Recently, we've become more social. Our Twitter and Facebook accounts have received makeovers and are more active. Our blog is expanded with more participation from our team in writing. We've written a few guest blogs, and we're participating in discussion on others' blogs. For example, we were one of the providers Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) discusses in The Personal Touch: Social Media Style, which I found to be a great compliment. If you participate in B2B marketing, you might ask, what's the point?
I am behind most of these interactions because we understand the importance of social outreach today. While social media may seem to be another advertising fad, I find these statistics worth a second thought:
- By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
- % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
- 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
- Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
- More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
These are from Socialnomics.net. Click here for more.
But, facts and figures aren't the only convincing case for spending time on social outreach. We find Twitter and Facebook a great way to announce Network Alerts and to stay in touch with our customers. In the past week, people wrote to OnSIP on Twitter to ask about a service interruption (luckily wasn't systemic), to thank us for support, and to ask for a Sales Rep to give them a call.
Regarding these interactions, you might ask, "Why didn't they email your Contact or Support email address on your website, instead?" I don't definitively know the answer to that; however, I could venture to guess it's because company email addresses often seem like automated black holes - You email them, you get an auto response, and then a real human doesn't contact you back for days. (We don't work that way, but I've surely experienced it.) Conversely, Twitter is live and active, run by a human with a personal touch if done right. And, Twitter is a platform that people are already perusing; so, my guess is it's simply convenient. We're big believers in convenience (example: we click to call our coworkers), so why not use Twitter?
Keeping up with the future of real-time platforms, I'm attending the #140 Characters Conference in NYC tomorrow. This event is organized by Jeff Pulver, an internet entrepreneur who in our industry, may be best known for the "Pulver Order," or the first FCC ruling regarding IP Communications. (Full PDF here; the main point is that computer-to-computer VoIP is not telecommunications and should not be subject to the same regulatory guidelines.)
"At #140conf NYC we will be taking a hard look at something Jeff Pulver calls “The State of NOW” and the continued effects the worldwide adoption of social communication platforms such as twitter is having on a number of industries. " - From the #140Conf website
I am hoping to get a few good ideas and insights into what's to come for social platforms and business. I'll keep you posted.