How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses

Video marketing holds the top spot for future plans: A significant 76% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing, making it the top area marketers will invest in for 2012.

Marketers seek to learn more about Google+: While only 40% of marketers are using Google+, 70% of marketers want to learn more about it and 67% plan on increasing Google+ activities.

Top three benefits of social media marketing: The number-one benefit of social media marketing is generating more business exposure (reported 85% of marketers), followed by increasing traffic (69%) and providing marketplace insight (65%).

Top five social media networks/tools for marketers 2011:

1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. LinkedIn
4. Blogs
5. YouTube

…are the top five social media tools used by marketers, in that order. Google+ surprised a lot of people jumping to #6 and they weren’t 6 months old.

Social media marketing still takes a lot of time: The majority of marketers (59%) are using social media for 6 hours or more each week, and a third (33%) invest 11 or more hours weekly.

Marketers still place high value on social media: A significant 83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.

Social Media Benefits

The top two benefitsof social media marketing are;

1. Increased exposure.  
2. Increased traffic.

A significant 65% of small business owners were more likely than others to generate leads, compared to the 58% average for all marketers.

A strong 78% of marketers with 3+ years of experience gained leads from social media marketing.

The self-employed (57%) were more likely than others to see reductions in marketing costs when using social media marketing.

•  Will Social Media continue to grow? Move at a faster pace?

• If you wait, will you be able to catch up with the competition?

Source: Marketing Report Social Media Examiner

 –Blair Evan Ball