Picture from www.nwahomepage.com

Social Media is now being used on multiple levels – to name just a few:

1. Strengthening a businesses brand and online presence

2. Building up a trustworthy community

3. Assisting in connecting team members, raising the awareness of staff talent and interests

4. Providing another avenues in delivering outstanding customer service.

I am a big believer that when a business is innovative and embraces new and creative avenues when expressing their message, then they will always reap the rewards. There are so many businesses out there right now that have the same opportunity as everyone else yet some take the opportunity by the horns, whilst others lag behind. Whether it’s a fear of change or they are too lazy to change the routine, I’m not sure, yet the point of this post is to highlight a business that is adopting a new way of recruiting staff….and  THAT my friends raises my heart rate above 100BPM!!! So we have talked about how the big brands like Ford and Virgin are leveraging and nailing this social media space, let’s drill down to a smaller Melbourne based company.

Sportsnet Holidays are a perfect example of a company who are embracing new avenues to achieve a specific goal. I love how they are rolling out their latest recruitment strategy. It’s personable, authentic and cutting edge. Who could not want a job there!!! Check out the video and the authenticty of the Founder and Director Rob Cecconi and AB as they speak from the heart. AB even gets interupted via the gong and still proceeds on! I love it – it’s raw, natural and catchy.

Every business has this opportunity that Sportsnet Holidays have utlised, yet how many are really doing it??? How many businesses are changing the game, mixing up the routine, taking a step out of their comfort zone or embracing their creative side??? I wanna know!

Good on ya Sportsnet Holidays, I trust you will inspire many other businesses to think and ACT in the way you have in this powerful social media space.

I’m now throwing it out to the floor, what are your thoughts here ?

This Web2.0 space is bursting with growth and it’s only ever increasing. The numbers below highlight to all businesses how much opportunity is out there on the web right now! Stop crying and start working harder in this space! 2009 for small business owners has never been so great! 

Hold onto your hats and fasten your seat belts!

Internet

1,596,270,108 people are actively using the internet (Internet Usage and World Population Statistics are for March 31, 2009)

Google

 1 trillion URL’s are indexed on Google –  Source 

Here is how Google grew in terms of number of indexed URLs :

1998 : 26,000,000 (26 million web pages)
2000 : 1,000,000,000 (1 Billion web pages)
2008 : 1,000,000,000,000 (1 Trillion web pages)

Google has done 2 billion searches a day, or about 700 billion a year Source

Top 100 google hot trends - http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Blogs

133,000,000 - is the number of blogs Technorati has indexed since 2002

A new blog is created every second, totalling 80,000 new blogs every day. 

900,000 blog posts are created daily

Blogging grew 68% in 2008

346 million people worldwide read blogs

77% of active web users read blogs

The average blogger in the US:

• 51% male 
• Aged 35+ (58%)
• Aged 18-34 (42%)
• College educated, 74%   Source

Twitter

Number of tweets as of right now! - 1,691,543, 819 - ( click here for an up to the minute count)

At the start of 2008 Twitter had only around 500,000 monthly visitors

Growth rate for Twitter was 752%, for a total of 4.43 million unique visitors in December 2008  Source

Twitter.com is a top 500 site that reaches over 4.1 million U.S. monthly people. The site attracts a more educated, slightly more female than male, young adult audience. Quantcast, March

Twitter is receiving 8million unique visitors in the month of March 2009.Compete (via Nick) March 10

 Melbourne’s top 100 twitter users

Facebook

• More than 200 million active users

• More than 100 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day

• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college

• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

• More than 20 million users update their statuses at least once each day

• More than 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) shared each week

• There are more than 30 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

• http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

• Inside Facebook says: “the number of Americans over 35, 45, and 55 on Facebook is growing fast. In the last 60 days alone, the number of people over 35 has nearly doubled. Developers and marketers may want to think about how to serve this group of new users.” Inside Facebook, March

• “Women over 55 remain the fastest growing group, and growth among the teen and college-age set has been relatively paltry. In absolute numbers there are now even slightly more members between the ages of 45 and 65 than there are 13-to 17-year-olds.” Wired Magazine, March.

YouTube

You tube nears 5 billion views Source

 Average internet users watch 2 YouTube videos a day

The average video length, according to comScore.com, was 2.7 minutes.

YouTube Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. 

One of the most watched videos on youtube in 2009 – set to break youtube records! 

This illustrates how web clips are mixing with TV shows and bringing in a bigger audience. 

Mobile usage

63 million on mobile internet daily

Significant growth in the numbers of people accessing the internet from their mobile phones vs. a year ago. The company says that today there are just over 63 million mobile web users in the US and 35 percent of them are online via their handset daily. Source.

I trust your mind had been sparking off like a new years eve fireworks show! Here are the numbers, now where are you seeing the opportunities within your own business?