Koodoz Design

On the social…

Love it, hate it or have no clue about it, Social Media is well and truly got its claws into the backbone of the internet. Buzz words like Web 2.0 and Social Networking are now common speak for internet folk, and sites such as Facebook and Twitter are as much as household names as Hoover and Kleenex.

And it seems as though it’s here to stay. Even the naysayers, who at one time suggested that these social sites were just a fad, would have to admit that social media is still going strong and is even on the increase.

Socialholicism

Just looking at a few figures, it’s easy to understand why social media and its integration into website development is as important now to web designers as closing HTML tags. Lets take a look:

Facebook, the worlds largest social networking site has over 9 million users in Australia alone (source: Facebook Dec 2009), that’s not far from being half the population of the country. It’s even more mind-blowing when you look at the global user base of over 400 million active users as of June 2010, Crikey! Even my Dad is on Facebook!

Twitter has over 105 million users, with 1.6 million in Australia (source: Twitter April 2010). So it’s not just Facebook that’s pulling in the big numbers.

Considering 72.9% of Australian adults are active internet users (Universal McCann) and 3 out of 4 of them are members of social networking sites (Forrester Research) it’s easy to see why, according to Social Media News, Australia has one of the highest uptakes of social media in the world.

More popular than email

You may find it surprising that social networks and blogs are now more popular than email (Nielsen), but thinking about it, I can’t remember the last time I used email to get in touch with a friend, I always use Facebook.

And just take a look at how social media has been incorporated into the mainstream. Most days on the train, I (rather shamefully) have a quick browse of the celebrity gossip section of MX, which features a round of of the most interesting celebrity Twitter posts.

News broadcasts incorporate Tweets, posts on their website and information shared on Facebook into their stories to capture the public’s opinion and response to the big issues, and controversial blogs, tweets and comments are consistently making news stories. Need I mention, ahem, Perez Hilton’s blog (Hmm in that case social media wasn’t such a good idea).

You can also take note of the way in which social networkers are ’socialising’, it’s not just on the good old fashioned PC. I can’t tell you how many times a day I see someone checking their Facebook, MySpace or Twitter profile on their iPhone or Blackberry on the train, or how many ad’s I see with specialised ‘Social Networking’ phone and mobile broadband plans.

A web designers prerogative

So what does this mean for web designers? You might find it surprising that some folk in the web design world are among the most skeptical and unforgiving of sites like Facebook. When I’ve talked to other web designers some seem a little reluctant to fully embrace social media themselves, whereas some are fully integrated web socialites. And on the whole, most of us are a right old bunch of bloggers.

However, considering all the above, I think there is one thing that all web designers can agree on; Social Media is big business, and you’d be a fool not to take it seriously and include it in your services.

Social media marketing is now being taken very seriously by the big companies. McDonalds, RaboBank, Telstra and CocaCola (to name a few) all have “Social Media Strategies”. Companies are even employing “Social Media Strategists“, a position that didn’t exist 5 years ago (probably even less).

This means that more and more clients are noticing Social Media and how it can really effect their marketing. If some smaller business are a little slower at jumping on the band wagon, it’s becoming necessary to inform them of it’s importance and how you can harness social media to their advantage.

So as web designers and web design companies, I think we can all safely say how pressing it is to ‘do social media’, and more importantly, that we know how to do it the right way, and the most effective way for a business to benefit from it. But perhaps that’s an issue for another post …

Anyway, I think we should all switch to FriendFace.