Have You Missed The ‘Social Media’ Train?

For many people in business today trying to get to grips with social media is just a bridge too far.

So I thought I’d point out some facts that illustrate why social media is a train that you do not want to miss!

For example, social media can offer business owners…

So let me take you through some facts that will get your attention when it comes to social media as a marketing platform for your business.

Facebook is the biggest social media site out there today and nearly a year ago in March 2010, Experian reported that it’s reach had become bigger than Google’s. I know that sounds amazing but it’s a fact. More people now visit Facebook than they do Google.

For example if Facebook were a country it would be the 3^rd largest country in the world today behind China and India, with a population of over 600 milion people.

But here’s the most amazing fact, over 50% of the those people are on Facebook everyday! And not only that but those same people spend and average of 55 minutes a day on the site!!

Also about 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States. So you get the point – there are a lot of people using this site.

Twitter is another place where more and more people are spending time online.

To give you an idea of its popularity and growth, back in December 2009, for the first time ever, there were over 1 billion ‘tweets’ on Twitters site.

For those of you reading that don’t know what a ‘tweet’ is, all it is is a short little note by an individual.

This could be a comment about something in the news or a reply to what someone else has said or a quick update on what that individual is thinking or doing at any moment in time.

But here’s the thing, by the May  of 2010, just 6 months later,  the number of ‘tweets’ had doubled to over 2 billion.

Another social media site that has seen massive growth recently is LinkedIn

LinkedIn has over 85 million members in over 200 countries right now.

And a new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of their members are outside the U.S. Plus executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

And to give you an idea of growth from a user perspective, LinkedIn has had over 40% growth since the beginning of 2010.

Now for those of you out there thinking “that’s all well and good Grant but the people spending time on Facebook, etc are not the kind of people I would do business with…”, here’s some figures that will make you think again.

The most dominant age group using social media today is 35 – 44. Also over 64% of Twitter’s users are 35 years or older. And over 61% of Facebook’s users are 35 years or older. Plus the average age on Linkedin is 44.

Now think about that for a minute.

These are the people with the real spending power. Wouldn’t you want to connect with this market and get your business and brand in front of them?

Well Inc. Magazine reported ‘yes’.

In an article published last year based on a survey of businesses using social media, their findings were extremely revealing.

Over 50% said social media had generated leads. 74% of business owners using social media said it helped close business and 84% said it had created ‘buzz’.

But one of the most startling statistics of all was that nearly 50% said it reduced marketing costs!

Now ‘blogging’ was one of the first social media activities to hit the web and if you’re wondering whether or not to use it as a marketing tool these statistics should encourage you.

In a recent survey of businesses that ‘blogged’ (if you want to find out more about blogs and how to set one up, go back to my article in the June issue of this newsletter) businesses in the B2C market increased leads by 88% compared with businesses that didn’t blog and in the B2B market businesses increased their leads by over 67%.

But what’s the score when it comes to actual sales?

Well the figures are equally impressive. In another survey performed by Hubspot, 41% of businesses using Twitter said they had generated sales, 41% of Linkedin users said they’d generated sales, 44% of the Facebook users surveyed could account for sales from using the channel and 46% of businesses using blogs said they had generated sales from this media.

Using social media is actually really simple.

First you connect with the right people. These are the people (your market) that you would have decided benefit most from your product or service. If you want guidance on how to find out who this group of people are, see my article from last month’s issue.

The second step is to post updates on your profile, group or page (depending on what site your on will dictate this).  And as you do this your connections see what your doing or saying.

Now by posting these updates your connections get to know, like and trust you.

But here’s the thing… when people ‘like’ your stuff, ‘comment’ on it and ‘share’ it, all of their connections see it as well!!

And this is why social media in the right hands is a very powerful weapon.

You can literally reach thousands of people very quickly and even ensure that these people are in the area where you do business, if you’re not a national business.

To give you an idea of how powerful being connected to people can be let me give you an example of something called “Metcalfe’s Law”.

Metcalfe’s Law helps us understand the following fact. If you are in a network of 5 people there are 10 possible connections. But if you are in a network of 10 people your number of connections doesn’t double to 20. It multiplies to 45!

So your number one goal when using social media is to keep giving , the right people, things to ‘like’, ‘share’ and ‘comment’ on so our connections indirectly or directly recommend us to their friends.

And as this process unfolds this will give your business massive social proof in the eyes of potential prospects.

So if you haven’t done so already take steps today to create a presence on the social media networks.

Until next time….  Grant

Tags: social media for business, social media marketing strategy, social media strategy