Social Media Monetization

Social Media Monetization
Twitter, Linked In, Facebook, My Space are great sites, but how can you monetize and productize these new innovations. The goal of social media is to turn customers into a volunteer marketing army. Social media creates kinship between companies and customers, and kinship equals purchase intent.
Facebook, Twitter and MySpace are superb social networking websites to utilize to generate network marketing demands. They have a plethora of features and tools for anyone to leverage substantial benefits for marketing products and services.
Traditionally marketing involved executing ad campaigns and very little opportunity was left for consumer feedback. With the introduction of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr there is a fundamental shift into participatory marketing and consumer engagement. People want to interact with people, not just brands. Power of Social Media is harnessed by finding more potential customers, development of meaningful relationships with others in your industry, and position yourself as an expert in your field.
Aside from treating social networking as a way to connect to other businesses, social networking has become a viable place for marketing their products are services. Through their connections in social networks, businesses could market their products and services.
The unique feature of social networking is based on the fact that you are marketing at a very personal level. Instead of passive information wherein you display your message on advertisements, marketing in social networks will require you to be a little bit aggressive wherein you inform them of your products and services on their personal page in social networks.
Social Media Marketing creates the following opportunities:
• Adds a human element (you) to your business or product
• Engage with customers directly but informally while hanging out online
• It is fun and simple to do once you know how
• Get traffic to your website
• Create buzz around your website, product or service or brand
• Create inbound links to your website for the search engine ranking benefit
• Creates loyalty and trust
History of Social Media
• The Social Media explosion didn’t happen overnight. Major networking sites as we know them have been evolving for over a decade.
• It all started in 1997 with a social networking site by the name of Six Degrees. This innovative website sought to bring people together online and followed the general principles that have shaped social media such as User profiles, List of Friends and Share Friends with others.
• Fast forward to the Year 2000 where SixDegrees.com closed down as users were not comfortable sharing information online and also the internet hadn’t caught on yet.
• Despite the early demise of Six Degrees, it helped establish the central characteristics of Social Media that would be later fine-tuned and elaborated on, expanding its appeal to a wider user base.
Here is list to the popular social networking sites categorized by media type.
1. Social Networking
• FaceBook
• Myspace
• DirectMatches
• Ryze
2. Social Bookmarking
• Technorati
• Propeller
• Digg
• Reddit
• StumbleUpon
3. Content Sharing
• Hubpages
• Squidoo
• EzineArticles
• Gather
4. Media Sharing
• GoogleVideo
• YouTube
• SlideShare
5. Blog Platforms
• Wordpress
• MovableType
• Blogger

Let’s look at the three main Social Media Marketing platforms:-
Social Media Networks: These include sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Beebo. These are online communities where friends can interact and share information with each other. The naturally viral nature of these online social networks can be used to your business ‘s profit.
Social Bookmarking: Social Bookmarking site is a bit like your "favourites list" on your web browser. But, instead of keeping this list on your computer for just you to see, it is stored on a website where your list can be "tagged" with your specific keywords and crawled by the search engines.
Social Media Sharing : includes sites such as YouTube and Google Video. Users upload video’s or photo slide shows. These applications can bring a flood of new website traffic to your website and improve inbound links to your content.

Monetizing Social Media
There are two sides of monetizing social media. One is from the owners of social media platform and other is from the customer point of view. Both the parties are able to leverage from social media and are making big bucks.
• Monetization of social media- Company (Owner of social media platforms)
Facebook, Youtube, Blogger and LinkedIn are the most common social media platforms and basically all of them are making good money and the answer is quiet obvious, through advertisements but let us look at into little more details:

Keywords: Fundamental importance

(i) Facebook: There are two forms of advertisement campaign to choose from
CPC – Cost Per Click: If you choose Pay for Clicks (CPC), you will pay a share of your budget every time your ad is clicked. This is the best choice if you 'd like users to take action or interact with your ad
CPM-Cost Per Impressions: If you choose Pay for Impressions (CPM), you will pay a share of your budget every time your ad is shown. This is the best choice if you 'd like to increase brand awareness by users simply seeing your ad.

(ii) Youtube:
Promote your content on Youtube:
Promoted Videos: “Use video to broadcast your brand across the YouTube ecosphere and drive views to your video assets.” The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the promoted video.
TrueView: “Video Ads are a family of formats that give viewers choice and control over which advertisers ' messages they want to see and when. We charge you only when a viewer has chosen to watch your ad, not when an impression is served.”

Brand Channel: “Build a home for your brand and video assets with a Brand Channel. Create a bespoke interface, customizing the look and feel of your presence on the site.” customization of brand channels is possible through several modules including:
Channel banners
Background image
Branding box
Ads on homepage: The YouTube Homepage Roadblock allows brands to own the homepage for 24 hours with a 100% share of voice takeover. The homepage averages 50 million impressions and over 18M uniques per day in the US with some formats averaging above an 11% interaction rate.

Advertise next to Youtube content:
Banner ads: The popular advertising format on YouTube is the InVideo overlay, which is a 480x70 Flash or image that appears at the bottom of the video. Also included is a 300x250 companion ad (Flash, rich media, or image) that remains adjacent to the video for the duration of the video. Alternatively, advertisers can elect just to run a stand-alone 300x250.

(iii) Twitter:
The advertising program, which Twitter calls Promoted Tweets, will show up when Twitter users search for keywords that the advertisers have bought to link to their ads. Later, Twitter plans to show promoted posts in the stream of Twitter posts, based on how relevant they might be to a particular user. (New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/technology/internet/13twitter.html?_r=1)
• Monetization of social media: Users side (Consumers using social media platforms)
Not only companies who have created the social media platform but the customers/users of the social media platforms are also monetizing it. Here we can group them into two categories. I would call them Agents and Corporate Users.
(i) Agents: I would define agents as the people who are neither owners nor just users. They are companies who are using social media platforms to run their own businesses. They are application developers, web developers, SMO Experts (Social Media Optimization), advertisement professionals and bulk of other related professionals and companies who have their business run on social media platforms. Again advertisement revenue plays a key role here too. The agents charge from the companies who hire their services or they develop their own applications and embed ads in them to earn revenue.
Facebook: “People on Facebook install 20 million applications every day. There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products” Facebook Pressroom

(ii) Corporate Users:
Companies are using social media to connect with the customers and engage them in variety of ways and thus establish that emotional link.
Companies use social media platform for basically three reasons.
1. To create brand awareness/ brand image and engage the audience.
2. To drive sells for their products/ service.
3. To conduct market research.
Let us pick facebook and look at some of the examples here.
Create brand awareness/ brand image:
Example: In just three months of advertising on Facebook, more than 65,000 people connected to The Roxy Theatre’s Page. It is currently one of the top nightclubs/venues on Facebook. Furthermore, it has since set and reached a goal to obtain 100,000 connections by December 2010. These status updates now drive over 4 million page views and 9,500 interactions per month.
Drive sells for their products:
TELUS Hey Canada! Today is the last day for you to get a FREE Xbox 360. So head to a TELUS store near you, purchase a select Windows Phone 7 and take home a FREE Xbox 360. By the way, will you be playing online? Offer ends Dec.19th, hurry up and learn more here. http://bit.ly/g8pZGu
December 19, 2010 at 11:43am • Like : Share 267 Likes and 69 Comments
Conduct market research:
Pizza Hut Wing Wednesday debate: Traditional or Boneless wings?
January 26 at 6:07pm • Like: Share 867 Likes & 904 Comments

Blogging:
When it comes to blogging, professional bloggers make a good lot of money. There are two ways you can earn a good deal if your blog has a considerable readership base.

1. By putting advertisement on your blogs. Using Google adsense program you can make a good deal of money.
2. Second, the companies pay good bloggers to write about their products and also to comment and write reviews.

Hands on Experience – Social Media Marketing
We created a facebook page called “International Students in Canada “ to study how social media marketing works. In a month’s time we have now 365 Users registered on the page.
Here are some of the facts:
1. Members from 20 different nationalities which speaks 10 different languages.
2. More than 70,000 post views till date.
3. 698 monthly active members.

References:
• You Tube for Business by Michael Miller
• Facebook Marketing by Steven Holzner
• www.Youtube.com
• www.facebook.com
• www.twitter.com
• www.linkedin.com
• http://www.exforsys.com/career-center/social-networking/marketing-through-social-networking.html
• http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Use-Social-Networking-For-Business-Marketing-Profits
• http://www.apollomediablog.com/a-brief-history-of-social-media-part-1/
• http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html
• http://marketing.about.com/od/internetmarketingstrategy/a/socialmediamrkt.htm
• http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/188449
• http://dannybrown.me/2010/07/03/cool-facts-about-social-media/
• http://socialmediatoday.com/soravjain/237864/fascinating-social-media-facts-year-2010
• http://techunzip.com/2010/11/22/russians-and-israelis-spend-more-time-on-social-networking-websites-stats/
• http://www.vincos.it/world-map-of-social-networks/
• http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_GX/global/industries/technology-media-telecommunications/tmt-predictions-2011/media-2011/eab5bcd1ed47d210VgnVCM2000001b56f00aRCRD.htm
• Statistics from Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2009.
• Statistics from Twitter and the Chirp Conference.
• Statistics from LinkedIn press centre and SysComm International.
• http://www.axleration.com/15-interesting-facts-about-wikipedi
• http://pochp.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/surprising-facts-about-wikipedia/

Annexures

Barrach Obama Example- Use of Social Media
Executives in organizations of all sizes really took notice when Senator Barack Obama used social blogs, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube to build a massive network of supporters, volunteers and workers. His use of social networking transformed political campaigning and helped Senator Obama raise unprecedented funds.
The Obama campaign mobilized over 3,000,000 people on Facebook and MySpace combined (over 3 times the number reported for Senator John McCain 's campaign), many of whom became volunteers and evangelists for his campaign. He uploaded almost 1,800 videos to YouTube that were viewed over 18 million times (9 times the McCain campaign). Senator Obama 's campaign reportedly raised over $600 million, much of it online (2,900,000 donations; 93% less than $100). Using 16 different social networks, his campaign kept his supporters (and the media!) updated instantly and constantly.
5th November ’08 was a historical day for the U.S & the world for more than one reason.
First, it was the election of the first ever African-American President, Barack Hussain Obama.
Second, and perhaps a bigger change over the long term was the crowning of the Internet as the king of all political media. It marked the end of an era of television that started with John F. Kennedy & the beginning of the Internet Presidency.

Here are the 3 amazing tactics that Obama so effectively used to get himself to the White House:
1. Online Fund raising: With the great number of people online, there was a huge opportunity for funds to be raised on the net. The Obama team recognized this and realized that it would be easier for people to make donations online and with a sum of money they would be comfortable with. This strategy appealed to many and resulted in 94% of the funds coming in sums of $200 & less. A million little donors became the way forward.
This way, the Obama campaign was not dependent on a few rich people who would donate only to get some influence in the government. But instead, successfully reached out to the common man through the Internet, which helped them raise a little over a whopping $600 million in contributions, which poured in from over 3 million donors.

2. Building an Army of Volunteers Online: According to sources, www.myBarackObama.com chalked up some 1.5 million volunteer accounts. For instance, everyone who wanted to get into the 75,000-strong rally in Portland & Oregon, had to provide an e-mail address. By the time they came home from the event, an e-mail was waiting for them, asking them for funds or for referrals to other friends and encouraging them to form “affinity groups” to spread the network wider & wider. This transformed its http://www.my.barackobama.com website into a great social networking zone.

3. Using the Social Media: Obama has a personal group on every social media site like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Youtube, LinkedIn, Flickr… the list goes on. The Obama team did not leave any stone unturned in their social media marketing. There is a personal Obama page on all these sites complete with his personal information, pictures, personal notes, events, the works. There were plenty of videos as well put up on YouTube and other video sharing sites.
This effort got him 14.5 million hours of views on YouTube, 3,918,613 supporters on Facebook & 123,000 followers on Twitter to name a few.
Other Statistics
Recently Net imperative released stats of top 10 countries in which people spend more time on social networking websites. Surprisingly Russians are on first place, while Israelis second them. These stats are based on average numbers of hours spent on different social networking websites by unique visitors in the month of August, 2010.

Russians Federation is on top, where people spend approximately 9.8 hours on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Tagged, Hi5, Orkut and MySpace etc. Israel is second on the list having a trend of daily spending approximately 9.2 hours on such websites. Turkish people are not so behind, spending 7.6 hours daily on such websites. United Kingdome is on third place and surprisingly people have 7.3 hours daily to spend on social networking websites. http://techunzip.com/2010/11/22/russians-and-israelis-spend-more-time-on-social-networking-websites-stats/ World Map of Social Networks
A brand new map of the world, showing the most popular social networks by country, according to Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traffic data* (December 2010).
I’ve decided to drop Many Eyes and redesign the map in order to give each social network a fixed colour to ease comparability over time. Below you will find an updated version plus an infographic poster of all changes since June 2009.

Zuckerberg’s creature continues to gain users around the world (almost 600 millions). Since June 2010 Facebook has stolen new important nations from local, previously strong, competitors (in 115 out of 132 countries analyzed it is market leader) especially in Europe. In particular:
- From Iwiw: Hungary
- From Nasza-Klasa: Poland
- From Hi5: Mongolia
- From Orkut (Google): Paraguay and India. Orkut remains the first social network in Brasil.
In Japan Mixi is still the most used web-based social network (Ameba that I previously mentioned it’s not a pure social networking site, but also a portal/blog-hosting provider). But if we look to mobile social networks usage the leader is Gree followeb by Mobage Town. [edited thanks to the insights from Akky Akimoto]
The situation remains unclear in Armenia, Georgia, Netherlands. In these countries Alexa gives victory to Facebook, but Google Trends for Websites still shows a predominance of local players.

Top 3 Social Networking Sites (December 2010)
If we take a look over Facebook’s shoulders we can see the rise of Twitter especially against MySpace (in Australia, Canada, Germany and Italy) and the slow but constant growth of LinkedIn (in Australia, Canada, UK). New entries since last June analysis highlighted in yellow. Deloitte predicts that in 2011 social networks are likely to surpass the breathtaking milestone of one billion unique members1. Also, they may deliver over 2 trillion advertisements2. Yet the advertising revenues directly attributable to social networks may remain relatively modest compared to other media, at least in the short term. With per member annual advertising revenue of about $4, that implies total 2011 advertising revenues of about $5 billion (see Figure 1). Despite social media’s large and growing audience, its advertising revenues still represent less than one percent of the worldwide advertising spend total. Other sources of social network revenues, such as payments systems and e-commerce, might exhibit faster growth. Figure 1: Social networks Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) in $

Figure 2: Global Social network revenues

• Australia has the most number of established users of social media in the world, followed by USA and UK.
• In terms of the impact of social networks on advertising, word of mouth is the popular option with 78% of customers trust peer recommendations on sites. While, only 14% trust advertisements.
• Advertising has also been impacted greatly because of social media with only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive return on investment.
• Facebook has over 500 million users.
If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest country.
• The most popular YouTube video – Justin Bieber, Baby ft. Ludacris has had over 374,403,983 views
• YouTube receives over 2 billion viewers each day.
• 70% of YouTube users are from the United States.
• There are over 181 million blogs.
• 38. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.
• Of the 60 million users of LinkedIn half of them are from outside US.
• By March 2010 Australia alone had over 1 million LinkedIn users.
• 80% companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool

References: A brand new map of the world, showing the most popular social networks by country, according to Alexa & Google Trends for Websites traffic data* (December 2010).