Facebook's had an incredible run for the last 6 years:
Twitter's had a remarkable 4 years under their belt:
The growth of these twin networks has brought new discipline to the practice of traffic generation, branding and customer engagement on the web: social media marketing. But for those of us who participate in the practice, there are clear signs that Twitter and Facebook aren't enough.
Plenty of recent facts and figures have helped to hammer this point home:
- Social media spending is estimated to be 10% of marketing budgets in 2011 (source: CMO Survey by Duke University)
- StumbleUpon, despite having less than 1/10th the US users of Facebook and ~1/100th the engagement, sends more outbound traffic (source: Statcounter via The Next Web)
- Quora, the social Q+A site is nearing 500,000 users and momentum is growing (source: TechCrunch + FastCompany)*
- Stackexchange, a platform for Q+A sites, already exceeds 650,000 registered users (source: StackExchange)
- Reddit grew 230%+ and now receives nearly 1 billion pageviews/month (source: Reddit via Mashable)
- LinkedIn has likely passed 100 million users; they were at 85 million in November, adding ~1million/day (source: CNN Money)
- Tumblr just entered the top 40 US Sites (source: Financial Times)
If your job includes the monitoring, management and/or promotion of a company's brand through social media, I'd strongly urge you to consider educating yourself about and participating in all the platforms that might matter to your company. The following are my personal recommendations for the average social media marketer to consider, grouped by users:
100 Million+ Users
25 Million+ Users
10 Million+ Users
- Tumblr
- StumbleUpon
- Care2
- Slideshare
- Scribd
- DeviantArt
- Digg (fading)
- Delicious (fading)
Up-and-Comers
There's dozens, possibly hundreds of others sites worthy of your attention as a social marketer (and possibly helpful to those focused on social as a channel for SEO opportunity). So, please, let's be cautious about an overly narrow definition of social media marketing - your clients/managers/bottom line will thank you.
p.s. As a startup guy and technologist, I'm excited to see even more sites enter the social media playing field in 2011. Unlike search, where Google has a near-monopoly worldwide (excluding China, Russia, North Korea + the Czech Republic), social media offers a myriad of unique platforms for opportunity.
* I'm a fan of Quora, but this quote made me gag a bit: "Cheever dismisses the notion that there is a direct competitor for Quora." Hubris, I understand, but blatant disregard for the truth is unbecoming.
Completely agree 100%. But, the one thing I will add on to this is that it is important to know who you are marketing to and what industry you are marketing to as well. For video, you have to use youtube, for music, you need to be on Myspace, and photography, it's a must to be on twitter. Before making the decision of "I have to be on Facebook and Twitter" or even "should I promote content through Digg?" In my opinion, it is smarter to think about, "where is my audience online?" and "how do I interact with them?" before getting tactical at all.
Agreed. Listing the number of users of each site is only useful for a small number of businesses/websites. For most, it's about quality of users (including how receptive they are to what you offer) as well as the types of content you're trying to promote. Furthermore, for many businesses, social media is an extension of what they offer rather than a way to drum up business - so users/followers will generally be sourced from links via the company's site, email signatures and newsletters, other social profiles & word of mouth rather than from the social network site itself.
I could not agree more! With so many SM sites and so little time to dedicate to even the top 5, I can not image trying to find time for venues where my customers do not hang out. That is why my one client does not really use Twitter all that much. Regardless of how much we promote, no one wants to follow us on there, but Facebook and email are growing.
Setting up profiles on all networks is probably smart in order to capture the presence there in the event that the future hold value for that SM outlet in your particular segment.
Good point well made Tony, ha! Of course this is the staple for all marketing surely? But with the right research, there now seems to be a suitable social platform for all types of business. Location is going to play a big part in 2011 and will give marketers further means of developing creative campaigns that will boost interaction with the 'right' audience.
Will be in teresting to see the figures of members for sites like Foursquare, Tumblr and Quora next year! Good work Rand
That CMO data point is a bit funky IMHO.
The global ad market is over a half trillion Dollars annually.
https://paidcontent.org/article/419-forecast-tv-internet-will-lead-advertising-back-up-as-print-wanes/
And that is with online only being a sliver of that market.
Google ad revenues are perhaps ~ $30 billion.
That means Google is only ~ 6% of the global ad market.
How then does social media become 66% larger than all of Google by next year?
Facebook ad revenues are rumored to be around $2 billion a year. Sure they may double next year, but they have to be at least 80% of that market ... which would make social media at most 1% of the global ad market. Maybe closer to 10% of online ad spend, but not 10% of the global ad market.
Nice data detective work - I should have fact-checked those myself. I wonder if they're splitting out something or if CMOs are simply over-committing to budget when surveyed.
Personally I think that the secret when it comes to Social Media is to rightly focus the right ones.
When it comes to SM the important is to previously plan your action, explore and see what really are the Social Media sites you or your clients need.
Just after that you can start making marketing with Social and it is for sure great that the social web panorama is so variated...
To add something about Spain :
Tuenti > Spanish Facebook kind Social Media Site but with a user age range from 14/25 y/o mostly. 8,3 million user (ComScore data of last October) and growing... Facebook in that age range is less used in Spain;
Meneame > Spanish Digg kind of site. Still very powerful.
Kedin.es > Events sharing Social Media.
Finally, I recommend to explore and discover verticals Social Media in order to plan any Social Media Marketing action. For instance:
aNobii > Social Media specialized in books and books lovers (and let see what our very own Tom Critchlow's 7BKS will become).
Or this classic example of what Social Media can be, and how you would have to look to find the right Social Media Niches: if you need to contact real "adventures" and "mountain lovers", you would have to check out Alpinaut more than Facebook.
Totally agree, were just starting an adventure into multilingual and facebook isnt the top dog in every country. Spending the time to research these will pay off in the long run.
A thumbs up from me good sir for mentioning 7books :D
Definitely agree that it depends who your audience is. In the B2B market things are sometimes a bit different. Scribd and SlideShare, I believe, can be very beneficial because they're more focused on documents and research. This type of interaction or discussion is much different than many you see in B2C situations. Not to say Facebook and Twitter don't mesh with B2B, but sometimes they're not as important as other channels.
Weird thing is, many people focus SEO purely on Google, at 80% market share but now don't want to miss out on the niche social media platforms that are a small fraction of the social media market
For me the question isn't Digg vs Reddit. It's where is your time better spent - Digg or Bing?
I was expecting this post from you Rand. I think best social platforms are those where majority of your target audience are regardless of the users base. So for some businesses facebook can do wonders and for some other like music bands myspace can do wonders.
You may be suprised to know that majority of social media traffic ended up as direct traffic in Google Analytics. So before deciding which social medium is good or bad or not enough, we should clean our direct traffic. Many marketers think that their social media campaigns are not performing well as they are not getting enough traffic from facebook, twitter, linkedin etc. Many times it is just the problem of untagged or improperly tagged campaign URLs. All traffic that comes from untagged shortened URLS on twitter and facebook applications is treated as direct traffic by Google Analytics. Solution is first tag your URLs and then shortened it. You may the be surprised to see how much traffic twitter or facebook is actually sending to your site.
Yes.
And no.
Whilst you're right that no-one should put all their eggs in one (or two) basket/s, with the main reason being that if all the users move somewhere else, you've lost your investment (see Second Life, bebo, MysSpace), there are a number of other factors that everyone should be considering.
The Hype Curve: TechCrunch loves Quora. We get that. But is a site that, realistically, has simply 2.0'd Yahoo! Answers by splicing in some Twitter-wiki style action really going to take over the world? And if so, exactly how would most businesses use it (it strikes me that most people using it at the moment seem to be Valley-Wags keen to get their side of various start-up stores out there).
What is social media? Tumblr might be a top 40 site, but so what? Wordpress is probably a Top 10, does that mean you need to invest time & money in Wordpress? No. Wordpress is a platform. So, to a large extent, is Tumblr.
Location, location, location: By this I'm not referring to Foursquare, but geography. Just as Google has weak-spots, so do many of the social platforms: LinkedIn isn't the biggest B2B platform in many parts of Europe (try Viadeo). bebo still has a following in Ireland. MetaCafe & Hi5 match YouTube in certain areas.
How much time do you have, and how niche are you? Many marketers are looking for true reach and for that you need scale. And, despite the (IMHO ridiculous StumbleUpon figures, which I simply don't believe) Facebook, and to a lesser extent Twitter, are often the only sites (outside of Russia/China) to deliver this (I haven't included YouTube as, again, I almost think this shouldn't be considered a social media platform anymore, just a video platform that happens to have social functionality). And when you only have so much resource to hand, concentrating on anything other than these two is probably an inefficient waste of time & money.
PS - happy new year to all at the MozPlex - here's hoping your 2011 is as awesome as your 2010 was.
Good post.. Totally agree wth you..
I am surprised when people only focus on FB and Twitter. To be ahead of the game you need to be amongst every thing..Every social media site you can get your hands on if it is niche specific the better =)
Man, all this talk about Quora today... I feel like it either came out of the blue or I've been out of it for awhile :S
Thanks for the list by User count, that's extremely helpful for me ;)
I agree there needs to be more than Facebook and Twitter, but I think the social media options need to be carefully planned to meet the needs and goals of each business/client.
Most of the marketers are concerned about Twitter and Facebook, the simple reason is number of users..and again rather than any other social networks Facebook and Twitter drive majority of the targeted visitors rather than any other social media.Besides that Linked in, Stubleupon,Reddit, Delicious,Digg,Mixx.com,folkd.com doing pretty well for a long time.In terms social and professional networking sites plaxo.com,xing.com and ecademy.com is vital one.
In terms Video marketing channel we cant ignore the other video sharing websites where milions of users are signed up besides youtube, like:brightcove.com,photobucket.com,metacafe.com,vimeo.com and obviously Myspace...this year social media marketing will emphasized to every online marketers!
Thanks for this - we are constantly wondering how to make the most of Social Media as Facebook and Twitter as it just doesn't suit some of our verticals. This gives us a starting point to see if other forms of social media may be more suitable!
I'm gonna be looking into these growing sites over the next few weeks!
It would be good to hear from others how they have made these other sites work for them in future!
Before reading this post I would have guessed that the number of users for both Twitter and Facebook had a steady incline, but clearly that isn't the case. This truly is an example of two things "exploding" and the numbers are there to prove that. I really like the break down of users per social networking site. Pretty insightful to see how they stand up to each other. I think one of the more interesting ones is MySpace. Pretty crazy to see how fast it died off, but how many users they technically still have. Definitely shows you that sometimes it not all about the user numbers. I know they are trying to make a comeback, but in my opinion they are just delaying the inevitable.
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I used to be a Facebook fan but now I really love Twitter... I find myself checking up on Twitter way too often and checking the trending topics several times a day.
Twitter and YouTube really seem like the way to go to connect in the Internet Marketing and business world. I'm not exactly sure why, but I see a lot of poorly done Facebook profiles in our field.
The great thing about niche sites is that if they do have audiences that you want to reach, you're able to capture quality and share of voice that's simply not available on facebook and twitter anymore. The more "mass"ive a network becomes, the more diluted the attention of potential customers is. Plus, some of those sites are really nifty...
Facebook is a top contender for a lot of reasons. The accuracy and relevancy of the targeted content, and segmentation is doing what Google hasn't been able to with the personal interests etc. This is the reason why in the US it surpassed the Google one way conversation. The internet is a two way conversation. With the technologies available we have to shift with the change. While Twitter has strong growth 1 in 10 people are spammers it seems like. The ads on there are hardly effective and while there's a high CTR due to deceptive links that's not the best way to get conversions. Until Twitter comes through with a better model they're going to be just another VC dream with no reality.
As always Rand, great write up. And as for the amount of social media websites out there there are quite a few to check out.
*The link I have included is a great list of them, with a very streamlined process of posting to each of them - for free.
I've been using it since 2009, and it doesn't appear to get updated all that often but maybe someone out here in the Moz world will get benefit from it. Who knows, it's there if you need it.
Edit: It's also good to note that linkedin has finally made it possible for companies to make pages. This is a fairly new thing I believe, because in September they hadn't launched it.
Up-and-Comers... fading --> Up-and-Comers... fading --> Up-and-Comers... fading: Social Media Experts will be (are) in demand as this is a tough market to stay on top of while doing SEO at the same time. Thanks for the list Rand :-)
Thanks Rand. I will have to look at these up and coming SM sites and see what, if any, fit into our profile and time budget.
Great list Rand. I will definitely have to check out some of these other sites. Having so many options is great, but I can imagine how discouraging it is for small business owners who try to do their own social media marketing and can hardly keep up with twitter and facebook.
I agree. I still hear of small business owners doing their own social media marketing (and sometimes they claim to do their own SEO), but they need to reailze that if they have enough time to do these other things, they aren't putting what they should be into their own business.
I have found that SM, and in particular facebook are great at retaining customers, "Keeping a communication channel open". But I have not found them any good at acquiring new customers. So from my point of very SM is a great way of leveraging existing investment in search and increasing 2nd, 3th ..... purchases from current customers.
Hi All,
simply the best and very informative article... as a social media optimiser we should be aware of that facebook and twitter are not the only sites to be worked on..other emerging and preestablished sites hold the equal importance.
Regards,
Rabia Sherazi
Times Travel. Co
Highly agree, whereas facebook and twitter are a high percentage of your SM strategy you cannot forget about the niche sites in your vertical and also any popular forums your audience use.
For me working in travel its highly important that i show a presence on consumer travel review sites as well as travel forums.
It's definitely a great post but it tends to be more dedicated towards American market in general. Twitter and Facebook are a great tool with millions of user and to master them will always be the first priority.
It will be interesting to watch the next couple of years to see what happens.
vimeo too!
I think It's so easy to forget that there isn't just twitter and facebook out there :)
So much food for thought on a daily basis. Thanks Rand.
I admit I haven't thought much about gearing certain industries more towards certain SM websites, other than taking my Realtor cilents to the popular real estate web2.0 venues. I'll definitely holster this one. Thanks.
For sure! Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only two social media channels to focus on… but they have the “best” Branding some others don’t.It´s like the Search Engine Industry: some people think Google is the “only” search engine when others like Blekko OR Bing perform a great work too ;)
thank you for this post!
We are spanish guys who has some sites about render, architectural visualization, .... and i can imagine that to make social marketing it is slow and dificult to everyone, but it is more dificult to us, because almost all information what we find, it is in english, and only a bit in spanish, everyway we traslate this blog, but sometimes i am stressed.
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Some words about this statement:
"There's dozens, possibly hundreds of others sites worthy of your attention as a social marketer (and possibly helpful to those focused on social as a channel for SEO opportunity)."
I think key for small enterprises is a mix of SEO and social media. Small businesses should be on the lookout for services that focus on both social media and SEO and some processes build in to drive conversion. www.chocoBRAIN.com was built to do exactly this.
Ya, absolutly agree with you but as many did mention which should one concentrate on? Not everyone can dedicate the needed time on each to create an impact don't you think unless that is solely what one does. But otherwise great post about SM.
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. LinkedIn
4. Stumbleupon
Nice post Rand. I like this stat, "StumbleUpon, despite having less than 1/10th the US users of Facebook and ~1/100th the engagement, sends more outbound traffic"
Based on my analytics I have been seeing this for years.
Mr. randfish, you seriously need to change your profile photo. I went away from this site several times because of the picture, it makes you look stupid.
Best wishes,
William
Hahaha. Who pissed in your cheerios this morning? Rand!?