Managing Editor
What happens in Las Vegas stays ... on Facebook and YouTube.
If you don’t believe that, you haven’t waded into the widening world of social media.
Social media is how people increasingly are communicating, through MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and many other avenues through cyberspace.
Is social media a fad or the biggest shift since the industrial revolution, asked BroadBased Communications President Jan Korb.
It’s the latter, she answered, speaking to the Association for Corporate Growth North Florida chapter on Friday.
Graeme Nichol, with Arcturus Advisors, also spoke to the group and made the “case for change” for businesses who hesitate to use social networking.
“The fast are going to beat the slow,” he said.
Korb and Nichol separately presented their portions of “Growth via Technology: Cloud Computing & Social Networking.”
Korb said companies use social networking to grow their businesses and find leads.
She shared a Socialnomics video from YouTube about social media. A few facts from it:
• More than 50 percent of the world’s population is under the age of 30.
• 96 percent of the “millennials,” the generation of 12- to 33-year-olds, joined social media networks.
• There are more than 200 million blogs.
• Gen X (34- to 45-year-olds) and Gen Y (millennials) consider e-mail passe, preferring social media.
The video is at www.YouTube.com, search for socialnomics09.
Korb said businesses can use social media to amass competitive intelligence, handle customer service, cultivate new business and drive traffic from its corporate website to its Facebook page to Twitter, keeping customers engaged.
To those reluctant to jump in headfirst, she suggested businesses at least sign up on social media sites to reserve a name and to populate the site with basic information. Then, she said, businesses can “lurk” and watch what happens and then fully participate.
Nichol talked about “cloud computing,” which is Internet-based computing. Common business applications are available online through a web service or web browser.
Nichol said cloud computing is less expensive, faster and easier to use.
Nichol said that a company’s CIO, or chief information officer, is the most important person on the job today.
“The customers are there, waiting for you. If you’re not there, they will go somewhere else,” said Nichol.
The International Council of Shopping Centers reported in its recent “Shopping Habits Report” that more than half of the adult consumers it recently surveyed use social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The report, written by The Research Shop Inc., said that almost 80 percent of consumers ages 18 to 34 use social media sites, followed by 67 percent of those ages 35 to 44, about half of those ages 45 to 64 and 31 percent of those 65 and over.
It also reported that Facebook was the most widely used social media site among adults and the majority of Facebook users check it daily or multiple times a week.
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