How complex is social media?

Think you know all the Social Media providers that are out there?  Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc?  Could you name just five more?

Business Insider published an image from Buddy Media showing around 300 Social media sites, trackers, URL shorteners and more.

The point of the article is that social media is really confusing, but I disagree.  There is no need for charities to be early adopters of social media platforms; most have short lives and disappear.  The ones that survive and grow are of most interest to us.

Even then, be cautious:  mail, phone and face to face still account for nearly all new donor acquisition.  There are donors acquired online of course, but when it comes to digital, old fashioned web advertising (where social media is treated as just another place to buy advertising) and email still accounts for nearly all digitally acquired donors.

Looking at 45 Australian and New Zealand charities we see in the chart below that online solicitation is growing, but is still very small.  Please note - this is solicitation; more and more direct mail solicited donors actually use the web to donate, but here we are looking at where the advertising goes, not the inbound channel.

When it comes down to it, social media follows the Pareto Principle; a majority of the useful traffic is going to be through a minority of the social media platforms.  In other words, just get Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter right and you don't need to worry about the others.  This month.

The infographic with all the social media firms is here.