The blog post Joining the social media conversation - connect, communicate, co-operate and collaborate outlines the many different uses of social media to build mutually beneficial relationships, reach professional and personal goals and ACTUALLY do business.
I’ve spent many long hours researching how others use social media to grow their business. By far the most helpful report I have read on this subject is by social media marketing expert Michael A. Stelzner who has conducted an in-depth study of 900 US marketers and provides valuable ‘who, what, where, why and when’ insight from people who are generating exposure, opportunities and sales from social media marketing.
Below is just a snapshot of what is in this report you can download the complete 26 page white paper here
Key findings of the report
Marketers are mostly new to social media: A significant 88% of marketers surveyed are using social media to market their businesses, BUT a staggering 72% have only been doing so for a few months or less.
The top social media tools: Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook were the top four social media tools used by marketers, in that order.
How much time do you need to invest: A significant 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week and 39% for 10 or more hours weekly. 9.6% spend more than 20 hours a week.
The top benefit of social media marketing: The number one advantage is generating exposure for the business, indicated 81% of all marketers, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships
Social medial marketing does close business: 61.62% of marketers who have been using social media marketing for some time report it has helped them close business.
Social medial does generate qualified leads: After only a few months and with as few as 6 hours a week, more than 50% of marketers have generated qualified leads from social marketing.
The people most likely to use social marketing: marketers aged between 30-39 years old were most likely to use social media marketing (92.8%)
If nothing else convinces you to dabble in social media marketing this will!: In terms of reducing overall marketing spend, a significant percentage of participants strongly agree that marketing costs dropped when social media marketing was implemented. In almost all cases social media marketing tools are free.
As David Quainton says in his Trend Watch article on social networking Find your wings, or get left behind in this months edition of Event Magazine - The digital revolution is over, we already live in a digital age and there are plenty of ways to make sure you use it to your advantage.
