If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know what I think of an online presence. I believe it will be the most critical asset a person owns. It will be the asset of the future. It will be worth more than any other asset you have. If I haven’t convinced you yet, maybe this will get you there.
Your online presence will matter because;
- Social media creates social capital. Social capital is a predictor of income and wealth
- Gen Y will out number baby boomers by 2010, 96% of Gen Y has joined a social network,
- Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the web
- There are over 200,000,000 million blogs, at least 100,000,000 million of those bloggers tweet or blog daily
- 33% of all internet users read blogs,
- 33 Million Americans have rated a product, service or person using an online rating system
- 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations – only 14% trust advertisements
- 80% of employers use social media to find candidates
- 45% of Employers use social media to screen or vet potential candidates
- 35% of employers decided NOT to offer a job to a candidate based on information uncovered on social media sites
- 18% of employers HIRED a candidate BECAUSE of their social presence
- 25% of college admissions use social networks as part of the admissions process
- 43% of people in the US Google (doogle) a first date
- 12.5% of all couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
- 42% of all adults have said they or someone they know has been helped by following medical advice and health information found online
- At lease one person, using social media, avoided highly invasive spinal surgery
- Those with lower social capital, have a higher mortality rate -they die earlier
- There are over 1 Billion Internet devices
- There are 6 billion internet searches on Google a month
- 1.6 Billion people access the web via their mobile phone – that’s 1.6 billion people a click away from info about you anytime anywhere
- The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the total population of the planet
- 355 Million users on Facebook
- Avg. time spent on Facebook: 20 minutes a day
- 19 Million people on Twitter
- 83 Million people generated some form of social media in the US
BONUS reason- Since 1985 our “core networks”, our offline networks of friends and family have shrunk by 1 person.
Personal networks are moving online. Social capital will be created and leveraged using social media. Social capital correlates heavy to someones overall success. Without social capital, there is little success. Developing and managing their social graph will be the most important thing someone can do
An online presence will be the most valuable asset a person will have, worth even more than their home.
Are you convinced?
UPDATE: Made a mistake on the statistic “50% of employers HIRED a candidate BECAUSE of their social presence” I’ve changed it to 18%. Thanks to Marty for getting me to double check stats.
