Thomas Trenz President of Hi Net Associates ppresents Social Media and why it is important for your Business in 2010

7. Facebook Visits Increased 194 Percent in Past Year. U.S. visits to social networking sites have increased 62 percent year over year; visits from 55 and older age group have increased 77 percent New York, N.Y., Oct. 9, 2009 - Facebook accounted for 58.59 percent of all U.S. visits among a custom category of 155 social networking Web sites in September 2009. The 58 percent was the highest among all social networking sites, as U.S. visits to Facebook increased 194 percent. Tagged received 2.38 percent of visits in September 2009, the third-largest amount. Twitter had the largest percentage gain, increasing 1170 percent compared with September 2008. U.S. visits to social networking Web sites increased 62 percent in September 2009 Market share of U.S. Internet visits to top five social networking Web sites Rank Name Domain September 2009 August 2009 September 2008 Year-over-year percent change 1 Facebook www.facebook.com 58.59% 55.15% 19.94% 194% 2 MySpace www.myspace.com 30.26% 33.00% 66.84% -55% 3 Tagged www.tagged.com 2.38% 2.36% 1.62% 47% 4 Twitter www.twitter.com 1.84% 1.95% 0.15% 1170% 5 myYearbook www.myyearbook.com 1.05% 1.16% 1.76% -40% Source: Experian Hitwise

8. … because we increasingly trust people ( even people we don’t know ) more than institutions (government, churches, corporations) and their marketers

9. … people were asked to pick the sources they use and trust for information

11. The other day I got a Tweet It said “Man, you are so but your goes right down the That must mean something….

28. Face Book Friend wheel shows connections between your friends

29. Before the launch of YouTube in 2005, there were few easy methods available for ordinary computer users who wanted to post videos online. With its simple interface, YouTube made it possible for anyone with an Internet connection to post a video that a worldwide audience could watch within a few minutes. The wide range of topics covered by YouTube has turned video sharing into one of the most important parts of Internet Culture.

40. Zappos stocks over 3 million shoes, handbags, clothing item and accessories from over 1100 brands. 24-year old CEO Tony Hsieh (with some 140,500 Twitter followers) encourages its Zappos' employees to twitter. Zappos now claims it is twittering with over 9 million customers, or 3% of the U.S. population. The company’s efforts with social media networking before the public eye, including Blogs , Zappos.TV , Facebook,Twitter have resulted in over $1B in sales, 75% of which are from repeat customers. Driving web traffic through well-placed self-linking in public conversations is a new marketing tool. A web page like twitter.zappos.com is worthy of study as the "secret sauce": It drives inbound links, its employees create a good deal of internal web links -- all magnets for search engine activity, in particular, raising Google Page Rank. Zappos is delivering on some mighty good customer service offers in those tweets. The company offers free shipping both ways, has a 365-day return policy and supports a call center that's always open. Zappos also randomly bestows free upgrades to customers. Twitter is not a magic technology bullet. Twitter can clearly magnify great customer service, but the offers, the compelling content, still need to be there to fully manifest the benefit of this great new social media too. The twitter.zappos.com page is not only a customer service forum, it's a public relations, branding and search engine attraction platform. Companies that continue to view these functions as separate corporate silos aren't going to realize the full and magnified benefits of Social Media.

43. A Fall 2008 announcement by Dell's Bob Pearson, VP of Communities and Conversations, that the company credits Twitter sales alerts with over $1 Million in incremental revenue. Dell's Twitter followers receive messages when discounted products are at the company's Home Outlet Store where they can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others. Beyond coupons, Dell also credits that they have successfully identified and acted upon customer concerns up to three weeks earlier than previously, thanks to blog and social media commentary.

47. 1. " The transformation to a bottom-up culture needs help from the top" . Executive management not only sets precedent for behavior, it provides best practice examples of how to use the tools with customer, the public and others. 2. "What's in the Workflow Gets Used". Organizations that have been successful with Social Media have embedded Twitter use into their customer service operations with compelling results. 3 . Effective use of participatory technology leverages not just "cognitive surplus" or the untapped potential from employees, but from customers and partners as well. 4. Companies with great brands adopt the latest brand-expanding technologies early. It is no longer sufficient to have a great brand inside your industry, companies have to be seen as technology leaders, specifically adopting the latest brand communication channels. And today that channel is Twitter. In the end, the trick to social media tools is no trick at all: Twitter just happens to be the latest green field marketing channel. There are many more new social media channels to come. You have to be ready to sample them, swirl and savor them in your mouth (perhaps biting a few rocks and pebbles along the way), and then spit the whole thing out with a ferocious force. Companies need to recognizing that marketing has become 360 degrees of mass participation. Everyone will be playing the "participatory marketing" game in 2010.

48. Rule 1. Use All The Social Media Tools. Rule 2. Offer “Free” Content and Value. Rule 3. Be Completely Transparent. Intense blending and merging of personality, product and media is the new world of branding and marketing. Twitter and web video expose your real brand and company publicly. Transparency, and with that comes authenticity and honesty, is part of the reason behind people's attraction to these tools. And part of being transparent means you let the rough edges show. And in the end, he ends up looking all the more human for it. (Side note: It is also the transparency factor that drove the Obama administration's use of RSS feeds as a mandate to taking stimulus money. If everybody can watch the Stimulus Money RSS channel, we all know where the money's going.) Rule 4. "Don't Listen to Anybody, Listen to Everybody" First and obvious, it's clear that savvy business people do watch what people are twittering about their company. In fact, there's probably no faster way to convert executive management to Twitter than to take them to seach.twitter.com and type in the company name. Second meaning. It's impossible to stay up on all the social media tools real-time, but if you've added value to your followers, among those "followers" are "leaders", people who have tools, insights and news relevant to your business to share with you. This is the true genius of Twitter business use: Even the smallest of companies can have 10,000 low-overhead marketing and customer service evangelists.