According to an eMarketer report there is an estimate of 800 million mobile social network users by 2012. That is up from an estimated 147 million in 2008. This is obviously a world wide estimate.

Source: eMarketer

For the US market we see only a small percentage of 4 million mobile social network users in 2008 according to a Nielsen report. There is so much room for growth in the mobile social network market in the world not to mention the United States.

According to a recent Facebook blog post in early September 2009, Facebook Mobile is excelling in the mobile social networking space by growing to over 65 million users. That is up from 20 million in the beginning of the year. This is over 300% growth in less than a year. I myself am a dominate user of the Facebook iPhone Application which I use to access Facebook more often than the normal site as I am constantly on the go and not in front of a laptop/desktop.

Mobile Social Network Channels

One reason for the rise of Facebook as a mobile social network is its availability among multiple ways to access their social network online. Listed below are a few channels to consider for a successful mobile social network reach.

• Mobile Web Sites
• Text Messages
• Mobile Application for Devices (Apple, RIM, Symbian, Palm, Windows)
• Common ID for Mobile Web (OpenID/Facebook Connect)

This ubiquitous approach to provide all touchpoints for the social network has allowed users to be able to connect to the social network with practically any mobile way currently possible. As we can see from a recent report on AdMob and written about in Read/Write/Web requests by devices play a critical role in understanding which ones are used to access the mobile web. We can see that the iPhone has a 60% share in the US and RIM dwarfed at 13%. World wide, iPhone still maintains lead and the Nokia devices running the Symbian operating system in second place.

Source: AdMob.com / ReadWriteWeb.com

What is interesting however is the fact that Nokia (Symbian OS) has a huge lead when it comes to devices on a world wide scale. So the strategic decision needs to be made when approaching a mobile social network. What market segment should the focus be placed on. The U.S. market or to expand globally. In other words, should a focus be on Apple products or Nokia products?

Source: Admob.com / Gartner

Perhaps another question is will Apple rise to even the playing field or pass Nokia by 2012 when the expected 800 million mobile web users have access to mobile social networks? As we can see from the graph above, Nokia in 1 year has fallen in comparison with the rapid growth of Apple from 3% to 13% market share in 1 year.

As we have seen the mobile market is rapidly growing and is ripe for an opportunity for existing powerhouse social networks to condition users to the idea of using a mobile social network. The question is will existing social networks just dominate this market or will another service arise from the shadows to leverage all of the mobile social network behaviors into a successful next thing?

The key stumbling block of many twitter users is how to add new followers. To many web users growing such a network seems like a manual time intensive task. There are tools to help automate some of this growth of followers.

Listed below are a set of tools that will help grow not only a targeted follower base, but a valuable community of like minded friends. This is the key difference. There are many on Twitter who follow for following sake. This is seen as “twitter spam”! If your goal is just to add random users, this is not for you! However, If you are interested to grow a niche specific high value twitter community here is a step by step listing of the tools necessary to do it:

Step 1 – Auto Follow Keywords

Twollow.com – This tool allows a you to input up to 5 keywords specific to a niche that you are trying to target. This is done by selecting the amount of people you wish to follow per day based on a keyword, twollow will then automatically follow people. If twollow is set to follow 15 new people per day for all 5 keywords that is a total of 75 new targeted users per day.

Step 2 – Follow Like Minded People

Twannabe.com – Now try to find some niche specific people to follow by doing a general search on your nich keyword on Twitter Search. Once you have identified a few key people in a niche, twannabe allows you to input a key twitter username that will then automatically all people that the key twitter user is following. This allows you to follow those people. This way it ensures that there is an organic growth of like-minded twitter users therefore increasing the chance of that person following you back.

Step 3 – Automate Direct Messages

Tweetlater.com – Send automated Direct Messages when someone follows an account and then one follows the user back instantly! You can automatically thank or direct someone to your website immediately after someone follows you. In this way the community is growing and your account is following like-minded individuals while all on an automated process!

Step 4 – Manage Your Twitter Followers

Tweepular.com – Perhaps the best tool to continue to grow your network on Twitter is the service called Tweepular. This service allows one to refine the audience. Tweepular will continue to suggest new users based on their ‘Build your Tweepularity” feature. You can also who manage who follows you and most important who is ‘not following’ you after a given period of time. With this tool you can continue to refine your community to have active and engaged twitter users.

Step 5 – Track Your Twitter Followers

As your followers begin to grow automatically and organically, tracking tools come in handy to further refine your profile to be attractive to other twitter users to follow you. Tools such as Tweetstats.com and Tweepletwak.com help monitor your twitter statistics.

By following these simple tools and steps a solid foundation can be created in order to have a long lasting organic growth to your social community on Twitter. I would love to hear your feedback after using these steps for a few days and how it these 5 steps are working for you!

BOSSdev

Collaborating with a Michigan based coffee chain Biggby Coffee in the city of Madison Heights, Cosmin and Grant from BOSSdev launched the first ever “Breakfast Tweetup” in the Metro Detroit area.

@danielbora – Biggby’s Coffee taking orders.

On Tuesday April 14th from 8am – 10am Twitter users showed up and began chatting things up both face to face along with the occasional tweets to the Twitter “back channel” of #bfastup. All the tweets from the event were displayed via the software Tweetdeck on the 50 inch plasma at Biggby’s, a great synergy of both real and virtual world usage of Twitter to establish professional relationships. Of course also enjoying their favorite coffee, latte’s, and pastries. Some people even posted Tweets of what coffee order they wanted.

There was great conversation, great networking, and above all great coffee to keep us going. Listed below are some of the participants during the event.

@cosguru
@gkravitz
@scottheath
@ruthreaser
@ddelonge
@mollysly
@davemurr
@balanon
@davebenjamin
@k_labudde
@hillsdalesam
@joshyurich
@virtualjason
@danielherdean
@jfavreau
@mruffi
@sullyvan
@sandradeelee
@kaylook
@brian_halicki
@karenevanstm
@danielbora
@kristanabraham

Tweetdeck on plasma screen for all to follow tweets in real time.

A big thank you to all who arrived and also participated even though they were not physically at Biggby’s ( @sazbean, @davepeckens ) The feedback was to continue the event at another date so please be on the lookout for the next Breakfast Tweetup!

Ps. Great recap from @davemurr with video – http://digg.com/u111ZK

More photos from the event:

@joshyurich and @mruffi – “talking”

@virtualjason and @gkravitz

This year we are continuing the seminar/workshop  tour and stopping in the New Jersey/New York area. I am excited to be speaking again with Dave Evans the author of “Social Media Marketing and Hour a Day“. Along with him this time around we will have the Social Media Manger from HP,  Tac Anderson. Looking forward to meeting him for the first time. Of course I cant forget my colleagues at BOSSdev, Korye Logan, Andy McDonnell and Sam Swenson.

We will be focusing on a major pain point for brands and enterprises that are looking for measurement and analytics in their Social Media initiatives. So if you are in the area please feel free to sign up and reserve your seat! More information below:

BOSSdev Social Media Marketing Breakfast

“Social Media Strategy: Achieving Real Results in a Virtual World”

Space is limited

Reserve your seat now

Date: Jan. 29th, 2009

Time: 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM

Location:

Parsippany Hilton
One Hilton Court
Parsippany, NJ 07054
973-267-7373

Social media is here to stay, and it has an enormous effect on the depth and speed that information is disseminated. There’s no denying the powerful influence this has on how companies need to approach communication, collaboration, multimedia, and entertainment.
Social media is the building block of the online world – and the content generated by casual users is expanding faster than any other kind. Those who truly want to succeed need to understand how it all works.

Regarding analytics, it makes sense to want data that proves and validates the impact of social programs. This helps to justify your investment by providing data for ongoing modification to maximize effectiveness.

Now, you can discover advantageous new insights on social media channels through real world case studies along with metrics of results. The next BOSSdev seminar will address these relevant issues – and more – to keep you ahead of the curve when it comes to this potent and expanding force.

Speakers include:

Tac Anderson, Social Media Marketing Manager, Hewlett Packard
Dave Evans, Author of “Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day”
Cosmin Ghiurau, Social Media Analyst, BOSSdev
Korye Logan, Digital Marketing Strategist, BOSSdev
Andy McDonnell, Business Development Director, BOSSdev
Sam Swenson, Social Media Analyst, BOSSdev
Justin Wyman, Director, Collective Intellect (Social Media Analytics)

As we can see from the graph below toward the end of January 2009 Facebook will become the most popular social networking website on the internet.

I think this is primarily due to the fact that Facebook is grabbing all of the ‘MySpace graduates’.

Social Networking is all about the demographic and what that demographic does with the tools it has from a social networking standpoint.

I have seen this before from personal experience when I founded a small niche social ‘community’ back in 2003 it grow tremendously (for the niche) for a couple of years.  When MySpace came around it grabbed 80% of the audience from my small community website (currently over 30,000 members). Now Facebook has been growing because users of MySpace are ‘graduating’ from MySpace and moving on to the social networking community that the rest of their peers are utilizing.

Ask anyone who is in college if they use MySpace. More than likely their response will be that MySpace is for ‘kids’ or high schoolers.

Next Social Network Graduate?

My question is what or who will be the next social networking website that will draw in the graduates of ‘Facebook’?

As we can see from the visual to the left, social networking utilization is primarily for communication and conversation followed by multimedia activites such as music, video, and photos.

The lesser percentages is that of actual ‘contributors’ or ‘creators’ of content.

I wonder if social networking websites such as LinkedIn.com or even Tagged.com will become that next step for graduates of Facebook.com?

Or perhaps users will become so overwhelmed by marketers and advertising on Facebook that they decide to leverage the micro-blogging genre such as Twitter.com or Plurk.com?

My thought for a successful social networking website is one that will be a merger between P2P and a Microblog. Based on statistics known in visual. There is a need for such a service that will provide multimedia content without a user having to contribute or create the content themselves and at the same time be able to add their own photos and be given the opportunity to have conversations with those that they gauge as their most valuable ‘friends’.

Could a service like this pull the next graduate class from Facebook?

As Social Media is about communication and discussion in its raw definition, how can this information be tracked on a daily basis as the ‘buzz’ of a brand or event is measured not by days but by hours in some cases.

That is why software  (and typically SaaS) company to measure social media are establishing themselves. These following companies are ones that have been highly recommended by my peers and I would recommend as well. Of course there are many others that are beginning to make waves these 3 are ones to review.

1. Radian6

Below are excerpts from the product page of the Radian6 product.

Radian6 software is quick and easy.  The user simply sets up topics using keywords.  Keywords could include names of brands, companies, products, competitors, issues, campaigns, spokespeople, executives or anything else that requires monitoring.

Once setup is complete, the solution automatically collects and tracks content for the topic.  It monitors all forms of social media including blogs, top video sharing and social networking sites, forums, opinion and review sites, image sharing sites, microblogging sites, online mainstream media and other sites as they become available.

Analyze your topic with a number of user-friendly widgets – mini-applications accessible through a dashboard that provide quick access to specific information.  As content is discovered, the solution automatically and continually tracks comments, viewership, user engagement and other metrics, 24/7, so that you can clearly see the reach and affect each post has on the community.  Know immediately which content is making an impact and what needs to be managed.  Uncover the influencers online by topic, based on user-determined formula weightings.  Listen and learn more about these influencers and decide on a path of engagement tracking the steps along the way.

Easily export data and analysis for use in your reports, presentations and spreadsheets.  Radian6’s social media monitoring solution can export reports using any variety of formats.

The company allows for demo signups to review and test drive their software.

2. Cymfony Orchestra (TNS Media Intelligence)

Below are excerpts from the product page of the Cymfony Orchestra product.

TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony’s Orchestra breaks new ground by enabling organizations to view traditional and consumer-generated media in one application, providing more comprehensive and complete real-time consumer and market insights. The convergence of multiple media sources enables a broader range of groups across the organization to benefit from the media analysis and discovery functions, including real-time “side-by-side” analysis of mainstream and consumer-generated media.

TNS MI/Cymfony’s Orchestra platform consists of two applications:

1. Our proprietary Natural Language Processing engine automatically aggregates, classifies, quantifies, and benchmarks both traditional and consumer-generated media.

2. The second application is a Web-based interface that provides a dashboard to analyze these multiple media sources. The Orchestra online dashboard provides access to real-time data at any time from any web browser. Orchestra requires no IT development and it easily integrates with your current workflow

TNS also has a call to action on their website to schedule a demo of their product or to contact one of their sales representatives to get more information on the product.

3. Sm2 (Techrigy)

Below are excerpts from the product page of the Sm2 product. What I like personally about Sm2 is the instant account creation that allows you to have a limited ability to test drive their application for your social media initiative.

SM2 is a social media monitoring and analysis solution designed for PR and marketing professionals. With SM2 you can track conversations, reviews and positive/negative sentiment for your brands, clients, competitors and partners across the eco-system called social media: blogs, wikis, microblogs like Twitter, social networks, embedded video and more – in real time.

SM2 doesn’t just return keyword search results. You get complete analysis tools including charting with comparisons, demographics, geo-location, sentiment and drill-down reports. It’s easy to use and, because it’s hosted, cost-effective to implement. With our Freemium Account you can run tests on your brands to manage risk, track trends, understand market reach and manage reputation. With our paid plans you can track one client or hundreds- SM2 scales with your needs.

Information is power and there’s a lot of information in Social Media. Adding SM2 capabilities to your practice gives you the ability to offer enhanced services and expertise to your clients including brand sentiment and conversation tracking, risk management and trend development in social media.

As I mentioned, the great thing about the Sm2 product is the fact that you can get your feet wet with their product instantly after creating an account with Techrigy.

blog post photo credit: www.masternewmedia.org

Collaboration and communication within Social Media culminates with monitoring. Many people and companies often start off with the end result question, “how do I monitor the buzz on my Social Media campaign”. Therefore I have compiled a list of categories and sites that will help you instantly get started. Obviously this list may change and grow with due time.

Listed below are some resources to help you follow the “buzz” on your brand, product, and service on a daily basis.

Search

• Google Trends – http://www.google.com/trends

General Site Comparisons

• Compete – http://www.compete.com
• Alexa – http://alexa.com

Inbound Links

• Yahoo Site Explorer – https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/mysites

Social Overview

• HowSociable – http://www.howsociable.com
• Addictomatic – http://www.addictomatic.com
• Techrigy – http://www.techrigy.com

Blogs

• Google Blog Search – http://blogsearch.google.com
• Nielsen BlogPulse – http://www.blogpulse.com
• Technorati – http://technorati.com
• Trendr – http://www.trendrr.com

Social Networks

• Facebook Lexicon – http://www.facebook.com/lexicon
• Digg Search – http://www.digg.com
• StumbleUpon Reviews – http://reviews.stumbleupon.com
• Twitter Twitscoop – http://www.twitscoop.com
• Twitter Search – http://search.twitter.com

You can look at several elements when measuring the success of your social media efforts. What you measure is going to depend on your overall marketing goals. Do you want to push sales, drive engagement, or increase awareness? Whatever your success metrics are, here are some others to consider as well:

1. Content Consumption – If you have a blog, an effective way to measure engagement is to monitor who is reading your blog, where they are coming from and what content they are reading. You can run web analytic reports that will show you the most popular content on your site or blog. This data will also show how much time the reader spent on a particular page, where the reader came from, and also the bounce rate (percent of visitors who left your site after visiting a particular page).
2. Content Contribution – If you have a blog or wiki that allows comments, a quick and easy metric is monitoring the number of visitors who are interacting with your content.
3. Social Bookmarking – Who is adding your site, article or blog posts to sites like Delicious, Reddit, and Stumbleupon? There are a couple of methods you can use to look at this metric. You can use your web analytics tool and run a click map report and see how many web visitors are clicking on the social bookmarking icons. Or, you can simply create profiles in each of the bookmarking sites and search for your URLs.
4. Subscribing to an RSS feed – This allows you to measure how many of your readers are subscribing to your RSS feeds.
5. Emailing posts – If you allow your blog postings to be emailed to others, you can use a blog platform tool (such as WordPress) to see how many emails are sent through your form.
6. Who is talking about you – There are a few ways you can measure this, but, it’s not an exact science. Again, with WordPress, you can see which sites are linking to your site. This function is clearly located on the dashboard so you can see this as soon as you log in. You can also use a blog search engine, such as Technorati, and search your domain. Lastly, you can always use the old SEO trick by searching for your domain in Google, Yahoo and MSN with the following: link:http://www.yourwebsite.com. These numbers will never exactly match, but they are indicators of who is talking about you, or minimally, who is linking to your site.
7. Profile Engagement – Perhaps you don’t have a blog, but you have a profile on Myspace, Facebook, or Mybloglog. You can apply the same metrics mentioned above, as well as monitor the number of friends that you have, total profile visits, etc. Each social networking site offers some type of vitality metric to see what’s going on in your communities.

Before you engage with social media, you may want to assign monetary values to your metrics, especially if your end goal does not include revenue conversions. This is where the task becomes a bit challenging, but it’s key if you want to assign an ROI to your social media marketing efforts.

Insipration: Content from Michael Brita Senior Marketing Manager Yahoo!