The proliferation of social media networks is a guerrilla marketer’s dream come true. Sites are free, accessible and easy to learn. Best of all, the medium provides endless possibilities for guerrilla style marketing and public relations. The barriers of entry could not have been lower. Now, anyone and their cousin can be the kings of the media, boasting thousands of fans while Tweeting their frustration of Steve Jobs for not allowing Flash on iPad.
The growth of social media sites over the past several years can only be described as mind-boggling. A passing trend or a new form of online interaction, social media is making waves, as witnessed by staggering numbers:
- 126 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse)
- 84% – Percent of social network sites with more women than men
- 27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
- 57% – Percentage of Twitter’s user base located in the United States
- 5.25 million – People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter’s most followed user, Jul 2010)
- 400 million – People on Facebook (May 2010)
- 50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day
- 700,000 – The number of active Facebook applications
The number of social media users has skyrocketed in recent years. The following chart from aggregation site Technorati sheds light into the amazing trend and mushrooming number of blogs in recent years:
The number of blogs is doubling every 6 months. Can the trend be sustained?
Facebook recently surpassed the 400 million users mark and it seems to be holding onto its growth projections. Here is a chart of Facebook’s monthly unique visitors in the US.
US users continue to flock to Facebook. If this trend hold, Facebook will soon constitute for half of the internet traffic.
Finally, here is a chart detailing Twitter’s recent growth:
Fueled by a mass media frenzy, Twitter grows exponentially in the years after its inception.
All this brings the question, “How can the guerrilla marketer tap into this growing pool of consumers?”
As it turns out there is no one right answer. Veteran marketers such as Jay Conrad Levinson may conclude that social media is just another medium and that old true and tried marketing principles, with some modifications, will continue to work.
Savvy entrepreneurs will probably come up with their secret sauce of what networks to use and in what ways. The most savvy among them will try a method, measure, adapt and retry.
The key is to keep social branding simple and fully integrated into the overall branding strategy. Since coordination and planning will be keys to success, social branding tools such as Socialada can help guerrilla marketers achieve consistency and ability to plan for the unexpected.
