Social Media Landscape

Have you ever examined the social media landscape you explore every day? There is a lot we can learn from just paying attention to who is doing what online at any given moment. For example, this weekend I saw an online ad for Amazon. This wasn’t an adwords ad, but it was a gorgeous, big ad that was well designed. I was so surprised when I saw that, and it really stuck with me for many reasons. My first thought was, why would a company as large as Amazon have to spend money on an ad like that? That thought quickly passed almost as fast as it entered my mind.

I started thinking about everything I’ve learned about online advertising over the past three years here at Bit Rebels, and it all made sense. Not only is online advertising sharply less expensive than television and print advertising, it’s more effective. If you are one of those people who thinks online advertising is only about getting clicks to your site, you may want to think about it a little more. There are a lot more long-term benefits of online advertising than you might realize, and someday soon I plan to put together an infographic that covers them all.

Another thing we can learn by watching the social media landscape in front of us each day is how some of these large corporations are able to amass so many Facebook fans. Sure, some of them are able to do it because they are popular brands offline, so it makes sense people would want to connect with them online. However, if you look at the Facebook and Twitter pages of the top 20 brands listed below, you’ll see they have put together real strategies that are working for them.

Richard touched on this before when he wrote 5 Crucial Facebook Practices That Helped Coca-Cola Reach 50M Fans. One piece of advice a wise woman once gave me is, “Never take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with.” So many times we consider taking advice about how to get more Facebook fans or Twitter followers from random people who don’t what they are talking about. Instead, check out this infographic called Business: The Social Media Landscape by top-business-degrees.net. There is a lot we can learn from these brands about boosting engagement, creating a buzz, providing useful information and services and increasing brand awareness. After all, they are all already doing it very well. The fascinating part of this is that it’s all right there for us to watch firsthand. We just have to pay attention to our own social media landscape.

Your Social Media Landscape – The Top 20 Brands