What could happen in Social Media in 2 Hours? Be Surprised

In 2 hours, many things could happen on the Internet.

Petra Neiger, a Cisco employee and blogger, got inspired to find out what could have happened in the social media sphere after spending 2 painful hours travelling from San Jose to the San Francisco International Airport last week (catch her story here).

Her research on the Internet has surfaced some whopping statistics. Breathe in before you read the next sentence.

In 2 hours, 25,000 new users joined Twitter, 5.4 million tweets were sent, 5 million new status updates on Facebook were published, 1.6 million Facebook applications were installed, 167 million videos on Youtube were viewed… the list goes on…

These statistics aren’t just impressive but also intimidating for businesses. In a sea of bazillions tweets, updates and videos, what makes yours stand out? Or rather, what could we do to make our campaign rise above the noise?

Having a large following sure helps but it has to go beyond that. Your social media strategy has to be top notch– well planned, integrated and creative. Yes, creativity is the answer to break through the clutter. The brands that are often mentioned are amazingly creative.

One of my favorite social media campaigns is Ikea’s Facebook photo-tagging campaign. It was easy to participate, brought value and highly interactive. The campaign allowed users to tag themselves on a product in a photo filled with Ikea furniture. The person that tagged their name on a product first wins it.

Tagged photos were spilled over to the News Feed and friends of friends were encouraged to participate in the campaign. The call to action was strong. Anyone would like to have free Ikea furniture since it’s just a tag away. The network effect just snowballed and it became one of the best Facebook campaigns around. The idea behind it is simple but extremely clutter breaking.

Of course, this is just a one-off campaign. For a sustainable social media strategy, providing great content is one of the best ways to go. Old Spice has provided value through its fun-to-watch videos (infotainment). American Express has provided business related content to entice businessmen. P&G built a community website for teens in an effort to sell tampons. The result was 4 times as effective per dollar spent than the usual advertising.

Last but not least, Apple is worth a mention here. The brand rises above the clutter without being on social media. Instead, it excites fans with its product and let happy customers do the talking.