The Impact of Social Media Marketing On Businesses
The social media marketing business impact is being felt by a major part of small businesses’ and this impact will only continue to increase. According to a recent report from online marketing services firm Constant Contact, which surveyed 1,572 small businesses during March and April, of the 73% of small businesses currently using social media marketing, 80% said their usage has increased during the past year and another 81% said that their social media marketing will continue to increase over the next year.
Of those 20% not yet utilizing the benefits of social media marketing for their business, almost 2 out of 3 of them stated that they plan to start utilizing a social media marketing program during this year.
Social Media Marketing | Which sites are being used?
There are 4 main social media marketing sites of choice for most small businesses: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Facebook was the social medium of choice for 95% of the small businesses doing social media marketing, followed by 60% using Twitter, 58% using LinkedIn, 45% using YouTube and other video sharing and 23% using daily/local deal services.
In terms of effectiveness, Facebook led again, with 82% of Facebook users finding it effective as a marketing tool — followed by 73% for video-sharing users, 55% for daily/local deals, and 47% each for Twitter and LinkedIn.
The report from Constant Contact said that small businesses seem to use social media as a complementary tool to other marketing efforts — since it found that 95% of respondents use Web site marketing, 91% use email marketing, 77% use print advertising, 53% use event marketing and 69% use online advertising. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=150586
In summary, more small businesses are utilizing the benefits of social media marketing to obtain more clients and socially interact with them, and according to Constant Contact’s report, this trend will only continue to grow.