Are you savvy about social media?

“Live” from Hudson Valley DMA Rountable

Amy Heir, Marketing Manager, Spiegel Brands, clued us into the inside story on how social media is being used for business.

Amy cited these statistics:
√ 52 million NEW participants jumped into social media in Q01 2009 alone with women 55+ the fastest growing segment
√ Over 57% of online users join a social network
√ Facebook has 200+ million members. MySpace has 72 million users
√ Twitter and Facebook experienced explosive growth in the last 6 months
√ Collective time spent on social networking nearly doubled in the last 6 months

► Social media is impacting brand reputation. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands on their blogs. 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs

► Before you get started, find out what networks your customers are participating in, and determine what they’re looking for.

► Define you goals. Options include market research, product and brand awareness, product announcements, traffic generation, consumer engagement and buzz

► Twitter and Facebook are used to engage your customers. Companies like Victoria’s Secret PINK, Gap and Starbucks are using Twitter to converse with customers about their brands…discuss trends…and make special offers to that drive traffic to web or retail. One participant successfully uses Twitter to inform mailers of deals on lists

► Facebook and MySpace can be used to engage users while providing product information or offer status updates that feed into user’s news feeds daily, to attract new users and get consumer feedback and suggestions

► Twitter gives you a “birds eye view” of what customers think of your brand and engage in a dialogue with your customers – a direction connection - about what they want, all in 140 characters per tweet.

► Brands tweet to get feedback, clarify misconceptions, gain insight into customers, educate and some offer twitter-only promotions

► Be prepared to stay on top of your social networking efforts. There could be a flood of responses daily or even hourly

► Podcasts, videos, photos, send to a friend viral efforts can all be incorporated

► Self-serving puffery and marketing-speak is taboo

► Recommended books: Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li, Josh Bernoff and Social Marketing: An Hour a Day by Dave Evans

► Recommended blogs: http://mashable.com; http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/Default.aspx; http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/