A lot of us don’ t always have a real purpose as to why we visit social media sites other than to kill some time and put an end to boredom. There is one organization, however, that is using Facebook to try and accomplish something with a real purpose. Bring Abducted Children Home (BACHome) is an organization working to bring home U.S. children that have been abducted and brought to Japan. According to their web site, BACHome.org, “no child kidnapped to Japan from any foreign country has ever been returned since 1952 when the Japanese sovereign government was established” and “in the past decade, more than 230 American children have been kidnapped to Japan”.

This morning NBC’s Today Show ran a story on Chris Savoie, just one of the many parents trying to locate and bring home their children from Japan. Savoie’s two children, Isaac and Rebecca, were both abducted and brought to Japan by their mother after she and Chris divorced last year. Chris warned U.S. courts that his wife intended to bring the children to Japan, however the judge ruled that a restraining order on his wife would not be necessary after she swore under oath that she didn’t actually plan on doing it. Unfortunately for Chris and other parents in the same situation Japan does not abide by an international agreement to return children abducted by parents back to their home nation. When Chris attempted to get his children back himself he found himself him Japanese prison and was only allowed to return to the U.S. after promising not to pursue his children any more.

BACHome, which leaves the ‘K’ out of their name because the kids are missing, lists 14 active cases on their web site. The organization’s goal is to influence our government and governments of other nations around the world to pressure Japan into doing everything in their power to locate and return abducted children. They utilize a Facebook page to share stories, information, and organize meetings. Currently there are over 650 people who ‘like’ the page.

The reach of Social Media extends far beyond bored teens. Organizations, like BACHome, are great examples of how social media can be used for a greater good.

Myspace got about half the number of mobile visits as Facebook, with 11.4 million users. The number of people who accessed Myspace on their mobile phone actually dropped compared to January of 2009, when they got visits from 12.3 million people. Facebook surpassed Myspace’s mobile browser audience size in February of 2009, 3 months before it overtook Myspace’s visits via personal computers.

A big reason for such a huge increase is the increased popularity of smartphones like the Droid, iPhone and Blackberry. 30.8% of smartphone owners accessed social media sites with their phones in January compared to just 6.8% of people using feature phones.

comScore says that the real number of people accessing social networking sites on their phones is actually even higher. This is because their figures do not include data from the 6 million people using mobile applications to get on social media sites; It only includes data of people accessing the sites with a mobile web browser.

And it’s not just Joe Schmo using the web platform; The world’s biggest celebrities, most prominent politicians, and largest corporations are using Twitter. According to Business Wire 65 percent of Fortune Global 100 companies have an active account. Politicians like Al Gore (@algore) rely on Twitter to reach their followers and keep them informed. Many news stations, schools, and local governments use Twitter to update their followers of emergency situations. And the celebrities… where do we begin? Are you a fan of cycling? Follow Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong). More of a basketball guy? Maybe Shaq is a big enough celeb for you to follow (@THE_REAL_SHAQ). Jimmy Fallon (@jimmyfallon), Dave Matthews (@DaveJMatthews), Britney Spears (@britneyspears), Snoop Dogg (@snoopdogg), Kevin Smith (@ThatKevinSmith), Eli Manning (@elimanning), George Lucas (@George_Lucas)… that’s quite the clientele for such a young company. Some big name users actually have their staff manage their accounts, like Barack Obama, however all of the ones listed here tweet for themselves.

Twitter is also becoming extremely involved in global events. Currently Twitter is working to help the people of Haiti; They have made a deal with mobile carrier Digicel to bring free SMS tweets to Haitians. Previously they were charged fees each time they tweeted so now they should be able to communicate more freely and easily with people in other countries.

There are projections that by the end of 2013 Twitter will have 1 billion users and $1.54 Billion in revenue. For comparison, the Facebook monster currently has about 350 million users – which is about 50 million more than the population of the United States.

It is amazing how popular Twitter has become in such a short period of time. Whether they can continue their growth and hit their projected figures is still uncertain, but the way things have been going I wouldn’t bet against them. Now let me go tweet about this blog (@thatsus).

A report by IDC pointed to a survey of workers that showed 57% of them used social media at least once per week for business purposes. It only makes sense that these tools, which have been optimized for usability and customization, are the tools of choice for business purposes. Workers find sites such as Facebook and Twitter much more user-friendly when it comes to communicating both internally and externally than some systems implemented by the companies themselves.

Workers are doing more promotion as well, regardless of whether they work in marketing, accounting, IT, or any other department. Sure, there are plenty of reasons to argue against allowing workers to use social networking sites while on the job (see Farmville) but the benefits can potentially outweigh the risks if the company takes the right stance on social media. Creating a Fan page and Twitter account for your company and then giving permission to employees to post to those social media portals periodically throughout the week can bring invaluable brand recognition, improved customer relationships, and can make consumers more likely to view your brand as a person rather than as a corporation. By connecting with people on a more personal level company’s can more successfully use their social media portals to promote sales, new products, and events without seeming like a robotic spam machine.

Some companies still see social media as a fad, but they will be playing catch-up with those companies which are “socially aware” – a term used by ChannelInsider.com to describe businesses who use social media to their advantage. Choosing to ignore social media can be a death sentence to companies, especially if they are part of an industry full of socially aware competition.

Creativity and ingenuity usually lead to success in Social Media campaigns, but sometimes you can be creative and successful by going old school. Volkswagen is doing just that by bringing back the old “Punch Buggy” game. Remember it? Every time you passed a VW Beetle on those long family road trips you and your little brother would exchange punches. It’s a game that pretty much everybody can remember being a part of at some point, which is why it makes for a great social media campaign. People can relate to it and get a tingly feeling of reminiscence.

So, starting with an ad during the 3rd quarter of this year’s Super Bowl, VW is reinventing the game and calling it “Punch Dub”, referring to their nickname “Vee Dub”. The new game allows punches whenever any VW is spotted, not just a Beetle. The modern version of the classic game will feature celebrity comedian Tracy Morgan (from SNL and 30 Rock). Fans of Volkswagen will be able to share their excitement over the reemergence of the game by going to VW’s Facebook page where they can become “Punch Dubbers” and dole out punches of their own and also get a chance to win a new VW CC.

The combination of bringing back a classic game with a chance to win a car and a popular comedian is something that will almost surely turn into a successful campaign. While most companies can’t afford Tracy Morgan, or a Super Bowl ad, the formula can still be followed by small businesses. Connect with your fans on a personal level by inviting them to get involved with a fun and quirky activity and offer them incentives to do so. Chances are, if you remind people of something from their past that they enjoyed, even something small like the “Punch Buggy” game, they will see your brand as more human and more fun. While it might not last long, such a campaign can leave a lasting impression on people and can leave them seeing your company as more Social Media-friendly.

According to B2B Social Media Benchmarking, a report from BtoBonline.com, the five most popular resources people turn to at work to get the information they need for their day-to-day jobs are:

• Webinars and podcasts
• Online ratings and reviews of business products or services
• Company pages on social networking sites such as Facebook or LinkedIn
• Company blogs
• Searches of business-related information on social media sites

Company size, job role, and industry all play roles in how much each of these resources is used. Larger companies are more likely to see success from social media marketing when reaching out to other businesses, but smaller companies can benefit as well, especially from online ratings sites. While Twitter is used less than podcasts and webinars it is still used for B2B by 41% of those businesses that use social media. Companies in industries such as marketing and advertising, computers and software, and the internet all are more likely to use and see results from social media than other industries such as legal or accounting.

A good rule to get the best results out of a B2B social media marketing campaign is to continually test different channels and keep an eye on what other competing companies are doing with social media and with what effect. Also, don’t spread yourself too thin. Focus on the most important channels for your company and maximize your results in that channel. This will be the year that more companies use social media for B2B but it will take some time and research before a solid formula can be developed for any company.

General Social Networking Terms

RSS

A group of related feed formats used to publish frequently updated works including blog posts, facebook profile activity, twitter “tweets”, and audio and video clips in a standardized text format. It aggregates content so it’s easily organized by mobile devices and web pages.

Example: Click on the RSS link in the navigation of this blog and you’ll get a text feed of every post we add – sent anywhere you want it – your iGoogle, Google reader, mobile phone are just a few of the options!

Tag

Marking a photo, video, blog post, facebook post or twitter tweet with text that identifies it.

Example: I’ve tagged this blog post with social media, facebook, twitter, rss, and social media glossary. These tags let the user know what the blog post focuses on and helps with SEO.

Cyber campaigning

Using web sites like Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for election or promotional strategy.

Leveraging

Using a social media site to a company or candidate’s full advantage to add personality and pull in users.

Facebook

Group

A page on facebook created by bands, companies and other organizations to promote their activities and interests.

News feed

Highlights what’s happening in your social circles on Facebook.

Live Feed

A real-time display of posts and other actions taken by the groups and friends you’re connected with on Facebook.

Social ads

A way to drive traffic to a web page by connecting with their Facebook page.

Fan

A person who has “become a fan” of a page because he or she likes what it represents.

Friend

A person that has requested to become a friend of your profile on Facebook to connect and share information. This allows them access to your Facebook wall, info and photo tabs and anything else you choose to share.

Twitter

Hashtags

A way to unite global Tweets around a particular topic or community. For example, when you search #LNK in Twitter, it links you to people posting in Lincoln.

TweetDeck

A personal browser to connect a person with his or her contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more to show everything a person wants to see at once, so he or she can stay organized and up to date.

One of the biggest social media campaigns will begin in January when Pepsi launches the Pepsi Refresh Project. The company’s social media campaign will focus  on collecting ideas from fans and followers. How, you ask, will that cost Pepsi $20 million? Pepsi wants ideas on ways to refresh their communities. The top ideas will be put into effect and funded by Pepsi, hopefully making the world a little better and, for Pepsi’s sake, generating brand awareness and publicity for the company. This is by far one of the largest budgets to be allocated for a social media campaign by any company

Pepsi isn’t taking this $20 million project lightly. In order to afford the project Pepsi wont advertise during this year’s Super Bowl, something it has done every year for 23 years. In the past decade they spent $142 million on those iconic Super Bowl ads, such as those featuring Britney Spears. Now, though, the company hopes the same amount of buzz, if not more, can be generated by getting fans of the brand to interact and become a part of the Refresh Project and, at the same time, improving communities throughtout the world. The campaign will start on January 13th and voting for the best user-submitted ideas will begin February 1st.

Source

Fast forward to the present and you’ll see the complete opposite is in effect. There is an all-out blitz on social media by companies wanting more customer-brand interaction. It’s not just feedback they’re looking for, but actual interactions and interest. Brands want to become more a part of their customers’ lives by becoming more involved with their daily social media activities. And it really is no surprise businesses would want to jump on the social media bandwagon. Over 350 million people use Facebook and it is one of the most visited sites on the web. It would be a huge mistake for a business to overlook the marketing benefits it could gain by tapping into that giant audience.

A brand can’t simply create a fan page and expect results, though. The user-generated content will never appear and people will never follow a brand that has nothing interesting to get people involved. So, brands are constantly soliciting responses out of the social media users by posting announcements, questions, updates, sales, polls, games, and anything else you can think of. The game now is for the company to get you talking about them. Good or bad they’ll let you speak your mind and leave your mark (they’d much rather have the good). The control is no longer entirely in the hands of the brand as they have given in to democracy where any person can voice their opinions. Sure, they could just delete the negative comments, but that is frowned upon in the social media world and defeats the purpose of the system.

In a time when user-generated content is constantly updating and flowing onto our smart phones, PCs and TVs, brands have become aware of the power of social media and have just one thing on their mind: What do you to have to say?

Dell has pulled in more than $6.5 million from its Twitter accounts.

The Year of Twitter may be coming to an end, but the potential for making money from the social media portal has still yet to be fully realized. Companies all over the world are reaching out to Twitter’s 18 million users and more and more of those companies are seeing revenues rise as a result. Social media’s continued integration into every aspect of our lives is creating a limitlessly lucrative channel for businesses to reach potential and current customers, handing out deals and coupons as well as taking care of customer service and creating brand awareness.

A great example of Twitter’s potential can be seen by looking at Dell (@DellOutlet). The 3rd largest PC maker began using Twitter 2 years ago to update followers of special deals as well has handle customer support. This June Dell announced that they had seen over $3 million in revenue generated from Twitter. At the time of this post Dell had more than doubled that figure to over $6.5 million. Not bad for using a free service.

Dell reaches out to more than 1.5 million followers (about the population of Pheonix, Arizona) several times a day, making sure that none of them can miss a deal that Dell may be running on their web site. Best of all, those 1.5 million followers all voluntarily chose to be continuously updated by Dell, meaning that, for the most part, they are all potential customers. That’s part of what makes Twitter so great. Pushing out deals to millions of people that aren’t interested in your product can be a waste of time and money. Twitter eliminates that problem for businesses and lets them focus their efforts on real sales leads.

And the benefits of Twitter keep growing at a rate that can’t be overlooked if you’re responsible for marketing your company’s products. Currently Twitter has only a fraction of the users that Facebook has (Facebook boasts an incredible 350 million users compared to Twitter’s 18 million), meaning that the potential for growth is still enormous. Also, Twitter, as well as other forms of social media, are now integrated into Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game console. This creates a new way for companies to reach the more than 2 million people that have already used the social media services on their TV through Xbox Live.

Even bigger, though, is the integration of tweets into Google’s search results, called Google Social Search. Google now scours the web for relevant and recent Twitter posts and displays them in your search results. The results are updated in real-time and those tweets that are being sent out are gaining an incredibly large boost in potential views and clicks. The power of Google combines with Twitter to make the social media portal a must-have for businesses. I’ve personally seen the benefits of this partnership in action. Just yesterday I posted a tweet for one of our clients that had the word money in it. Just minutes later a coworker of mine came over to show me that he had just tried out Google’s social search capabilities and searched for the keyword money. Behold, the tweet that was sent out to the company’s followers was on the first page of Google’s search results with a link to their web site. That was impressive to say the least.

Twitter will continue to grow in several ways and will become more ingrained into our daily lives. 2009 may have been the year of Twitter, but 2010 will be the year that companies use it to its full potential and really profit from it.