Marketer's Use of Social Media Tools | |
Social Media | % Respondents Using |
86% | |
Blogs | 79 |
78 | |
77 | |
YouTube or other video | 41 |
Social bookmark sites | 38 |
Forums | 38 |
StumbleUpon | 28 |
Digg, Reddit or similar | 26 |
FriendFeed | 18 |
Source: Social Media Marketing Industry Report, March 2009 |
Key survey findings about specific application show that:
72% of marketers say they have either just started or have been using social media for only a few months.
Duration of Social Media Use by Marketers (% of Respondents) | |
Duration | % of Respondents |
Just getting started | 28% |
A few months | 44 |
A few years | 23 |
No experience, plan to use | 4 |
No experience, don't plan to use | 1 |
Source: Social Media Marketing Industry Report, March 2009 |
The largest group just getting under way with social media marketing is sole proprietors, with 30.2% reporting just getting started, the survey found. Owners of businesses with 2-100 employees were the most experienced, with 29.3% reporting doing social media marketing for years.
64% of marketers are using social media for five hours or more each week, with 39% using it 10 or more hours weekly and 9.6% spending more than 20 hours each week with social media.
According to the survey, 81% of all marketers indicate that their social media efforts have generated exposure for their businesses. At least two in three participants found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours a week invested in social media marketing. Owners of small businesses with 2 - 100 employees are more likely than others to report benefits.
Half of participants reported that a major benefit of social media marketing is the resultant rise in search engine rankings that often comes with increased efforts. Improved search engine rankings were most prevalent among those who've been using social media for years, with nearly 80% reporting a rise.
Benefits of Social Media Marketing (% of Respondents, multiple response OK) | |
Benefit | % Responding |
Generated exposure | 81% |
Increased traffic, subscribers, list | 61 |
New business partners | 56 |
Increased position in search rankings | 52 |
Generated qualified leads | 48 |
Reduced overall marketing expenses | 45 |
Helped close sales | 35 |
Source: Social Media Marketing Industry Report, March 2009 |
When marketers were asked which social media tools they most want to learn more about, social bookmarking sites slightly edged out Twitter as the number one response, with a four-way tie for third place between LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Facebook and Digg/Reddit/Mixx.
Please visit this site for the complete Whitepaper of the study, "How Marketers are Using Social Media to Grow their Businesses,"
3 out of 4 marketers are using Twitter? Hmmm.... that seemed really really high to me so I decided to do a bit of research myself. I belong to an association of 1800 marketing executives based largely in the US. The association keeps a directory of member twitter accounts which currently numbers 181, or 10% of members. Now it may be that only a few actually bothered to submit their twitter Ids but 10% is not a very high number.
This gave me a sample of at least 181 twitter accounts set up by marketers. I then went through and viewed each and every twitter page to determine if they were actually actively in use. My definition of active was more than 10 updates, with at least one of those updates submitted in the last 21 days.
I learned that only 55% of those twitter accounts were by my definition, active, or in other words, about half of the marketers who “used Twitter” to set up an account, had either never posted to it or had not posted anything for the past 3 weeks.
If the list of twitter accounts in the directory accurately reflects the total twitter accounts held by the group’s membership, then active twitter usage among this group of marketing executives is closer to 5%.
I agree that the number for twitter sounds high, digital & mobile marketers are more likely to be using the service vs. traditional marketers. We at Ansible Mobile are using several social networking tactics have seen great results insofar as leads and customer interactions. Thanks for the report- I will twitter about it ;)
this sounds like really positive data for marketers, as many of us are increasingly spending resources on social media, deal with inconsistent ability to track ROI, and yet know that we need to continue down this path to make our marketing mix one that will successfully address the changing consumer behavior going forward.
in response to Lynda Partner, i think her observations may be a result of the sourcing of the survey participants. if i had participated, my responses would have been very much in line with these results, except the companies i have been working with by their social media nature would make me more of an early adopter at first, and a power user down the line. i definitely noticed that in many traditional industries the adoption of social media happen more bottom-up than top down.
interesting whitepaper. will twitter now.
:)
@britta_sf
The title of this article is misleading.
Although “Generated qualified leads” and “Helped me close business” were listed as benefits seen by the users of social media in this report, they were near the bottom of the list of eight choices, and no information was given about actual numbers of leads, sales or ROI.
I think it is interesting to note that most of those who said social media helped them generate leads and close business have been active in social networking for years and/or are investing more than 16 hours a week in it.
By the way, some of the results in Stelzner’s report may be biased, considering that only social media was used to promote survey participation, starting with a tweet on Twitter that got retweeted by others and was seen by Twitterers’ networks on other social media including Facebook and LinkedIn.
Mac McIntosh
www.sales-lead-experts.com
What has also been a huge help to my colleagues and I are the <a href="http://usdatacorporation.com/consumer_lists.php">sales lists</a>
maintained at http://www.usdatacorporation.com/consumer_lists.php. They have the most comprehensive consumer lists I've ever used.