Social Media – Connect with More Customers Online

Are you tappping into the power of social networking and Web 2.0 sites to connect with more prospects and potential customers?

In these tough times, effective use of social media can mean the difference between a thriving or a languishing business.

Web 2.0 and social media marketing offer businesses a massive opportunity to reach and engage more prospects online in both a highly cost effective and personal manner.

What kind of reach do these sites have? The numbers below will give you a rough idea:

• LinkedIn: Network of 36 million business professionals
• Twitter:  8  million users growing at a rate of 40% per month
• Facebook:  Community of 200 million
• Youtube: 100 million videos viewed daily
• Flickr: 54 million photos per month
• Digg/Delicious/StumbleUpon: 30 million users

“Does social media marketing work or is it just a waste of time?” is a question I often hear from small business owners.

Results of a recent March 2009 marketing industry survey answer this question and may convince you to start building a social media presence for your business (if you haven’t yet already!). Here are some of the highlights:

The majority of businesses (over 80%) reported an increase in attention and exposure for their businesses, with small business owners reporting the greatest benefit. In addition, search rankings also rose (due to the high page rank accorded to popular social media sites by Google), thus increasing these businesses’ chances of being found on the web.

Interestingly, Twitter was the top tool used, followed closely by blogs, LinkedIn, and Facebook.  With Oprah (and almost a million of her fans) joining Twitter recently, the service is fast becoming a tool that is known and used by mainstreet america.

So how significant is the time required for social media marketing? About a third reported spending more than 5 hours each week, with 39% spending 10+ hours and almost 10% using it more than 20 hours each week.

The bottom line? The overall results of the survey point to social media marketing efforts as being beneficial in terms of creating a high impact web presence – thus generating new traffic, leads, and partnerships for businesses who are willing to invest the time to learn and leverage these highly effective tools.