Woah. That’s a lot.

My boyfriend isn’t falling for it though. He steadfastly believes that it just isn’t for him, despite my repeated attempts to get him to join.  But still, he is not fully without social media. His one and only golden jewel of social media is his Instagram account, a social media app for iPhone and iPad that allows you to take and share pictures with friends.

Regardless of the Kyle’s (aka: non-Facebookers) of the world, it’s hard to deny the power of social media for business and for pleasure.

Sarah Evans of AdAge.com collected an impressive array of social media stats that I found thoroughly impressive. I thought I’d share some of my favorites with you to start off your weekend of social media posting (You can see the article here for source info).

• Business to Consumer Facebook results are 30% higher than average on Sundays.
• 23% of overall internet usage is devoted to time spent on a social networks or blogs.
• What people are retweeting: 92% retweet interesting content, 84% retweet humor, 66% retweet personal connection, 21% retweet celebrity status, 32% of retweets offered incentive and 26% of retweets were because some asked them to “Please RT”.
• Auto-posting things to Facebook decreases likes and comments by 70%
• There are over 100 million active Twitter users. 40% of which aren’t actually Tweeting but simply reading what is going on in their feed.
• 95% of Facebook Wall posts by fans are not answered by the brands walls they post on (!!)
• Consumers who use social media apps (Twitter, Foursquare, Urban Spoon etc) dine out more often and are more likely to be return customers.
• 20% of Google searches made every day have been NEVER been searched for before.

As you can see people are really using their social media! And it helps to be aware of some of these statistics to better utilize social media for your business. The above statistic that states that 95% of wall posts by fans are not answered by brands (Source allfacebook.com) boggles my mind! I understand that some brands are huge and inundated with wall posts, but social media (and marketing) is all about relationships and sending someone a thanks or answering a question can be a great way to connect with a new or existing customer!

Paying attention to how and why people are using social media is the first step to creating and leveraging social media that works for your business or organization.

So keep reading!

To check out more interesting social media statistics visit the AdAge.com article Stats of the Day: 50 New Social-Media Stats to Kick-start Your Slide Deck.

For additional social media  fun you can follow me on Twitter @jenniejacobs or  Web Marketing Therapy @WebMarketing_RX

Did you miss the first part of our interview with Jess? Read it here!

Jess Weiner - Creating a Confident World Together

9.  What is fun and what is difficult about working as a sole “wild web” entrepreneur?

Fun: Every day is different. Opportunities abound. And life is a great big playground for me to build from.

Difficult: The buck stops (and starts) with me. So the pressure to perform can be tough and I have no one to blame for that but me!

10.  You are a very self-driven individual who values productivity; which web tools helped you increase your productivity the most? Specifically, in what ways did they improve your productivity?

I think Twitter has given me a crash course in how to relay a message as concisely and creatively as possible. It’s been a great brainteaser for me to hone my skills in pitching and enticing. I sometimes find myself creating tweets in my head while I’m driving or exercising – and I love the immediate feedback a great tweet can create for my business.

11.  Do you have any personal “wild web” role models? If so, what do you admire about this person?

Well, would it look like brown-nosing if I mention the original Wild Web Woman – Lorrie Thomas Ross?  (I say yes, but we’ll let it slide, because I would have to agree with you, Lorrie is awesome…wait, does that look like brown-nosing?!?)

She showed me that navigating a business online doesn’t have to be like living on Stress-A-Me Street. It can be fun and loose, and fluid. I also admire Samantha Ettus who writes a great column for ForbesWomen.com – she is a consistent voice in branding and her online web presence is as authentic as it gets!

12.  As far as dealing with competition in your line of work: do you pay special attention to their marketing strategies and adjust yours to stay ahead OR do you mostly focus on your individual marketing plan without worrying too much about your competitors?

I always look around to see what’s happening but I learned early on to run my own race. My career and my work as an entrepreneur is about running a marathon not a sprint. I find that if I continue to weave my voice and my vision into my marketing strategies I feel the most solid. When I try to emulate someone else, it never works out as well.

13.  Being a successful professional embodies being an excellent marketer (so that people know your name and service!), how do you reach out to your wide range of customers to build a trusting relationship?

Nothing in social media can ever replace the genuine feeling of meeting someone in person. I try to live my marketing life as in 3-D as it will allow me to. I love our virtual world for the ease and quickness it may provide but you can’t underestimate the sound of a voice, eye contact, or a shared laugh. That goes a long way to creating an authentic relationship and my relationships are the strongest tool I’ve used to build my business.

14.  Do you utilize both traditional PR and new PR? What is the ratio of your web marketing to traditional marketing (print ads, local newspapers…etc)?

For my kind of work, referrals and word of mouth are more effective than traditional PR and marketing.

In 17 years, I’ve never paid to advertise. I’ve worked to leverage my public image as an expert and TV personality to cultivate new relationships for my business. But I think nowadays I think it’s best to create a combo of traditional and social media PR for your business.  Again, run your own race. If you find that you get great results with ads – do it. But don’t be afraid to try something new or pull back in an area that doesn’t bring you results. Everyone is trying to find the magic fit – and PR is not about magic. It’s always about relationships and perception. Not always in that order. J

15.  When marketing your business, do you find yourself more often seeking risks or avoiding risks? What are some risks you have taken on the web that resulted in positive outcomes?

I took a big risk – personally and professionally – writing a very intimate piece for a national women’s magazine that basically was going to reveal to my most loyal fans that a big part of my past brand rhetoric was changing and evolving. I took a risk knowing I could lose a few fans. And I did. But what I gained far outweighed the positives. I reached millions of people with this new line of honest communication, I opened up a new portal for doing business in an area I’ve been wanting to explore, and my loyal fans became even more loyal because they saw me take a public risk and applauded me for it.

16.  Business-wise, where do you see yourself in ten years?

I hope no matter where I am in my career, that I continue to be this happy, excited by life, and healthy to enjoy it!

Thank you Jess for sharing your inner-most online marketing thoughts with me and our readers!  We so appreciate all of your words of wisdom!  Connect with Jess to be inspired daily at @JessWeiner or on Facebook or read one of her best selling books “A Very Hungry Girl” or “Life Doesn’t begin 5 Pounds from Now“.  Have a WONDERFUL day!

Kudos to the Honda advertising team, not only for thinking of this *brilliant* commercial, but for also snagging Matthew Broderick to reprise his role as an adult-like Bueller, and for creating one helluva buzz on the internet to make sure that everyone, and their mother, father (mine included, who actually forwarded me the commercial, although I had already seen it), brother, and sister see this incredible mini-movie before millions of more people see it during the actual Super Bowl. How’d they do it? They simply sent out a newsletter to their entire opted-in email customer base saying “See our ad before 100 million people do” and embedded the extended version (a whopping 2 minutes, 25 seconds) of the commercial in the newsletter and invited people to “share with your friends and family too”.

What was the overall goal for releasing the commercial early and online? While I can’t speak on behalf of Honda, I can always speculate:

1. Possibly they were excited to show off the new CR-V.
2. Possibly they were thrilled with how the commercial turned out and just couldn’t wait to show it off.
3. Possibly they were testing out the effectiveness of internet marketing and wanted to see how fast the buzz about the commercial would spread.

Let’s go with option three because the whole point of making a commercial is to expose it to as many people as possible, right. (Note: no question mark needed in the previous sentence because I wasn’t asking a question, okay).  The beauty of internet marketing is the measurability of outreach. And this commercial certainly “outreached”. The commercial was emailed out 2 days ago. In about 48 hours, I see that the commercial (hosted on YouTube) has been viewed 6,518,483 times, garnering over 23,000 “likes”. Searching on Google for “Honda CRV Super Bowl Commercial” returns 5,880,000 results from the Christian Science Monitor to ABC News to people’s personal blogs and everything in between. The commercial posted on Honda’s Facebook page has 1,170 “likes” and 112 comments. Wow!

I would deem that Honda successfully used the power of the internet to leverage their commercial.  They reached over 6 million people in 2 days, some of whom may not necessarily have seen the commercial otherwise (me included: Super what?). The commercial has been talked about in countless online publications and the video will live forever on the web, available for viewing again and again. And for all the rest of the people that haven’t seen it, they will see it on Super Bowl Sunday. The combination of releasing the commercial early online and airing it on a day when 100 million people are expected to see it on TV, will insure that this commercial makes a lasting impact. Just as the original movie did. Well done, Honda!

Before you jump to the review, check out this amazing Social Resolutions 2012 infographic from the official Google+ Business page. These are GREAT social media marketing tips that we recommend printing and putting up at the office.

1. Keep your page fresh
2. Post quality, not quantity
3. Ask for interaction
4. Hangout with your customers
5. Post lots of images

Amazing infographic from the official page for businesses using Google+ to connect with their customers.

Google+ Business Sharing Tips – Start real conversations with the right people

• A quick look at sharing on Google+ – Google+ Pages help you build deeper relationships with customers by sharing your thoughts, links, photos and promotions with the right people at the right times.
• Publish Posts – Once you have people on your page, how do you start talking to them? You can use your Stream to post relevant content, including photos and videos, and even engage your followers directly by asking questions that start discussions.
• Launch Hangouts – Hangouts let you set up one-click video conversations with customers and colleagues alike.
• Manage Circles – Different people are interested in different parts of your business. Google+ lets you easily share the right things with the right customers.

Google+ Business Promotion Tips – Social sharing. Google reach.

• Spread the word – There are lots of ways to promote your site and your Google+ page, from promoting it yourself with Google+ Direct Connect and the Google+ badge, to helping others recommend you with the +1 button.
• Google+ badge – Let people know you’re here by connecting your company website to your Google+ Page by adding the Google+ badge to your site.
• Google+ Direct Connect – A new feature called Direct Connect makes it easy — even automatic — for people to connect with you. Direct Connect lets people enter ‘+’ followed by the name of your page in Google search to get directly to your Google+ page. You can learn more about Direct Connect in our help center.
• +1 recommendations – People often turn to friends and family for help making decisions. Get the +1 button.
• Connect your +1’s – Help people see their friends’ recommendations, wherever they find you on the web by connecting +1s for your website, with +1s on your Google+ page and ads.
• +1 on search – A recommendation is good; a recommendation from a friend is even better. +1 annotations in Google search help surface these recommendations right when people need them most — when they’re searching for exactly that information.
• +1 button sharing to Google – Help your words get around by installing the +1 button on any of your web pages, so that when a visitor to that page clicks a +1 button, that specific content is shared on Google+, where people can discuss it with friends and reshare it with their own social networks.
• +1 on display ads – People tend to trust recommendations from people they already know. Adding the +1 button to your display ads lets you, for the first time, run social-enabled campaigns across millions of sites in more than 40 countries around the world.

Google+ Business Analytics Tips – Get in the know

• Understand your Google+ activity – Google’s measurement tools will soon make it easier to understand Google+ activity: what people are saying about your business, how many +1’s your business receives and how these affect your traffic.
• Google+ search – Search on Google+ can help you as much as it helps your customers. You can search keywords, names or anything else, and use your search results to understand better what people are saying about your brand.
• Ripples – Word travels fast online. Ripples let you see your posts spread across Google+, who’s sharing and resharing your content, and whose opinions matter.
• Social analytics – How do +1’s affect user behavior? Google Analytics suite of social reports make it easy to find out.
• Analytics on a Page – Data trumps guessing every time. In the coming weeks Google+ will be launching tools to give you access to as much data as possible about your Google+ Page and +1 activity.
• API integrations – Ready to start building for the Google+ platform? This first release of the Google+ API, which includes read access to public data and a hangouts API should be helpful.

You can find Web Marketing Therapy on Google Plus and you can find my Google Plus profile here: Nicki Gauthier Google Plus profile.

Facebook
Outside of your Website, Facebook is the most  important resource for a non-profit; and worth your energy and time. It can be used as a tool to organize your supporters to further your cause, communicate your events and news, conduct research, launch fundraising campaigns and more.  Think of Facebook as an extension of your Website. The advantage of Facebook page is the ability to interact directly with supporters.

If you don’t have a Facebook page for your non-profit, setting one up is free and easy.  Facebook will walk you through the process in the step by step set up guide.

Once you have your page set up, follow these tips to give your page a boost:

1.Tell the entire world that you have a page.  Place a link to your Facebook page on your Website.  Give your page a custom url by going to facebook.com/username so you can easily direct supporters to your page by including the url on all printed materials, business cards, email signatures, signage, etc.

2. Design a large profile picture that shows who you are (logo, website)- it makes a great first impression. Profile pictures can be 200pix wide x 600pix high

3.  Include a sentence or two that clearly says who you are and what your non profit organization does in the “About” section. Keep it simple and to the point.

4. Make  your page relevant and current by making 2-3 updates a week:
-If you have a blog, all posts should be a part of your FB updates.
-Post photos and video
-Good to ask questions, encourages people to respond
-Communicate event information and fundraising initiatives

5. Interact with other organizations by tagging them in your posts. To do this, you must “Like” their business page, then place an @ symbol in front of their name in an update and it will create a live link to their Facebook page.  This is a great way to develop relationships with other businesses.  You can’t do this with personal profiles however.

6. Designate 2-3 people responsible to managing your Facebook content.

7. Use Facebook Insights! There is a lot of valuable information here, it helps you gage your audience, and the effectiveness of your posts!  Watch this video tutorial to learn how to use this free tool.

Twitter
Twitter can also be a useful way to gain support and spread awareness for your cause. Socialbrite has a great article with some valuable tips: 24 best practices for nonprofits using Twitter.

Here are some of the tips from the article that I found to be very helpful
-Don’t over think your Twitter entries. Use your own voice, not a detached, institutional one.
-Use the “60-30-10 rule” 60% retweets and pointers to promote items from other users or sites, 30% conversation and responses, 10% announcements and events.
-Use Twitter to conduct research, to solicit ideas, to identify experts, to thank donors
-Link to newsworthy events that people are already talking about and how they relate to your cause
-Be current/in the moment- “Live Tweet” from events
-Reach out to other influencersIf you have a blog, always tweet about an updated post

Want more info?  Here are some additional resources
How Non-Profits Use Social Media
How Non-Profits Can Use Social Media
Non-Profit Social Media Success

Video: Use social media to connect with donors