If your idea of social networking involves a handshake and a business card, it’s time to upgrade your marketing efforts. The surging popularity of social-media sites has changed the way businesses interact with their customer base and market their services. Increasingly, businesses turn to blogs and sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to generate leads, gain exposure, and brand their business. And recent surveys show social media’s use is expanding, along with its effectiveness.
Here are the top three business benefits of social-media marketing …
Exposure: According to the 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, 85 percent of surveyed businesses said their social-media efforts had generated additional exposure for their business and led to improved web traffic. In a separate survey, companies that blog reported 55 percent more website visitors and 97 percent more inbound links than companies that didn’t.
Relationships and Referrals: Social media makes forming one-on-one relationships with your customers and clients easier than ever. Keeping a blog and regularly updated social-media sites creates exposure for you and your business, but it also forms an existing community of people you’ve done business with. And staying in touch and participating with your online community can lead to an increase in referrals. After all, if a potential client visits your Facebook or Twitter page and its filled with glowing reviews from satisfied customers, it will likely have a positive influence when deciding whether or not to do business with you.
Lead Generation: Among 752 recently surveyed small-business owners, 57 percent said lead generation was the top benefit of social-media marketing. And that number is growing. Small-business owners that said Facebook was somewhat or very beneficial to their business rose to 55 percent from 33.2 percent the year before, while Twitter and LinkedIn also saw significant gains. In other words, the popularity and effectiveness of social-media marketing continues to grow, as does the power to generate real-life leads from your online efforts.
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I heard social media is one of the fastest growing professions in the country. I think it has become more important now that Google is looking at the social media efforts of businesses in their search results.