Digital Marketing And Social Media PR – The Future Buzz

As our digital and physical lives blur further, the internet has become the information hub where people spend a majority of their time learning, playing and communicating with others globally.

Sometimes it is easy to get lose sight of just how staggering the numbers are of people collaborating, researching, and interacting on the web.

I thought it might be fun to take a step back and look at some interesting/amazing social media, Web 2.0, crowdsourcing and internet statistics. I tried to find stats that are the most up-to-date as possible at the time of publishing this post.

The numbers presented below should be a close representation of today’s numbers (please correct me in the comments if you find more recent numbers somewhere and I’ll update).

If you are involved in media, communications or your job description involves spreading ideas and you are not participating on sites such as Digg and Reddit you are at a huge disadvantage compared to those who are.

There is so much you can learn from the open socialization of news, content and ideas that these communities are unmissable from a sociological perspective. Success in social media is more than knowing how to market – it is understanding society. At its core, the social web is merely all of us having a giant digital conversation anyway.

Especially interesting to me and why I want to focus on Digg and Reddit specifically and not others in this post is the community fostered. The Digg and Reddit communities are far more vibrant in the discussions, opinions and vocalizations than others such as StumbleUpon and Delicious due to their layout. I won’t say they are “better” or “worse” at sharing content, that is entirely subjective – just different.

image credit: zeuxis

There was a time not too long ago when a limited few had power of distribution. And with that power and zero competition, the media moguls built monolithic and faceless brands behind them. Sure, there were talented writers behind the publications, but the writers themselves were not directly intertwined with the brand beyond the extent that they merely supplied content.

Think of your local newspaper or even a traditional national media organization – I highly doubt there is one single writer or editor that immediately comes to mind and stands out as the person behind that brand of media.

All of that has changed.

Software companies, such as Ableton use forums as part of their community building strategy.

Prior to Web 2.0…

Before blogs, before social media, before Facebook and MySpace — message boards and forums reigned supreme. For the uninitiated, they are fragmented, niche communities of like minded people who came together around a common interest.

It’s no surprise that sites like Ning have sprung up in popularity and blogging has taken off in the last few years. There are countless people creating content, trading expertise and working together to learn and socialize around things they are passionate about.

Message boards (or message forums, which ever you prefer) were the start of the modern social web. In fact, they still thrive today and are some of the best resources of information on niche topics around.

Read a great post recently at Twist Image on selling 2.0 – letting the customer do the communicating. Mitch writes on the great strategy used by e-commerce sites for empowering consumers to be vocal about products and what they like and don’t directly on the same page as the product.

Amazon comes to mind as a site that does this extremely well. When making a purchase (which is pretty frequently as I’m addicted to reading) I always read the consumer reviews there, especially when it comes to new authors. The consumer reviews always tell the real story about the product. And everyone knows it, I am willing to bet a heat-map of an Amazon product page shows consumers spending more time reading reviews than the publisher copy someone painstakingly drafted.

Why is this? Simple – we know the publisher copy is going to gush praise. While it is worthwhile in getting someone’s attention and providing them an intro, what provides real value in a consumer site that is unfamiliar territory with a potential new visitor is other consumer’s opinions and thoughts. It is social proofing.

image credit: bbsc30 via flickr

I receieve a decent amount of reader questions via email. I always take time to give a response, as generally email questions are quick one-offs, and I’m happy to answer.

Once in awhile I get an email question asking for detailed, specific advice and seeking a more in-depth response. When that happens, I give the writer two options:

1) I can answer the question in an open-format for all my readers to see and get value from. In this case I can either give detailed advice to your company if you’re willing to let me disclose your company name and issues publicly, or I can tackle the question from a general perspective and keep your company name private (unfortunately with this method, I can never be as thorough with an answer).