When it comes to social media you might be busy trying to separate the opportunity from the bullshit, such are the interstellar levels of hype and associated jargon that are plaguing this space.
Nevertheless, I for one believe that a solid social media strategy can make a real difference to your business, helping you to drive engagement in order to boost customer satisfaction, retention, and profits. But that's not to say it will be easy: there's a lot to figure out and each company has different needs (and challenges to overcome).
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I thought I'd aggregate a few of the social media visualisations I've spotted in the past few weeks to help you make some mental leaps of faith, or use in your internal pitches, or otherwise determine that it's all a bunch of hot air, as you see fit.
Caveat: some of these are more badass than others!
Social Media ROI
Social Media Landscape
[by Ivan Walsh]
Tools and Methods of Social Media
[by deanmeyersnet]
Social Media Laws of Attraction
Five Step Social Media Program
[by Gauravonomics]
20:20 Social Media Approach
[by Gauravonomics]
Everything I Learned About Twitter I Learned In Grade School
[by johnny goldstein]
Brands and Social Media: Characters and Evangelists are Touchpoints
[by Stefano Maggi]
And finally two for the cynics...
Social Media Venn Diagram
[via pecatello]
Timewastrs
[by andrewcherwenka]
All images republished under Flickr's Creative Commons licence. Some of these visualisations are available in larger sizes via Flickr (but not many, alas).
Chris Lake is Director of Product Development at Econsultancy, an entrepreneur and a long-term internet fiend. Follow him on Twitter or connect via Linkedin.
Recommended reports
UK Social Media Statistics
Econsultancy's UK Social Media Statistics document is one of 11 individual downloads that make up Econsultancy’s UK Internet Statistics Compendium, a comprehensive compilation of statistics and online market research with data, facts, charts and figures that are essential to understanding the marketplace as a whole.
Alternatively, see our Twitter for Business or Customer Engagement Report 2011.
10:28AM on 25th September 2009
The originial post to the Social Media Lanscape is here : http://www.fredcavazza.net/2009/04/10/social-media-landscape-redux/ /Fred
12:06PM on 25th September 2009
Its my own drawing (so am blowing my own trumpet)... but am interested if you think this pic http://jimanning.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/socmed-and-orgs-small.jpg is on the money...
1:10PM on 25th September 2009
Jim Anning: Loved it! Your drawing is the only one of these that I understood! The others just seem to be trying too hard. You just nailed it. Good job!
8:42PM on 25th September 2009
Re Jim: Scary how a simple visualization can describe such a massive paradigm shift ;-) I like it both visually and content wise - you really absolutely nailed it.
For "selling" the idea of the social dialogue, i.e. Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 in general, one may find the orientation map helpful:
http://www.mediawerk.ch/nerve/2008/06/w2e2-orientation-map/
11:47PM on 25th September 2009
also, the starfish by @scobleizer or the conversation prism by @briansolis and @jess3 were not included: http://www.briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversation-prism/
8:31AM on 2nd October 2009
Thanks for the post and especially giving the graphical representations so well.Would like to get more such posts from you.
4:08PM on 2nd October 2009
These are really creative approaches to laying out some benefits and conflicts associated with social media. (I especially found Dean Meyersnet and Jonny Goldstein’s hand draw diagrams to be eye catching and effective!) As far as the diagrams for cynics go, those are also very appropriate. J
2:12AM on 20th February 2011
I am very much interested in learning the Social Media ROI.
I have attend the conference in kolkata.
Your post help me get the knowledge about the Social Media ROI.
Thanks,