30 Interesting Social Media Observations

It’s been a long week.. flew to the Gold Coast, took a trip to a rainforest, chilled out on the beach, had a great time socializing with friends over a few great Australian wines, saw the B52′s (an American band popular in the 80′s) in concert in Sydney and they didn’t bring their A game (not helped by the fact that the lead singer decided to go AWOL after 2 songs), did some blogging, put some proposals together for clients,  tweeted, blogged again, helped organise my Christmas street party, watched a bit of Test Cricket (that’s a game invented by the English in the 1800′s and played around the world  and watched by about 2 Billion people including India, South Africa and countless other countries) and managed to fit in breakfast every morning.

So what has that to do with Social Media ..nothing, but as I am running out of time and it’s late on a Friday night and because I stumbled across some numbers on social media and some other quite interesting facts, comments and insightful quotes on a video on YouTube (by Erik Qualman also known as @Equalman on Twitter) that I thought you might find it worth reading,  so I decided to share them with you in a textual format (hope you don’t mind). By the way the video is embedded at the end of the following text for those of you who are YouTube inclined.

1. 300,000 businesses have a presence on Facebook
2. Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family wine business from $4 Million to $50 Million using Social Media
3. He found $15,000 in direct mail generated 200 new customers
4. $7,500 Billboard provided 300 new  customers
5. $0 on Twitter produced 1,800 new customers (well.. someone had to spend some time “Twittering” it’s not exactly $0, because time costs but hey.. it wasn’t much in dollar terms)
6. Wetpaint/Altimeter found companies widely engaged in social media surpass their peers in both revenues and profits  (Companies with highest levels of social media  plus18% in sales, Company sales with least social media activity minus 6 %
7. Lenovo saw 20% reductions in call centre activity as customers go to a community (Social Media) website
8. Burger King’s ”Facebook Application investment of $50,000 received greater than $400,000 in PR media value (32 Million free media impressions, thats like reaching the combined populations of 19 States of the USA
9. Blendtec increased sales by 400% with “Will It Blend” YouTube videos
10. Dell sold $3,000,000 of computers on Twitter
11. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
12. “You can’t just say it. You have to get the people to say it to each other” – James Farley Chief Marketing Officer - Ford
13. 37% of Generation Y were aware of the the Ford Fiesta via social media before its launch in the USA
14. 25% of Fords marketing spend is on Digital/Social Media
15. They are the only US Auto company not to take a government loan
16. Naked Pizza set a one day sales record using social media (68% of sales from Twitter and 85% of new customers from Twitter)
17. VW goes 100% mobile for launch of GTI
18. “Social Media is not only for B2C”
19. Tweets for a cause sent out a Tweet from Atlanta to encourage support of Susan G  Komen for the Cure, the Retweets from @mashable, @G_man, @Zaibatsu and others caused the Atlanta chapter website to receive 11,000 visitors in 24 hours
20. Intuit introduced “Live Community” into their Turbo Tax products 2 years ago – Unit sales up +30% each year
21. Software company Genius.com reports 24% of social media leads convert to sales
22. Barak Obama – 5 million fans on Social Media – 5.4 million clicked on a “I voted for Obama Facebook Button” –  3 million online donors equals $500 million – 92% of donations were in increments of less tha $100
23. University of  Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre saw a 9.5% increase in registrations using social media
24. Web Host Provider “Moonfruit” with a $15,000 social media investment saw their website traffic increase 300% and sales 20% as well as being on Google’s first page for “free website builder”
25. eBay found participants in online communities spend 54% more $’s
26. Customer support cost is $12 via the contact center vs 25 cents via self-service
27. “Why are we trying to measure Social media like a traditional channel anyway? Social Media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics” – Erik Qualcam
28. “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in Social Media… the old paradigm was “Pay to Play”. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You have to be willing to “Play to Play” – Alex Bogusky, Co-Chairman, CP& B
29. @equalman ” When I’m asked about the ROI of Social Media sometimes an appropriate response is … what’s the ROI of your phone?”
30. 71% plan to increase investments in Social media by an average of 40% because: You get “Low Cost Marketing” and “Get Traction” and we have to do it!

What is the CO$T of doing nothing? Do you really want to take that risk?