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The hollow emptiness in social media numbers - most accounts are fake or empty | ZDNet

The numbers of users reported by Facebook, Twitter, Google, and many other sites, are closely watched. They reveal trends in adoption and they are one of the few public metrics available to analysts trying to assign value to companies preparing an initial public offering.

But how accurate are these numbers?

In some anecdotal cases, the number of users, active and actual, could be as small as one-third. And nearly one-half of user accounts could be fake or contain no user profiles.

No user profiles means very little usable data for marketing or advertising campaigns. This is a huge hole in social media platforms.

It means corporate marketers and advertisers will not be able to reach and engage with the numbers they expect, resulting in increased costs and a discouraging ROI.

If corporations aren’t able to use social media to reach large numbers of consumers, the value of platforms such as Facebook will be severely diminished.

How large is this problem of fake and empty user profiles?

Here is an analysis performed by Kevin Kelly, a former editor of Wired magazine and a book author, on 560,000 people that have him in their G+ “circles.”

via zdnet.com

9 Reasons Your Company Should Use Brand Advocates: New Research

What would you say if you could add 5, 10, 100 or 1000 marketing reps to your team? For free?

What if these marketing reps would freely write about your brand and tell their friends and all they expect in return is recognition and access to insider information?

Who are these free marketers? Brand advocates. BzzAgent has recently released a new research study giving us the skinny on the habitat, behaviors and motivations behind brand advocates.

via socialmediaexaminer.com