Social Media - A Report byAdstrategies Inc.

Information, Research & recommendations compiledby Terry Ayers

Advertising & Sponsorships Director30 April 2009

410-822-2450 x 17

The Future of Marketing

• Forrester Research predicts interactive onlineadvertising, display, email, mobile, search,and social media, will experience a 17%annual growth rate, totaling almost $55billion in spending over the next sevenyears.

• Five key online advertising channels willsee the following upswing: Social media -34% Mobile -- 27% Display -- 17%Search -- 15% Email -- 11%

• Source: Adotas, 04/28/09.

Social media requires a willingness& readiness to ENGAGE

• Social media programs aren't the same as just writing a pressrelease or developing a media pitch.

• When you begin to engage with people, they want to interact withYOU – they want to see personalities at a company, not just acorporate image.

• This requires a level of transparency from the CEO downto engineering that can't be forged by an Advertising & PR firm.

• Be prepared to conduct business this way if you wantto be successful with social media.

Your audience MIGHT NOT naturally pay attention

• Maintaining a day-to-day social mediapresence (and relevance) requiresloyally following four key steps:

• produce content• push content through social media

channels• actively monitor the channels you

want to leverage• and respond FAST.

• Rinse and repeat. Daily.

Social media NEVER stops

• Companies often drastically underestimate theresources required to build successful social mediachannels. They want to generate buzz around amajor announcement, but then want to "turn off"until their next bit of news.

• They don't want to respond to questions or createnew content until it benefits their bottom line.

• You can't do that with social media.

• Don't be surprised when people demand thatyou pay attention to them before they'llcare about you.

Social media requires A LOT of planning

• Building your brand with social media can be a lot offun, but the planning process can be pretty exhausting.

• Expect any social media program to take at least2.5x the amount of time and resources a traditionalPR approach normally would.

• Plan ahead. After identifying your target audiences andthe key messages you want to communicate to eachaudience, multiply those by the number of channelsyou plan to use and develop metrics tomeasure your success.

• Content should be cross-linked and distributed insync or according to a detailed choreography.

• Then, monitor and have guidelinesfor response.

Social media is EVERYONEʼSresponsibility

• Social media enables your audience to askquestions, challenge your claims, offer helpfulproduct feedback and share their opinions with theirnetwork of friends and followers.

• Companies that are successful with social mediahave resources in every department to immediatelyaddress questions and issues that come in throughsocial media channels.

• As you are starting up a social media program,share with your company what you want toaccomplish and tell everyone how they can help.

Elin Raymond, President of The Sage Group, Incan integrated marketing, branding and communications firm

Suggestions for marketing to 17- to 40-year-olds:

• Keep engaged via two-way social media. Thisincludes hosting online contests, creating aFacebook company profile, and using Twitter toannounce events, brand extensions, etc.

• Help them try your brand by providingfree/discount coupons on Facebook, MySpace,and other Web sites

• Integrate online and traditional marketing• Track what's said about your

brand/product

Social Networking Growth Outpaces Email Among USConsumers April 22, 2009Facebook, Twitter Usage Growing While Email Usage Stays Flat During 8-Month Study

BERKELEY, CA (BUSINESS WIRE)--During an eight month study of over twothousand home-based consumer Microsoft Windows PCs and several hundredhome Apple Mac computers in the US, ClickStream Technologies found SocialNetworking activity increased significantly while email usage remained flat.

US Consumer PC Usage by Pc Facebook.com MS Outlook

Jul'08 17% 15%Aug'08 17% 14%Sep'08 17% 13%Oct'08 16% 12%Nov'08 21% 13%Dec'08 23% 13%Jan'09 27% 13%Feb’09 32% 13%

Social Networking Generates Leads,Closes Sales for Marketers

According to a social media study by Michael Stelzner for the Social MediaSuccess Summit 2009, 88% of marketers in a recent survey say they are nowusing some form of social media to market their business, though 72% of thoseusing it say they have only been at it a few months or less.

Key survey findings:

• Small-business owners are more likely to use LinkedIn than employees workingfor a corporation

• Men are significantly more likely to use YouTube or other video marketing than women (52.4% of all men compared with 31.7% of women)• For those just getting under way with social media marketing, LinkedIn is

ranked as their number-two choice, pushing blogging down one notch• Among those who have been using social media for a few months,

Facebook is in second place. This group also has more Twitter use• Twitter is used by 94% of marketers who have been using social media for years, followed closely by blogs.

The Rise of Viral Media

• In March 2009, YouTube reached 100 millionmonthly viewers in the US. 6.3 billion videoswere viewed on the site.

• Its competitor, Hulu, is also growing fast, but notnearly as fast as YouTube.

• In March alone, YouTube has grown almost twoHulus in size. According to some calculations,YouTube will serve 75 billion video streams to375 million unique visitors in 2009.

• Source: http://mashable.com/2009/04/17/web-in-numbers-social-media/

• Facebook has grown from 100 million to 200 million users inless than 8 months. If it were a country, it would be biggerthan Brazil. Its traffic has grown immensely in one year period.

• MySpace, the social network that used to break records likethese, is now lagging behind Facebook; according to latestcalculations, Facebook now has a total of 65.7 million uniquevisitors versus MySpace’s 54.1 million

• Source: http://mashable.com/2009/04/17/web-in-numbers-social-media/

Twitter & The Rest

• Twitter is growing at a crazy rate; although it already hasa very large audience, it grew 76.8 percent just fromFebruary to March 09. Its yearly growth rate? 1,382percent. According to Nielsen, Twitter currently has 7million unique monthly visitors. If it keeps growing at thisrate, it’ll have nearly 100 million visitors same time nextyear.

• Digg recently launched DiggBar has increased the sitetraffic by 20%. And, according to Compete, Digg is at 36million uniques and growing fast again, despite adip in traffic in February.

• Source: http://mashable.com/2009/04/17/web-in-numbers-social-media/

Adstrategies Can Help

• Paid Media: We recently purchased hypertargeteddisplay ads for the Baltimore Bridal Show on MySpace &Facebook. We were able to geo-target the ads to theBaltimore area and demo target to females ages 18 to 35who were recently engaged.

• Social Media Participation: (3 options)• 1. We Do it For You - NOT POSSIBLE• 2. Do it Yourself - we set it up, you run with it• 3. Adstrategies Consultation - we set it up,

offer on-going assistance and track instances& feedback

Hypertargeting

We can target thedemographicsyou want in a varietyof ways!

Contact Us

• Terry Ayers, Advertising & Sponsorships Director• 410-822-2450 x 17 or 888-456-2450• Terrya@adstrategies.com

Thank you for the opportunity to present this information :)