‘social networking’

The reports on the latest social networking growth stats indicate that Facebook is the leader of the pack with Twitter second and LinkedIn trailing in third place. More significant is continues growth of the networks with Facebook, showing tremendous increase in usage. With over 1.1 billion users globally and attracting more than 81% of the Internet users, Facebook is by far the biggest gun in the social network industry.

Globally, social networking growth stats show that citizens in Israel spend the most time at social networking with more than 11 hours a month per user. The people of Argentina are not far behind with over 10.6 hours a month per user and then Russians with their more than 10.3 hours monthly. Turkey, Chile, The Philippines and Colombia are not far behind. Trailing the top ten are Peru, Venezuela and Canada. Surprisingly, the US citizens spend less time on social networks than the citizens in the above countries, with South Africans not yet coming close.

Gender Profiles

Reports further indicate that women use the social media sites for comparison with their female peers whilst the men use such for finding friends. Men love the idea of body photos whilst women tend to add facial photos.  Men use the platforms for finding information about people whilst females tend to use such for personal engagement.

Social Networking in South Africa Compared To the USA and Europe

Studies indicate that more than 75% of Americans use social networks with European users slightly behind them, but when it comes to South Africa, the picture looks different. Reports show that Twitter has grown its market tremendously to now include more than a million users with estimates indicating that more than 39% of the users are active. With the majority of users in South Africa, only joining during 2010-2011, it is definitely the hottest new thing on the social media scene when it comes to South Africa.

The South African Social Media Landscape 2011 released by World Wide Worx and Fuseware indicated that the SA media is mostly responsible for the tremendous growth in Twitter usage. Accordingly, many use the platform for retrieval and for following of news.

When it comes to Facebook, the social network growth stats indicate that many of the users didn’t even log in during 2010-2011. With more than 4.1 million users and only around 3.1 million plus, who logged in during the period, it seems as if the obsession with Facebook in South Africa has subsided a bit.

Numerous users now utilize BBM and MXit as well as Twitter instead, whilst some, and only some, have begun to use Google+.  Many of the Facebook users have accounts, but only occasionally visit their profile pages to upload new pictures or to play a game or two.

Surprisingly, LinkedIn has also passed the million user mark with reports indicating 1.1 million users. It shows tremendous growth with active usage also on the increase. It has indeed shown more than 86% growth in one year. Only a tenth of the users are businesses.

MXit, though certainly not forming part of the international social networking growth stats, is still the largest mobile social media platform for the country. Its user profile shows that more than 74% of the users are teens and younger kids. It is thus, apart from BBM, the preferred platform for social networking when it comes to the youth of the country.

USA Usage

When it comes to the USA, Facebook is definitely the most important of the social networks with reports indicating that more than 57% for the users use the platform on a daily basis. LinkedIn has a smaller market penetration with just over a fifth of the user profile and Twitter in the same region.

European Usage

The Europeans are surprisingly conservative in social media usage with about half the profile logging into one social platform only. Around two thirds of Europeans use at least one of the social media networks with over 60% logging in at Facebook on a regular basis and around 15-17% on Twitter. Another social network called Vkontakte that takes around 11-13% of the user profile.

New Networks

Apart from BBM that has made its mark, reports indicate that users don’t easily migrate to other networks or add them to their profiles.  It may explain the low usage level of Google+, although it certainly has enough subscribers, just not active users. Smaller social media networks will have an even harder time in penetrating the market. It can be ascribed to persons already having all their contacts at Facebook or LinkedIn and with them already following tweets they don’t seem to have more time or willingness to add another platform to their schedule. People, according to experts in the field, tend to ignore smaller social networks because of the low level of interactivity.

 Social Networking and Branding Growth

According to the various reports, globally the USA and European users follow brands, although international figures suggest that only half the number of users from other countries, including South Africa, actively follows brands on the social networks.

Other reports indicate that MySpace usage is on the fast track downwards with Tumblr surprisingly showing growth. Accordingly, the average time spent at Facebook has increased to more than six hours a month for the USA profile. Market dominance of the big players in social networking will continue, and currently only around five networks show massive growth while the thousands of other networks have indeed shown a decrease in activity.

Social Networking Growth Stats in Japan

The Japanese, according to reports, love Facebook and Twitter just about the same, but when it comes to usage, Facebook leads with more than 52% of the sharing whilst Twitter is only used for just under 14%. Twitter has, however, shown tremendous growth in 2011 with more than 576% growth in one year. Google has shown a drop in usage of around 7-8%. Reports indicate that more than 11 million of social networking users globally are in Japan.

Social networking growth stats clearly indicate Facebook as the leader. Twitter and LinkedIn are the two other big players, but usage trends differ from country to country. In South Africa, as shown, MXit and BBM are also big, with Google+ not really a threat to any network. What is important is to take note of the tremendous growth in social media and networking. Any business hoping to reach their target audience must make use of the social platforms where their users are in addition to offline marketing and their websites.

Google has introduced the Google+ on a limited scale at present. Before you jump on a search to join, it is at present open on an invite only basis. It may be because Google first wants to test the market and avoid unnecessary publicity and questions regarding Google Buzz or perhaps to create suspense. What is more important though, is whether Google+ can outperform Facebook or will be, yet another one of Google’s less successful social media network rollouts.

No doubt, Google is the best when it comes to search engines and many Facebook users don’t appreciate Facebook’s lack of concern about their privacy. Whether Google+ will replace Facebook completely will depend on the features offered, marketing of the social network, and of course integration with other applications. At this stage it is just another platform for social communication, but it can grow into a Google Giant.

There are positives and negatives as with all applications. The Google Plus, written as Google+ is perhaps not the best of names to select. For one, it definitely creates confusion with the Google +1 Button. Upon request to post about Google+ and Facebook, the original post was written about the Google+1 Button and Facebook Like, simply because of confusion. To further add to the confusion, the Google +1 feature in Google Plus differs from the Google +1 Button used for searches in Google. With all the plusses one can almost get into a state of total puzzlement and leave everything altogether out of fear of making a mistake when talking to people.

Google has named it a project rather than one of their new products with the idea that it would be seen as one of their features rather than a product taking on the social network giant Facebook. According to Google it is not intended as competition for Facebook, but rather another way of connecting and sharing, although it certainly comes across as a social network just as Facebook.

Similarities And Differences Between Google+ And Facebook

Facebook allows users to create specific groups and lists of contacts. The Google+ version is the Circles where the user drags and drops contacts into various Circles, allowing for sharing of information with specific groups only. If you are thus not comfortable sharing information about your cat that just died with the whole bunch of contacts, you will be able to select a Circle with contacts who will give the required sympathy. It will enable the user to split social and office life gossip. It is better than the friend lists in Facebook in the sense that the Facebook lists don’t give you the opportunity to selectively share information with a few friends. You can make group posts though with Facebook Groups. You normally end up making groups to share specific information with and it doesn’t have the easy drop and drag feature of Google+.

On the negative side for the Circles – it is still a lot of work, especially if you have the 100 closest friends in a circle and another 900 contacts to organise. Apparently not the easiest to use in the beginning, it becomes a rather useful feature once you get the hang of it.

Newsfeed & Stream

Facebook has the newsfeeds which enable users to see what their friends have posted. One can stream updates, the most recent posts or everything.  Google+ has Stream, located at the top of the box where you post your status updates, photos and other content you want to share. You will select a Circle from which you want to get a stream unlike the Facebook newsfeed option that shares information about everything posted recently, updates or all.

Making It Easier To Share Information With Non-Google Plus Users

Google+ has a feature that enables you to still share information with users that only have email addresses and have not joined the network formerly by adding them to one of your circles. They will be able to see what you have shared with the particular circle of friends. You can also follow a person that has not added you as a friend, provided they share information publicly. What they share with their particular circles will still be a mystery. The only negative about sharing with people who have not befriended you is that you can easily fill their email inboxes since they will be notified when you post for a circle where their details appear.

Importing Contacts

At present you will not be able to import friends from Facebook. You will be able to use all the emails, but for understandable reasons, Facebook at present doesn’t allow for exporting of friend details to Google+. As such you will have to create your contact base in Google from scratch, but can use present Google contacts to get it jump started. The upside is that one can export details from Facebook to Microsoft and Yahoo!. Using the two you can then get your friend details to Google+. One should note that although contact information can be obtained, the contacts will not include their friends. This little glitch can make it difficult to get Google Plus to grow fast, especially because Google Buzz is not included in the picture as it will at first be kept separate and may never be integrated with the Plus project.

Plus & Like

Facebook has the Like option allowing one to show others what you think is worth considering or when you generally just like something. Google+ has the +1 button. You will +1 for the same reason. Just a note on the plus one buttons on the search and those offered in Google Plus. The two are not related. Nothing you +1 in the Google search feature will be related to your +1 in the social network. It is confusing. As such there is a +1 for the search which is not related to Google+ the social network. Facebook has a definite advantage here. At present the only way to see what a person has +1’d in the Google search feature is to view their Google Profile. Apparently the +1 of the social network and +1 button in the search will eventually be integrated, but not for now.

Hangouts & Huddles

Hangout is the one feature that may get Google+ off the ground and get Facebook users to join in the network. Hangout is the video chatting option where up to ten persons can at the same time chat by means of video. It is definitely something to consider for work meetings or friends who for instance, play Paintball together. Everyone in the particular circle can contribute to the conversation and it is done video based. As soon as a user launches a Hangout, the friends in the circle get a notification. Pretty soon everyone can join in and have a video chat. This is better than the Facebook chat at present and also a bit more private. It is for instance, possible to share a video to a whole group of people. The Huddles feature is the Google non-SMS chat feature for mobile applications. Information about the feature is still a bit limited and as such keep an eye on this spot for more about it in future.

In Summary

Google+ offers more privacy than Facebook and better organisation of contacts. It has the Hangouts and Huddle features. In addition, it also offers Stream allowing for high quality picture feeds. There are other smaller features such as Sparks (sparking conversation on a topic and allowing to follow a specific topic), and then the ability of mobile users to add their location. Facebook is extremely popular, not so private, yet, familiar to users. Facebook is rather easy to use and doesn’t have a confusing name. The Like is already integrated with searches whereas Google+ has kept the +1 for social and the +1 for search separate for their launch. Google has it made it possible to integrate various Google products such as the Google Profiles, the Chrome search toolbar and Gmail as well.

Facebook, however, still wins on the topic of user-friendliness and simplification. You need a Google Profile that will have some information displayed publically. The Circles feature is great, but with one user being able to have more than one email account, you may end up with a user in two circles receiving two notifications every time. It still has some glitches and for people familiar with Facebook there may not be enough incentive to make use of another social network. If Google+ focuses a lot of attention on the Hangouts feature, they may be able to get more Facebook users. Other video chat applications such as Skype may get the boot in the long run and Facebook will have to bring something better to the table to keep their users at home.

Without contest Facebook is the ruling giant in the land of social media. In fact, comScore Inc. recently did some research in the US to see exactly how Americans spent their time online with astonishing results. According to comScore Inc. the average US Web surfer spends more time socializing on Facebook then searching on Google!

Now for those of us working in the online world this study holds great importance because it completely affects the purpose and position of online marketing. As business owner you can no longer ignore social media as part of your action plan to drive more traffic to your website in order to build a brand name for your company, gain consumer loyalty and essentially ensure ROI growth. Apart from these factors, social media is also a low-cost promotional method that will give you direct and easy access large number of online visitors, i.e. potential clients.

In December 2009 Google launched their “real-time search” which allowed the indexing of information as they were happening on the web. This included their collaboration with Facebook updates, Twitter feeds, Blog posts, Google News feeds, Yahoo! Answers and last but not least, MySpace feeds, thus allowing Google users to get the latest results on various “Hot Topics”. The main reason why this change was introduced was for the obvious reason that social media is a rich source of information. More than that is how it allows businesses to tap into the opinions and insights of online users, thus giving you an edge when it comes to online marketing. But first, let’s look at the leading social media websites and networks out there:

Facebook

As stated before Facebook has rapidly grown into the leading social networking site the world has ever seen and causing many ripple effects along the way. While MySpace holds onto a meagre 5.0% of the market share, Facebook controls approximately 24%, which is more than double the amount of its closest competitor in the form of emails (11.1%), thus making it the main place users go to to share content. The key factor though is how easy Facebook makes it for you to promote your company whilst connecting with users in a personal and trustworthy manner.

When you eventually come to the realisation that no online business strategy is complete without a Facebook fan page, then consider your options of how you should go about doing so. You can either do it yourself (which requires a keen knowledge of HTML) OR you can call in the professionals to create a killer fan page for you to include such things as a fabulous design to suit your branding, and Blog feeding into your fan page. Of course the simplest thing to do is give us a call and we can help you with the whole package that includes both search engine (SEO) and social media optimization.

Then there are the demographics. Facebook allows you to advertise to a very specific market. This means that you are able to choose whether your ad should be shown to male or female, old or young, single or married Facebook users. But you can be even more particular than this. Looking for users who, for example, show some interest in pets? No problem. Facebook will be able to pin down and advertise to users that used or referenced specific details, like a love of their beloved dog Rover, allowing you to directly get in touch with your target market.

Twitter

This free social networking and microblogging website is, aside from Facebook, a hot favourite amongst internet users. In 2009 Nielsen reported that this social media platform attracted 21million unique visitors giving it a near 2000% increase year-over-year. With an average of up to 370,000 new users signing up daily, Twitter made it public that they plan to redesign the website so that their millions of users may find it easier to search and navigate.

A lot of Twitter followers access their account by way of text messages, mobile phone- and desktop applications. In hindsight this means that the number of Twitter users is actually higher. For business owners it provides the chance to build and sustain relationships with their existing clientele as well as reach new potentials.

The drawing attraction of Twitter is that things are kept short and sweet, thus allowing users to quickly and frequently update their own messages, or tweets which are restricted to 140 characters, as well as respond to those they follow. As business owner it gives you the unique opportunity to interact and share information with your followers, thus allowing your company or brand to maintain top of mind awareness as well as establish it as a leader of opinions. Moreover, the Google spiders pick up on tweets which in turn help to drive more traffic to your website.

A Few Other Social Media Applications

Apart from Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, companies can also use YouTube to their advantage. This video sharing application draws much attention and have proven to give unknowns the time of day they wouldn’t have had otherwise; case in point Die Antwoord. This South African band was an unknown until their music video “Enter the ninja” spread like wildfire amongst online viewers and eventually got them a record deal with an American record company. You can easily integrate it as part of your online marketing strategy by uploading optimized videos about your product or service, thus allowing your consumers to have a quick and easy video access whilst using the SEO factor to your advantage.

Bookmarking has never been as pleasing since del.icio.us made its appearance. While links from sites such as del.icio.us aren’t really worth much from a search engine perspective – you can’t optimize like one would normally as their robots use “noarchive, nofollow, noindex” Meta tags – they do however still drive quite a bit of traffic to websites when used correctly. You can achieve this by means of tagging pages with the relevant keywords. Let’s use the example of pets again. When submitting your blog post about training your dog, be sure to post it to your del.icio.us account and tag keywords like “dog training”, “obedience training”, and “dog training tips”. Automatically these pages will have their own RSS feed which readers, such as bloggers, will tap into, as well as individuals interested in the particular topic. This not only heightens your chance for more online exposure, but also better your click-through rates, and if your content is good, the possibility that the reader will link their website with your own.

Finally, to bring our post to its conclusion, it becomes evident that social media applications hold many benefits in that they not only can, but will assure you a great online presence. Yes they will require a little more attention and effort, but if done correctly you, your brand and company will most definitely be able to reap the benefits – especially with the help of a professional online company such as iLeadOnline. So the question you should be asking yourself is not whether or not you should include social media as part of your online marketing campaign, but rather why haven’t you already?

One of the key concerns which have caused major debates on the subject of Facebook is the matter of privacy. The fact of the matter is that this social media website has completely revolutionised the way we interact with people online. Without a second wasted people share their every thought, feeling, comments, photos, videos and shared links, and considering that 350million people are registered, Facebook is the undisputed king of social networking.

While many people revel at the mere thought of sharing all kinds of details about themselves, there has been the global concern about privacy and how sharing private information could affect us as individuals. The user did have the choice though as to how much information they are willing to share by merely going to the privacy setting and choosing what they want to share with whom. This changed dramatically though in December, 2009, when Facebook’s privacy settings changed in a fundamental way in that Facebook users couldn’t restrict access to their profile the way they used to.  Of course the reaction was one of outcry as this raged the debate of privacy, public information and Facebook even further.

The latest in the “Facebook privacy” saga came about on the 18^th of August, 2010, when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced their newest venture – Facebook Places – a Smartphone-based service. This foray into the world of location-based services’ main aim is to bring about 3 things:

• To help users share their exact location for social purposes;
• To help you as a user see who of your friends are nearby; and
• So that you may discover nearby places as well as new places by means of your Facebook friends’ profiles.

In light of the privacy debate focus was placed on Places’ security features wherein it was pointed out that the “check-ins” that users would select when pinpointing their location would be, by default, only visible to their friends. Of course the user will be able to customise the setting should they want to share this information with a broader group or restrict it to only a few selected friends. Moreover, people will only be able to tag those on their friends list in when checking in on Places. To ensure that mischievous behaviour is limited the service will only allow you to check in a friend if the user checks themselves in too, thereby avoiding users to check their friends in at embarrassing places. In case a user was tagged but prefer not to be, they will have the option to remove the tag or opt out from being tagged at all. There will also be a reporting feature on Places where users can report any locations listings that are either offensive, erroneous or outdated.

The day after the announcement Facebook launched the read API which allows people to read check-ins as well as providing them with information about a place. The write- and search API is currently in beta testing phase and said to be soon rolled out by the developers.

The question still remains though whether or not this is sharing too much of one’s private details. Facebook’s VP of Product Chris Cox shared his enthusiasm about the future and how this device will be able to tell us all kinds of facts about a place and which of our friends are there or have been there before, what pictures they shared when visiting the place and whether or not they had a good time. You need to ask yourself this though – do you really feel the need to share so much of yourself as individual? On the other hand, this could only mean great things for business owners and their online marketing strategy.