Social media is here to stay and both small businesses and Fortune 100 companies are embracing it. A sampling of 100 “Fortune 500″ companies, 79% use social media to communicate with customers and stakeholders. On the other hand, small business use of social media doubled in 2009, but only 24% of small businesses use it.

Fortune 500 companies have bigger budgets, more manpower (or womanpower) and more visibility, so it makes sense that they are actively using social media. Small businesses may not have the same perks, but because of the relatively low costs, any small business has the potential to gain huge successes using social media. According to a recent survey, 61% of small business using social media did so to identify and attract new customers, and 45% expect social media to be profitable in the next twelve months. Also, 72% have found ways to operate more efficiently. A quote from an eye doctor below shows how he successfully utilized social media for business and reduced his marketing costs:

“In order to meet the growing challenges of a tough market last year, I was forced to consider alternative options to keep my business visible,” says small business owner, Dr. Alan Glazier, CEO and Founder, Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care. “With a very small investment in social media marketing, I was able to generate new business opportunities. Our Google® ranking is consistently number one for many of the phrases people use to search for eye doctors in and around my city, and we have received a ‘bump’ in terms of new visitors to the site. My blog has been picked up by different news sources and led to media interviews. I am now recognized as a thought leader in social networking within my profession and lastly but most importantly, my marketing budget has been reduced by more than 80 percent.”

Most people have heard about how small m0m-and-pops have boosted sales and awareness for their business using social media, but it is still important to work from a social media plan. Here’s a great read about how to create a social media business strategy.

I have been fascinated by how journalists consume and utilize social media for a while now. Some reporters still claims they don’t use PR professionals at all when writing stories, but a recent survey found that 89% of journalists use blogs for story research. This makes sense because blogs can publish content instantly and often times are the first to break important news.

The survey also found that 65% of journalists use Facebook and LinkedIn and 52% use microbloggings services like Twitter for the same purposes. I was on LinkedIn a few years ago, but deleted my account because I didn’t find it helpful. I have heard about many of the new features, and because of this finding, I may get back on. I have never pitched a reporter on Facebook, but have done so on Twitter successfully. Check out these interesting quotes from journalists about being pitched on Twitter. With only 140 characters to use on Twitter, pitching has to be concise and effective to elicit a response from the journalists.

I must admit I was shocked to find out that 61% of journalists use Wikipedia for research. When I want to settle a quick bet, I start with Wikipedia but would not use it for hard facts. I can see that Wikipedia might be a good place for a journalist to start because of the links and notations provided at the bottom of entries.

This leads to the next finding-84% of journalists said social media sources were “slightly less” or “much less” reliable than traditional media, with 49% saying social media suffers from “lack of fact checking, verification and reporting standards.” I am glad this was included in the survey because everything published on the internet must be verified through multiple sources.

So how do you pitch media via social media? Most would say in the same fashion as traditional media-listen to the conversation first, know their beat/interests/audience, build a relationship with them (this could be commenting on their story online or retweeting posts on their Twitter feed) and finally pitch them using all the elements of good story ideas like timeliness, relevant and ability to appeal to their audience. Good luck!

I recently prepared entries for SCPRSA’s annual Mercury Awards. This year there were categories for social media, and for the first time-I measurement our social media tactics to use in the evaluation section. I have tried various free tools to help evaluate social media work, and some are more accurate than others.

I know that having thousands of fans or followers doesn’t mean much unless they are actually engaging with your brand via social media. Are fans commenting? If you’re holding contests, how many entries are you getting? Have your sales increased?

I came across a GREAT list of questions to use when measuring social media. Some of these questions must be answered using extensive primary research, but most can be easily answered.

Need help answering these questions for Facebook? Click here to learn how to set up Google Analytics for fan pages. I also have found Tweet

WHO – Who interacted? What do you know about these consumers?

1. Fans
2. Followers
3. Friends
4. Growth rate of fans, followers, and friends
5. Second-degree reach (connections to fans, followers, and friends exposed - by people or impressions)
6. Influence of consumers reaches
7. Demographics of target audience engaged with social channels
8. Demographics of audience reached through social media
9. Social media habits/interests of target audience
10. Languages spoken by participating consumers
11. Customers assisted
12. Number of chat room participants
13. Wiki contributors
14. Responses to socially posted events
15. Attendance generated at in-person events
16. Employees reached (for internal programs)
17. Job applications received

WHAT – What was discussed? What was shared? What did consumers engage with?

1. Volume of consumer-created buzz for a brand based on number of posts
2. Amount of buzz based on number of impressions
3. Buzz by stage in purchase funnel (e.g., researching vs. completing transaction vs. post-purchase)
4. Asset popularity (e.g., if several videos are available to embed, which is used more)
5. Rate of virality / pass-along
6. Embeds / Installs
7. Downloads
8. Uploads
9. User-initiated views (e.g., for videos)
10. Ratio of embeds or favoriting to views
11. Likes / favorites
12. Comments
13. Ratings
14. Social bookmarks
15. Subscriptions (RSS, podcasts, video series)
16. Pageviews (for blogs, microsites, etc)
17. Effective CPM based on spend per impressions received
18. Change in search engine rankings for the site linked to through social media
19. Change in search engine share of voice for all social sites promoting the brand
20. Percentage of buzz containing links
21. Percentage of buzz containing multimedia (images, video, audio)
22. Share of voice on social sites when running earned and paid media in same environment
23. Time spent with distributed content
24. Clicks
25. View-throughs
26. Number of interactions
27. Interaction/engagement rate
28. Frequency of social interactions per consumer
29. Percentage of videos viewed
30. Polls taken / votes received
31. Number of user-generated submissions received
32. Exposures of virtual gifts
33. Number of virtual gifts given
34. Relative popularity of content
35. Tags added
36. Contest entries
37. User-generated content created that can be used by the marketer in other channels
38. Volume of customer feedback generated
39. Leads generated
40. Products sampled
41. Buzz by category / topic

WHERE – Where were the conversations happening, whether in terms of the social channels or the geography of the consumers reached?

1. Buzz by social channel (forums, social networks, blogs, Twitter, etc)
2. Mainstream media mentions
3. Links ranked by influence of publishers
4. Influence of publishers reached (e.g., blogs)
5. Geography of participating consumers
6. Registrations from third-party social logins (e.g., Facebook Connect, Twitter OAuth)
7. Registrations by channel (e.g., Web, desktop application, mobile application, SMS, etc)

WHEN – When did the results happen? When did other promotions or programs run that could have had an impact?

1. Shift in buzz over time
2. Buzz by time of day / daypart
3. Seasonality of buzz
4. Competitive buzz
5. Change in virality rates over time
6. Impact of offline marketing/events on social marketing programs or buzz

WHY – Why were consumers engaging or feeling this way?

1. Increase in searches due to social activity
2. Sentiment by volume of posts
3. Sentiment by volume of impressions
4. Shift in sentiment before, during, and after social marketing programs
5. Attributes of tags (e.g., how well they match the brand’s perception of itself)
6. Customer satisfaction

HOW – How much of an impact did the social marketing have? How do results hold up against benchmarks? How do they translate to brand metrics? How does this add to the bottom line?

1. Method of content discovery (search, pass-along, discovery engines, etc)
2. Influence of brands participating in social channels
3. Time spent on site through social media referrals
4. Percentage of traffic generated from earned media
5. Brand association
6. Purchase consideration
7. Savings per customer assisted through direct social media interactions compared to other channels (e.g., call centers, in-store)
8. Savings generated by enabling customers to connect with each other
9. Impact on first contact resolution (FCR) (hat tip to Forrester Research for that one)
10. Research & development time saved based on feedback from social media
11. Suggestions implemented from social feedback
12. Costs saved from not spending on traditional research
13. Impact on online sales
14. Impact on offline sales
15. Discount redemption rate
16. Impact on other offline behavior (e.g., TV tune-in)
17. Visits to store locator pages
18. Conversion change due to user ratings, reviews
19. Rate of customer/visitor retention
20. Impact on customer lifetime value
21. Customer acquisition / retention costs through social media
22. Change in market share
23. Earned media’s impact on results from paid media

Also, here’s a list of many resources for measuring social media.

When I first got on Facebook, my main purpose was sharing photos with friends. As the years have gone by, I have connected with lots of old friends that I lost touch with, and even met some new friends via Facebook. I can now keep up with my friends without having to pick up the phone or drive somewhere to visit.

A recent study confirmed my personal experience, stating that 27.6% of American social media users’ offline relationships benefited from online interaction via social media. I am surprised this number is not higher, considering I can keep up-to-date with my friends’ children, weddings and much more just by logging onto Facebook.

Other findings include:

• 48.7% felt that online communication was more convenient than face-to-face
• 39.9% said that online social groups were truly social
• 25.6% reported that they made no distinction between online and offline interaction
• 48.7% met new people via social media

The newspaper industry has had a rough couple of years lately. A new poll confirms that it isn’t really getting better either. For the PR industry, this is nothing new but reinforces a few things…

• 43% of U.S. adults say they read a daily newspaper, either online or in print almost every day.
• 72% of Americans say they read one at least once a week while, 81% read a daily newspaper at least once a month and 10% have NEVER read a daily newspaper.
• 64% of Americans 55+ read a daily newspaper almost every day, 36% of the 35-44 group do so, 23% of the 18-34 group do so, with 17% of this group having NEVR read a daily newspaper.

What have we learned?

• The daily print newspaper is still dying
• If you want to reach the 55+ age group, a daily newspaper is still are great place.
• The youngins’ could care less about newspapers.
• The newspaper industry must evolve to survive. This brings us to the second part of this poll…

The New York Times will begin charging for their online content in 2011, but 77% of those surveyed said they wouldn’t pay for content. A few (19%) said they’d pay between $1-10/month and 5% would pay $10+/month. Obviously, the idea of charging for content is likely doomed, but what is a better alternative? Do you know of any daily papers doing something new or impressive?