These big four social networks are the most social, most active, most feature rich communities. Or are they? They certainly are the full featured social networks in the traditional sense. But there are many quiet communities out there that are building very significant numbers.

Should we be giving more thought to these quiet social networks?

Some things to consider

• Pandora is growing their member base faster than LinkedIn
• Farmville has more active monthly users than Twitter
• Gmail will soon be larger than Myspace

Yes, Pandora is just for music and has not built in many social tools. And Farmville is just a game with little interactions outside of clicking on farm images. And Gmail is private and email and not a basis for a true social network.

This is the thing though. These are massive user bases. And they are highly active user bases. A much larger percentage of Farmville and Gmail uses are active daily users than Twitter and LinkedIn.

Gmail is of course the biggest threat to somehow leverage this user base into a traditional social network, as recent rumors have Google entering the social networking sphere with a new product soon.

But anywhere you have these types of numbers in a community, already interacting with media or other people, and there are possibilities for marketers, for investment, and for integration.

What communities are you seeing quietly acquire large audiences?

Occasionally I get the question “How long will there be a need for a company like Social Fresh?”

My answer is usually “I have no idea, but I think we are still just at the beginning of this thing.”

Where Do We Stand?

The community of thought leaders in social media is still very small. There are still only a few hundred community managers out there. And while there are a lot of marketers learning social media very quickly and doing some really cool things, have no fear. The audience for social media education is only growing.

Most companies are at least dipping their toes in the social media waters. Few are diving in head first (See Zappos, Dell, Best Buy, Intel).

Where Are We Going?

The education gap is growing because companies are learning just how much social media can do – how many of their employees they need to train to bring them up to speed.

A company can “be social” with just a community manager talking to a few customers on Twitter, Facebook, and a blog. A single employee. A small commitment.

But once they decide to invest in becoming an holistic social company, the education gap grows. The number of people they need to bring into the know explodes.

• Multiple departments need training on how to integrate social
• Departments must learn how to work together through internal social tools
• Chains with thousands of employees on the ground need training for consistency
• Groups of volunteers need training to support non-profits
• Groups of champions need guidance to support brands
• Sales forces need to learn
• Teachers need to learn
• Call centers need to learn

The potential for how social media can change businesses inside and out is unending. And with each realization of these oppotunities, the education gap grows.

For now, the number of people looking to learn social media, looking to utilize this new tool set for business, is small compared to where it will be.

So I say again, we are still at the beginning of this thing.

Image Credit: Shutterstock.com

Foursquare is the new hot girl at the party and everyone is looking at her. Everyone is saying hello. Everyone is flirting. AND everyone is wondering if there is really anything more there than just a pretty face.

Are some retail stores seeing a small bump in sales? Yes.

Are some larger brands getting nice PR bumps because of the unique ways they are engaging? Yes.

There is a whole list of Foursquare case studies with companies, large and small, experimenting in the space. But is Foursquare a legitimate marketing tool or just another game? Another niche tool for geeks?

Two big questions.

1. Will Foursquare grow beyond being a subset of Twitter users?

This is crucial. Foursquare’s benefit to businesses is based on data and using that data to make money either through loyalty (old customers) or advertising (new customers). The real money for Foursquare is in both the advertising opportunity and the ability to scale the service large enough for a freemium business dashboard to create revenue. Hopefully both happen.

In order to get to either place and create real revenue, scale is crucial. And scale does not exist if the majority of users are the same early adopters and techies that drive Twitter.

2. Do people really want to open up their location to businesses?

One of the key benefits of Foursquare that may help it gain mainstream adoption is how useful it’s data can be to consumers. Knowing where all your friends are or who has suggested positive things about restaurants near you are powerful motivators for members to share their location.

But, sharing that same info with businesses that might contact them without opting in, or with businesses pushing them ads is a different story. We have seen the Facebook uproar recently. Foursquare has not shared too much of this data with businesses yet. But it is important to consider how a larger user base will react to Foursquare opening up their data. To make money they need these options.

Will Foursquare overcome these challenges to be the next Twitter, the next Facebook? Or is it just another pretty face?

Image Source: ShutterStock.com

Edison Research is launching their “Twitter Usage in America 2010″ report today with a live webinar. The report is part of their full Internet & Multimedia Study and includes some quality data. Here are some of the highlights:

• “The percentage of Americans who are familiar with Twitter has surged from 5% in 2008 to 87% in 2010.” We can all blame CNN’s Rick Sanchez for this.
• There are really only 17 million Americans using Twitter. The inflated number of accounts represents SPAM accounts and users with multiple accounts.
• “The percentage of Twitter users who are African-Americans in the current U.S. population… stands at roughly 25%.”
• “The majority of Twitter users are “lurkers,” passively following and reading the updates of others without contributing updates of their own.”
• “The percentage of Twitter users who follow brands is more than three times higher than similar behavior expressed by social networking users in general.”
• “A significantly higher proportion of Twitter users update their social networking profiles – and access Twitter – using mobile phones than the average user of other social networking sites and services.”
• “Only 7% of Americans are aware of location based social networks”
• “Twitter users are more likely to have improved their financial situation in the past year compared to the total population (32% to 18%)”

Twitter Users are Unique

There are still, relatively, very few of us living and breathing Twitter on a regular basis (and sharing our breakfast choices).  The users driving the content on Twitter are not reflective of social networking users as a whole. They are very much early adopters and more comfortable interacting with brands. This is great for marketers looking to engage influencers.

“The fact that Twitter users are far more likely to follow brands and engage in brand conversations makes them responsive to marketing, but also considerably different to mainstream Americans,” said Tom Webster, VP Strategy adn Marketing at Edison Research.

Marketers can clearly find in Twitter a healthy community of influencers ready to engage. But as Tom points out, Twitter users are a bit of a different breed. Marketing strategies that work well on Twitter may not hold true within other communities. Many marketers would no doubt agree with this assessment, but it is very interesting to dive into some of the data behind it.

Twitter Has A Strong Black Community

Why are so many African Americans on Twitter (There are Black People on Twitter)? Who knows. Why do so many white people love Frisbee Sports? It does not really matter why, but it’s important as marketers to understand the demographics of the channels we are marketing in. Depending on the brand in question, this may or may not be important to your marketing. Nevertheless, this demonstrated even more that Twitter is an outlier.

And now for a couple surprising numbers…

Twitter Users Make More Money?

If you were on Twitter in the past year, you had a significantly higher chance of improving your financial situation. The question is why? Is it because Twitter users are more likely to be business owners? Entrepreneurs?

“WTF is Twitter?” is so 2009

Oprah, Ashton, The Real Shaq oh my. Thanks to some celebrity and media love affairs with the blue bird in question, Twitter has shockingly infiltrated 87% of American brains. To jump from 5% to 87% in 2 years is quite the leap. So while 17 million Americans are the only ones truly using the service, hundreds of millions know we are here. Twitter can continue to have a large influence (as large as Facebook) on what society talks about with a much smaller core user group.

Thanks to Edison for the great data. Check out the the webinar or download the full report.

First on our computers, then phones, and soon you will be able to buy tracks the second you hear them in your car (this seems so obvious to me, the music industry should make it happen sooner).

The music industry has been fighting to keep their old model, but what they should be doing is fighting to create more impulsive music buying opportunity. If you let me buy my music where I first hear it, when I am most amazed by a new sound, you dramatically increase your conversion.

I grew up buying tapes at local music shops. When I was a teenager it was all CD’s from the national chain store in the mall. Napster spread my first year in college and my music taste exploded because of the wealth of options now available at my fingertips. How refreshing right? I didn’t have to rely on local radio or the kids from my home town to hear about new music.

I use iTunes for all my music today (making me an honest man again). But it was never about having the money to afford music. It is about accessibility. When I can watch an episode of House, use Shazam to figure out the closing credit song, and buy that song on my phone, the sales cycle get dramatically short and simple. It goes form weeks to seconds. Impulse.

The music shops of the past were destinations. It was pure point of sale music. You physically went somewhere to browse the music, to talk about the music, to buy the music.

Today even the point of sale music is more impulsive.

• You purchase album cards that you can use to download digital versions from Office Depot.
• You get free downloads included with your Xbox game, that then open you up to new artists.
• And occasionally you buy a CD, but probably from the counter at your local Starbucks.

If we hear music we like at a bar or coffee shop or on a commercial, we go get it online. The physical stores are marginalized. The digital product reigns. And our concept of consuming the media has completely evolved. We stream music more and more, owning becomes less important. We

• We often stream music instead of purchasing it
• We create more and more content featuring music (playlists, podcasts, videos)
• We buy ring tones and video game soundtracks

Much of the community and discussion around music lives largely online and consumers seem the happier for it.

In the long run this evolution and disruption of the music industry is good. Consumers get more out of it. They get to find more great music. And musicians, while getting the short end of the stick with Napster piracy, seem to be skipping the music oligarchies and claiming back their connection with fans through unique products, touring, and digital consumer relationships.

A few examples of how the music industry could accelerate the impulse music buying trend:

• Buy Shazam, improve it’s purchasing options, do deals to include it on all cell phones, iPads, TV’s, toasters, etc.
• Fully embrace users that want to incorporate music into videos and podcasts, work with Youtube et all to get buying links on any unlicensed works
• Work with OnStar or XM Radio or electronics makers to get easy music sales in every new car
• Email concert goers with links to buy the live show, while they are at the concert

I hope that I am just repeating what music executives already know and that all of this is in motion. I hope.

What do you think? Is the music industry better off? Will movies be immune to the same fate?

Original Image from Shutterstock.com

PR agencies will inevitably own the social media space for big brands. They simply have the right skill set and the right billing model. They have the ability to buy the social media talent needed. And they have something that other social media agencies do not – bigger, more time tested resources for relationship building and research.

1. PR Does Story Telling

At the most basic of levels, writing and story telling is the heart of public relations. It is important to be able to spin an angle, develop a company’s story in a news worthy format, or simply compose a narrative through press releases and conversations.

2. PR Does Relationship Building

Maintaining connections with journalists is old PR (and still important). Today companies need to maintain relationships with influencers. This is a larger scale. These influencers are more numerous and more varied than their journalist counterparts. There are A, B, and C list bloggers, Twitterati, Youtube Stars and the list goes on. Other marketing segments have a lot to learn in this arena.

3. PR Does Crisis Management

The publicity game works both ways, for better or worse. They are out there to push the good, but even more importantly sometimes is having a team to react quickly when bad press hits. This is even more important within social media, where the bad can spread at a blistering pace. No other segment of the marketing community is built well to deal with this exact situation.

4. PR Has the Right Billing Model

All marketing companies share an hourly billing model, but PR bills for ongoing work, not an end product. PR agencies are prepared for a constant effort to get earned media to the right audience, to book event publicity, to leverage partnerships, to cultivate longer term relationships with stakeholders and media.

What PR agencies do you think are leading the way in taking over social media for big brands?

Image Credit ShutterStock.com

The Foil War #NCchevySXSW from jason keath on Vimeo.

Let’s look beyond the fact that I love soccer and the fact that I am filled with deep, deep anticipatory joy for this summer’s World Cup action. The juxtaposition in this Puma video of rough UK football hooligans singing some harmonizing a cappella is simply magnetic. It pulls you in from the first moment and holds you there until you beg them to show you their logo. Great stuff. I watched it a few times.

For those of you who hate soccer, move along, there is nothing for you here. You cannot be helped.

But, for a campaign that can get people to the internet pretty easily, their integrated social media, if you can call it that, reminds me more of any empty roll that needs to be replaced.

Yes they have two of their commercial’s characters on Twitter, and a Facebook page, and the poll itself with a nice map of results. But these small efforts are social for social’s sake with very little thought toward tying it all together. They even went out and interviewed folks on the street to add to their actor interviews and put all of it on Youtube, but check out the views on those videos. There is obviously nothing being done to promote them.

It smacks of a brand or agency that thinks social media is suppose to be cheap and easy. I see a multi-million dollar traditional ad campaign and a dollar store social media effort.

There is no effort to engage the consumers, whose attention they are buying with some major TV spots, in a long term way. I am sure the media buys will produce a short bump in sales and if that is all Cottonelle wants, then fine, good show.

But in 2010, pointing people to a micro-site that does not extend the relationship beyond the length of a media buy, is traditional advertising and less effective. The opportunity is to build a community, to engage the consumer in a way that creates a longer term relationship (meaning more money), to ask questions of consumers, to answer questions, to get the people they are pulling in with a clever, simple question, and convert them into spending more time with their brand. Consumers want dialogue.

It is a cute campaign Cottonelle, but perhaps you should consider building consumer relationships with a longer shelf life than say, I don’t know, a roll of toilet paper?

Jason Falls delivers a little Gary Vaynerchuk impersonation at Social Fresh Nashville, a social media conference for marketers.

A good portion of Social Fresh spoke to what social media can really do for business, including Jason’s talk on “Moving the Needle, Social Media for the Bottom Line”.

In the quick video above, taken at the Social Fresh photo opp zone, Jason recaps why the social media purists (dirty hippies and treehuggers) do not get that if social media is not making you money, it is just a hobby.