Despite consistent predictions to the contrary, the huge success of social media is not showing signs of cooling down.

Statistics from last year showed 82% increased usage of social networking sites. The Nielsen Company report also shows that together with blogs, social networks are the most popular online category ranked by the average time spent online in December 2009.

With its reported 350 million active users, Facebook is the uncrowned king of social media. As global users spend nearly six hours per month on the site, it’s becoming more and more difficult to bypass Facebook as a serious marketing opportunity anymore.

Social media is also leading the way in people’s use of the web on their mobiles. BBC has reported that Facebook accounts for nearly half of all the time spent online via mobile phones in the UK. Dominating the statistics, Facebook topped categories of most unique visitors, most number of pages viewed as well as most time spent on the site.

Recent reports have also hailed Facebook’s growing dominance as a traffic driver to online news sites. Research from Hitwise lists Facebook as the fourth largest distributor of online content demonstrating the growing attachment social media is establishing to our daily lives. Even the Vatican has recently been reported to have advised priests to start engaging in social media!

A meaningless toy or a real effect on ROI?

Enough statistics. I guess it’s safe to say that, at least at the moment, social media is massive and impossible to neglect in marketing strategies anymore.

But while more and more brands are making Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for themselves, many are still puzzled about what it is all for. Does it really matter? Is it really worth the all time and the effort?

While the general consensus seems to speak for the importance of online presence, some still argue that it might not be that essential.

Sienna Farris, director of social media marketing strategy for New York agency, Strawberry Frog, states in an AdWeek article that Twitter, for example, is not for everyone. She says while all marketers should mind the real-time mentions of their brand, there are only few areas where Twitter actually makes sense for marketers such as customer relations management and as a channel for promotions.

For those contemplating the real effect social media has on the business side of things, new tools of measurement are emerging.

Advertising measurement company, Millward Brown, is said to be moving towards establishing a service that will introduce digital word-of-mouth as a measurement alongside traditional ad effectiveness metrics such as awareness, brand lift and intent to purchase. AdWeek reported that together with “buzz-monitor” company, Cymfony, social media presence will be analysed using measurements like volume, sentiment and share of voice.

To tweet or not to tweet?

Research by eMarketer speaks on behalf of social media as part of marketing strategies. The results concluded that over half of new media users (53%) believe that brands should have a presence in new media. Over one third wanted regular interaction as part of that presence.

A friend interacting with a company via social media was seen as a positive image booster by 64% of the respondents. More than half (52%) also stated that they choose to follow or become friends or fans of a brand because they feel it helps to showcase their personality.

What’s restricting some companies to meet the interaction demands is the fear of negative publicity. Econsultancy research concluded that more than one-fifth of companies and one-third of agencies stated fear of reputation as a key problem for their brands to interact more efficiently in social media.

The fears can’t be accused of being unfounded. In addition to worrying how consumers will react online, the companies also have to worry about a possible problem coming from within – new online tools are an extremely easy channel for disgruntled employees to voice their frustration.

A recent example saw network company, Vodafone, send out a stream of individual apologises to its Twitter-followers after an obscene message was posted by an employee to the company’s account.

And it doesn’t even take a dissatisfied employee to get a company in social media trouble. It takes only a moment of thoughtlessness to make an unintentional mess online – one misjudgement and you find yourself sending out global apologies. The internet is ruthless in allowing anything juicy to pass the online communities’ scrutiny.

Football club Manchester United has recently warned their players about social networking sites – not strictly banning players from using them, but urging their players, especially the younger ones, to be careful with them.

According to the Econsultancy report, more guidance is needed in order for companies to learn to master the new tools of marketing. Social media is a huge opportunity to really engage with customers or fans and therefore not to be neglected.

The report stated: “To address this, there needs to be more education around how to deal with negative PR and social media crisis management, as well as best practice on how to engage in the first place.”

The future

There will always be the cynics who are ready to write Facebook and Twitter off because ‘that’s what tends to happen with internet phenomena’. A Telegraph article listed examples such as Six Degrees, Firefly, Friendster and Friends Reunited – all of which appeared to have established a prominent foothold in their time.

Twitter’s user statistics from mid-2009 alerted some hawk-eyed social media followers. The decline from 7.8 million new users a month down to 6.2 million, was considered enough to suggest that this is the beginning of the end for tweeting.

However, the fact remains that when scanning through online news services, it’s impossible to get far without bumping into articles analysing the usage of social media tools, contemplating their role and giving advice how to engage in them.

Rather than asking whether or not companies should think about social media in their marketing strategies, a more relevant question might be: why not just go ahead and do it? Even if hugely popular services like Facebook and Twitter would eventually fade away, there’s no doubt that others will follow, Google being the most recent one to join the game with its ‘Buzz’ – enabling Gmail users to create a profile page and post status updates.

Once the groundwork is done and social media added to the marketing strategy it’s easier to readapt to whatever will follow. The internet has changed the way people communicate and there is nothing to suggest marketing strategies would be excluded from that change.

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Case Study:

How to use social media effectively

Some companies have managed to effectively exploit the huge popularity of social networking tools in their marketing strategies. Some have tried bravely, but failed miserably. We have listed a few examples in trying to outline what works and what doesn’t. Read more…