Read about Doing business on social networks: the video on yourBusinessChannel.
Maybe it's just because we work with social marketing every day, but it seems amazing that there are still some entrepreneurs and businesspeople out there who struggle to see the opportunity social media represents - after all, the idea that social networking will change society as profoundly as the industrial revolution is now quite commonplace!
Perhaps less surprising is the fact that a lot of businesses are not seeing the results they'd like in this highly dynamic, technically complex area.
Our recent poll of businesspeople in the UK and US showed that 74.3 per cent of them were unhappy with the results they were seeing from their social media efforts.
In other words, there's an incredible new business and marketing tool here, a lot of people want to give it a go, but nearly three quarters of them aren't sure how to do it!
Something is badly wrong with this picture!
Since The Results Team is in a great position to help, we created a short video clip (above - take a look!) which sets out the size of the business opportunity that social media represents, and explains the four basic steps that businesses need to take to use networks profitably.
All the advice has been provided by Results Team experts, and you can find the sources for the various statistics given in the video below.
Most of the stats are sourced from research which is freely available online. We encourage you to take a look at some of the original reports and research - they're really worth checking out.
We have created this video not just as a primer for entrepreneurs looking to get started in social marketing, but also as a way to open up debate and conversation about these very interesting and important issues.
Over the next few weeks we're looking to speak with as many business owners and experts as possible to get responses, information, and answers on this issue.
We're interested in things like:
- What has your experience of doing business with social media been?
- What worked, what didn't?
- What's holding you back?
- What results did you see?
- What advice can you offer?
- Who do you think is doing a really great job of social marketing today?
So join the discussion, we're looking forward to hearing from you!
Source data for “Doing business on social networks” video:
- “625 million people are active online today” - Universal McCann Wave 4 Report, July 2009
- “two thirds of them use social networks” - Neilson, Global Faces and Networking Places, 2009
- “4 out of 5 UK internet users use social networks monthly” - ComScore, 20 July 2009
- “80% of online Americans use social media monthly” - Forrester Research, The Broad Reach of Social Technologies, August 2009
- “Social networks are now more popular than email” - Neilson, Global Faces and Networking Places, 2009
- “Facebook: over 250 million users” - http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
- “Youtube: 100 million videos viewed every day” - ComScore
- “Twitter: has topped 50 million users worldwide less than 3 years after it launched” - ComScore, 20 July 2009
- “Wikipedia: 13 million articles, created by 75,000 active contributors in more than 260 languages” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
- “78% of consumers trust peer recommendations” - July 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey
- “Only 14% trust advertisements” - Marketing to the Social Web, Larry Weber, Wiley Publishing 2007
- “74.3% unhappy with social media results for business” - yourBusinessChannel Survey, 2009
