Posts over the last few weeks have talked about using social media for sharing the gospel and staying connected with friends. But how do you decide which social media site(s) to use? Below is a quick review of each of the major social platforms.

Facebook

• Primarily used for: connecting
• Primary demographic: 25 to 45
• Ideal fit for: entertainment, lifestyle brands, and non-profits
• Biggest opportunity: building fans
• Biggest challenge: few appreciate Facebook advertising
• Metrics: fans, comments, likes, wall posts
• Helpful tools: Lexicon, ad interface, applications, analytics, connect, etc.

MySpace

• Primarily used for: connecting
• Primary demographic: 15 to 25
• Ideal fit for: music and entertainment
• Biggest opportunity: providing music samples
• Biggest challenges: noisy; losing market share quickly
• Metrics: friends, favorites, groups, impressions
• Helpful tools: Open Platform, MyApps, MySpace Toolbox

LinkedIn

• Primarily used for: connecting
• Primary demographic: 35 to 55
• Ideal fit for: service providers, industry associations
• Biggest opportunity: creating thought leadership via Q&A and Groups
• Biggest challenge: time commitment
• Metrics: profile connections, best answers, group members, discussions
• Helpful tools: Applications, Salesforce plug-in

Blogs

• Primarily used for: creating
• Primary demographic: 35 to 55
• Ideal fit for: about anything
• Biggest opportunity: develop thought-leadership
• Biggest challenge: requires significant resources over time
• Metrics: feed subscribers, comments, visits, unique visitors, page views, Technorati rank, pingbacks, inbound links, visibility in search engines
• Helpful tools: WordPress plug-ins

Twitter

• Primarily used for: creating (microblogging)
• Primary demographic: 35 to 45
• Ideal fit for: service industry, sharing ideas
• Biggest opportunity: customer service, consumer insight, sales and marketing
• Biggest challenges: noisy; reliability issues; platform limitations
• Metrics: followers, @ replies, retweets, direct messages, custom hashtags
• Helpful tools: BingTweets, TweetBeep, TweetDeck, HootSuite, CoTweet, Mr. Tweet, Twitalyzer, blog plug-ins

YouTube

• Primarily used for: creating, sharing, voting
• Primary demographic: 25 to 45
• Ideal fit for: big brands and entertainment
• Biggest opportunity: creating viral content
• Biggest challenges: noise; conversions
• Metrics: views, comments, subscribers, ratings
• Helpful tools: TubeMogul, YouTube Insight

Adapted from Kent Lewis

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Social networks continue to climb in popularity around the world. The study “Power to the People: Social Media Tracker” found that the percentage of US Internet users with a social network profile grew 16% from 2008 to 2009. Today, 59% of active Web users (those with access at least every other day) reported having a profile.

eMarketer estimates that 44.2% of all Internet users in the US use a social network at least monthly.

But the US is far from tops in social networking activity. Seven other countries polled had higher percentages of Internet users with a social network profile. Russia, which came in first place, also had one of the fastest growth rates; it has grown from 23% in 2006 to over 85% in 2009.

Worldwide, 62.5% of active Internet users aged 16-54 have a social network profile. In addition, 71.1% have visited a friend’s profile page.

The study also sees people starting to focus their digital life around single networks (like Facebook), rather than around many specialized tools with social features (like blogging and photo-sharing sites). They tend to like social networks that consolidate multiple social media in a single place.

The chart below shows the most popular activities on social networks.

Messaging friends, uploading photos, and finding old friends are the 3 most popular activities. But also notice the variety of other activities that are also quite popular.

So, how do you use social networks? How can you ensure they are more helpful than a waste of time? I’m just learning how to filter and be selective with my Facebook page. For me, the trick is how to get updates from people I want to stay in contact with, without having to wade through the babble from all 318 of my friends.

A friend just posted the following on Facebook: “They say that 40% of tweets are just babble. I don’t think so. BTW, I just ate breakfast. Thought you would want to know.”

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Earlier this month we informed you that LDSMediaTalk set up a page on Facebook and over a hundred of you became fans of that page.

To enhance the experience, we have now set up a new page at facebook.com/ldsmediatalk. This new page will automatically display new  posts from the LDSMediaTalk blog. Some users may find this an easier way to follow the LDSMediaTalk blog.

We invite you to become friends with the new LDSMediaTalk page on Facebook. You can then choose whether to have new blog posts appear on your personal Facebook page.

We invite you to become a fan of the with the new LDSMediaTalk page on Facebook. You can then choose whether to have new blog posts appear on your personal Facebook page.

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This morning Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) tweeted about A Day in the Life of a Twintern. The article immediately caught my eye since it’s a story about Pizza Hut’s first official “twintern” – Alexa Robinson.

As a twintern – “an intern in charge of their companies’ Twitter feeds” – Robinson spends the majority of her time on Twitter “sending out messages about special promotions, responding to customer complaints, and trolling Twitter for mentions of Pizza Hut.” According to Caitlin McDevitt:

Despite a lack of in-house experience—she worked for only one day in a Pizza Hut restaurant—Robinson seems to be doing a fine job thus far. She has increased Pizza Hut’s Twitter followers from 3,000 to more than 13,000 and successfully executed a sales promotion over the Fourth of July weekend. And despite having only been on the job for a month, she seems well-informed about the company offerings. In response to a customer inquiry, she tweeted on Tuesday: “Currently the Stuffed Pizza Rolls are only available with pepperoni. I’ll keep you posted if anything changes.”

Who are some of your favorite LDS twitterers you follow?

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LDSMediaTalk how has a page on Facebook. See the discussion tab to share ideas on what you’d like to see on LDSMediaTalk. Become a fan to receive periodic updates.

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In May 2009, Facebook became the most popular US social networking site, just barely surpassing MySpace’s number of unique visitors.

Facebook now allows you to choose a username for your user page. For example, rather than the Web address (URL)being a randomly-assigned number like “id=592952074,” it can now be a name  of your choosing, like facebook.com/larry.richman. 

This makes it much easier to share with others your profile or some other Facebook page in a more personal way. It also adds authenticity and helps create a trusted environment because the identity of the people and things on Facebook will be more clear.

While the Church is still developing a strategy on how to use Facebook appropriately, preliminary pages have been created for the following:

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Facebook
• LDS Newsroom (facebook.com/LDSNewsroom)
• Liahona magazine (facebook.com/liahona.magazine)
• Ensign magazine (facebook.com/ensign.magazine)
• New Era magazine (facebook.com/newera.magazine)
• Friend magazine (facebook.com/friend.magazine)

You’ll notice that we’ve establish an easy username for each page, except for the main Church page. That will be set up once Facebook provides instructions to us and releases the names reserved around trademarks, such as “Mormon.”

To claim your own username (sometimes called “vanity URL”), visit facebook.com/username. Usernames can only contain romanized letters, numbers, and periods–no hypens or underscores. Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it’s been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it.

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If you haven’t added the LDS App on Facebook, you should check it out. It allows you to include on Facebook some of your LDS interests and background. You have the option whether or not to include the information on your personal profile.

New features:

• Share your mission, with dates and experiences, and see other friends from your mission
• Share the temple you were married (or would like to be married). Include the date you were sealed.
• Share gospel artwork on your profile and through messages.
• Group your favorite scriptures together and share your thoughts on them.
• Play some scripture mastery games.
• Reference the help section which overviews all the features.

The LDS App was created by the More Good Foundation. The LDS App now has 39,500 members.

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Every day, the social networking giant Facebook is becoming a larger part of the overall Internet experience. More than 175 million people have joined since its founding in 2005, and its users contribute millions of pieces of content every day.

Every day in February 2009, Facebook users averaged over 3 billion minutes on the site. They updated their status 15 million times and became “fans” of a particular company, brand, product or person 3.5 million times a day.

US residents spent more time on Facebook than on any other Web site, beating out the previous leader Yahoo! Source: eMarketer

You may also be interested in an article in yesterday’s USA Today that explains that social networking is fast becoming a staple for a growing number of adults.

While the Church is still developing a strategy on how to use Facebook appropriately, a preliminary page has been created for the Church, as well as for the Liahona, Ensign, New Era, and Friend magazines.

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In February 2008, it was reported that comScore ranked Women’s Communities as the fastest growing category of sites on the Internet, growing 35% from Dec 06 to Dec 07.  Below is a list of the top Web sites, at that time, in that category:

After seeing the data above, I thought it would be interesting to see if I could find some common themes and features among these top women’s sites.  I started by going to each site, and seeing how they describe themselves (see the descriptions of each site in Appendix 1 below).  By analyzing these descriptions, I was able to come up with four high-level purposes/features that nearly all of the sites’ content could fit into.

• Connections/Support (peer to peer, peer to expert, blogs, photo and story sharing, etc.)
• Information/Research (on health, parenting, babies, relationships, beauty, etc.)
• Home Making (coupons, budgeting, decorating, gardening, etc.)
• Fun/Entertainment (games, celebrity gossip and style, travel, etc.)

I found it interesting that, except for the last category, it seems like most  of the purposes and features of these top women’s sites fit well within the gospel.  Relief Society meetings and visiting teaching provide connections and support.  The scriptures, Sunday School lessons, manuals, and Church Web sites provide information and tools for research.  And with the Church’s emphasis on home and family, our sisters, wives and mothers are among the best homemakers in the world.

Though these topics might fit neatly into the purposes of the gospel, the Church has yet to venture into producing a Web site like these, most of which have social networking/online community-type features.  Do you think the Church should build a Web site to address these functions: Connections and Support, Information and Research, and Home Making?  Or, since there are already many other Web sites providing these functions, is this something the Church doesn’t need to venture into?  Or should the Church address these issues through a Web site and, in our unique and inspired way, better serve women?  Your thoughts are appreciated.

Appendix 1: Descriptions of the top 10 sites for women:
1. cafemom.com (CafeMom is a place for moms and moms-to-be to connect with one another. We invite you to take a look around CafeMom and join the moms who are already sharing, supporting, and having fun with one another at CafeMom.)
2. babycenter.com (Find information from BabyCenter on pregnancy, children’s health, parenting and more, including expert advice and weekly newsletters that detail your child’s development.)
3. ivillage.com (the daily destination for women, with horoscopes, health and pregnancy information, message boards and blogs, celebrity gossip, beauty and more.)
4. oprah.com (The place for everything in Oprah’s world. Get health, beauty, recipes, money, decorating and relationship advice to live your best life on Oprah.com. Plus, the home to The Oprah Winfrey Show, O Magazine, Oprah and Friends Radio, Angel Network, Harpo Films and Oprah’s Book Club.)
5. marthastewart.com (Food and dessert recipes, entertaining and home decorating ideas. Find ideas for cake decorating, baking, and kids crafts. Your online source for ideas from gardening to weddings.)
6. parents.com (Parents – Pregnancy, Babies, Baby Names, Pregnancy Calendar, Ovulation, Birth and More. Expert advice about pregnancy, your life, and family time from the editors of Parents magazine.)
7. kaboose.com (Kaboose is the premier family and parenting destination with kids’ crafts, holiday fun and activities, healthy food recipes, free online games, expert health and parenting information, community message boards, parenting blogs, photos, videos, shopping, interactive quizzes and tools, and much more.)
8. family.com (Family.com provides answers for every family’s needs. Find resources on parenting and raising healthy children, activities, entertainment, recipes, family travel and attractions, budgeting, shopping, coupons, and answers from the experts, other moms.)
9. glam.com (Glam covers fashion, celebrity style tips for women. Celebrity photos fashion designer interviews and beauty advice.)
10. parentsconnect.com (Get expert parenting advice, tips, & recipes for all stages of raising your child, plus connect with other parents)

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Who’s using Facebook?

Inside Facebook, an independent blog that reports on the Facebook platform, found that the faces on Facebook are looking older these days. 45% of the social network’s US users are ages 26+ and nearly 25% are over 34. In fact, women 55+ are the fastest-growing demographic group on Facebook. The number of women 55+ on Facebook grew over 175% since the end of September 2008, compared with a growth of 138% in men 55+.

How often do people use social networks?

Older adults don’t visit Facebook as often as 20-somethings who have been on the site since their college days. In the chart below from the  JPMorgan 2008 Consumer Survey, you’ll see that the percent who log in at least daily (red bars) diminishes with age, from 34% for 18-33-year-olds to only 5% for those 50+.

What do people do on social networks?

The Pew Internet & American Life Project “Tracking Survey” found that 89% of adult users logged on to social networks to stay in touch with friends, 57% to make plans with friends and 49% to make new friends. “Friends” is the overriding theme.

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