April 2009 due to the Twitter Red Carpet Era
-During the Twitter Red Carpet Era, the Twitter Crime Rate increased 66%, and continued to escalate reaching 12% in October 2009, indicating one in eight accounts created was deemed to be malicious, suspicious or otherwise misused and subsequently suspended.

Red Carpet Era effect:

In terms of tweets, 34% of Twitter users haven’t tweeted even once. However, the site is showing signs of potential activity increase. While that percentage still seems quite high, numbers do show users are being more active and connecting more often. For instance, the number of inactive accounts back in June 2009 was 37%, which shows a clear 8% decrease.

Do you think Twitter will continue to gain momentum?

However, in order to capitalize on this rising trend, companies must develop comprehensive social media advertising strategies to attain their goals. Such principle applies not only to B2C marketers, also B2B marketers are benefiting from these current media tendencies.

According to new predictions from a study by Forrester, B2B interactive marketing spend will be doubling up to $4.8 billion in 2014.

Social has proven to be a good vehicle to connect with consumers. However, we personally find that B2B and B2C social media campaigns are quite similar in that they both work to target opinion leaders or decision makers- whether they’re the consumers or the business executives.

We also keep hearing about social media being the best channel to foster relationships with consumers, respond to feedback, answer questions, engage in conversation and share important product information. Truth is, the same process works for B2B companies in that most of their business is centered around longer term relationships, only this time instead of customers it involves suppliers and consultants.

Forrester’s forecast states that paid search is still the top interactive line item for B2B marketers, but display, mobile, and social marketing are all growing quickly. As B2B marketers gain experience with interactive marketing, they are beginning to stretch outside of their comfort zone and turn to channels that can spark brand interest and help educate potential customers.

B2B companies that utilize the social tools available today are at a great advantage compared to those who have not yet joined the bandwagon simply because networks such as LinkedIn or Twitter help create better comunication as well as build strong relationships and partnerships.

Among the numerous online initiatives that were measured in the study, having a company page on a social networking site had the highest adoption with 75% of small businesses using it.

Small businesses today are considering different, cost-effective alternatives to keep their brands visible and accessible to potential customers some of which include posting status updates and/or articles of interest on social networking sites, building network through sites such as LinkedIn, creating a blog in area of expertise and monitoring positive and negative feedback about own organization on social networks.

As the study shows, the second highest activity used by small businesses is posting status updates and/or articles of interest on social networking sites which was implemented by 69% of businesses.

In addition, small businesses also declared that building online presence was one of their main priorities for the coming years, property sites being the top technology investment in the next two years, followed by an online showcase of products and services to help attract new customers and placing third are social media activity investments.

One highlighting fact which can be greatly exploited using social networks such as Twitter or Facebook is the fact that small businesses hold customer service as one of their biggest strengths, and have proven to be quite efficient at responding to customer claims, answering their questions and solving their problems.

For more information on the study you can visit www.growsmartbusiness.com

Today, the huge success of online applications, the increasing number of brand marketers using social media and the numerous companies for which social media has delivered meaningful business results, is being referenced on a daily basis.

eMarketer took a shot at predicting the future of social media outlining some of the trends to be watching out for in the coming years.

The report explained how more marketers in the future will incorporate analytics, as social media becomes truly integrated into all marketing efforts. In addition, TV will become more social, as will search.

The research company continued explaining that as advertising via social networks increases, marketers need to gain active control over their brands and make brand monitoring a top issue.

As we have witnessed, there has been a power shift from the old media ways to more consumer driven communities, which will force marketers to track a diverse and growing range of sources that talk about a business or product.

Furthermore, these sources could also be influential enough as to reach thousands of potential cosumers in a very short period of time and have either a positive or negative impact on a given brand. And this is where brand monitoring is crucial. It takes only 1 negative comment to annihilate 10 positive ones.

Location was also highlighted in the report and we are beginning to see this in location-based social media tools such as Foursquare (and the likes) and how such companies continue to gain traction and prove to be an excellent way for companies to capitalize on location.

As time goes by, it’s interesting to see how social networks have evolved, the new developments being made and how users are engaging and participating in the social Web.

Below is another great infographic produced by TrendStream which provides a snapshot of the social media involvement in the market. The global map was put together after interviewing 32,000 Web users in 16 countries in order to best show a unique perspective on web behavior and social media involvement worldwide.

It’s evident that each region of the world adopts these social technologies differently, but what’s even more interesting is seeing how brands implement social media in their daily activities and which type of social activity they prefer to use.

These are the areas in which they’ve categorized the survey:

And this is the actual infographic- click to enlarge and view pdf:

Some observations provided by the company include:

* The social web is mass market: Hundreds of millions of web users are creating and sharing content every month
* The massive impact of China: The vast Internet population coupled with hugely socially active set of web users, makes for a massive volume of content creators. However due to the inward looking nature of China’s internet economy combined with the language mean that this volume of content does not impact the broader Internet
* Low engagement in Japan: We also associate Japan with technology innovation, and actual while you might not think it, the low engagement is indicative of progress. Why? Our map shows PC activity and we know from this research that a huge number of Japanese users are bypassing PC altogether and using mobile devices to access social platforms and create and share content. Just over 34% of social network users only accessed through mobile in the month of the research, this is compared to 3% in the UK, a staggering indication of where the future is heading.
* The low level of microblog engagement: Despite the Twitter hype, microblogging is still not a mass social activity and nowhere near the size and scale of blogging.

The following data is a compilation of social media statistics put together by Econsultancy showcasing the most significant facts and figures surrounding networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and online activities such as blogging and photo sharing.

If you’re a newcomer or are beginning to consider taking a plunge into the social media arena and exploit the opportunities (and challenges) social media offers, take a look at the following numbers:

* Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours.
* Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. It’s still a fair increase from the estimated 6-10m global users from a few months ago.
* LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. This means an increase of around 1m members month-on-month since July/August last year.
* Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million close to 400 million active users on a global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m… meaning around a 40% increase of users in less than half a year.
* Flickr now hosts more than 4bn images. A massive jump from the previous 3.6bn I wrote about.
* More than 35m Facebook users update their status each day. This is 5m more than towards the end of July 2009.
* Wikipedia currently has in excess of 14m articles, meaning that it’s 85,000 contributors have written nearly a million new posts in six months.
* Photo uploads to Facebook have increased by more than 100%. Currently, there are around 2.5bn uploads to the site each month – this was around a billion last time I covered this.
* There are more than 70 translations available on Facebook. Last time around, this was only 50.
* Back in 2009, the average user had 120 friends within Facebook. This is now around 130.
* Mobile is even bigger than before for Facebook, with more than 65m users accessing the site through mobile-based devices. In six months, this is over 100% increase. (Previously 30m).

Other significant facts include:

* There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.
* There are now 11m LinkedIn users across Europe.
* Towards the end of last year, the average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million.
* The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m.
* More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.
* Purpose-built Facebook pages have created more than 5.3bn fans.
* 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging, according to Technorati’s new State of the Blogosphere.
* At the current rate, Twitter will process almost 10bn tweets in a single year.
* About 70% of Facebook users are outside the USA.
* India is currently the fastest-growing country to use LinkedIn, with around 3m total users.
* More than 250 Facebook applications have over a million combined users each month.
* 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog.
* 38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.
* More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60m Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.

Keep these handy for when you begin developing your brand’s social media strategy, however, the info presented above is only a bird’s eye view of this particular sector.

In order to be able to achieve your objectives using social media, it is best you understand your audience well and identify the right channels in order to be able to properly cater to your selected audience.

Many things can be done the wrong way if not embraced properly and your brand or product can be easily damaged.

For instance, try to avoid selling your product to your audiences. Selling, bragging, pushing the product into the consumer’s mind can have a negative effect to it. What consumers are really interested in is the what’s in it for me. What your brand or product can do/offer or how it can help them.

There’s a second part to the first statement and it is self-promotion. It’s a great thing that you believe in yourself, in your brand and what you’re selling, however, there’s a lot of useful information out there that you might be overlooking. Information that can be valuable to both you and your consumers. Don’t be afraid to learn from your competitors.

You’re not listening, therefore, you’re not engaging in conversation. You must always listen in order to know what’s going on, find out about what people are talking about and especially, what they’re saying about your brand. Do not ignore criticism, respond to it and try to tackle it the best way possible as to be able to turn the situation around to achieve positive results.

Don’t bombard your audience with millions of facts, figures and articles just to show them that you’re savvy. Do share information that you find offers interesting insights, even if it’s just one piece of information. However, make sure you share it, discuss it, comment on it, involve your readers and ask for opinions.

Have you spotted the right channels to place your brand? If you’re not sure, it’s important that you identify who and where your audience is. Make sure you’re listening and addressing your messages to the right people, if not, it’ll be quite hard to get anyone’s attention.

Do not use only one social network. If you want your brand to have the most visibility and exposure, why narrow it down to just one…especially when many social networks today cover all possible niches, therefore, there’s a much greater chance your content, brand or product will go viral.

These are only some of the actions you should avoid doing as part of your social media strategy. It’s important because, with technology being ubiquitous and accessible to all, we’ve been given the tools to carry on conversations, engage with prospects and customers, share and place our brand/product in the eyes of many, hence, it’s imperative that we embrace these tactics and exploit the opportunities available to us.

For more dont’s, check out this article.

Average posts per user on the site exceed the 55 million mark and more than 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared every week. The social media giant has also expanded way beyond its American roots: today some 70% of its audience is outside the United States, the article stated.

That being said, our recommendation is that every business- small, medium or large- product or service should have a compelling Facebook profile that helps to drive awareness, increase visibility, and boost fan engagement.

What should you try to achieve from your Facebook profile? Engagement for one, followed by interaction.

In order to engage fans and non, you need substantial and relevant content that they can find interesting. It’s not necessary to post a trizillion articles a day, depending on your fan base, you should begin with a few and then work your way up as you begin growing your audience.

In addition, posts can be anything, from ideas and videos, to articles, research and latest industry news. One thing that you must keep present, you must be relevant, stick to your topic of expertise. You may include links to other articles or bloggers, post photos and if possible, tag the people in them, set up an events calendar and so on.

If you are able to achieve enough fan engagement- bear in mind it will not happen automatically, it’s something you or your social specialist must work on and dedicate loads of time to on a daily basis- then you’ll be a small step away from increasing interaction between fans and your brand or product.

Also, if you haven’t already, link your Twitter account to your Facebook profile so that you can share content, photos, videos, news, and increase your fan base/follower base.

Try to discover what sparks the most interest out of your fans by testing out different types of content, ask open-ended questions, set up polls, etc. Start testing and observe the kind of results you obtain. Respond promptly, if possible, to comments or questions. And most importantly, give your brand a true character, avoid being impersonal and instead try putting yourself in your fan’s shoes and seeing things from their perspective.

Go ahead, tell us about your brand’s Facebook experience. What has worked or hasn’t quite worked for you yet?

If any of you thought that social media marketing was not worth your or your brand’s time, the following figures should make you think otherwise.

In December 2009, consumers spent more than five and a half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, up 82% from the same time last year.  The total amount of time users spent online in December 2008 was a little more than three hours compared to the two hours and ten minutes from the previous year.

Facebook alone captured 67% of the global social media audience last month, with 206.9 million unique visitors. In the U.S. alone, Facebook towered over its peers on the list of most visited social networking sites.

That said, we can discuss how The Academy with its Grammy ceremony has decided to embrace this shift in attempt to speak the language of it’s audience- the fans- and thousands of followers which are their raison d‘être.

The We’re All Fans website showcases a myriad portraits of Grammy-nominated artists composed entirely of real-time, fan-generated YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook postings. The content is continuously updated and users can select from a list of nominated artists like Beyoncé, LL Cool J, U2, Kings of Leon and click on any piece of content, tweets, images or YouTube videos they want to visualize.

The site is full of videos made by real fans  performing to the beat of their favorite songs from their favorite artists, all of which go live and are available for everyone to see, including the entire CBS audience.

One cool aspect of the site is the FanBuzz Visualizer which is a sort of dashboard that works as a real-time visualization of fan activity which includes all the posts, mentions, comments of nominated artists across the entire web. The insights are then presented in two different graphs, ‘today’s posts’ and ‘total posts’ where you can visualize which artist(s) currently has the most mentions.

And better yet, fans can share the information with friends and engage more and more people into commenting and mentioning their favorite artists by creating an endless viral effect across the internet. It’s pretty great to see an institution such as The Academy embrace social media and find new and innovative ways of communicating with their  now web-savvy audiences.

Now there’s no need to log in to Facebook in order to reply to your email notifications- whether they’re status updates, wall posts, videos or photos. All you need to do is click reply and out goes your message.

However, you should first change your settings under account settings in order to enable email notifications.

Once you’re in your account settings, you should go to notifications and tick the option send a message…don’t forget to save.

You can also decide to which email you want your messages to arrive by changing email address under the settings options.

This is what the new email notifications should look like from now on, it specifies how you can now reply to this email to comment on the post from your friend(s).

It’s a great new feature specially for those of us on-the-go who don’t really want to take the time and login from our smartphones. We can access our mail and simply click reply.