Social Media Marketing for the Anti-Social

You don’t have to like Facebook or Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn. But it will darn sure improve your business if you put social media marketing to work for you.

Sure, plenty of people don’t gravitate to tweets and likes. Who has time?  Isn’t it really more for the twentysomethings anyway? Besides, what can social media marketing do for you that you’re not already doing in some other marketing channel?

Good questions – and even better answers.  For instance …

Current usage of social media sites Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+ and Instagram is closing in on 2.5 billion users worldwide. What business is so successful it can afford to ignore that many customers?

Brand-following behavior on social media sites increased by a respectable 17% in the last two years, and by 8% from 2011 to 2012. Trending advises it will continue on the same upward path.

Social media stats like these from Hubspot are fairly hard to ignore.

• 84% of B2B marketers use social media in some form. (Source: Aberdeen)
• 59% of marketers use social media for 6 hours or more each week. (Source: Social Media Examiner)
• 83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.(Source: Social Media Examiner)
• 62% of marketers said social media became more important to the marketing campaigns in the last 6 months. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)
• Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)

 Social media stats from Fast Company tell us that …

• The fastest growing demographic on Twitter is the 55-64 year age bracket.
• YouTube reaches more U.S. adults aged 18-34 than any cable network.
• Every second two new members join LinkedIn.

And get this …  93% of marketers use social media for business! (This one earns the exclamation mark).  So that means that only 7% of marketers say they don’t use social media for their business. Hmmm.

Now we know what those anti-social folks are up to.  Not much it seems.

Want to read another take on Facebook in marketing?  Check out this blog!