Social Media Marketing — Marketers’ New Puppy
Social media marketing is big. It’s the new best thing for marketers. Isn’t it?
According to the April 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, by Michael A. Stelzner, the answer seems to be a qualified “yes.” You see, marketers are just getting into SM marketing, and they feel as if they’re walking a new puppy on a leash for the first time without having read a Puppy 101 book.
In the report, 65% of marketers surveyed are just now dipping a toe into the SM marketing waters. So naturally, they have questions. The top three questions marketers want answered related to –
• how to measure SM marketing ROI
• what SM marketing best practices are
• how they should manage time spent on SM marketing
But querulous or not, the majority — 56% — are using SM for six or more hours a week, and close to one in three invest 11 or more hours weekly. What are they doing with SM marketing? And who is spending those hours doing it? Last year’s report indicated few companies had a designated person for SM marketing activities, or any SM marketing plan in place. But those that did thought SM marketing was helping their biz.
You can download and read this fascinating report yourself here But to me, the most interesting factoids were these:
1. The majority of marketers — 91% — indicated they were using SM for marketing purposes, with small businesses slightly more likely to be using it.
2. Most marketers — 76% — are spending at least four hours per week on SM marketing efforts. The median for those who have been into it for a few months or longer is 10 hours per week.
3. Only 14% of businesses are outsourcing any aspect of their social media marketing.
The benefits of doing SM marketing seem richer for B2B companies than B2C companies, but all companies fee that it —
• reduces their overall marketing expenses
• helps them climb in search engine rankings
• increases their traffic or subscribers/opt-in list members
And get this –
“At least 67% of marketers plan on increasing their use of blogs, Facebook, video/YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn….”
… “[M]arketers indicated that blogs were the top area in which they planned on increasing their social media efforts.”
Yet 86% of marketers said they weren’t outsourcing any of their SM marketing efforts. That’s pretty startling, but the report’s author predicts that in a year or so, as SM marketing becomes more clearly recognized as a source of business leads and sales, outsourcing will increase. It is less expensive than hiring a staff person, getting them SM marketing training, and paying them a salary and benefits.
On my small scale, at least, based on several new inquiries in the past two weeks, it seems the trend is toward outsourcing blogging. It just makes sense.
One caveat: If you’re thinking of outsourcing your company’s blogging, don’t make the mistake of throwing the work to a company employing Indian writers. I visited the website of one such company the other day and read one of their blog posts. They said their writers all speak English, but they didn’t say English was their first language. It was quite obvious that either a foreigner or a robot had written the post. You don’t want to let stilted, awkward writing represent your company. So if you’re planning to outsource your blogging or other SM marketing functions, hire American!
