Has Facebook –

Has Facebook has it’s day? Not by a long shot it would seem. 

I have been doing a few more workshops as of late – which is nice – and this has kept me busy. But more and more I hear about Facebook losing out to other forms of social media especially amongst young people i.e. teens and the like 🙂 

Now as a part time social media marketing trainer and someone who loves a bit of Facebook PPC for clients I am a little shocked by such ideas. Not that the demographic for Facebook would change – as these things always happen, but more at the speed of it all. 

According to Social Media Today “Facebook’s growth period has clearly come to an end, with Comscore reporting an end of December 2013 user base of just over 31 million users. December 2012 it was around 1.5 million higher.” 

But be careful of such claims as you go to Fanalyzer – http://www.fanalyzer.co.uk/demographics.html# – and they say that Facebook is in rude health. With 36 million users in the UK, some 58.06% of the UK population and some 72.57% of the UK’s internet users.

Not bad at all for Facebook I would say. However, how many are active? And I wonder how many you really do reach with a marketing message. Not saying that Facebook’s advertising algorithm is dodgy but… 

It all depends on the marketing message and the product or service. But perhaps my client at JusTaxi should re look at Facebook as not just a customer service portal opportunity and an advertising platform to help downloads, but as a demographic changer and an integration partner.

Would a function where you can sign up through Facebook help people interact with our app more?  

As Social Media Today conclude…”Brands looking to target very young or fashion conscious individuals will certainly be needing to look elsewhere, although there are still approximately 2.5 million 13-17 year olds using the site. The largest demographic remains the 25-34 year olds, with just under 26% of all users falling into this age bracket. Regardless of what the teens are doing, this remains the single largest concentration of consumers on any social media platform, so businesses writing Facebook off do so very much at their peril.”

Perhaps the Justaxi demographic really is more older professionals in the suburbs and mums needing to go to the shops with kids and no car – rather than trendy young people coming back from trendy bars at trendy times in the morning (and you can tell how old I am from the ironic use of the word ‘trendy’)

Who knows? What I do know is that from our findings so far, we will need Manchester’s taxi comparison app to exist a lot more in the social space if it is going to survive at all. 

Who influencers your influencers – shouldnt you be doing it? And how…

All about social and something I talk about in my workshop – the simply fact that – “You can buy your advertising, but you can’t buy your friends.” And you can never, ever buy a community or a blogger, or for that matter a community blogger.

So how do we do it?

The Launch of StartupLocal – the on the ground part of StartUpBritain….

June 28^th held a great event as I was part of the launch of something with a select core of Start up Locals braving the conditions to make it all the way to the centre of the UK in the thunderous rain and lightening to come up with some bright ideas to help an already thriving organisation achieve even more this year. This was the start of StartUpLocal something I am proud to be part of for South Manchester. 

Confucius or just me being confused

Been reading – love that – actually had the time (no taken the time) to read.

With the baby coming (11 weeks to go and our first) might not have that much more time for self development.

Had already taken a year out after selling Spearfish (my second company – the events / marketing one) so should be ready.

Anyhoo loving some of this from Confucius and realised that it didn’t really go in my marketing blog or tweets – after people started to question what my philosphical ramblings were on about.

So popped it here instead – Enjoy

“The Master said, (the good man) does not grieve that other people do not recognize his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs.”

“He who by reanimating the Old can gain knowledge of the New is fit to be a teacher.”

“Tzu-kung asked about the true gentleman. The Master said, He does not preach what he practices till he has practised what he preaches.”

“The Master said, A gentleman takes as much trouble to discover what is right as lesser men take to discover what will pay.”

“The Master said, To men who have risen at all above the middling sort, one may talk of things higher yet.

But to men who are at all below the middling sort it is useless to talk of things that are above them.”

“The Master said, Who expects to be able to go out of a house except by the door? How is it then that no one follows this

Way of ours?”

“As to be being a Divine Sage or even a Good Man, far be it from me to make any such claim. As for unwavering effort to learn and unflagging patience in teaching others, those are merits that I do not hesitate to claim.”

“I have never yet seen anyone whose desire to build up his moral power was as strong as sexual desire.”

And then one from me – Only 3 things in the world: money/time/energy. The 1st made, the 2nd cannot be bought + the 3rd comes from a vast resource called motivation

It make a difference before you start – trust me 🙂

Ok you might not have seen it – have a look

I got something forwarded to me the other day.

I dont even know whence it came (check out me, I say wence)

It came from the ether of the internet from that ever changing mistress of the ephemeral distraction – the twitter feed.

Pop back and we can chat about it.

Have a look – http://thechive.com/2010/08/10/girl-quits-her-job-on-dry-erase-board-emails-entire-office-33-photos/?obref=obinsite

Now what do you think? Is it real or is it a great marketing idea?

For me, old gazer behind the curtains of the wizards of oz, its a very obvious social media campaign by someone

I.e. it’s a hoax – just like the classic youtube social faux pas – which launched the idea of things going viral on the net.

The woman chatting with friends at a party, a bit drunk about her boss, and he is stood behind her…

If you never seen it – worth a look – it’s on youtube.

Anyhoo, it just made me think about how things go viral – and how somethings are obviously meant for the social space.

However, after reading the wonderful book by Brian Solis (the new grand-daddy of all things royally kick ass in the social space) he has made me rethink the simplicity of it all.

I suppose as he so rightly puts it…we are all here to relearn 🙂

Being at UKfast host’s – Round table on E-learning

Was very proud today to be part of a future thinking think tank – a round table discussion on elearning and mobile education – with some very clever people at UKfast.

One question we covered together was what possibilities do Apps, iPads, networked games consoles bring about in education and training?

Good point especially with what is happening…

In the world of the net – not only are some BIG things happening with what the net might be in the years to come (totally free / not so free) – but there are some BIG players entering the Ipad world as well.

With even the BIG man himself, Murdoch, reckoning Apple will sell about 15m iPads this year and more than 40m by 2012, with more being made by other manufacturers.

But let’s be fair, estimates for the potential size of the market vary wildly. And most of them even from really clever paying people have been horribly wrong.

As Guardian Tech, reports,

“A couple of months before the iPad launched, ABI Research estimated that 4m could be shipped this year, rising to 57m a year by 2015. But on the run-rate reached since the device launched in the US in April, Apple should exceed 4m this month.

At the start of the year, research house Gartner reckoned 4m tablets would be sold this year – including the iPad. After the iPad’s success that estimate is now 14m.”

So we can all be wrong about numbers what we can’t be wrong about is the change that this can make to education.

After reading Clay Shirky’s wonderful ‘Here comes everybody’ and ‘Coginitive Surplus’ you can see the role of teacher and trainer to be seriously under attack.

We can all be the teachers – or the facilitators of learning – as Lord Puttnam’s new film about education puts it ‘We are the people we’ve been waiting for’.

However will ipads really make a difference in education? The potential is massive but…. the tablet market is still small compared with the PC and the mobile phone markets. Sticking with Gartner’s figures, the 14m tablets in 2010 compares with an estimate of 1.4bn mobile phones and 366m personal computers.

For mobiles – the number of mobile phone subscribers has doubled in the past five years. This figure is expected to rise by 10 percent to 5.6 billion in 2011.

So is it ipads or iphones that we should be looking into for training people and changing education / e-learning – I think you know what I feel.

Mobile is the future – and mix this with social and you get things to be very funky indeed.

Marketing in a way is like teaching (especially when you teach people marketing) so perhaps we should all look at facilitating rather than teaching.

Changing people from not buying your products – to loving what you do – now that is ‘great marketing’ and how internet marketing works.