This presentation tries to explain the basic and fundamental mechanics of social media and their -still underestimated- influence on marketing communication as a whole. It dates back to q2/2009.

1. SocialMedia Basic mechanicsthatfundamentallyinfluenceyourmarketingcommunication

2. Social media evolves at light speed http://www.personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-count/

3. If Facebook were a country CHINA, 1.300 Mn USA, 305 Mn INDIA, 1.150 Mn BRASIL, 195 Mn FACEBOOK, 350 Mn PAKISTAN, 173 Mn INDONESIA, 240 Mn NIGERIA, 148 Mn The periods in which 50 mn new active users join Facebook shrink significantly over time. By mid-2009, Facebook has 70% of its population outside the U.S. Facebook-Blog, 2008 World Population Data Sheet

4. Global traffic heavyweights have changed significantly within 3 years Do not produce or buy content to distribute Morgan Stanley, Economy & Internet Trends, Dec 2008 Facebook stats (2009) 55 mn status updates daily 14 billion pieces of content (photos, links, notes etc.) shared per month 1.6mn active fanpages 500.000 active applications 2.5 billion photos uploaded monthly Delivering 600,000 photos per second Over 170 mn unique logins daily 8 billion minutes spent on FB daily Generating 25 TB of logfiles daily Facebook blog/stats

5. Social networks serve as aggregators of long tail content, private and professional Short tail Long tail

6. How would you try and find relevant content among a few billion choices?

7. Of course: Ask someone who knows. But who knows better? This guy? Or other readers? happens to be Andrew Rosenthal, chiefeditor of the New York Times New York Times bestseller list

8. What if you could have the bestseller list of your friends only?

9. That’s what social media does. With anything, not only books.

10. Traffic from Facebook – sorry: from friends – is more valuable

11. What happened? The old scheme Audiences Content producers Distribution Technologies One way, one to all distribution technology Big, passive group of audiences that serve as recipients only Privileged group due to financial barriers (technology to produce TV or radio content) or due to bottleneck oflimited available content distribution capabilities Bottleneck of limited available content distribution capabilities: TV or radio could air “only” 24h of content a day; a newspaper could only distribute x amount of pages a day.

12. What happened? Content, Technology and Audiences merged Audiences Content producers Distribution Technologies Anyone can produce contentwith widespread technologies like home computers, mobile phones, digital cameras. Anyone can passively consume content or actively review, promote, judge and comment on content as well as produce own pieces. There is no distribution bottleneck. Via Facebook alone (embedded player), Youtube airs 46.2 years of content a day. http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/

13. Effects on business communication 1: You cannottell anything to your audiences anymore Transparent markets where everyone can communicate experiences and opinions do not allow to cover up or hide anything from consumers. Best solution: Sell great products that people really appreciate.

14. Effects on business communication 2: You do not necessarily need ‘media’ or ‘mediators’ to connect with target groups “We’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive. We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.” Trevor Edwards VP, Nike October 2007 Many businesses considered the ones who paid them as their clients – dealers, supermarkets, “key accounts”. But of course, the money comes from us – the “end consumers”. Time to connect with them.

15. Effects on business communication 3: Nothing in life is free: You will have to listen to consumers. A large amount of media budget saved by communicating directly with consumers is best invested in making this communication valuable to consumers.

16. Effects on business communication 4: There’s no exceptional position for your content anymore. Super HOT! Your message. Someone read a book. Your messages need to be at least as relevant as someone’s status updates. And sometimes they better be more relevant than someone’s new baby photos, because this is your competition for attention nowadays. Someone plays Farmville. Someone’s on vacation. Someone joined some group. MEGA HOT! Some other brand’s message.

17. Effects on business communication 5: Embrace change. Launch and learn. Make the best of it. Also inside your company. The effects on business communication go way deeper than just adding a new channel. Organizational structures, processes, operations need to be different from running TV or newspaper ads. Educate your staff to embrace change.

18. There’s more where that came from.

19. Credits: personalizemedia.com/garys-social-media-count Facebook-Blog, 2008 World Population Data Sheet Morgan Stanley, Economy & Internet Trends, Dec 2008 New York Times, Living Social, Chitika Newtwork Camel, Coca-Cola, Global Web Indes, E-Marketer Farmville Other images from istockphoto.com dreamstime.com