Newsletter
WHY SOCIAL MEDIA IS SO IMPORTANT FOR COMPANIES THESE DAYS
In the past few years, social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and others have revolutionized the way businesses go about networking. Whether promoting themselves to customers or journalists, or gathering market feedback, major corporations and small enterprises have begun leveraging the power of online social networks to their advantage. Here are some of the things that you should know:
Is Social Media really here to stay?
The statistics below indicate that this is not simply a fad, but a real paradigm shift.
• 88% of marketers are using social media
• 67% of global web-users visit social network sites
• 10% of all time spent on the internet is on social media sites
• 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs
What are some of the social media networks out there and what do they do?
• YouTube is a site owned by Google that enables individuals and businesses to post video content. It has been ranked as the fourth most visited website on the Internet, with over 100 million viewers watching around 6 billion videos each month. Additionally, 60% of the videos are embedded by 20-35 year olds, a major targeted demographic for companies.
• Twitter is a free service that allows members to send short messages (known as “tweets”) to their “followers”. It recently experienced a 1,400% monthly growth rate with over 55 million monthly visits. With 50 million “tweets” a day, that’s a lot of information sharing.
• Facebook is the largest social media network that operates off of banner ads and referral marketing. Ranked as #2 on Alexa, only Google gets more hits per day. There are over 400 million active users, of whom 50% log on each day and spend an average of 55 minutes online. Open access to such a broad demographic has made them an extremely attractive place to publicize yourself.
• LinkedIn is an international business-oriented social networking site that allows users to post their professional or business profiles. With over 55 million users from around the world, it’s understandable why 80% of companies utilize it in some form. Projected growth for this network stands somewhere at 10% annually.
What is the value of social media networks?
Social media is really about two things; raising public awareness of your company and tapping into relevant online conversations that affect your company and its technology. When such a large percent of your audience is using social media to research just about everything, and the value of such information many times outweighs the messages transmitted through traditional marketing methods, drawing online attention to your company and learning about your audience’s needs through these networks, is clearly one of the keys to success.
The formula for success with social media consists of the following concepts:
• Authentic participation whereby your company is part of the online conversation by offering helpful information that the industry members can benefit from, without any sales-oriented edge.
• Customer Service is promoted by having the answers to your customer’s issues at the right place and right time.
• Brand consistency is created by an unchanging presentation of your company’s value offering, coupled with unwavering commitment to a high level of service.
• Persistence and perseverance will ensure that your social media campaign will yield solid results within 6-12 months.
How to begin with social media:
Social media is a discipline with unique methods and techniques. As such, companies that try to do it in-house with little prior experience are often times spinning their wheels unnecessarily.
Many business owners note the importance of ‘time’ and negative impact of not having enough of it to accomplish other important aspects of running their operation. Marketing strategists and business solutions experts will tell you that time allocation and conservation are crucial factors in successfully managing your company, especially when you are getting started and lack the manpower to delegate each job to a separate department. While outsourcing may cost you money, it saves you something even more valuable. If time is money as they say, you want to make sure that you’re spending your time on ROI and market share expansion, and let the experts assist you with the field they know best.
Check out the article by following to learn about why out-sourcing those things that don't come in your natural skill-set, actually saves you money! Great startups are usually started by great people...
Also of importance, is the fact that marketing companies that are already using social media have created economies of scale, and can pass along their savings to the client.
Expansion Media is full-service marketing company with this expertise, and brings an integrated approach to social media, with its full suite of tools and services available for their clients.