The Growth of Social Media as an Increasingly Important Vehicle for the Environment

The rapid growth of social media has made it a revolutionary force for prosocial change. Facebook is a great illustration of this rapid growth. In less than seven years Facebook has accrued more than 500 million users. This gives Facebook the distiction of having more users than the population of any country in the world except China and India.

Organizations of all sizes are incorporating social media into their marketing programs. According to Kiwano, 9 in 10 organizations use social media in Canada and thirty-one percent say social media plays a major role in public communications around their brand.

There are many social media campaigns that have benefited the environment including 10/10/10, Earth Day, Earth Hour and WWF’s Online Event. These events relied on social media tools to facilitate massive public participation.

Nowhere is this growth more evident than during the most recent social media week conference. In 2011, the fourth social media week was celebrated between February 7-11. The two year old social media week conference has become one of one of the world’s most important platforms to explore emerging trends in social and mobile media.

Here are the nine cities took part in the first social media week conference of 2011, Rome; São Paulo; Toronto; Paris; San Francisco; London; Hong Kong; Istanbul; and New York. Around the world there were over 1,800 speakers and 600 events. More than 30,000 participants were present, an additional 80,000 unique viewers watching events live via Livestream.com and nearly 200,000 unique visitors engaging through Socialmediaweek.org. Real-time conversations included more than 75,000 tweets shared during the week, which created almost 300 million impressions in the social sphere, according to social media monitoring company Sysomos.

“This year’s Social Media Week was a truly global phenomenon—showcasing borderless brands and communications, via the power of social media,” said Bonin Bough, Global Director of Social and Digital Media for PepsiCo. “We are proud to have been an integral partner—with PepsiCo employees contributing to discussions and idea exchanges on three continents and there, demonstrating the depth and breadth to which digital media is permeating our company.”

“Social Media Week is more than an event, it’s a movement,” said Nokia’s Craig Hepburn, Global Director, Digital. “Such an innovative event that taps into the human networks of people across the world and encourages sharing and best practice will move us forward faster and more effectively than traditional event silos.”

© 2011, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.

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