It’s the business of engagement, of interpretation, of reaching people before they reach the product or service they love. Social media from an instrumental perspective has helped evolve a sub-class of new society based on their participation in online activities. It has changed the way we look around us.

Earlier it was considered a platform for socializing, a window that connects people, an auxiliary for leisure, a corner to share emotions and share ideas. Over a period of time it transformed into a major marketing pillar. From start-ups to local business and multinational corporations, all businesses recognized the need to expand their presence online using sites that connect and involve direct human participation.

Days of traditional marketing through newspapers, magazine advertisements, posters and television commercials seem to be fading. The size of human engagement online is greater than conventional marketing mediums.

Marketing, no matter conventional or technocratic, blows away barriers and distance between potential customers and the product. A real-time analogy tells us that online marketing through social media sites makes far-reaching interactions with millions of people at the same time easy.

Simple Facebook or LinkedIn user statistics are enough to support the view that, in comparison of conventional marketing, digital marketing through social media is powerful tool because it engages an unthinkably large number of people.

It all takes places beyond fun, games, status updates and tweets; an unimaginably vast playground filled with digitized thinking.

According to the Digital Marketing Ramblings‘ website release of statistics of the number of people using the most popular social media sites, Facebook is on the top slot with 1 billion users, followed by YouTube with 800 million users and 4 billion views per day, QQ with 700 million users, and the Micro-blogging platform Twitter has 500 million users.

Further, Sina Weibo has 400 million users and LinkedIn has 175 million users. According to Media bistro, in their social media marketing industry report, 83 percent of marketers believe that social media is important, and about 94 percent of marketers use social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter for business purposes.

A tally among the tools reveals that Facebook is in the top slot on the preference list of marketers, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn. This is testimonial information with an indication that social connectivity will be helpful for businesses based on customers’ presence.

However, some critics argue that as users gradually move to mobile phones from the computer, advertisements need to undergo technical renovation to keep the communication line alive, or else days are numbered for online marketers.

According to Mashable, Kleiner Perkins’ partner Mary Meeker illustrated the financial gap in her annual trend report that says mobile phones occupy 10 percent of people’s media consumption time and commands only 1 percent of advertising budgets.

It’s an indication that marketing will undergo change following consumer decisions; it means that as screen size expands or contracts (from personal computer to laptops, from tablets to mobile phones), advertisements will change to fit them.

But perhaps, no matter to what platform on-line marketing may divert, it is for sure days of digital marketing are greatly radiant.

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London, England — On October 24, Rising Media and WebMediaBrands, producers of the AllFacebook Marketing Conference, announced that Vincent Sider, Vice President of Social Media for the BBC, will open this year’s London conference as the keynote speaker.

Sider will address how the BBC harnesses social technologies and explores opportunities for enhancing engagement and monetisation across a variety of social media platforms, including Facebook. In his role, Sider creates and delivers social media strategies to support the broadcast company’s global brands.

A full-day event designed for professionals who are interested in leveraging Facebook to grow their businesses and extend the social reach of their brands. The conference is packed with case studies, practical advice, and concrete examples of how to monetise content through this social media platform.

Sider’s presentation marks an exceptional opportunity to learn how one of the world’s largest broadcasters is successfully leveraging social media. Attendees will walk away with advice and actionable tips to apply to their own social media strategies.

“Being responsible for the BBC’s social media strategy is a mammoth task in a corporation which has so many worldwide brands,” said CEO of Rising Media, Matthew Finlay. In his opening presentation, Sider will outline why Facebook, as well as other social media platforms, are fundamental to the BBC’s marketing plans and reveal just how they leverage the multitude of opportunities this presents.”

Additional conference speakers include professionals from Kred, Yorkshire Tea and Taylors Coffee, salesforce.com, Syncapse, Spruce Media, and more.

AllFacebook Marketing Conference is being held on 19 November at 200 Aldersgate, London.

Click here to register for the conference.

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Boca Raton, U.S.A. — LinkedIn, a business to business social media site whose membership now exceeds 175 million with an average of two members joining per second. Ray Knight, Chief Envisioneer Officer of The RaynMakers, is considered a LinkedIn guru and has partnered with TransMedia Group to offer his knowledge to professionals seeking clients and to businesses looking to grow.

“Most individuals and  businesses know what LinkedIn is and have a presence on it, but very few professionals know how to properly utilize the site in order to generate more business. I’m excited about my partnership with a public relations leader like TransMedia Group and look forward to helping businesses make LinkedIn a valuable tool,” said Ray Knight, CEO of The RaynMakers.

Knight has spent eight years working with LinkedIn profile creation and optimization. He helps businesses better position themselves within LinkedIn with completed profiles that rank high in keywords. Knight has achieved page one position for a number of clients including executives and business owners alike including:

• Attorneys
• Catering Companies
• Consultants
• Consumer Goods Executives
• Doctors
• Digital Revenue Executives
• Financial Executives
• Indoor Environmentalists
• Limousine Owners
• Moisture Instruction Experts
• Real Estate Executives
• Spa /Wellness Centers

“We are so pleased to be linked in with Ray Knight as his expertise will help individuals and companies leverage the LinkedIn network. His knowledge will help businesses and our clients maximize their LinkedIn ranking position and search results, which will equal more business,” said Tom Madden CEO and Founder of TransMedia Group.

For more information, visit www.transmediagroup.com/socialmedia.php.

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The banking and telecommunication sectors in North Africa have not utilized the power of social media yet, according to Amine Jabali, Managing Partner, Peppers & Rogers Group.

Social networking is becoming more and more relevant in today’s world, especially in the North Africa region. As evidenced by the impact that Social Media has had in fueling the Arab Spring, the companies should embrace this new trend and place increasing focus on Social Media activities. In fact, they need to enter the ‘Social’ era with a structured approach and best practices in their Social Media adoption.

“Telecommunication companies reacted but they have not used the full potential of social media; they have responded only by providing the gadgets, but the telcos are yet to leverage the use of social networking to generate revenues,” Jabali argues. The telecom companies, even the banking sector can leverage through building advocacy or affinity. “As an example, the telecom and banking sectors can create clubs for high school or university students using the power of social media. You can talk to this group of people and know their interest/needs and can bring them forward to be more loyal to you in the early stages of their professional lifecycle,” Jabali suggests.

Jabali notes that customers nowadays are not only intelligent, but also becoming more and more demanding. “It’s not about ‘I’ll take what you give’ anymore. It’s about ‘provide what I need’. It is a challenge for the firm, but we see that companies are adapting to new challenges,” he asserts. “We see more and more customers purchasing smart phones not only because they have cash, but because they know the value of what they are paying for,” he adds.

Many companies have already reaped significant benefits from incorporating Social Media as part of their strategy, by being able to effectively and efficiently build new and reinforce ongoing relationships with existing and potential customers. Marketing can use Social Media to drive brand awareness, deliver relevant information and generate new leads; Customer Support can leverage social channels to respond to enquiries and complaints, as well as solicit customer feedback; whereas Sales can utilize Social Media to support customer acquisition strategies.

“Social Media can also be instrumental in managing and protecting corporate reputation,” Jabali notes. Unhappy customers can reach out to thousands of online users through Facebook, Tweets and other Social Media channels and the adverse effect to company’s reputation through such outbursts can be staggering if the appropriate remediating actions are not taken.

Companies need to have a comprehensive Social Media presence to provide the customers with an ‘always on’ channel that is able to meet their sales and service needs. “Pioneers in Social Media in North Africa will find that investing in this new channel will create not only brand awareness and social engagement with their targeted segments, but also to generate consistent uplift of revenue year after year,” concludes Jabali.

Image Courtesy of  Studentersamfunnet i Bergen

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San Francisco, U.S.A. — Media Sentiment, is of the opinion that the following is a material event which warrants a public release. The Company is pleased to report that it is in the final stages of finalizing the acquisition of a new asset, namely the social media video curation technology of videocourier.com.

Media Sentiment immediate plans are to start the work on integrating the videocourier.com technology into the media sentiment set of tools. The plan is to use this new social networking technology to enable users from around the world to easily create and share video channels, in real-time by curating video clips of material importance to equities, currencies, bonds and any other financial instruments.

The intent is to make this technology available in as many languages as possible, from available news sources around the world. Currently, the technology already supports video clips from news sources such as CNBC, Reuters, Forbes, CNN Money, The Wall Street Journal, TheStreet.com, CBS News, Morningstar, Yahoo Daily Ticker, AOL Business, as well as international sources such as BBC, Aljazeera, European Commission and EuropeNews and others.

Marion Munz, Media Sentiment’s CEO said, “Social media curation is seen by many experts as the next major media trend for social networking technologies, following the extraordinary valuations of the traditional social media networks. As an example, Pinterest.com, one of the latest darlings of Silicon Valley investment community, has recently received a $1.5 billion valuation, due in part to the perceived growth potential.”

Media Sentiment sees as a tremendous opportunity to create one of the most comprehensive databases of video news that shakes markets around the world, by making use of its trademarked thumbs up and down symbols to indicate the sentiment coming from video news and information that moves markets. The trademarked meaning of the thumbs up and thumbs down symbols should be easily understood by anyone, in any language, therefore maximizing the impact and timeliness of the news.

The company will continue its search for additional acquisition candidates, and foresees closing this transaction within the next 3 to 5 business days.

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Dallas, U.S.A. — Social Media Club of Dallas, a premier networking and education organization dedicated to marketing and new media, along with platinum sponsor, Sprint, has announced that its August 16 meeting will feature a panel of social customer care experts moderated by Bryan Person, Director of Social Insights for Social Dynamx. Bryan and panelists Tony Turnage of FedEx, Sean Valderas of Nokia and Mike Cearley of Fleishman-Hillard will discuss the challenges that businesses and brands face in building a successful customer service operation in a social world, including:

• Customers’ impatience and expectation of instant responses
• Confusion associated with tracking posts across multiple channels
• Using social tools that weren’t designed to support customer service
• Tracking the elusive ROI of customer service
• Communicating with customers in a public forum

The panel will educate the audience on how to overcome these challenges and deliver exceptional social customer service to customers and fans.

“More than ever, customers are reaching out to companies on social media when they have customer service issues and questions,” said Bryan Person. “And when they do, they *expect* a response — and fast. I look forward to discussing how businesses and brands are adapting to this new reality during our panel.”

The meeting will take place from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 16, 2012, at the Angelika Film Center Dallas in Mockingbird Station. Guests are invited for more networking at a post meeting Tweet-Up at Trinity Hall. Early registration tickets cost $35 and are available through August 15, 2012. Tickets on the day of the event are $45, if available.

Please register here for the event on Eventbrite.

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The National Inflation Association has announced that it believes Facebook will likely start trading this May at a peak valuation of $100 billion and see its market capitalization and share price decrease in value in the years afterwards.

Facebook has successfully grown their monthly active users from 1 million in 2004, to 6 million in 2005, to 12 million in 2006, to 58 million in 2007, to 145 million in 2008, to 360 million in 2009, to 606 million in 2010, and to 845 million in 2011. After achieving compound annual user growth from 2004 to 2010 of 191%, Facebook’s user growth in 2011 declined to only 39%.

If Facebook begins trading with a market cap of $100 billion, Facebook will be trading for approximately 27 times 2011 revenue of $3.711 billion and approximately 150 times 2011 net income of $668 million.

A price/sales ratio of 27 and P/E ratio of 150 is too high of a premium to pay for a company that has just reached 50% market penetration in the U.S. Moving forward, NIA believes in 2012 we will likely see Facebook’s user growth decline to 20%, with its user growth declining to just 15% in year 2013 and 10% in year 2014.

It is unlikely that Facebook will ever be able to achieve the same market penetration in Europe that they have achieved in the U.S. Facebook needs to expand into the Chinese market, but the Chinese government has blocked off access to the social network.

In October of 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million into Facebook at a valuation of $15 billion. In January of 2011, Goldman Sachs’ international clients invested $1.5 billion into Facebook at a valuation of $50 billion.

While Microsoft is set to make a profit of 667% in 4 1/2 years and Goldman Sachs’ international clients are set to make a profit of 100% in just 1 1/2 years, NIA believes that the U.S. financial mainstream media that is currently hyping the Facebook IPO, is setting the general public up to get slaughtered on Facebook’s common stock.

The consumer social networking space has experienced very dramatic growth over the past few years, with Facebook being the dominant leader of the industry. Moving forward, NIA believes that social networking technology will soon begin to revolutionize the workplace in the same way that it changed the personal lives of millions of people around the world.

Recent college graduates, who experienced Facebook’s very dramatic growth first hand, are beginning to enter the workforce and are demanding that their employers adopt enterprise social networking technology at their place of employment.

The enterprise social networking industry is projected to grow 61% annually between now and 2016. Enterprise social networking is expected to grow from being a $600 million space in 2011 to a $6.4 billionspace in 2016. This is similar to the type of growth seen in the consumer social networking space over the past four years.

Although Facebook is the dominant leader in the consumer social space today, there is a good chance that another consumer social company will grow to become larger than Facebook in the future. Back in 2006, many analysts expected MySpace to remain king of consumer social networking forever and projected MySpace to continue rapidly growing indefinitely. Instead, Facebook surpassed MySpace and MySpace was recently sold by News Corp for 94% less than what they paid for it.

The American public needs to realize that Facebook at a valuation of $100 billion has far more downside risk than upside potential. While Facebook’s growth is going to rapidly decline in the years ahead, there are two publicly traded companies in the enterprise social networking space that are positioned for enormous revenue growth moving forward.

The user growth of these two companies could accelerate greatly in the years ahead as major corporations begin rapidly deploying their own enterprise social networks. Currently the enterprise social networking industry is still in its infancy, but by 2016 it is likely that the majority of the largest corporations around the world will be using some type of enterprise social networking platform within their business.

The two major publicly traded companies in this space now are Jive Software and BroadVision Inc. Jive is the industry leader with a market cap of $937.97 million. After subtracting Jive’s estimated net cash position of $200.99 million, Jive’s Engage social platform is currently being valued by the market at $736.98 million.

BroadVision only has a market cap of approximately $153.51 million. After subtracting BroadVision’s cash position of $54.4 million and another $17 million in value for their old legacy products still generating revenue, BroadVision’s Clearvale enterprise social platform is currently being valued at only $82.11 million.

BroadVision is NIA’s latest position. BroadVision just reported that they signed 117 new Clearvale Enterprise customers in 2011, up an amazing 290% from the 30 they signed in 2010. In fact, BroadVision signed 33 new Clearvale Enterprise customers in the 4Q of 2011 alone, which was more than they signed in the whole entire previous year.

Jive hasn’t yet reported their year-end 2011 results, but Jive has reported that they only signed 113 new Engage customers in the 12 month period ending June 30, 2011.

BroadVision’s Clearvale is now growing faster than Jive’s Engage, when at their current share prices Jive is receiving a valuation for Engage that is approximately 9 times higher than the valuation that BroadVision is receiving for Clearvale. Besides BroadVision’s fully featured Clearvale Enterprise, BroadVision also offers a free starter version called Clearvale Express.

Any employee at a company can quickly and easily setup their own Clearvale Express account to use at work. After outgrowing Clearvale Express, companies have the ability to seamlessly upgrade from Clearvale Express to Clearvale Enterprise.

BroadVision also offers a unique Clearvale Passport reseller program, which allows other companies to offer Clearvale to their clients. Softbank, a $30 billion Japanese telecommunications giant, had so much success using Clearvale Enterprise within their corporation that they have now joined Clearvale Passport and are offering both Clearvale Express and Clearvale Enterprise to their partners and clients.

NIA believes that BroadVision’s free starter Clearvale Express platform along with their reseller program Clearvale Passport, gives the company a huge advantage over Jive. In NIA’s opinion, BroadVision has the potential to become a bigger company than Jive in the future.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdlasica/

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Some question the potential that social media has to offer, while others are utilizing and benefiting through what social media has to offer. Social media may be one of the greatest tools in marketing today, for several reasons.

Two of the most commonly used social media pages are Facebook and Twitter. Most companies are starting to pick up on their benefits of having social media accounts set up within these sites. According to InsideFacebook.com, Facebook has 712.4 million users worldwide in September and Twitter has 100 million active users.

Facebook is being used as a form of communication and interaction between the consumer and the brand. Brand pages allow not only the brand to interact with consumers, but also for others to review and share their feelings towards the brand. From this feedback, companies are creating more of an interpersonal relationship with their customers.

Marketers also, are able to target a certain audience with paid ads, ensuring that these are placed on the page that fits their defined audience. This ensures that the ad is appearing primarily to people who are more likely to click the ad. Twitter is another great tool that elicits some confusion. Twitter can be used as a mouthpiece for the company, which makes it excellent for PR purposes.

On Twitter, companies share news regarding their company, this allows followers to keep up with said company. By giving your brand a voice on Twitter, Twitter will categorize your Page and place your page under recommendation for followers, related to the content posted by users on twitter.

Through Facebook and Twitter, companies are creating a niche for themselves. It’s possible to get an understanding of what these brands represent and how these companies want consumers to view their brands. Social media is a great way to provide customer service to followers, and keep an audience engaged and updated at the same time.

That is why it is important for company pages to always respond to consumers’ posts. In a study done by Evolve24, about 83% of Consumers have positive feelings when contacted from a company from a tweet a user posts. Traditional marketing is slowly declining, yet it is not to say that is dying out.

There is still a lot of power in traditional marketing, that may be too hard for social media to convey. If a brand were to reposition itself, television ads would be a powerful medium to display this new position for the brand. Combined, these two create a powerful voice and should be included in successful marketing campaigns.

The more impressions from, traditional marketing and inbound marketing, the better odds are of being noticed by potential clients.

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New social networks are being released every day. What makes each one unique is their individual focuses and functions, though they all have the common goals to increase social relations and to establish contact with the professional world, educational target, medical network, travel communities, and so on.

The focus is usually developed based on the needs of the public. Opensoft, a Portuguese company, saw a need for the business environment, and they are trying to put this new model  in the competitive world of social media. Spreadd is a Portuguese startup focused on business environments and tries to differentiate itself from LinkedIn and Facebook, arguing that it is actually able to create opportunities to companies through the improvement of a collaborative environment.

Facebook offers big opportunities to reach target markets and great tools to develop marketing and communication with the public. However, there are limitations in developing sharing tools inside the company, since a social network is not a business-oriented network if it has other focuses.

LinkedIn, on other hand, is a business network. However, it allows people to connect to each other, but doesn’t solve the match problem between people and tasks, which Spreadd promises to do. The inefficiency inside of companies created by issues, such as employees repeatedly doing the same tasks and assigning the wrong employee to perform a task, can impact business performance.

It can be solved through a better sharing, communicating, and collaborating environment. The ambitious goal of the project is be a perfect network solution to small companies, big organizations, and even the ones geographically dispersed.

The network has been in the testing stage for the past six months, but it has already been seen as a solution to companies that are already using basic sharing tools, such as e-mail, instant message systems, internal networks, and blogs. Such tools have a time-gap between assigning the task and seeing the task completed, which is the issue Spreadd is trying to solve.

The Opensoft project will be going to Silicon Valley in California to accelerate the development of the business. It will be an important part of companies concerned with transparency, increase in opportunities, and creativity. There are high expectations coming from this developing season.

The goals the company have made will be able to help all companies interested in increase competitiveness through efficient information sharing. For companies that want to get a head start, they can sign up using a company e-mail address, which will be added to the Spreadd’s social network, and wait for a developed version of Spreadd to become available to the public.

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The importance of social media in Turkey has increased considerably in recent years, which in turn has led to a mounting interest in the phenomenon and its overall impact on the Turkish society. Sharing her opinions on the matter, Gulay Ozkan, a Turkish internet and mobile entrepreneur, suggests that the increasing popularity of social media is mainly to do with the large percentage of young people in the country’s current population.

Different types of social media, such as Facebook or Youtube, can indeed be very appealing to young people all over the world. Turkey is a country where 70 percent of the population is actually under 35 years of age, a fact that makes her explanation both valid and rational. “Social Media is a very hot topic at the moment as it brings freedom to a culture that traditionally is shy”, Gulay says.

She lays emphasis on the idea that social media offers free and open communication, which is perhaps the aspect that appeals the most to young Turkish users. Currently, the most popular social network in Turkey is Facebook. The popularity of the well-known networking website rose to such an extent that Turkey has now become the fourth largest nationality on Facebook in the world.

However, Twitter and personal blogs have also gained popularity recently. Turkey’s mobile penetration is larger than internet penetration, which is an immediate consequence of people’s using mobile phones to access their favorite social networks. Gulay also predicts that this trend will grow even more in the future.

Increasing internet censorship is still a problem in Turkey, a situation that has led to numerous protests organized by youth groups. Although some networks such as Youtube may still be banned there, the restriction does not seem to prevent young Turkish people from freely accessing it by using DNS switching and other proxy settings.

This can be interpreted as a sign that the population is ready and wishes to open up to the new form of communication. In fact, it has been this extensive use of social media which have allow Turkey to join the global community. Information spreads far easier and faster via different kinds of social media outlets than via traditional media or educational platforms.

The importance of social media also extends to Turkey’s public relations campaign. There are many instances when international public opinion on Turkey have been shaped and influenced through the use of social media, which should propel the country to engage more in the use of social media as a means of promoting its own image.

One such example is the case of Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan abruptly leaving a panel discussion on Gaza with Israeli president Shimon Peres in 2009. His gesture received a lot of media attention. At the time, hundreds of thousands visited Youtube to watch the video of the Prime Minister. Links of the video began to be circulated via Facebook, fan groups and other web applications were launched, all of them carrying the name of Erdogan.

The politicization of social media in Turkey is becoming more and more obvious. Many analysts recognize the role social media is starting to play in politics. “For the past two years, as the political environment has become more severe, the political weight of social media has increased,” Ozgur Uckan, a professor at Bilgi University, said in an interview discussing the relation between social media and politics in contemporary Turkey.

“Blogs on the one hand and social media on the other have begun transforming into a political agora, a forum space,” he added. However, the politicization of social media is seriously threatened by internet censorship. Besides Youtube, many other websites, such as Blogger, have also been banned in Turkey. This phenomenon has led to the foundation of groups such as “Don’t Touch My Blog”

Moreover, national protests have been organized in reaction to the government’s attempts to impose internet censorship. Such is the case of the national, multi-locational protests that took place on May 15 in response to legislation planned to impose filters on internet access.

“I think we will see more of these sorts of interactions in the future,” says Yaman Akdeniz, a law professor at Bilgi University, who also added that political parties themselves have begun using social media in their campaigns.
Faraways / Shutterstock.com

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