The Social Media FAQ Project

The core mission of Social Media Club is to further media literacy, and we do so through efforts to promote the Social Media profession and the widespread use of Social Media.

We are starting a new project to build out the Social Media FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) - expected to launch during SxSWi (March 13-17, 2009) - where we anyone interested in Social Media will be able to use this FAQ as their starting point into the world of Social Media. If you have some ideas about what this site should look like or what it should do, please share them in the comments or write them up on your blog and send us a trackback.

In the meantime, please help us get started by submitting one or more of your frequently asked questions below or through our online form. If you have an answer for the question, even better, but the value of powerful questions is what we are seeking here. Ultimately, the biggest questions will be explored as part of our new International Social Media Club program we are simply calling Question of the Week right now. So let’s get started and move to get all the information, knowledge and insights organized! Not only will it help people learn, it will enable practitioners and professionals to invest more time innovating and less time explaining the basics.

If you get it, share it.

Again, either post your question  (or answer) below and/or complete our online form. Cheers.

Questions:

Q. What is the difference between social media and word-of-mouth?

A. 'Social media' refers to a collection of online web sites, in which users of the site interact with each other, such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or any other site in which a community gathers. Word of mouth is when people tell others about a product or service that they particularly enjoy. Word of mouth is, essentially, friends talking around the water cooler. The people involved may not be friends, or even know each other, but it's certainly a very powerful thing to harness.

Q. What types of social media channels are available to all users, to special types of users such as individuals, special interest groups, existing off-line communities (e.g., schools, enterprises, towns), online communities such as customers for a company or members of a college class,  'artificial' virtual communities such as Second Life, ...? A multi-dimensional grid to lay out the many dimentions of users and 'channels':

A. Social media channels can be categorized as follows: 

• Email lists with additional features (e.g., Yahoo Groups)
• Online messaging only (e.g., GardenWeb)
• Blogs (e.g., WordPress, TypePad, Google Blogger),
• Blog syndication (e.g., AlwaysOn),
• Content Management System (ex. Drupal) This is a tool, not a 'channel'
• Discussion Forum (ex. MSDN), This is confusing because "discussion form" would describe older tools like email distribution lists. Re Web 2.0 interactive capabilities, Jive is optimized for a Forum function where users can rate content (like Amazon's 5 star system), post comments... many features.
• Microblog (ex. Twitter),
• Multimedia Sharing (ex. YouTube),
• News Aggregation (ex. Digg),
• Social Bookmarking (ex. del.icio.us),
• Social Networking (ex. Facebook),
• Thumbcast (ex. Go2Media), Tumbleblog (ex. Tumblr.),
• Widget/Feed Button (ex. Add This), and
• Wiki (ex. Wikipedia) . [@walshtechnet]
• Collaboration platforms (e.g., WebEx, Jive's various products)
• Viritual communities where users create avatars and have quite complete virtual economies (e.g., Second Life)

Q. Is there a central place where corporations, agencies can review case studies and ROI success stories?

A. Not yet. Social networks are still emerging in terms of market structure, business impact, technological infrastructure and social significance. There are many web sites that add relevant (and often very good) content continuously. Many industry analysts study and report on this topic.

Q. What is the most popular social network in the US?

A. How does one measure 'popularity?' Number of subscribers unique visitors per time period, revenues, breadth of demographics...???

Q. What is the most popular social network in Europe?

A. According to a 2007 comScore report, Facebook is the fastest growing social network in Europe. Also according to comScore, Russia has the fastest growing Internet population in Europe.

Q. What is the most popular social network in Asia?

A. A 2008 comScore report says that Friendster is the fastest growing and #1 social network in all of Asia. Reuters also reports that Friendster has more than twice the users of any other social network in Asia.

Q. What is the difference between PR and Social Media?

A. PR is public relations. It is spreading general announcements, and creating good will towards a company or cause. In the olden days PR was basically a company assigning a spokesperson to communicate with news outlets.

Social Media is doing all these things - but it is enlisting the help of everyday people to organize. It is about democracy in action, it is about grassroots. In Social Media - citizen journalists, aka bloggers, facebookers, twitterers - all become their own news agencies. Some with larger followings like John Chow or Darren Rowse are celebrities in their own right.

It is all about the masses giving a thumbs up or a thumbs down about a product, or service. Social media in that respect can make or break a company.

Positive Example: MoonFruit.com recently held a contest - tweet the hashtag #moonfruit and get entered to win a macbook pro. The company stated that in the first 2 days they gathered 20,000 new followers, and received 8x their normal traffic, and they became a trending topic on Twitter.

Negative Example: Dominos Pizza's recent negative youtube video which showed employees doing disgusting things while working. The video received wide recognition and spread across the internet like a wildfire. Now corporate did not plan for this video, yet it caused a huge stir and definitely put a huge blemish on the company as a whole.

As you can see just from these two examples Social Media is extremely powerful - IF it hits the viral stage. (added by @patrickcurl)

Q. What is the best way to arrive at a social media mix for a project by any company?

e.g. Companies have champions who use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn groups, video channels and online community sites. How can they arrive at what is the best mix for a particular social media campaign?

A. Twitter seems by far the best tool for customer support, while LinkedIn groups works where there are established B2B groups in place. Facebook works for building online community using fan pages or for product launches with quick Facebook applications. Videos and blogs are part of all campaigns to varying degrees.

Q. How do you measure ROI of social media projects?

A.  First, set clear goals and quantitative metrics for what you intend to achieve by the project. Create social media impressions, or get processes in place for your group to test the waters. You should also determine if customer aqusitions or brand extension is a viable goal of a nascent social media project.

Set a baseline metrics of what is out there and track the echos created by your campaign. SM2 is a good tool that helps with the metrics.

(see example here http://coolastory.blogspot.com/2009/02/power-of-social-media-metrics.html