OhMyGov Inc.

July 2010 Whitepaper

Social Media Myths:

5 Roadblocks to Discovery

Executive Summary

Despite social media’s prominence as the number one online activity,

the promise that social media holds for governments, businesses,
educators, and politicians has yet to be fully realized. Commonly
held but erroneous myths — that social media is free, just for kids, a
passing fad, for socializing only, and unmeasurable — are precluding
organizations from allocating the required resources to benefit from
social media.

This paper attempts to debunk the prevailing myths and demonstrate

how, when used and analyzed correctly, social media can identify
trends, unravel mysteries about public perceptions, evaluate the
effectiveness of campaigns, and even predict the future.

Copyright © 2010 OhMyGov Inc.

 Social Media Myths: 5 Roadblocks to Discovery — OhMyGov Inc. Whitepaper
Introduction
In recent years, social media has emerged as the
hottest Internet phenomenon ever created. Yet,
despite its prominence as the number one online
activity, the promise that social media holds for
governments, businesses, educators, and poli-
ticians has yet to be fully realized. This is due
in large part to (1) a variety of incorrect myths
that large segments of society still believe about
social media, which prevents widespread adop-
tion in professional applications, and (2) a lack
of awareness of how social media can be used
for a number of branding, policy, and research
applications. This paper attempts to debunk
prevailing myths about social media and provide
insights into how social media—when used and
analyzed correctly—can identify trends, unravel
mysteries in public perception of a person, orga-
nization or brand, evaluate the effectiveness of
outreach campaigns, and even predict the future.
Myth #1: Social media is free
While it is true that public social media plat-
forms do not charge a licensing fee for use, using
the platforms requires organizations to allocate
resources in the form of man hours. Employees
must be paid to spend the time to learn how to
use these platforms, populate them with con-
tent, operate them, monitor them, optimize
them, and communicate with others through
them. In fact, one of the hottest new jobs is
that of social media manager—a position entirely
devoted to navigating the social media world.
To understand the need for such a position,
consider the time it takes to run a blog. Even a
modest blog requires the posting of several sub-
stantial entries a week. Estimating that an orga-
nization’s blogger needs four hours to research
and write a 500-word post, plus time to edit and
get feedback from colleagues and higher-ups, it
2
Because social media is perceived as free,
most organizations avoid measuring its
effectivenesss. This is a mistake.
would take 20+ hours total simply to compose
four posts a week. Finding or creating photos,
charts or infographics adds still more time, and
formatting the posts with hyperlinks and tags, up-
loading them to a content management system,
tweeting about them, responding to reader com-
ments, and monitoring site traffic brings the total
estimated commitment closer to 30 hours each
week. Depending upon an organization’s culture,
even 140 character Twitter messages can require
substantial amounts of time to craft. In a govern-
ment public health agency, for example, messages
must first be cleared by scientists to ensure ve-
racity. Once published, messages must be moni-
tored; sharing and commenting on social media
sites can occur rapidly, and organizations need
to be aware of the public’s real-time response.
Clearly, social media is not free. Yet one reason
that social media is often not deployed and moni-
tored properly is because it is viewed as a gratis
technolgy—a communications perk. And in most
organizations, if something is perceived as free,
resources are not allocated to ensure its perfor-
mance is optimized and properly monitored. It
is precisively because social media is perceived
as free that most organizations avoid measuring
its effectiveness in meeting goals and objec-
tives, and in measuring the effectiveness of their
employees in deploying messaging through it.
Myth #2: Social media is for kids
This is perhaps the most common and inac-
curate myth about social media. Arising out of
Facebook’s and MySpace’s initial successes in
marketing to the college and teen markets back
in 2004–2006 when the sites were new, the ste-
reotype remains even in the face of wildly con-
trasting statistics. Today, women 55–65 years of
age comprise the fastest growing demographic
 Social Media Myths: 5 Roadblocks to Discovery — OhMyGov Inc. Whitepaper
on Facebook. According to a recent study by
market researcher Pingdom, 61% of Facebook’s
users are aged 35 and over, with the average
age being 37. Twitter boasts similar numbers,
with the average user being 39 years old.
While it may come as a surprise that people of
middle age (35–44) are the most “social” age
group out there, it shouldn’t. They were the
generation of people in their 20s when email
and online communications took off in the
mid-1990s. These are the men and women who
stuck it out through AOL instant messaging and
chat rooms to get to today’s media Valhalla.
Addressing the social media age myth is important
for breaking down another barrier to it being treat-
ed as a valuable business tool and data source. As
long as it is perceived as a daily diary for teenagers
or a party planning device for college students, its
wide-ranging utility will continue to be ignored.
Myth #3: Social media is a
passing fad
Organizations that continue to fail to invest
time and resources into developing social media
strategies or integrating social media metrics
and analytics into their daily operations may be

operating under the fallacy that social media is
a mere fad that will soon disappear and never be
missed. In deciding whether or not social media
is a fad, one must examine two factors: market
longevity and market penetration. Regarding the
former, social media began in the mid-1990’s,
when instant messaging and group chats were
becoming popular. The first “social network-
ing” site, sixdegrees.com, mirrored much of
Facebook’s functionality and debuted in 1998.
Whether social media’s lifespan to date is 15
years or 12 years we shall leave to academics
to decide. Suffice it to say that the technology
has outlived many other popular fads such as the
Rubik’s Cube and Cabbage Patch Doll. In fact, so-
cial media has been around longer than Google.
With regard to market penetration, social media
is becoming almost as ubiquitious as email. A
recent study noted that 75% of Americans vis-
ited a social networking site in May 2010, and
more than half of U.S. online adults have at
least one social networking profile. Even more
impressive: 96% of Generation Y uses social
media, and Facebook is now the most visited
website in the world—a fact that undoubtedly
is contributing to the dramatic year-over-year
increase in time being spent on social networks.
Those who would still dismiss the power of social
 Social Media Myths: 5 Roadblocks to Discovery — OhMyGov Inc. Whitepaper
media and the need to monitor these channels
with equal fervor as one monitors industry trends
should commit the following statistics to memory:
Every day, more than 500 million pieces of content
are shared on Facebook, 55 million tweets are
posted to Twitter, one billion online videos are
viewed, and 175 million people log into Facebook.
Once upon a time, another communications “fad”
boasted similar numbers in its early days: email.
Myth #4: Social media is only for
socializing
“Businesses used to have a small suggestion box near the door
that mostly housed dust bunnies and an occasional piece of gum.
Rarely would someone get back to you. But people can now
make a post from an iPhone or a BlackBerry while they’re sitting
in your restaurant.”
—Charles Nelson, president of Sprinkles Cupcakes
Few would deny that the “hook” for getting into
social media lay in its social roots. Be it getting
back in touch with an old high school friend,
keeping tabs on a boyfriend while traveling, or
looking at pictures of your new grandaughter, the
primary draw of social media stems from its abil-

ity to connect people to one another in novel and
meaningful ways. But like most new technologies,
social media has evolved from its original purpose.
Once merely an engine for strengthening person-
al connections, today social media is a vehicle
for communicating in almost any environment,
including business, government, and education.
Social media, perceived in its early days as an echo
chamber for the news, is now breaking the news.
Recall that the first images to come in the im-
mediate aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earth-
quake were sent via Twitter. The year before,
Iranians used Twitter to voice their outrage
to the world over the reelection of President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after the government
began censoring traditional media. Opposition
activists spread word of an upcoming protest
in the streets of Tehran and posted pictures of
clashes between demonstrators and police over
what was preceived to be a rigged election.
Communications campaigns waged through so-
cial media have crippled stock prices, caused
massive sales dips, altered business practices,
and even aided in electing Presidents. On a
 Social Media Myths: 5 Roadblocks to Discovery — OhMyGov Inc. Whitepaper
Ways That Companies Worldwide
Use Twitter
62% Publicizing new content
54% Marketing Channel
47% Brand monitoring
27% Reacting to customer service issues
25% Gathering customer feedback
23% Market intelligence
14% Sales channel
11% Human resources
21% Don’t use Twitter for any of above
Source: Econsultancy, 2009
smaller scale, social media has helped inform
(and misinform) consumers about products,
raised public awareness of critical issues and
legislation, influenced policy shifts, and provided
valuable feedback channels for organizations.
In late 2009, information management firm
Convergys conducted market research that
indicated one negative comment posted by a
customer to a social media site can influence
30 customers to defect. The study also found
that one in three consumers affected by bad
customer service now share their problems on
the Web. On average, each post reaches 45 us-
ers—an important number considering that 62%
of respondents said “they would stop buying
products about which they read bad things.”
The implications for this research extend be-
yond the business world. Social media’s reach
and connectivity ease can profoundly influence
public perception of politicians, campaign mes-

sages, government agencies, programs, and bud-
gets, charities, and even celebrity personas—an
attribute uniquely tied to box office success.
Myth #5: Social media is not
measureable
In March 2010, computer scientists at HP Labs
conducted a large study of the microblogging
platform Twitter. Their mission: to analyze pat-
terns in tweets (messages sent through Twitter)
in order to predict the box office success of ma-
jor Hollywood movies. After studying more than
three million tweets, the researchers determined
that the rate at which messages about a film were
posted by Twitter users serves as a reliable indi-
cator of the film’s financial potential. The system
employed by the researchers predicted that zom-
bie film The Crazies would take in $16.8 million
in its first weekend in the United States; the film
earned $16.1 million. Similar predictions were
equally and eerily close to the actual amount.
In another study, a group of Japanese PhD stu-
dents at Tokyo University researched the correla-
tion between “online buzz”—the relative amount
of social media mentions about a person, place or
thing—and election results of candidates running
for public office. The study aimed to determine if
the quantity of online “word of mouth” mentions
of candidates could foreshadow whether the
candidate would end up being elected. Results
indicated that in a vast majority of cases, the
candidate with the most online mentions won.
In July, OhMyGov Inc. conducted a study of poli-
ticians using Facebook to determine if patterns
among political “fans” mirrored the current po-
litical climate, and if the platform could be used
to determine whether one political party was
emerging as dominant over the other. Results
showed Republicans were dominating Democrats
not only in the volume of Facebook fans they
were attracting, but also in the rate at which
they were acquiring new Facebook fans. The
 Social Media Myths: 5 Roadblocks to Discovery — OhMyGov Inc. Whitepaper
pattern was especially pronounced in the U.S.
House of Representatives, where significantly
more fans were being acquired by Republican
politicians in or currently running for House seats.
Social media cannot only be measured,
it can also be used to make predictions
into the future.
These statistically signifcant findings may
demonstrate a political shift in public in-
terest away from Democrats and towards
the GOP—a pattern that may carry over to
the November 2010 mid-term elections.
Analysis of Facebook Fan Growth Rate
for U.S. House Reps by Political Party
Republicans Democrats
Source: OhMyGov Inc.

Making a case for social media
measurement
Given these studies, it is clear that not only can
social media be measured, but that it can also
be used to make predictions into the future. Of
course, not every organization needs this level of
sophistication. Some simply want to know what
people are saying about their organizations,
brands and messages, and how many people
they are reaching with their marketing. These
data are typical components of media analysis
programs, which aim to get a broad sense of
“who says what through which channel to whom
with what effect” (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996).
To demonstrate the importance of media analy-
sis for organizations, consider the findings of a
report compiled for the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention by OhMyGov Inc. At the
time of the analysis, H1N1/swine flu was making
daily headlines and the CDC was at the forefront
of the public health battle to prevent a pandemic.
In order to gauge the effectiveness of CDC’s cam-
paign to control information about H1N1 and mon-
itor chatter for erroneous information, OhMyGov
Inc. analyzed 28,424 tweets that mentioned
H1N1 or swine flu over the span of three days
(Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, 2009). These tweets yielded
more than 39 million opportunities to view H1N1
discussions on Twitter. The CDC was visible in 649
of these tweets or 2.3% of the total, which cor-
responded to more than 2.6 million opportunities
for the CDC name to be seen by Twitter users.
The analysis uncovered the fact that one tweet
from ABC News, which criticized the CDC H1N1
map, was responsible for nearly all of the
agency’s negative visibility. Three of the top
five most tweeted H1N1 statements tied to the
CDC reported on child fatality figures linked to
the H1N1 virus. More than 300 tweets specifi-
cally focused on the shortage of H1N1 vaccine,
yet notably only 2% of H1N1 tweets mentioning
the CDC reported concern for the vaccine short-
 Social Media Myths: 5 Roadblocks to Discovery — OhMyGov Inc. Whitepaper
age. The CDC’s relatively low level of visibility
within tweets discussing the vaccine shortage
suggested that twitterers did not associate the
shortage with the agency. Good news for CDC.
As evidenced by the findings of this CDC analysis
and other studies mentioned, social media plat-
forms such as Twitter and Facebook provide an in-
credibly rich data set for organizations to study and
better understand how the public perceives their
particular brand or message—or in some cases,
how the public is clouding or subverting that mes-
sage. Media analysis that incorporates social me-
dia monitoring can provide an organization with:
• cost-effective and timely research for evaluating the
effectiveness of communications campaigns
• benchmarking those campaigns against peers or competitors
• identifying industry trends and public sentiment prior to
launching a campaign
• tracking down sources of erroneous information
• evaluating regional differences in message delivery
• determining key influencers in the space
• and better informing policy and decision makers.
In lieu of conducting expensive and labor-intensive
focus groups and surveys, communicators who em-
brace social media can use media analysis to gain
comparable insights—with the triple advantage

of conducting the analysis on larger data sets, at
a far greater frequency (weekly or even daily),
and at a fraction of the cost. What’s more, media
analysis is far less intrusive, time-consuming, and
conspicuous than traditional research methods.
Conclusion
Existing myths held by a shrinking but still large
number of decision-makers paint social media as
a free technological fad of waning importance
geared mainly for the young, idle and gregari-
ous that can neither be measured nor deployed
for serious business purposes. Examining the
myths reveals a profound lack of merit in
these accusations. Yet the persistence of these
myths causes many organizations to fail to al-
locate the resources required to gain any ben-
efit from social media monitoring and analysis.
Myth # 1: Social media is free
Reality: Manpower is required to run a successful,
or even an unsuccessful, social media campaign.
These manhours translate into real costs that the
organization incurs. The myth of social media
being completely free leads organizations to un-
dervalue the importance of running a successful
social media campaign. As a result, performance
 Social Media Myths: 5 Roadblocks to Discovery — OhMyGov Inc. Whitepaper
monitoring and metrics are not frequently utilized
as they would normally be in a program where
costs are closely tracked and return on invest-
ment calculated, such as an advertising campaign.
Myth #2: Social media is for kids
Reality: Middle-aged adults rule the social media
space. While the early saturation of Facebook
and MySpace by college students and teens has
perpetuated the erroneous myth that all social
media is dominated by the same age group, the
average age now on Facebook and Twitter are 37
and 39, respectively. Organizations staying away
from social media due to a misbelief that these
sites are for youth only should reexamine the de-
mographics to make a better informed decision
as to where to place their communication efforts.
Myth #3: Social media is just a fad
Reality: Now approaching its 15th year in ex-
istence and rapidly growing and evolving with
each new quarter, social media has proven
itself as a still fresh but well-established
method of communication. Organizations at-
tempting to ride out the social media wave on
the sidelines must learn to recognize that so-
cial media is no more of a fad than email was.
Myth #4: Social media is only for socializing
Reality: This dated myth overlooks the incred-
ible diversity of applications users have found
for social media. Today, social media is used
to break and track news stories, share product
reviews, provide feedback to companies and
governments, survey employees for new ideas on
improving operations, orchestrate boycotts, and
elect presidents. In fact, it seems that each new
day brings a new application for social media.
Myth #5: Social media is not measurable
Reality: The relative popularity of political can-
didates can now be measured by their number of
followers and mentions on social media platforms.
These same numbers can be used as a litmus test
for public sentiment towards politicians, brands,
and campaigns. Similarly, campaigns waged on
these platforms can be monitored and analyzed

to determine the public’s response to the messag-
ing, regional variations in message uptake, key in-
flueners or detractors, and the number of people
reached by the campaign. In certain instances,
social media can even be used to make predic-
tions as to future earnings or election outcomes.
The days of guesswork and focus groups are
waning, being rapidly replaced by social media
analysis—a cheaper, more robust process com-
municators and researchers can use to study,
understand, and even predict human behavioral
patterns. Those who embrace social media and
social media analysis empower themselves with
new tools for discovering realities and patterns
of human beliefs, behavior, and influence.
To learn more about OhMyGov’s
research and analytics, please
contact editors@ohmygov.com or
call 703-243-3461.
References
[1] Asur, Sitaram, and Huberman, Bernardo A., “Predicting the
Future with Social Media,” HP Labs research, April 2010.
[2] Huberman, Bernardo A., Romero, Daniel M., and Wu, Fang.
“Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope.” First
Monday, 14(1), Jan 2009.
[3] Jansen, B., Zhang, M., et al. “Twitter power: Tweets as
electronic word of mouth.” Journal of American Society for
Information Science and Technology, 2009.
[4] Alistair Jamieson, “Silent majority risk worse customer service
as companies monitor Twitter, Facebook,” Telegraph, December
13, 2009.
[5] “Ages of Social Network Users,” Pingdom, February, 2010,
available at: http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-
social-network-users.
[6] Nielsen.com
[7] Einhorn, A., and Hartman, R, “Center for Disease Control and
Prevention: H1N1 Twitter Analysis,” OhMyGov Inc, November
2009.
[8] Shoemaker, P. & Reese, S. “Mediating the message: theories
of influences on mass media content,” White Plains, NY:
Longman, 1996.