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Social Media’s Global Growth

The stats on social media’s global growth are staggering.  A graphic recently posted in Mashable.com illustrates how the world consumes social media.  And boy does it!

Facebook Logo

 
We all know that Facebook now has one billion users in 127 countries and is the top social media destination.  It’s also interesting to learn how countries and regions outside the U.S. are adopting social media like Asia, which has grown to more than one billion Internet users in a little more than ten years.
 
Or that 800 million users visit YouTube each month with more than 70 percent of the site’s traffic coming from outside the U.S.  In fact, 700 of these videos are shared via Twitter every minute.  Moreover, LinkedIn increased its membership nearly by half in the last two years with Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia seeing the largest user growth.
 
All this data can seem very overwhelming.  Even though the growth of social media seems to be a no brainer when it comes to global marketing, many executives still fail to grasp the opportunity.  Let’s be clear: social media is not slowing down anytime soon.
 
Not all social media platforms may be relevant for every business organization.  There is no one size fits all solution for tackling this new media landscape.  However, given the global economy and the opportunities social media presents, these new platforms can help organizations engage with consumers, customers, and even investors, all over the world.  It’s like six degrees of separation on steroids. The proof is in the data.
 
So, the world is consuming social media.  Are you?

 

George Medici, gmedici@pondel.com
 
 

Video Killed the Radio Star

How much is a YouTube view really worth if the view comes from hiring a marketing firm?  Earlier this month, the L.A. Times reported that Los Angeles City Atty. Carmen Trutanich paid for YouTube views for his campaign videos promoting his run for district attorney.
 
His videos boasted 725,000 views, with the most popular clip surpassing any campaign video from GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum, according to the Times.
 
Sounds like payola to me.  But I wonder if some videos need “primer” views to promote organic views. Consider the psychological effects of viewing a clip with tens of thousands of views versus a couple dozen.   The more people that view a clip the more likely other people will view the same clip.  Before you know it, the video goes “viral” and begins to prompt some sort of social movement.  And then, perhaps, a politician is elected, a brand gets sticky, or a warlord is overthrown.
 
By now, many of us have heard about the Invisible Children video that net almost 80 million views in about a week.  Are all of these views organic?  Beats me, but the video’s content is very compelling and probably could have drummed up at least a million views without any help from fluffers.

Video Views

YouTube Video Views

 
The bottom line is that the digital world values transparency, and if you are going to hire a marketing firm to bolster views, perhaps disclosing this fact in the first few seconds of the video would actually enhance the credibility of your message.  After all, it’s a lot easier to disclose upfront that you are artificially inflating video views, as opposed to suffering the consequences of someone else, i.e. the media, disclosing this fact.
 
Even better yet, how about producing video content that is actually worthy of bona fide viewership?

 

— Evan Pondel, epondel@pondel.com