What Can Social Media Marketing Do For My Business?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) January 10, 2012 -- As a small business owner, what’s the best strategy to market my product or service ? Why would I even bother with social media as a marketing tool? Surely the tried and tested marketing tools are best and more effective? If I make a product or develop a new service, and create a pamphlet to advertise it, maybe take out an ad in a local paper, surely that’s enough?

Let’s review a few Social Media Statistics (Sources: see below):

Internet : Approximately 2 billion people are connected to the Internet.
Google : Google experiences over 1 billion (yes billion) searches per day. Google + has over 25 million users.
Facebook : Facebook has over 800 million active users (up from 500 million last year).
Linkedin : :Linkedin has over 135 million members worldwide (up from 75 million last year).
Twitter : Twitter has over 300 million accounts holders; and average 190 million tweets per day.
Blogs : There are 152 million blogs on the internet.

Video : YouTube experiences over 2 billion viewings per day of its’ videos.
Emails : The number of emails sent is estimated at 294 billion per day.
Flickr : Flickr hosts over 5 billion images

Ok. Enough. There is a lot going on in the social media world, but surely that is mostly junk? How can you conduct business in such an environment?

The answer is …easily. The truth is there has been a paradigm shift in the last several years leading to a new mode of conducting our lives, which will revolutionize how we do business. Most of your friends and family, your associates and competitors, and for that matter, if you are reading this, YOU, have already started to make social media an every day part of their life. And, if it is an everyday part of your life and it involves you doing what you enjoy, then marketers will do what they have done since time began; they will try to utilize this activity as a means to develop your awareness and desire for their products and services.

Most companies have already taken the first steps; a website for sure, but now membership and company sites on Linkedin, Facebook, Google + are the norm, along with regular tweet shout-outs to create awareness. The wheels of time and ingenuity are turning, business is moving to social media as a new marketing opportunity where they can learn what their customers want, where they can advertise their wares, where they can build their brand image and conduct their public relations, but probably most important to the true marketer, social media provides a vehicle for a two way communication with their customers!

At the very least, social media marketing is a low cost way to promote your product and services, to reach out to your customers and receive feedback, and to build your brand. The economic value of this is enormous, as Facebook, Google and other can testify to. It is clearly not enough to be thinking about joining the trend and getting involved in social media, it is likely that to survive in an ever more competitive world, social media will have to become an essential part of a company’s business model.

Over the next few weeks, I want to introduce you to the different structural parts of the social media world, its importance and relevance, and how you can use it as a new marketing vehicle to complement your more traditional approaches, and make it an inherent part of your business strategy. I hope you will enjoy this and send me your comments, subscribe to my blog, and if you need help, ask me questions?

Free Guides are available from my blogsite on a number of business subjects including: Strategic Planning, Business Plans, Marketing Plans, Social Media Planning, Public Relations Planning, Time Management, Negotiating Strategies, Effective Business Meetings, Due Diligence, and many others. To visit my blog, go to http://bit.ly/ikBWe5

MP Consulting Services specializes in the areas of strategic planning, leadership, marketing and social media. Mark Philip, principal at MPCS, has over 20 years experience in managing businesses, both small and large, has orchestrated multiple turnarounds, built product pipelines, launched new products, sold companies and created significant shareholder value. Let me know how I can help you with your business challenge.

For More Information : visit my blog at http://mpconsulting.wordpress.com or visit my LinkedIn account at http://www.linkedin.com/in/markpconsulting

Sources and References :
http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2011/08/why-microsoft-google-and-faceb.php
http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/09/02/20-stunning-social-media-statistics/
http://www.socialnomics.net/2012/01/04/39-social-media-statistics-to-start-2012/
http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/01/12/internet-2010-in-numbers/

http://www.socialnomics.net/2012/01/04/39-social-media-statistics-to-start-2012/

Copyright © 2012 Mark Philip

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