In the last few years social media
has seen a tremendous growth and popularity. Not being on social media means
one belongs to the ages of antiquity. Social media has become trendy. However,
the sad part of it is that most of users of social media have still not been
able to harness its tremendous benefits. The truth is, social media when used
strategically over time is the most powerful form of marketing and market
research the world has ever seen.
Many users have the perception that
just opening a Facebook account, Twitter and the others will get you connected
to the rest of the world. It tell you it demands real work it's not a magic.
Users of social media must understand that apart from just building
relationships, it is a great marketing tool. It is a tool for listening, not
just talking.
A survey reveals that 22.5 percent of Americans spend their time on social media. I think more organizations
should take strategic advantage of this platform. The social media brand that
Americans spend the most time with, the report finds, is Facebook, by an
enormous margin. During May, when the report was compiled, Americans spent 53.5
billion minutes on Facebook.com from computers at home and work. (That was up 6
percent from 50.6 billion minutes in May 2010.) Facebook reaches 70 percent of
active Internet users in the United States, the report says, and of the visitors
to Facebook, 62 percent were female.
I am older than most of the students in the e-marketing class Raymond, but I’m glad that I do not fall into the category of what you called the "age of antiquity" (love that description)! I have had a LinkedIn account for about eight years, and I have actually utilized the account to network relative to job opportunities. In addition, I have had a personal Facebook account for about five years, and a business Facebook page for the last four years. In fact, inspired by this new e-marketing class, a few weeks ago I even started doing some advertising on my business Facebook account to promote specific communications and to build my "likes" database. Watching how Facebook reports the results of the marketing efforts is impressive, and the analytics are amazing. Regardless, you are correct when you state that it is not enough just to be on those social media networks. To really benefit, whether and individual or business, e-marketing activities via social media channels does indeed require much work. There is a lot of noise in the social media world, and anyone wanting to cut through all of that and get significant attention, has to be creative and consistently diligent. As you say, it demands real work – it’s not magic.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting blog post! It is crazy to think that that many people in the U.S. are on Facebook. Also that over 20% of people spend their free time on social media websites like Facebook or Twitter is just astounding. If more businesses, especially smaller businesses, knew this kind of stuff then they would definitely start marketing on these types of social media websites! It could really help out all of these types of businesses with trying to get more traffic into their store. I bet that sooner than later more businesses are going to figure out that using social media to market their business, and that more and more of these businesses are going to be marketing on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
ReplyDeleteVery good post! And thank you for the links to the websites!
The market analysis that these social media outlets can provide a company isn't utilized like it should be. All the different pages people can like on Facebook can show you what tends are hot right now and what are not. You can even search similar businesses or topics to gather information from the people that like the pages, or send them information about your business. Many companies on Facebook offer prizes for completing a market research survey and in order to be eligible they must share the page for others to see. Many tactics like this can be used to take advantage of the opportunity that social media offers. Only social media can address such a large community with little costs in a very short time period.
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