If you’re thinking about including social media into your marketing plan, here are some great trend reports and statistics to put that thought into action. Finding the time and dollars to allocate to social media marketing is on the tip of every marketing executives tongue. One reason is that social media is trending and is not just a trend. The digital age is evolving and we are finding that we can reach out and touch someone through being a friend on Facebook, linking to them on LinkedIn or posting a blog for them read at their convenience. Through these social media networks, businesses have found a new way to communicate with their target markets to grow their business. Check out how social media is currently trending and the stats that back it up.

Social Media Marketing Is On The Rise

“The State of Small Business Report”, by Network Solutions, LLC and the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, showed that the downed economy has contributed to the popularity of social media networks.  The study reported that:

• Small businesses increased their use of social media from 12% to 24% in the last year.
• An estimated 1 out of 5 small businesses are involved in using social media as a part of their marketing strategy.

How Businesses Use Social Media

Small businesses reported the following:

• 75% have a company page listed on a social networking site.
• 69% post updates or articles on social media sites .
• 57% build out a professional  network through a site like LinkedIn.
• 54% closely observe the feedback they receive about their business.
• 39% have set up and maintain a blog.
• 26% tweet about their area of expertise.
• 16% use Twitter as a service channel.

Social Media  Expectations

The report showed  businesses who have worked with social media as part of their marketing plan had mixed reviews on how it met their expectations.

• 58% felt that social media had met their expectations.
• 25% felt that social media had fallen short of what they had hoped for.
• 12% reported that social media network sites had exceeded their expectations.

For businesses that reported social media had fallen short of their expectations:

• 50% said that social media had used more time than they had expected.
• 19% thought social media had lost them money.
• 17% felt that social media networks allowed people/customers to criticize their business.

Messages Sent Through Social Media

eMarketer showed that social media marketing does not choke innovation out of existence. Instead some of the most successful small businesses are able to compete by offering superior services. The small business model has embraced social media as a means to keep themselves tied to their customers. Businesses felt that they could engage their audiences through social media. They also reported to use social media to tap into knowledgeable resources.  

How Social Media Budgets Will Rise

Over the last several months marketing professionals have been found to be leaning towards the importance of creating a budget for social media marketing. Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association, “The CMO Survey” reported that social media marketing budgets are on the rise. The report showed that businesses currently budget 6% of their marketing dollars to social media. They expect this amount to increase 10% in the next year and 18% over the course of the next 5 years.

In August 2009 marketing professionals had also been found to have planned to incorporate a higher budget dedicated to social media marketing efforts. In February 2010, those marketers had reported that they would be budgeting one-fifth of their dollars to social media marketing over the next 5 years.  Current social media marketing budget trends are:

• August 2009: 3.5% budget allowance was spent on social media marketing.
• February 2010: Social media marketing budgets had risen to 5.6% .

Social Media The Big Buzz

According to the Marketing Executives Networking Group and Anderson Analytics, their report entitled “Marketing Trends 2010″ found that mastering social media was high on the priority list for marketing professionals. The number one  buzzword to keep on the tip of the tongue in 2010 was Marketing ROI —rate of return on marketing efforts.

• 58% of marketing executives thought social media was a trend to keep an eye on.
• 42% of marketing professionals chose social media as a top trend to watch which made social media marketing hit the list of the top 10 productive marketing initiatives.
• 72% of professionals in marketing reported that they work with companies that have planned a social media marketing program for 2010.  

Social Media – Who Is Using It & How

The study by Anderson Analytics also showed the differences on how social media marketing was being used. Individuals and professionals were found to use social media networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. Companies were found to utilize the blog as their main social media tool.

The Anderson Analytics study also reported that social media marketing plans were handed to internal employees, social media consultants and interactive agencies. Marketing professionals that were in charge of carrying out social media initiatives were not found to be looking to PR or ad agencies to head their social media campaigns.

So if your business is working to plan a social media marketing program, feel confident that you are not diving into a trend that will disappear any time soon. Many studies have been performed to analyze the worth of social media marketing and have found that businesses all over are planning to incorporate social media into their marketing budgets. Reaching out to your customers, target marketed and creating an open line of communication through social media is here to stay.

The foundation of successful companies has always been to become a reliable source for their customers.  Long standing businesses look to become a resource in which customers can count on and communicate with. Social media networking allows a business the open line they need to communicate the message that their customers need to hear—you can count on us and you can rely on us. A message that can now be broadcast through social media networks 24 hours a day, 365 days a year— which is more than a stamped postcard can offer.

The world of traditional marketing is ever-changing and as it leans into the digital online world, we encourage you to dig your business heels in and enjoy planning your social media efforts!

We welcome new ideas and you might inspire us for our next blog post! Share your thoughts and tips by posting comments for us. Thanks for reading!

By Sara Hassler

Lee and I founded Oozil™ on the notion that the creativity of Internet users is of tremendous, but as-yet untapped, value. Oozil™ is implementing a ground-breaking business model in stages, tapping the proven creativity of a wide Internet audience using direct monetary rewards.

Our company credo is: Oozil™ – Where it Pays to be Creative™ Oozil™ will directly monetize this creativity by creating a commerce of ideas, best summarized by the new term: Micro-Marketing. Micro-Marketing is a nascent market for “small scale advertisements: ad copy, art and ideas for individual products; produced en-masse and sold at volume rates.” Micro-marketing is selling volumes of targeted individualized advertising content on a scale only made possible by the participation of vast numbers of content creators working as independent “artists” rather than employees. Look what eBay or Craigslist have done for direct sales of individual products.

The popularity of eBay has spawned full-fledged “stores” that survive on volume and low cost-to-market. EBay facilitates this with affordable cyber real-estate. Consumers facilitate this by bearing the brunt of the cost of business, namely shipping. Oozil™ will likewise create a common ground for buyers of advertising

The most effective way to harness this sea of creativity is through the use of a social network. Social networks attract and motivate naturally creative people. Social networks elicit user-generated content as part-and-parcel of using the system. Standing out and staying connected is the primary reward for the users. Users must be competent in areas of creativity and self-expression (primarily through writing) to effectively make a MySpace page. They must have a flair for presentation to stand out from the crowd and users with artistic talent (music, art or writing) gain the most from these services, but opinioning and critiquing are also valued. Younger demographics are disproportionately represented.

Social networks reward their users by allowing them to express themselves and (much more importantly but under-recognized) give them FEEDBACK about what they’ve created. Social networks have inherent hierarchies which are obvious to anyone in the system: e.g. a users’ number of MySpace “Friends” equates roughly to “pecking order.” This is not new to social networks. Online message “bulletin boards” pre-date the web but have also traced a user’s “reputation” in terms of his number of posts. Social networks encourage a competition of ideas by allowing the most expressive users (those with the “coolest” pages) increased contacts, connections and kudos.

Social networks have proven this model can get and hold the interest of hundreds of millions of users but have failed to monetize this effectively.

Oozil™ will bring capital and online societies together by blending the most compelling aspects of social networks with the very wide audience, self-service commerce of eBay. Our society of copy writers will vie for place and higher pay by competing to create the most effective ads (as measured by our ad-placement lifetime feedback mechanism). The system will be skewed to keep a fair amount of “churn” at the top. All participants will have some way to attain their fifteen minutes of fame in the community of creators.

Peer review will be an important part of Oozil™. Rating of others’ work will be just one type of cooperative content creation. Our software will outline and facilitate a natural work-flow from the idea-centric realm of headline generation, to the visual aspect of custom graphics, on to the workhorse of full ad text creation and editing. We will encourage groups of like-minded creators to form their own online “firms,” like eBay stores. We will grow the user base through commitment to fair payments and social network development tactics, like discussions, online webinars by prominent authors, and competitions.

Both Lee and I welcome you to join us on this journey and value each and every one of your comments, suggestions and contributions in creating this new galaxy of creativity.

There comes a day in everyone’s life where they finally decide that they are truly sick and tired of being sick and tired and that if they do not change directions they are going to end up where they are headed. That day has come for my friend Adam and me. My name is Lee and Adam and our families have been friends and co-workers for over fifteen years and I have watched Adam become an IT professional progressing through the PhD Computer Science program at UCLA and on to a successful career at several Silicon Valley startups. I, on the other hand, am a grizzled veteran of the microcomputer industry having started the tenth Apple computer store in South Florida in the early 80’s. I have kept my hand in the industry but segwayed into the travel industry working as a team member in helping build the number one online leisure travel organization.

I always enjoy speaking with Adam about the industry and its progressions and evolutions as I have seen the cost of disk space go from $5K for 5MB to $200 for 1TB. The birth of the internet and where it is now and going down the line as directed by that all encompassing 500lb gorilla called Google. The birth and explosive growth of the online social network and how everyone wants to be connected from all walks of life. All of these wonderful technologies and innovations and it just seems that the benefits and rewards are still just being reaped by the few. We brainstorm back and forth and back and forth about how we can harness the many to benefit the many and we keep coming back to the same idea, a place where creative people can virtually gather, congregate, interact and MOST importantly find freelance jobs that can generate them a part-time or even a full time income. That’s right, a place you can go whether you are a copywriter, videographer, producer, director, writer, photographer, editor, or any other creative type and are interested in earning some extra income. Work independently or network with other members in various areas of specialization to create virtual agencies. Sure its fun to post your pics of last night’s party or your vacation but in today’s economy everyone need some extra revenue and Facebook and LinkedIn are not sending any checks last time I looked in my mailbox.

We have an enormous almost Pollyannaish vision for this place and so we named it Oozil and we know that there are so many people out there that could make a contribution to Oozil and create a real synergy using the new catch all term, Crowd Sourcing. We envision Oozil to be a place where clients can come with creative projects and get them produced at a reasonable cost by real professionals that they would have never had access to at such reasonable rates if they went through he traditional channels.

Adam and I want to hear from you as to your thoughts and ideas on how you feel Oozil can benefit you individually and the whole creative community as a whole. We welcome you to join us on this journey and know that the sum of the parts is always greater then the whole. What would you like to see Oozil provide for its citizens? Nothing is too extreme, let’s shoot for the stars and grow Oozil into a galaxy of creativity.