Why Should Your Business Engage In Social Media Marketing?

November 20, 2009

A lot of the posts here on the SMEketing Small Business Blog are regarding social media – Twitter, Facebook, blogging etc. That’s not just because it’s a service we offer – it’s because the way people use the Internet, and more importantly, consumer behaviour, is changing.

It used to always be about interruption marketing – adverts interrupting your favourite TV show, every other page in a magazine being an advert, adverts on the radio offering car insurance and local double glazing, pop ups jumping up from websites running around the page whilst you try to find the X to close it down…. you get what I mean. Marketing was all about interruption – getting in the consumers way. Did we ask for Coronation Street to be split into two halves with 3 minutes of adverts in the middle? No we didn’t. Luckily nowadays, we don’t have to put up with it anymore. We can fast forward through adverts on TV, install spam blockers and pop up blockers to get rid of those pop ups and spam emails. No longer do we have no choice over having to endure irrelevant marketing rot.

So marketers need to change the way they promote their products and services. One popular stream of thought is all about content – providing content to consumers when they want, where they want. If a young lady is online, if searching in Google for ‘red ladies bikes’ then you need to make sure that your bike website gets found in Google for that search term. That young lady may also go on Twitter, and say that ‘I’m looking for a new bike – it’s got to be red, can anyone recommend a shop?’ – again, you need to make sure you are there to answer that tweet.

Additionally, people now use the Internet to research purchases. They don’t go to Comet and ask the spotty teenager behind the till for advice, they go online and look at reviews from people who are just like them, who have bought the same printer, used it and have now formed an opinion; an opinion which they post online which is available for the whole world to see.  Even my Granny, who doesn’t even have the Internet knows that online is the best place to get product advice – when she wanted a new DVD player earlier this year she called me up and asked me to go online and check the reviews of the one she wanted!  The power of a positive review in Amazon is amazing – in the same way that a bad review can be disastrous. So businesses need to also monitor social media; know what is being said about products you sell, your industry, and more importantly – you!

These are just a couple of examples, but eConsultancy have some social media statistics to really bring home the fact that your small business NEEDS to be participating in social media marketing – if you’re not, you’re in danger of become an irrelevant dinosaur:

• Social networks and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities online, including beating personal email. 67% of global users visit member communities and 10% of all time spent on the Internet is on social media sites.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.*
• 80% of companies use, (or are planning to use), LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees during the course of this year. The site has just celebrated reaching its 45-millionth membership.
• Around 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week during campaigns, with 39% using it for 10 or more hours per week.
• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The internet took four years to reach 50 million people… In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.
• Wikipedia currently has more than 13 million articles in more than 260 different languages. The site attracts over 60 million unique users a month and it’s often hotly debated that the information it contains is more reliable than any printed Encyclopedia.
• The most recent figure of blogs being indexed by Technorati currently stands at 133 million. The same report into the Blogosphere also revealed that on average, 900,000 blog posts are created within a single 24-hour period.
• It’s been suggested that YouTube is likely to serve over 75 billion video streams to around 375 million unique visitors during this year.
• The top three people on Twitter (Ashton Kutcher, Ellen DeGeneres and Britney Spears) have more combined followers than the entire population of Austria.*
• According to Socialnomics, if you were paid $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia, you would earn $156.23 per hour.
• The online bookmarking service, Delicious, has more than five million users and over 150 million unique bookmarked URLs.
• Since April this year, Twitter has been receiving around 20 million unique visitors to the site each month, according to some analytical sources.
• Formed in 2004, Flickr now hosts more than 3.6 billion user images.
• Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs.

*Thanks to SEW for the b/g inspiration.

So social media is here to stay. If you don’t have a blog on your site, aren’t using Twitter, and don’t have a Facebook Business Page then please come and talk to us at SMEketing.  For the month of November, we are offering you the chance to have a Facebook Business Page created for just £60 – get one before the offer runs out!

Filed under: Blogging, Social Media Marketing

Tags: Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter