Wan+Y.+final+report

​​Wan Y.

=Proximity = A next generation connection

Proximity Research Report

**The Cooperation of Business and Social Media**  //Revolution of Social Networking - How Business Connect with their Customer Trough Facebook// By Yichi Wan

Spring 2010

=**Table of Contents **=

Executive Summary 1 Introduction: Social Networking revolution, a new way of advertisement 2 The Growth of Facebook users 3 The Impact of Social Networking 4 Social Media Success, business like Starbucks can get huge benefits from Facebook 5 The increasing importance of Mobile Social Networking 6 2010 Statistics about Facebook's users 7 Attachment 1:3 Attachment 2:5 Attachment 3:7 Recommendations 8 References 9

**Executive Summary** Gen- Y users does not consumer social media in traditional ways. Facebook is currently the social networking site that Gen- Y uses the most to connect with their peers. Therefore it has become an attractive place for businesses to connect with Gen- Y users over the past few years. Facebook is using its targeted advertisements to attract, and give businesses an effective way to reach their customer base directly. It presents a unique marketing opportunity for businesses by creating their own Facebook business pages. This report will show how businesses use Facebook to market and advertise Gen- Y users. A focus group session was conducted. The results of the focus group demonstrated that using Facebook to reach Gen-Y user is effective, and businesses can succeed their business goals through Facebook. It is recommended for small and large businesses to join Facebook, and use its targeting tools to reach Generation-Y users.


 * Introduction: Social Networking revolution, a new way of advertisement **

In the 21st century, Gen- Y consumers no longer watch TV or listen to radio in conventional ways, companies are having a hard time targeting them. Many Gen- Y consumers can only be found on Facebook. Social networking is the way Generation-Y users communicate and integrate. Facebook provides various platforms for businesses to show their products and to communicate with consumers from continent to continent. It can help companies pull through this economic slump.

Since Facebook targets Gen- Y users through ads based on their demographics, schooling and interests. That helps businesses use the effective ways to attract consumers. Proximity focus group indicates that advertisement through Facebook is hugely effective. There is no doubt that Facebook has become the social networking site where advertisers can best reach their targeted audience. ** The Growth of Facebook users **

At the beginning of 2008, Facebook’s international audience totaled 34 million people. By the first day of 2009, that number had increased to 95 million – making nearly 70% of the total Facebook audience. Today, this number is well over 400 million. The huge increase of Facebook users let Facebook easily maintain its place atop the social networking business. It is obviously that Facebook will continue laying the foundation for viral marketing capability and communications.



**Figure 1. The growth of Facebook in the past years **  Source: //Inside Facebook.com// "New Facebook Statistics Show Big Increase in Content Sharing, Local Business Pages" <[]>   Since Gen- Y does not consumer social media in traditional ways, so the social networking sites become extremely important to business to communicate with their consumers. Furthermore, Facebook is currently the social networking site that Gen- Y uses most to connect with their peers. Marketing on Facebook can help businesses target Gen- Y users in an effective way and attracts more consumers and makes more money. Therefore Facebook becomes the most attractive place for businesses to connect with Gen- Y users.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The Impact of Social Networking **
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Over 1900 participants in the study indicated that they work for a company involved in social media initiatives. 92% are directly involved in planning or managing these initiatives.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">On average, these individuals spend 18% of their time in any given week working on these initiatives.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">71% of the companies surveyed have less than two years of experience with social media.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The average company in the study is currently involved in 7 different social media efforts.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Top activities include – maintaining company related accounts and profiles on social media sites (70%), followed by monitoring company-related mentions on social media sites (60%) and maintaining one or more company blogs (60%).
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">66% of social media initiatives are driven by marketing, followed by 23% by customer support and 8% by product development departments.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">On average, companies use four different metrics to measure their social media initiatives - web site traffic, engagement with prospects and customers, brand impact – basically awareness and reputation, quantity and quality of leads
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">80% maintain a presence on Facebook (Business.com).


 * <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">Social Media Success, business like Starbucks can get huge benefits from Facebook **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The issue is of particular interest to agencies focused on developing social media strategies for their clients and, more importantly, figuring out how to sell them. In speaking with strategists it's increasingly clear that altruistic statements like the one Starbucks made is the best public explanation for what happens behind the scenes. As in, sure, Starbucks wants the public to perceive that their social efforts are good and well(Matt Van Hoven). Elaine reports that Starbucks has become the most popular brand on Facebook, with more than 3.6 million fans. Consumers can share their ideas with Starbucks to help Starbucks company makes better improvement. It’s a natural extension of the brand through Facebook, and through Starbucks' success with that, Starbucks Company started to expand beyond that. It was important for Starbucks to go where consumers are and to provide a valuable and meaningful brand experience. Also, on Facebook, there is a large volume of conversation on people's favorite beverages. It helps Starbucks to effectively target on its consumers, in order to make more revenues. And the conversation is representative of all the different aspects of Starbucks' brand (Elaine Wong).



<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">


 * Figure 2. Social Media Success Metrics**

Source: //Blogspot.com// "Business.com: 2009 B2B Social Media Benchmarking Study" <[]> <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">
 * The increasing importance of Mobile Social Networking**

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">For years, one of the most popular ways to access Facebook has been from mobile phones. Generally, <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">the popularity of mobile social networking is increasing. In January 2010, 11.1% of all mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via mobile browser, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from the previous year. Much of this growth has been driven by Smartphone owners, 30.8% of whom accessed social networking sites on their mobile browsers, up more than eight percentage points in the year. By comparison, just 6.8% of feature phone users accessed social networking sites on their mobile phones. Also, in January 2010, 25.1 million mobile users accessed Facebook via their mobile browser, up 112% from 11.8 million mobile users in January 2009 (comeSORE).

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">**2010 Statistics about Facebook's users**

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The statistics table about Facebook's users shows below indicated that Facebook has absolutely dominant United State's social networking sites. It is clear that Facebook has been adopted not only by Gen- Y users but also other generation users as their first and primary source for social networking site.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Facebook’s US user base grew from 42 million to 103 million in 2009. That’s a 144.9% growth rate!
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">The 55+ audience grew a whopping 922.7% in 2009.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Atlanta had the highest growth rate in 2009 at 267.6% (Petter Corbett).

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Source: //Istrategylabs.com// "Facebook Demographics and statistics Report 2010-145% Growth in 1 Year" <[]>
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Figure 3. Comparison of Facebook users **

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">**Recommendations** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> Marketing through social networking is affective and profitable for businesses. Since the mobile social networking has also become attractive to Gen- Y users, Facebook can easily reach their customer base directly anytime it wants. There is no doubt that Facebook has already become the most amazing social networking site that can provide cheap and effective advertisements and vast consumer marketing. According to that feature, businesses should cooperate with social networking such as Facebook and Twitter in order to achieve their final goals.


 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Business can make its own "Fan Group" or "Group Page" in order to connect and to reach its consumer base directly.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Gen- Y users can join a "Fan Group" to sharing their interests with businesses and to get the latest events from businesses faster.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Business can put their newest products and information on their Facebook Pages in order to attract more consumers to buy their products.

<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;">**References** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;"> <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">Business.com November 25, 2009 "2009 Business social Media Benchmarking Study"//Typepad.com// <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 144%;">< <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.4pt;">[]>

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">comSCORE “Mobile Facebook, Twitter Growth Explore” //Marketingcharts.com// <[]>

Eric Eldon. February 15, 2010 “New Facebook Statistics Show Big Increase in Content Sharing, Local Business Pages” //Insidefacebook.com// <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.4pt;"> <[]>

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Hemartin. December 04, 2009 “Business.com: 2009 Social Media Benchmarking Study” //Blogspot.com// <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.4pt;"><[]> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">

Peter Corbett. January 4, 2010 "Facebook Demographics and statistics Report 2010- 145% Growth in 1 Year" //Istrategylabs.com// <[]>

Matt Van Hoven. April 14, 2010 "Social Media Not a 'Marketing Play' for Starbucks" //Agencyspy//. <[]>

Elaine Wong. 12, 2009 "Why Starbucks Is the Top Brand on Facebook" //Brandweek//. August <[|http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/n][|ews-and-features/direct/e3idee9d1f93a71c575f89eb22566e7457b]>