Is Social Media a Fad or a Revolution? You Decide.

Love this updated “Social Media Revolution” Video on YouTube. It you’re thinking of developing your social media marketing strategy but still can’t figure out why you should, this may help you decide. It's engaging and interesting and I've commented and summed up some of the findings. Scroll down to see the video. 

Although I did not fact check them, according to this video:

One out of eight couples married in the US last year met via social media (perhaps social networks like Match and Eharmony?)

Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users, TV took 13 years, the internet took 4 years, Apple Ipods took 3 years, and Facebook, one of my favorite social networks, added 100 million users in less than 9 months!

My gosh, according to the video, if Facebook were a country it would be the fourth largest behind China, India, United States and then Facebook.

Also another fact in the recent 2009 US Department of Education study revealed on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction. Here's a link to the report. Let me know how what you think.

This is a big one: 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees. I understand Monster and some of the other career job sites can be quite expensive. 

The fastest growing percentage segment on Facebook is women 55 and over. Since I am a baby boomer, I love this stat. Us boomers still have a lot of drive and ambition.

Move over Ireland, Norway and Panama. Did you know that Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of those three countries? That's a lot of Tweeters.

And here’s one I’m not involved with because I know I would be too addicted but 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. And what could this mean for bad customer service?

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world – okay, that is my next project and I can't wait. We are talking over 100,000,000 videos.

If you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia, you would earn $156.23 per hour.

There are over 200,000,000 blogs and 54% of bloggers post or tweet daily. And isn't it fun?

People talk about brands online: 78% of consumers trust what their peers say about brands -  compared to only 14% trust advertisements. Have you found yourself doing internet searches to see what others have said about things they've bought that you're considering also? Ever searched on Twitter?

hulu (yes, not capitalized) has grown from 63 million streams to 373 million in one year. Wonder what type of affect this is having or will have on cable television.

We no longer search for the news, the news finds us. Anytime I get on my home page, Yahoo, I click on the news. I also receive New York Times emails updating the latest headlines. Plus, Twitter users tweet as the news is happening around them making news instantaneous.

This is a big one and one huge reason to be implementing your social media plan: In the near future, we will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media.

Love this one: Social media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate. And I would say a positive way of communicating where we are not pushing our agenda but being helpful, pulling customers towards us - the inbound marketing way.

And another one to love: Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy – Listening first, selling second. Look at my previous post where I write about Chris Brogan and being nice.