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?

According to figures from comScore, visits to social networking sites Twitter and Facebook via mobile internet browsers showed triple-digit growth during January.

The study found that 30.8% of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, up 8.3% from 22.5% one year ago. Access to social network Facebook, in particular, grew 112% in the past year attracting 25.1 mobile users in January, compared to Twitter which experienced a 347% increase on the corresponding period of 2009.

Overall figures for January 2010 revealed that 11.1% of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via their mobile’s internet browser. This shows an increase of 4.6% over the past 12 months.

Such figures are proof that social media sites are increasingly being used by individuals worldwide regardless of their location, and this is where mobile marketing still holds great promise for marketers. Not only are users accessing social sites and community networks via their phones, they’re also feeling more comfortable making purchases from their handsets, as revealed by a recent Compete Smartphone Intelligence Survey.

I’d like to go back to one of my blog posts from last week, Building Good Online Branding While Being Consistent, and discuss one very important factor that was kindly brought to light by Dominique Lahaix co-founder & CEO of Cairn Inc., a privately held software technology company.

His comment was the following:

Thanks for the article. I like the stress on having an objective.

What I think is also critical is to target a specific audience.
Most marketers define their audience as “social media” and I think this is a huge mistake. The web is made up by a myriad of communities and tribes (that connects thru blogs, twitter, facebook) and what marketers should look at is how to select the communities that matter and develop the right value proposal, messages, strategies for these communities not to broadly and loosly diffuse messages into “social media”.

And my response to his statement was:

Yes, I entirely agree. Strategies should be developed to cater a specific audience from a specific network. It’s like having a campaign targeted to a Spanish-speaking audience and using the exact same campaign with the literal translation in English to target the English-speaking crowd…it’s just not going to work. Community profiles are different,they have different customs, demographics, psychographics,etc. Great point!

Like I said, great point. And this is why I decided to dedicate a couple lines to explain this very important aspect.

It’s true that in the thriving world of social media, things won’t always be as easy as they seem. At times, trying to define a comprehensive social media strategy for your brand can even be overwhelming.

But as Dominique stated, marketers cannot assume that the citizens of the ’social media’ universe are all the same, that they have the same likes and interests, speak the same language, or practice the same hobbies.

Before determining your social media objectives you need to first understand your audience. Once you have distinctive goals for your digital brand strategy you can then embark on ‘mini-campaigns’ which target specific audiences in specific channels. In short, your company goals will automatically help you determine the crowd you want to reach and further define the message you want to depict.

For instance, Twitter has proven to be effective on the CRM and customer service front, whereas Facebook can be more useful to interact with customers and foster relationships. And this translates to two different approaches for two different networks.

In addition, measuring your campaign results will become a less daunting task since the idea is to be able to examine each one of your campaigns individually and track your ROI until eventually pinpointing the social media channel that best fulfills your company’s objectives.

(hat tip to Dominiq for the inspiration)

Below is a list of activities to help you bring your physical event online by leveraging online tools like social networks and the likes.

BLOG

If you have a blog already, make sure you write about the given event well in advance and also a few days prior to it. Look into your sector’s blogging community and identify the bloggers that would be most likely interested in blogging about the event, and of course, don’t forget to invite them to the event.

CREATE A FACEBOOK EVENT

If your brand or service already has a Facebook Page, include the event on the page, plus highlights of the event, keynote speakers, images, ways to participate, etc. Event’s can be easily shared between users and if you like, you may also promote your event by launching a highly targeted Facebook ad campaign.

After the event, you can add photos of the participants, tag people and even thank them for joining. It’s a great way to start conversation between you and your audience.

TWEET! + HASHTAGS

Tweeting during the event can generate great buzz and get people talking. If people talk and comment about it, that’ll get more people interested and awaken curiosity about upcoming events. A few days ago I attended the Forum Digitale della Comunicazione here in Milan and it was great in the sense that they had a Twitter live stream being projected in a huge screen and all tweets being shown included the dedicated event hashtag: #fd10tag (no idea why they added the ‘tag’ at the end).

The good thing about hashtags is that those who couldn’t make it to the event can 1. keep up with the live streaming as the event occurs and 2. look up news on the certain event using the hashtag on the Twitter search field.

SOCIAL NETWORK STATUSES

We all love the ‘what are you doing’ or ‘what’s happening’ questions, but moreover, we love answering them. Why not make good use out of these and promote your upcoming event, where you’re headed, which event your attending, why you’re looking forward to it and who your favorite guest speakers are, etc etc.

USE BUSINESS NETWORKS

Take advantage of online communities such as LinkedIn or Viadeo to promote your event. Networks such as these are advantageous for joining groups and communities where you can easily find subjects related to your industry or sector. Also, now that Twitter updates can be synced with your LinkedIn account people can keep up with your tweets and current activities as they are broadcasted on your status update.

UPLOAD PHOTOS + VIDEOS

A good way to generate some good noise is by creating photo albums on sites such as Flickr or Facebook or by uploading videos on YouTube. Online sharing applications are the best to manage your photos and share them with the world. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words…People enjoy viewing pictures/videos, not only are they entertaining, they also serve to inform and give people a general idea of what the event, conference, roundtable was like.

Try these out and let us know how it goes!

A few months back we wrote a post discussing the importance of dedicating time to customers and how the rise of social media use can positively impact customer service as well as enhance interaction between brands and consumers.

This still holds true as we haven’t stopped witnessing great efforts on behalf of brands, for instance, @WholeFoods, who have turned to social media and harnessed channels such as Twitter and Facebook to reach their customers and build relationships.

On this particular post, however, I wanted to discuss the importance and the role of employees in a business when it comes to social media sites.

If you think about it, your employees are the people who are most familiar with your product or service, hence, they’re your biggest brand ambassadors. Because the interent gives everyone and anyone a voice through these social platforms, why not use the opportunity to leverage  your employees and make them active advocates of your brand.

According to Nielsen, 2/3’s of the world’s interent population visit social networking or blogging sites. Your employees are now on the web more than ever and being very social. Facebook, for example, has recently revealed that the average user has 130 friends on the site. Just about anyone can get access to the Internet and communicate with likeminded individuals who share the same interests that they do.

You can make your employees your biggest fans and have them showcase why your product or service is their absolute favorite. Make your employees feel like they can engage online by encouraging them to participate in social networks, forums or blogs.

The idea is for your employees to start dialogue, give valuable insight about the company and become influential enough to encourage others to join the conversation.

Your employees represent one of the best solutions to connect your business with your customers and start conversation. The more natural, spontaneous and sincere their interactions are, the more they will appear like real humans who are not trying to sell anything to anyone…and this can only result in one thing: open, friendly dialogue.

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.

The study also shows that advertisers are planning to allocate between 6 and 20% of their digital marketing budgets to social media this year, compared to just 14% in the previous year.

The main reason for this dedicated budget is to drive brand awareness and consideration, as declared by 77% of respondents, while another 75% said to use it to drive engagement and advocacy and 47% to drive product sales.

Though respondents didn’t exactly pinpoint which department should handle all social media initiatives and implementations, the vast majority, 73%, said that the marketing department should cover such activities, whilst another 33% declared it’s a job for the PR department, followed by 16% who said customer services should handle it.

The greatest challenge for the social media industry? 74% respondents declared that providing ROI was the hardest to attain, followed by 64% who made reference to seeing measurable results- a topic we covered on one of our previous articles.

The study revealed the following to be amongst the top social media activities mostly claimed by marketers:

* Twitter & brand monitoring= 51% of respondents

* Facebook Pages= 47% of respondents

* Branded communities= 39% of respondents

* Blogger outreach= 37% of respondents

* Video Distribution= 37% of respondents

* User Generate Content= 37% of respondents

More interesting data from the study includes the percentage of marketers who have not yet embraced social media at all, which made up 7% of respondents. In contrast, 22% of respondents have made it a core part of their communications strategy.

So far Google’s real-time search has proven quite effective for many of us. For those who are pursuing social media as part of their online marketing campaigns, Google’s real-time search capability is certainly a strong point in favor.

What marketers should be considering right now is that having an active role in social media can really help drive traffic to their websites and help them attain better rankings on the SERPs. With the inclusion of live Twitter streams,(and the likes), in the SERPs, social media has never been so important.

Here are some quick-tips we put together to get your brand found in Google’s real-time search:

1. Keywords are key- in our previous post we mentioned the importance of content and keywords. This time, we’re advising you to use keywords in anything you write, from content and titles, to updates on Twitter and status updates on Facebook.

2. Have a social media presence- create your brand’s Facebook Fan Page, Twitter profile, YouTube channel, but first understand your audience and harness the social media channels that fit your brand. Get social, go live, and gain exposure on the Web.

3. Share your content- make sure its easy for you readers to share your articles by including share links, icons and buttons that are visible enough to just click & share.

4. Fresh content- make sure you post information as it happens. Be timely. The quicker your post the news, the quicker you’ll occupya space in the SERPs.

5. Be social- once you have an online presence and have created a series of public profiles in diverse channels, the next step should be to engage and interact with your audience. Increase your community, your followers, your fans, and dont’ be afraid to foster relationships. The bigger your audience, the easier it will be to spread your content and give visibility to your brand throughout the web.

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?