Who are the big players?
Compete.com has a post including usage stats on the top 20 social networks: Myspace is still the champion by a long shot, followed by Facebook, with everything else well behind.
The lesson:
- "One social network wins the whole high school."
- Go where the people are! Don't mess with a "niche" social network - unless it really matches what you do.
- If you're building a presence on a social network, it needs nearly constant attention.
- Friends must be cultivated, your "last login" must be recent, and you must respond to comments and activity.
But that's so much work! What's the ROI?
- Nobody knows how to measure it yet.
- But people are trying: Frogloop's ROI calculator for Social Network Campaigns
- Referrals
- Joining a social network (and being active!) can bring huge amounts of traffic to your site.
- Don't be left behind.
- Even though there is a lot of hand waving about the benefits, there's no denying that everyone is doing it. It's the thing to be doing.
- Wendy Wharman has a great post where she summarizes it like this:
- Number of comments on the org blog: 23
- Number of photos added to the Flickr pool: 228
- Feeling of having a voice in, being heard by, and participating in your favorite cause: priceless
Is it all or nothing?
- Sort of.
- You do need to stay active if you're going to do this, but it can be small snippets of your day.
- Start small! Don't launch a Youtube account, a Flickr account, and tackle Facebook all at once!
- Look for people interested in what you're doing, and connect with them.
- This saves you a ton of time and effort.