Consider these stats from “the future buzz” newsletter:
“The social areas of the web are growing fast. Consider just a few stats:
400 million active Facebook users
50 million Tweets per day
133 million blogs (creating 900,000 blog posts every 24 hours) and around 77% of internet users read blogs
While the above numbers show the scale of the consumer driven web – B2B influence also lives here.
According to a Forrester Research report of business buyers:
91% read blogs, watch user generated video, participate in other social media
55% of decision-makers are in social networks
43% are creating media (blogs, uploading videos or articles, etc.)
Consumers and prospects are already here. Marketing dollars care catching up, fast:
$55 billion – number of dollars marketers will spend on interactive (display, mobile, email, social, search) channels by 2014 -representing a compound annual growth rate of 34% (source).
Media influence, too:
89% of reporters use blogs, 65% use social networking sites, and 52% use microblogging sites according to a national study by GW University.
More, here.
Magik New Media
Social Network Marketing is about starting a dialogue with your customers, rather than shouting orders. A nice conversation with your customers may result in them thinking positively about your brand and they ll more than likely share the love with their friends. By having a discussion with your potential customers you may even discover flaws in your offering.