Social Media and Social Networking Marketing is here and working

Social media transforms from just a place to post your personal chatter to a place to that’s smart to market your professional content in real time. An ongoing web study called the Global Web Index, which surveyed a total of 51,000 consumers between July 2009 and September 2010. The results? Participation in real-time social networks and microblogs (personal blogs) both grew by 20%. Participation in major Blogs decreased by 4%, and forum participation declined by over 10%.

Social media networks like Twitter a bit later than social networks like Facebook; although the two groups of real-time social media are growing at a similar rate, social networks still dominate the real-time social web. The people who said they updated their social accounts daily was twice that who said they updated their microblog. 29% reported of those surveyed said they use microblogs.

A relatively new social marketing technique is the use of small, localy owned and opperated blogs hosted on your own website (aka. Microbloggings). Why- because they know the source of the information. OK, they may not KNOW you, but at least they know who is wrinting it.* Blog content is becoming more about sharing professional advice and useful content. It use to be about personal content. Use of these company blogs have increased by 10% last year (2010).  *Many companies hire content writers to keep their blog up to date. The SEOPRO’s at KO Websites offer this service.

Twitter now asks “How are you doing? instead of “What’s happening?” Facebook which has become more microblog-like with every new redesign What’s this all mean? I don’t know. More probing questions I guess.

The potential for social media — The surveys found 50% participation and engagement. If social media continues to grow at this rate, it could become a more powerful distribution channel than print, television, radio or static web pages ever were.