I’ve listened to business people speak of how they despise social media, especially Facebook. They go on about how their businesses would not benefit from social media networking. Some proclaim that they rarely use the Internet in general, except for email of course. Perhaps the word “social” may be steering some small businesses away? Who has time to socialize, this is business right?
There are others, and not a small number I might add, who do use and understand the value social media can bring to their businesses. But before I let the numbers speak for themselves. Let’s define social media.
Social media according to Google “are websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.” Here are a few popular social media sites or applications; LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, Blogger, just to name a few.
Now let’s get to the numbers. Consider the following stats from Hootsuite.com:
• 9 out of 10 small businesses are using social media
• 94% of small businesses are leveraging social media for marketing
• 61% of small businesses find that social media solves the problem of attracting new customers
• 49% of small businesses use social media for learning, e.g. access to network of peers, learning from experts in their industry, obtaining insights on best practices
What about the audience or users of these social media networking sites? Digital Insights revealed the following:
• There are 1.2 Billon monthly active Facebook users
• Twitter has 255 million active users and 1 Billion plus total users
• There are 540 Million active Google+ users and 1.6 Billion plus total users
• Instagram has 200 Million monthly active users
• LinkedIn has 187 Million active users and 300 Million total users
• Pinterest has 40 Million active users and 70 Million plus total users
• YouTube has 1 Billion plus users with 80% of traffic from outside the U.S.
• 6.7 Million people blog via blogging sites and 77 Million of Internet users read blogs
So how are small businesses using social media and how effective are these networks?
• 90% of small businesses report social media effective for branding, 88% effective for word-of-mouth, 89% effective for content management, 89% effective for lead generation
Still not convinced? Knowledge is power so here we go. Hubspot.com gives us more convincing evidence:
• 83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business
• 42% of marketers say Facebook is critical or important to their business
• An increase of 75% of businesses say Facebook is critical or important to their business
• Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing
• Photos that included hashtags in their descriptions on Instagram tend to get more Likes than photos that do not
• 43% of all marketers have found a customer via LinkedIn in 2013
• 36% of all marketers have found a customer via Twitter in 2013
Well welcome to the 21st century! Like I mentioned earlier, the numbers speak for themselves. As a small business owner still skeptical of the usefulness of social media networking to your business, you may wish to reconsider and jump on the social media bandwagon. Increase your brand presence, your target audience, your sales, and knowledge of industry trends. Consider using social media as a part of your overall business marketing strategy today.
