Kevins Travel South Presentation

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Department of Economic Development
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Why does Social Media matter to me?

• Arent these sites only for college students and
  young people?
• Arent these sites only used for messing around,
  procrastinating, looking at pictures and silly
  videos?
• Arent these sites potentially dangerous and
  worth avoiding?

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Social Networking Facts

• Many public relations and marketing professionals
  believe that social networking and social media
  represent the fastest growing and most important
  trends in their fields
• There are now thousands, perhaps millions, of
  social networking and media sites across the
  globe
• Major social networking and media sites in the US
  include Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter,
  youTube, Flickr, and Ning, as well as an enormous
  number of niche and specialty sites

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An Example Facebook Global Statistics

• Has more than 200 million active users, and more
  than 100 million users log on at least each day
• More than 2/3 of Facebook users are outside of
  college
• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years
  or older

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Facebook US Stats

• Within the last 4 months ending in February, the
  fastest growing segment were women over 55, up
  175.3
• 45 of Facebooks US audience is now 26 years old
  or older
• Facebook reported nearly 45.3 million active
  users in January
• Facebook is growing in every age and gender
  demographic

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Mobile Users

• There are more than 30 million active users
  currently accessing Facebook through their mobile
  devices
• Users that access Facebook on their mobile
  devices are almost 50 more active than
  non-mobile users
• There are more than 150 mobile operators in 50
  countries working to deploy and promote Facebook
  mobile products

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Twitter Statistics

• Twitter, unlike Facebook, has never been the
  haven of students
• It is most popular among working adults the
  largest age group of Twitterers or Tweeters falls
  in the 35 49 range, comprising nearly 42 of
  the sites audience

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Ashton Kutcher vs. CNNthe end of the media
monopoly

• Twitter represents the fastest growing site in
  the member communities category, and is wildly
  popular among everyone from politicians
  (President Obama, John McCain, Newt Gingrich) to
  executives (Richard Branson, Steve Case) to
  celebrities (Oprah Winfrey) to sports stars
  (Shaquille O'Neal)
• Movie star Ashton Kutcher recently challenged CNN
  to a race to1 million followers on Twitter and
  won, showing that a single persons voice can
  rival that of an entire global media company, in
  some ways, using social media

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Blogs and Podcasts

• Podcasts (audio) or vodcasts/vidcasts (video) are
  files that can be used for direct advertising,
  building credibility, distributing information
  and a host of other applications
• Have you recently watched a vodcast, or
  distributed one yourself?
• What were the results? Was it effective (in
  teaching something, driving customers to a
  site/product, establishing someone as an expert
  in a field, etc)?

• Blogs are useful tools for marketing, both for
  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts and
  distributing information, as well as eliciting
  feedback
• As blogs has grown in popularity, they have
  caused a huge debate over their reliability
  would/do you trust a blog as your news source?

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Do You Social Bookmark?

• social bookmarking sites are rising in
  importance every day have you heard of Reddit,
  Mixx, Mashable, Digg, Del.icio.us?
• They allow news, posted on anything from blogs to
  websites to other social media networks, to be
  aggregated and sorted based on your preferences
  and user feedback