Fruitbowl - Fresh Ideas from Hawke's Bay

Do you remember when TradeMe suddenly got big? That moment when you couldn't get in a taxi without the driver rabbiting on about some bargain he had picked up in a TradeMe auction? Well, exactly the same thing is happening right now with social media, except it's on a much bigger scale. Facebook made some ambitious changes to its website last week and Wall Street analysts who were previously sceptical about the company are now estimating Facebook's value at around US$100 billion (!!).

US$100 billion is such a big number that it defies our imagination. To put it in perspective, that's about 200 times what TradeMe was sold for!

So it's official. Social media is definitely the big story of 2010. In case, you've been living on another planet, here are some facts.

• 4 of the top 7 highest-traffic websites (Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Blogger) are social media websites
• With over 425 million users, if Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world
• Twitter now has 110 million users and is adding 300,000 a day

This means that if you want to communicate effectively with your audience, you need to have a social media strategy.

That might mean making regular updates to your organisation's Facebook page, tweeting regularly on Twitter, publishing regular blog posts, or uploading videos regularly to YouTube.

Notice my use of the word 'regular' in that last sentence? Once you create your social media presence, you need to maintain it and not let it lose momentum. No-one wants to read a blog that hasn't been updated for weeks or months.

If you're struggling to understand a word of this, don't worry!! At Mogul, we've been running a series of Friday morning workshops on:
'Social Media And Its Place In Your Online Marketing Strategy'
The feedback so far has been amazing. Places are limited to 10 per workshop so if you would like to attend, please let me know.