Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn numbers

I took the following information from the post "The Big Three Social Networks Have Emerged as Professional Networks: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter" written by Don Bulmer:

- LinkedIn: LinkedIn has approximately 50 million users worldwide in 200 countries. The membership on LinkedIn is growing at roughly one new member per second. When LinkedIn launched in 2003, it took 477 days, almost a year and four months to reach the first million members. The last million took only 12 days. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

- Facebook: Facebook has over 300 million members with 150 million that log in at least once per day. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook are 35 years and older and according to Facebook more than 2 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared across the network, each week.

- Twitter: Twitter has more than 32 million members with the segment of 45-54 year olds being the top demographic and 25-34 year olds following closely behind at second. It has been found in other studies that baby boomers and senior citizens are more likely to join Twitter than their grandchildren.

I thought this was something interesting to share to get a picture of how social networks are doing today. If you want to read the full article, click HERE.

How to screw up your social media

Today, I read a very interesting article that talks about different ways to ruin your social media efforts.

Catharine Taylor, the author of the article "Eight Ways to Ruin Your Social-Media Strategy" points out eight common mistakes that occurred when managers deal with social media strategies. This is the list:

1. Pretend you can do without it
2. Play down the costs
3. Act like you own the conversation
4. Fear empowering your employees
5. Assume you have little to learn
6. Take negative feedback personally
7. Fret about return on investment
8. Understimate the power of seemingly small efforts

After reading this article, I couldn't stop thinking about the way my previous company managed its Facebook campaign. Taking into consideration the author's list, this is my personal reflection of the mistakes my company did:

1. Pretend you can do without it
My manager always thought social media was useless.
2. Play down the costs
He set up a campaign with the conviction that the only thing he needed to do in order to succeed was creating a company page on Facebook.
3. Act like you own the conversation
The language on the page was everything about "we are the best", "come and play", etc...
4. Fear empowering your employees
My manager was scared to death with the idea of people devoting time to Facebook during working hours. For him that stuff wasn't real work.
5. Assume you have little to learn
He didn't care about social media, he didn't believe in the fact that maybe user engagement could bring new ideas to the table affecting site improvement.
6. Take negative feedback personally
After we created the page, there were three groups on Facebook talking very bad about a pop-up campaign that we were using with an affiliate partner. My manager thought it was useless to interact with these angry users and try to deal with the problem.
7. Fret about return on investment
We placed some ads on Facebook with zero results in terms of ROI. After one week, he decided to abandon forever social media strategies.
8. Understimate the power of seemingly small efforts
He thought social media was useless... he didn't even know what Twitter was.

To that list, I would like to add one more thing:
Our site was oriented towards the Spanish market yet the page we created on Facebook was in English language!

What I saw on my previous company was probably one of the worst social media campaigns ever built. I blamed my manager for the failure of this campaign which unfortunately was one of the numerous problems he created with his management style... no wonder why the company eventually closed down.

Twitter Analytics

What is the best tool to measure your success with Twitter?

I came across a very interestting article (read full post HERE) that talks about a new tool (Tweet Level) developed by Edelman which allows you to measure your Twitter performance.

There was a comment made to that post that mentioned another tool called twendz which seems to be a good one too.

Now, I am wondering what could be the best tool I can use to measure my Twitter presence...

Social Media Manager

One of the nicest things about innovation is that it creates new job opportunities. The boom of social media confirms that trend. Social media has opened the doors to a new full range of job opportunities. One of them, is the Social Media Manager.

I read an article that highlights five essential skills a Social Media Manager should have:

1. You understand technology, but you love people.
2. You possess intellectual and emotional curiousity.
3. You're thoughtful, not impulsive or reactive.
4. You think strategically (and communicate the strategy).
5. You are an ensemble player, not a diva.

If you want to read the full post, click HERE.

Do you unfriend a lot?

And the word of the year according to the New Oxford American Dictionary is.... unfriend!

What does unfriend mean?... this is the official defintion:
Unfriend - verb - To remove someone as a "friend" on a social networking site such as Facebook.

Example: "I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight."

So, do you unfriend a lot?

To read full post click HERE.

Top 5 social media books

The other day, I came across a post on the website Mashable that mentions the top 5 must-read social media publications. The names are:

- Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
- The Whuffie Factor by Tara Hunt
- Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
- Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuck
- The New Community Rules by Tamar Weinberg

Has anyone read any of these books? which of these books would you suggest to read?

To read the full post click HERE.