There is no question that social media has changed the way we communicate - both as organizations and as individuals. Social media tools and platforms give us the opportunity to engage in ongoing "conversations" and extend our community far beyond anything we could have ever imagined. To embrace this incredible opportunity and take advantage of all that it possible for our students, faculty, staff, and community, we must first understand how significant these changes happening around us are.
Compelling tidbits like:
- Over half the world's population is under 30 years old
- 96% of Millennials have joined a social network
- Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US
- 1 out of 8 couples in the US met via social media
- 80% of companies use social media for recruitment (and 95% of that percentage use LinkedIn)
- Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Panama combined - 4.8 million each
- 50% of mobile internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook
- 78% of Wikipedia content is in languages other than English
- 25% of search results for the world's top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
- 90% of people skips ads via TiVo/ DVR
Qualman and others push us to consider social media beyond the tools and channels and address the fundamental shifts in human behavior that continue to have a powerful effect on the way we do business as usual. Where would the conversation take us if we viewed social media "ROI" as "risk of ignoring" rather than "return on investment".
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