You see many small business owners are lost when it comes to social media and cannot afford a high-priced consultant or devote oodles of hours reading up on the space in Mashable. Plus who doesn’t like helping people out?

So what am I asking you to do? Well, I am just asking for 30-180 seconds of your time, to simply jot down a social media tip or best practice for small business owners on small business in the book that I am carrying – you can think of it of signing an autograph with a custom inscription.  Sound good? Well then I will see you in Texas around the panels and if you want to set up time, or I can help you with ANYTHING while out there, please do not hesitate to ask and feel free to contact me at the following:

• @Jeffespo
• Jeffesposito20 – Gmail
• Facebook.com/jeffesposito

I would love to get 100+ tips to share, so please share this if you think someone would be willing to contribute a few lines of their thoughts – with full attribution and links back. And if you aren’t headed to SXSW and want to contribute, please leave a comment and how you want to be attributed in the comments below.

Thanks!

Jeff

Image – Shelter Rescue

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This post originally ran on CommsCorner, but I wanted to share with you in case you missed it.

Earlier this month, Adam Vincenzini and I had an interesting talk on the state of social media around the world. One thing led to another and we agreed to take a page out of the playbook of two of the world’s best piano men, Billy Joel

and Sir Elton John, by banging out on our keyboards for a joint composition. If you were expecting crooning or sweet melodies, you’ve come to the wrong place. Instead we’ve turned our keyboards towards trans-Atlantic posts on our respectivecountries.  Adam struck first with this post on the UK’s statistics. I suggest giving a read as it’ll help you in your research. Now it’s my turn to return serve and dish out the state of social media in the former colony.

According to Pew, the top three countries in terms of adoption are:

1. United States – 46%
2. Poland – 43%
3. UK – 43%

Sure 46 percent is nice to look at and show to bosses, but what does that really mean? To get a better understanding I’ll break down some statistics based on the major networks and the location based networks.

Facebook

• 70% of the US’ 149 Million Facebook users login daily (Ogilvy)
• Facebook is the top visited website, accounting for over 8% of all online visits (Hitwise)
• 46% of US small businesses utilize social media in their marketing mix (Vistaprint)

Twitter

• Americans spend 2 hours, 12 minutes per day on Twitter (Experian)
• 62.14% of Twitter users are in the US (Sysomos)
• 66.93% of iPhone users who utilize Twitter are in the US (Sysomos)

YouTube

• YouTube accounts for 86% of US online video watching, Hulu, the #2 site, receives just 7% (imediaConnection)

Location Based Networks

• Foursquare’s largest check-in was in Washington D.C. with over 30,000 (Mashable)
• Gen Y accounts for 44% of US’ location based network users (Forrester)

I get excited looking at these numbers that make up the overall percentage of the US social media population. As this market continues to grow, everyone working for a brand, agency or just participating in the conversation has a hand in how the platforms evolve in the future.  Where do you see it going?

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My biggest take away from the book was a lesson on dealing with people who you may not respect or like. I am often told that folks who fall under this bucket, often can tell my true feelings, so I am going to try to enchant them, while still secretly loathing them. Will re port back if it works. Below’s my full report on the book:

I would say that if you are looking for a quick inspiring read, check out the book. You won’t be disappointed.

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How was your week? Hope to catch up with you on the interwebs next week, enjoy this week’s edition of Five for Friday. If you are headed to Austin shoot  me a message so we can have an IRL meeting and possibly an interview for this blog.

Facebook, Twitter play role in college admissions – We’ve all heard about jobs firing folks because of things happening on the social Web, but would you believe that it is filtering into the admissions process?

Is there a void of advanced social media content on the conference scene? – I love this post from Arik Hanson. It is what I’ve been thinking for a while with conferences seeing the same tracts. There is substance, but lacking beef as there isn’t anything that dives into an advanced segment, almost making the material remedial at times. But how do we change this? Check the comments for some great feedback.

Building relationships with influencers is anything but lazy – I like this post from my friend Rebecca Dennison because it looks at something that many folks struggle with – Influencers. Some good insights here into why we should look at who the influencers in OUR industries are, not the so-called influencer.

New Research: Search Marketing Vs. Social Media or Search + Social Media? – I have always stood by the fact that social media will not be a silver bullet that replaces traditional marketing, but rather support the entire business.  This new study from groupm is worth printing out and taking a look at. It shows that combining social media and search for product information has a 48 percent conversion rate in purchase for consumers.

Three Mets Decades, Only Two Days Off – Sports PR is a grueling job, I worked in it for some time, but know that it is for the most part unrewarding. So it is always nice to see a positive story come out on a lifelong flack for a major sports team. This one is a great write up on NY Mets PR man Jay Horwitz and is a must-read for any sports fan, PR folk, or someone interested in getting into working in sports.

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The quote above is in the conclusion of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, in particular, they are the last words spoken by the monster that we tend to visualize with bolts in his neck and a flat top with some pale greenish skin. I’m thinking about Frankenstein because I fear that we have created a monster of our own in the 21^st century.

If you have logged onto Twitter, Facebook, Yelp!, GetSatisfaction or blogged about a company either positively or negatively – you’ve shaped the way brands interact with their customers on the social web.

We are creating an insatiable monster. We like shiny things and want instant satisfaction from brands on the sites that WE are comfortable on. If brands can’t adapt well to hell with them, we’ll just keep putting them on blast.

The problem with this mentality is that companies need to prioritize their efforts and there are just too many platforms to monitor all of them 24/7. It is not possible – hell you probably don’t even log into a quarter of the social profiles you have created on a weekly basis – I know I don’t. I tend to stick to blogs, Twitter, Facebook, foursquare and SCVNGR. I just don’t have time to be efficient to play in other spaces.

Do the honest evaluation of yourself now and then come back to read the rest of the article.

Are you utilizing all of the networks that you are a member of? I thought not. So how can we DEMAND that companies train an all-seeing eye to every complaint?

If we cannot get over ourselves and realize that we’re just not that important to deem a 24-hour concierge for our every bitch, well we’ll create a monster that like Frankenstein needs to get put down.

Image – TWM1340

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Image – GapingVoid

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