This presentation gives an overview of current social media trends, a look at how businesses today are utilizing social media to grow their businesses and touch on career potential within this unique marketing niche. You will leave with a better understanding of how social media goes beyond how they typically use it as a teenage consumer, and help them understand how businesses are using social media to help further their business objectives.
Why is Social Media Important?
• Social media is here to stay. If you don’t have a strategy, it’s more than likely your competitors will have, or are planning to.
• A good strategy will, at its core, allow you to garner insight into what customers really think about your organization. It allows you to monitor and protect your reputation.
• For the costs that are involved, it’s a great “soft” marketing and communication channel. Although it’s well worth remembering that measuring any ROI against social media can be extremely difficult.
• Boosting overall online activity. Social media will help your SEO and drive visitors to your site.
• It helps your organization speak and listen. Ever tried to make people aware of something while nobody listened? Social media can help you be heard. Equally, it allows otherwise-unheard customers to strike up a two-way conversation with you.
• It makes your organization become transparent, which is a very important element in current business practice, especially online.
• It’s an educational experience. You will be able to learn from customers: what they want, where they are, etc. Equally, customers can quickly learn from you: services, products, locations, etc.
• Relationships will be built and maintained between you and your customers.
• It helps you fish where the fish are. The Internet is becoming increasingly fragmented and distributed. Social media can help you find the correct audience or customers and engage with them, instead of wasting resources in the wrong areas.
More Tips, Best Practices and Social Media Marketing Resources:
FREE Evaluation of Your Social Media: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/do-you-make-social-media-grade
Social Media Blog: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/marketinglibrary/
Social Media Infographics: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/infographs
Social Media Workshops: http://www.customerinsightgroup.com/custom-social-media-workshops
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/engagekeepgrow/
The latest research from Forrester cites social media as the fastest growing marketing channel, expected to reach $3.1 billion by 2014.
How has this change influenced
Note: As expected, Generation Y still accounts for the lion’s share of activity, but Generation X isn’t far behind and Baby Boomers are quickly catching up, particularly in the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Orkut, and QQ. Baby Boomers have demonstrated the most growth interms of numbers using such sites. In 2009, 50 percent of Baby Boomers were using social networking sites.7 Based on oursurvey, that number had swelled to 72 percent by 2010.Notes: 1) Sample size N=1056. 2) Generation Y: People born between 1975 and 1992 (18 to 35 year olds): Generation X: People born between 1965 to 1974 (36 to 45 year olds): Baby Boomers: People born in or before 1964 (46 year olds and older). Source: IBM Institute for Business Value analysis. CRM Study 2011Gen Y born between 1975 and 1992 (18-35) Gen X 1965 – 1974 (36 – 45), Baby Boomers Born before 1964. IBM Study MethodologyIn October 2010, we conducted two online surveys:The first was completed by 1,056 consumers in the UnitedStates, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, India,China, Australia and Brazil. Participants represented adistribution of ages among Generation Y, Generation X andBaby Boomers, with annual household incomes fromUS$25,000 to more than US$100,000.6The second survey went to 351 business executives in thesame countries (except Canada). Executives representedcompanies from the following sectors: Distribution,Communications, Financial Services, Industrial and PublicSector/Healthcare. In addition, to capture qualitative datafrom executives responsible for social media programs, weconducted 17 interviews in the United States and the UnitedKingdom. In partnership with Oxford Economics, we alsoestablished a Social CRM blog to solicit feedback on SocialCRM topics from social media and CRM specialists andother interested individuals.