Whew! I actually have been so busy I haven’t posted on my blog in awhile. But I have been busy with social media. Have you been keeping up? It’s no surprise if you haven’t. Social Media has literally exploded.
Twitter grew by 131% in March. Yes, in the month of March. Not January through March and not in 2008 but just in the month of March. In the last six weeks I’ve gone from about 100 followers to nearly a 1000 and growing rapidly.
Facebook continues its incredible pace of growth as well, adding 23 MILLION new users just in the United States this year. And the numbers are interesting in that people aged 26 to 44 are the fast growing segment of Facebook users in the US, according to Facebook’s own numbers.
LinkedIn also is growing rapidly, doubling in size last year and reaching nearly 16 million users in the US.
Three quick observations:
- A few years ago, companies felt obligated to have a web site because, well, because everyone else had one and it was needed for competitive reasons. The same is rapidly becoming true for companies on social media sites.
- These social media sites are fun. No doubt about it. But if you’re doing it for business reasons, identify what those reasons are and then proceed accordingly. This will keep you from getting bogged down in areas that aren’t helpful for your business.
- When you create an account or profile, by all means jump in head first. But remember to listen first then speak. If you barge into the middle of a group and start “spraying” your wisdom around without first understanding where everyone is coming from, you might actually hurt your reputation.
