For many marketing companies, management of corporate or small business level social media has become a full-time endeavor. For this reason it can be vital to learn what impact your efforts are actually having on your brand awareness. Gaining this knowledge will help you to understand what it may take to boost your business’s bottom line.
The Noisy Social Media Environment
Social media networks are busy places. Once a user has built up a large friend or fan following, the information can stream by at light speed. There are plenty of opportunities to place ads to garner that extra attention from those who may not be able to meticulously pick through their social media networks information, but still scan it for an overall idea of what the internet world had to offer today.
In a recent release of a study by the Adobe Digital Marketing Team, some statistics may have shown why consumers and businesses may not be benefiting from social media like they could.
- 36% of tweets with valuable content are swallowed by a more boring majority.
- 37% of those who do use social media networks say that the ads they see are not very useful.
- 63% of social community managers spend more than 30 hours per week.
- 26% spent 41 to 50 hours on their community administration and management.
Account proliferation seems to contribute to the overload currently experienced on social media networks. The Adobe study showed that many companies with over 1,000 employees, had an average of 178 social media network accounts. Not only can this clog up the networks, but it can also make full brand analytics rather difficult to test in some cases. Many social marketers also report that they feel they lack resources. Many of those also reporting that they often struggle to measure ROI, which ironically, does not help for getting new resources.
Measuring Social Success
There are obviously many business, large and small who are utilizing their Facebook fan pages to great benefit for their businesses and brands. Facebook and YouTube both have emerged as leaders in social marketing successes. These two market leaders dwarf their competition with an unparalleled critical difference in terms of time spent by users on those sites.
The study also showed that recommendations from other social users can affect the level of enjoyment a possible consumer may feel about a video. When it comes to websites and content, the study also showed that users tend to stay logged in more than twice as long when doing so with social plug-ins.
Many other social networking and social media statistics found in the study can also be vital to understanding how to implement
Social sharing increases email click-throughs
CTR without sharing shows up around 26%.
- Twitter – 5.0%
- Facebook – 5.4%
- LinkedIn – 9.6%
People use social networks to find local business
In 2008 4% of consumers reported they used social networking sites to find local business.
- 2009 – 7%
- 2010 – 9%
- 2011 – 15%
Social Drives Sales but Faces Perception Challenges
During a self-assessment of women’s marketplace influence, 73% of young adult women described themselves as influential information sources. It also showed that orders that come in via social media networks are commonly larger than those through more traditional digital means such s email, search engines, or even ad displays. In the same realm, the study showed that social sharing can actually trickle down to orders. A quarter of online shoppers who shop at least quarterly, and log into their Facebook accounts at least once a month have made purchases based on a social recommendation.
Author:
@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.
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