Doing some digging tonight, I found an amazing site with some great information. The site, www.whitepapersource.com, has published a 26 page report on social media titled “Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Business.” I will be referring back to this a bit for a while to cover it all, but if you want to see the whole report, go to:
http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/
This report finds that people aged 30 to 39 were most likely to use social media marketing. 72% of the marketers surveyed were using this medium for just a few months with sole proprietors being the largest group.
This was an interesting find. The more experience someone had, the more time they were spending on social media. New social marketers are spending an average of two hours a week. Whereas, people who have doing this for years spend and average of 20+ hours a week.
According to the report:
“The number-one benefit of social media marketing is gaining the all-important eyeball. A significant 81% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts have generated exposure for their businesses. Improving traffic and growing lists was the second major benefit, followed by building new partnerships. An unexpected benefit was a rise in search engine rankings reported by more than half of participants. As the search engine rankings improve, so will business exposure, lead generation efforts and a reduction in overall marketing expenses. About one in two marketers found social media generated qualified leads. However, only slightly more than one in three said social media marketing helped close business.”
There’s so much more to talk about and see in this report. Go take a look at it and let me know your thoughts.
