Startling Facts 3 - YouTube

Some startling facts about YouTube, the video sharing site that is the third most visited site on the internet. This data is all as of late 2010.

In November of 2006 Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion (that would but a lot of videos. It would also buy five Boeing 747 airplanes with enough left over to buy a country or two).

According to Alexa.com YouTube is the 3rd most visited website in the world (The #1 spot belongs to Google and #2 is FaceBook).

Facebook has 500 million users, YouTube has 300 million users and Twitter has around 100 Million users (although I have recently heard the number 200 million users - I will stick with the 100 million number for now. Either way, it is a lot of users).

The traffic on YouTube is 22% from the USA and 78% from the rest of the world.

A more detailed breakdown provides this information: User %

• 22.6% USA
• 6.7% Japan
• 4.8% Germany
• 4.8% India
• 3.7% United Kingdom
• 3.7% Italy
• 3.6% Brazil
• 3.6% Mexico
• 3.3% France, and,
• 2.7% Spain

(Looks like YouTube, in addition to being a very effective marketing tool is also great for reach an international audience.)

If you sat down to watch all YouTube content previously uploaded, it would take you 1700 years to watch it all. It is a safe bet that you would need to take a nap at some point during your viewing.

A full 24 hours of video is uploaded every minute.

That works out to 10 videos being uploaded every second, and

829,440 videos uploaded every day.

In addition to the short videos (they average about 2 minutes and 46 seconds each),

150,000 full length films are uploaded every week.

YouTube gets 10% of all internet traffic, that is 1 out of every ten visits to the internet is to YouTube.

YouTube get 2 Billion views per day (that looks like this, 2,000,000,000 views per day)

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world (behind only Google).


And finally, all that traffic to YouTube breaks down into the following traffic by age percentage.

• 3 to 11 years is 3% of the traffic
• 12 to 17 is 19%
• 18 to 34 is 35%
• 35 to 49 is 23%, and,
• 50+ is 19%

Thanks to www.go-gulf.com for the statistics

Social Media Marketing Basics 1

While the number of people participating in the world of Social Media is staggering (about 500 million for Facebook, 300 million for YouTube and say 100 million for Twitter) there seem to be just as many choices to be made, platforms to be considered and tools to be mastered. It is a lot to take in, and learn and try.

Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin all acting as funnels to pass
people through to your blog.

But it really is not as daunting as all that (yes, I just set up my own straw man so I could knock it down). Really, to start, there are only four platforms to consider. These are your blog, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter.

Your blog is your main site. It is where you tell people about you, who you are, what services and/or products you offer, how to find you and your store (either on the web or brick and mortar or both). The blog is the cornerstone of your virtual empire. It is your location on the internet.

There is a lot more to come on your blog and blogging in general.

The other three platforms, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin are all conduits. From each platform you are looking to gain Contacts (Linkedin), Followers (Twitter) and Friends (Facebook) or to be Liked (Facebook again).  Once you have made the connection on these platforms you try to move them to your blog. Once there they can discover the complete you and, hopefully, sooner or later, make a purchase of a product and/or service or add value in some way to your business.

This is not as cynical as it sounds at first read through. Business in general is about developing relationships. Twitter. Linkedin and Facebook are simply means to develop a relationship. Moving that relationship to your blog is simply further developing that relationship. You can make a sale at any point in the relationship and there are some relationships that will never lead to a sale.

The first step, therefore, on the road to Social Media Marketing is setting up your blog and accounts with Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook. In order to set up your accounts in the most efficient manner possible, you are going to need to define what you hope to gain through your Social Media Marketing efforts (making millions, while an understandable end, is not a great goal to start with). You are also going to need to determine what I will call your voice. Your voice is a coherent, systematic and consistent appearance across all Social Media platforms. Another term for Voice is Brand. I just find the term Brand a little more intimidating.

I will be going through specifics on your blog, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and your Branding or Voice in upcoming posts.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Many years ago, one of my first jobs out of college was as an insurance salesman for Met Life. My sales manager sat me down one day and drew me a picture on a yellow legal pad (the iPad of the day). Basically it was two half circles facing each other. In the lower part of the half circle he put a dot. It looked sort like this:

.) (.

But bigger.

"Brad" he said, "those half circles are bellies and the dots are belly buttons.  All sales and marketing comes down to putting your belly button next to a lot of other belly buttons, and then getting personal". 

So far as I can tell, that is what Social Media Marketing does. It enables the user to connect with a lot of other belly buttons. Except, instead of a smile and a hand shake, there is the Tweet, Follow, Like and Friend. The method of connection is a variety of internet tools. All the rest is just detail. 

I will get more into that detail soon.

Startling Statistics 2 - Twitter

Today it is Twitter's turn. More numbers that verge on the unimaginable! Again, my thanks to www.kunocreations.com and www.mashable.com for these statistics.

As for Twitter then:

Twitter has more than 106,000,000 users. One Hundred and six million, a huge number.

These 106 million users send out 640 tweets per second. That equals 55,296,000 tweets per day and more tweets per year than my small hand held calculator can calculate (I will get a new calculator, but for now you get the idea).

There are more than 300,000 new Twitter accounts set up every day.

While not as overwhelming as Facebook numbers, clearly Twitter is huge in and unto itself. Statistics like these demand attention. More, Twitter as a micro blogging site can be used for many and different purposes  than can Facebook. If nothing else, consider Twitter your announcement to 106 million users that you have a Facebook account.

More Startling Statistics - Facebook

More startling statistics on Social Media. This time just on Facebook (check back for Twitter tomorrow). The numbers are staggering, sometimes so large that they verge on incomprehensible. By the way, these numbers came, in one for or another, from www.kunocreative.com (I tip my hat to you!) who got many of them from www.mashable.com (another tip of the hat!).

We know already that Facebook has 500 million users. But did you know that 50%, that is 250 million, of them log on every day.  WOW!

Further, that 500 million users of Facebook translates to about one person out of every 14!!!

40% of the Facebook user base is age 35 and up.

One out of every eight minutes on line is spent on Facebook.

34% of Facebook users are from North America, 32% from Europe, 20% from Asia, 9% from South America, 3% from Africa and 2% from Australia.

US Internet users spend 3 times more minutes on blogs and social media than they do on emails (okay, that wasn't about Facebook, but I thought I would slip it in anyway).

Think about the potential for reaching and engaging with people based on these numbers. The potential is amazing.

Great Reading

Two great books that you have to read. Both are great motivators and both have great tools for you to use. (and yes, if you click on either link you will be taken to Amazon. The first book I have read and reread. It is a great motivator. It is by Timothy Ferriss and titled, The 4-Hour Workweek.

Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk is another excellent read.

The Power of Social Media

Why is Social Media so important to your business? It is not just that there are 500 million users signed up to Facebook or 175 million registered users on Twitter that you can try to get your message to. Rather its is that the buyers of your products and those that follow or friend you can communicate back to you about your product and that you can then engage them in a discussion. The possibility of engagement is where the real power of Social Media lies.

Traditional advertising is like a one way street. You throw out your message via TV or print ad and hope that it gets heard and then sticks.

Social Media on the other hand is a two way street. You put out information. Your customers and prospects put out information. Then both of you interact with each other about your respective information. Sometimes this two way street may seem more like a 25 lane super highway with no speed limit. But it is manageable and once managed, can be very lucrative.

The Biggest Shift Since the Industrial Revolution

Last week I attended SMACC2011 (#smacc2011). It was a conference at the Newhouse School of Communication at Syracuse University on the blending of Social Media and A Cappella singing. There was a lot of singing, but I spent my time in Social Media Marketing seminars. One seminar started on the phenomenal growth of Social Media. Some of the statistics and thoughts they revealed were, I thought, astonishing. Here are some of those revelations (the source of most of them are a book titled, Socialnomics dated May 5, 2010 - also found at www.socialnomics.com).

First, Social Media is called "The Biggest Shift Since the Industrial Revolution".

More:

Over 50% of the world's population is under 30.  96% of them have joined some form of Social Media

Facebook now tops Google for weekly traffic in the US

Social Media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the web

Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users

Television took 13 years to reach 50 million users

The internet took 4 years to reach 50 million users

The iPod took 3 years to reach 50 million users

Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year

If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest country in the world

China would be first, India second, Facebook third and the USA fourth

Facebook has more users than there are people living in the United States

80% of companies in the US use Social Media for recruitment

95% of these use Linkedin

The fastest growing Facebook segment is 55 - 65 year old women

Generation Y and Z consider email to be passe

YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world

There are over 200,000,000 blogs

34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.

(34% of 200,000,000 is a very large number)

Only 18% of traditional TV ad campaigns generate a positive ROI (return on investment)

90% of viewers skip TV ads completely by means of Tivo/DVR

where as, 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations

(such as they get on social media)

and only 14% trust advertisements

On Facebook, there are over 60 million updates a day.

And, a couple of quotes:

"Social Media is not a fad, it is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate".

and

"The ROI of Social Media is that your business will exist in 5 years".

(These are powerful words - and the emphasis is added).

These numbers are compelling evidence that if your business is not involved in Social Media, at the very least, it is missing a huge opportunity to be more profitable.  Further, this opportunity exists for every type of business, be it professional or store front or creative.

Social Media A Cappella Conference

Having just returned from the Social Media A Cappella Conference (#smacc2011) My excitement about the potential for Social Media Marketing has increased ten fold. I will, as soon as I get my notes sorted out, share many of the ideas, information and statistics learned there with you.  Until I have those notes sorted out, think about this, Social Media has now passed pornography as the number one use of the internet.