IS SOCIAL MEDIA REALLY IMPORTANT TO ARTISTS?

Helen De Ramus on Social Media

I was honored to have been asked to sit on a panel for the Women’s Caucus for Art of Georgia .   This was organized by Corlia Kock, and consisted of artists Marilynn Brandenburger, Anita Stewart and Helen De Ramus.  

Because of my background as a media buyer, I have been researching this for awhile, and I no longer consider social media a phenomen, but it is here to stay!  I decided to use this approach for my portion of the afternoon.  The following are some statistics I found after researching for a couple of weeks.  Because the research is varied and is changes from day to day, I would approach these numbers as estimates.  (To prove a point, when I began this, Coca-cola was the most popular brand on Facebook with 31 million fans, it is now over 49 million!)

FACEBOOK – this is the most visited website on the planet, it hit ONE TRILLION views on 6/30/2011.  More people are on Facebook than there are cars on the road.

  • The average posts has a lifeline of three hours
  • Most people spend 20 minutes or less at a time on Facebook
  • 50% check in daily
  • There are 2.7 billion “likes” each day (and I found some statistics that had this over 3 billion!)
  • 20 million apps are installed a day
  • 23% check in at least 5x a day
  • average user had 130 friends, and likes 80 pagesthere are 30 billion pieces of content shared every month

TWITTER

  • There are 190 Million tweets each day
  • 11 new accounts are created every second, over 1 million a day
  • 59% of users have been on less than a year
  • 76% of users post, in 2010 it was only 47%
  • Average user has 115 followers

 

Marilynn Brandenburger giving her presentation

 

I gave statistics about Pinterest and You Tube also.   But, some other statistics I found interesting were the fastest growing segment is 45-54 year old, and 33% of all Americans over the age of 55 are on social media.

Also, 57% of people that talk to people online would rather talk to them online than in person!

What does this mean to artists?  I believe it is something to learn and take seriously.  I believe the recent Olympics are a testament to this, as the word “Olympic” was tweeted 4 million times in the first week of the Olympics, and NBCOlympics.com had 1.1 billion page visits the first 10 days!!!!

The internet is full of articles regarding the power of “like” (read one I wrote in 2011 here), the power of sharing – there is alot out there about this!

I will follow up this blog with another blog about the power of like, and the importance of your “about” page!

 

 

3 thoughts on “IS SOCIAL MEDIA REALLY IMPORTANT TO ARTISTS?

  1. Christine

    Hi Vicki,

    Nice to meet you, I enjoyed this post 🙂

    I replied to your post in the typepad flying comment section but wanted to make sure you got this…

    I try to do as much on WordPress Blog/website myself but there is so much to learn, I’ve hired a web designer ( he does Skype session if you’re interested ) who helps me with the tedious details like setting up PayPal. It’s been great to work with someone who will teach me how to do anything I want to learn and who will also do tasks I don’t want to learn.

    I think one thing that could visually enhance all your post is to put your photos in at 600 px, I could help you do that if you’re not sure 🙂

  2. vickiemartin Post author

    Thank you both! I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you – I have to keep familiarizing myself with wordpress!!!! I’m not sure about putting the photos in at 600px – I’m going to look around and see if I can figure it out!

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