Small businesses

Feed the Social Media “Beast” and you’ll see it pay dividends.

Not long ago, social media seemed so new and different that it was treated as an appendage of

sorts—a kind of marketing that should be tried only by “experts.”

While that view still exists to some degree today, it’s become clear to many that social media is no

longer marketing’s new thing. It’s now simply part of the way we do marketing today.

I believe that the proper way to view social media from a small-business owner’s point of view is

as more of an evolution than a revolution.

Traditional marketing tactics such as advertising, referrals, and public relations are still very

important, but social media tactics have now become a part of everyday marketing’s fabric and

need to be considered at the strategic level of your marketing decision-making process.

So, rather than asking yourself if you should or should not use Facebook or Twitter, the question

is: “How can Facebook and Twitter help you achieve your marketing objectives?” It’s the same as

asking how direct mail or having two more salespeople might fit into the plans.

From this integrated viewpoint, social media participation can start to make more sense for each

individual marketer’s needs and goals.

Is social media simply today’s hot thing?

Think you can sit the social networking craze out? Consider the following statistics.

According to the online competitive intelligence service Compete.com, social media growth

continues to skyrocket.

• The top three social networks—Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—collectively received

more than 2.5 billion visits in the month of September 2009 alone. Twitter grew by more

than 600% in 2009, while Facebook grew by 210% and LinkedIn by 85%.

• As of this writing, Google and Yahoo are the only websites that receive more daily traffic

than Facebook. Current trends suggest that may not last much longer.

• In fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s fourth largest.

• The most recent count of blogs being indexed by Technorati currently stands at 133 million.

The same report also revealed that, on average, 900,000 blog posts are created within a

single 24-hour period.

• It’s been reported that YouTube is likely to serve more than 75 billion video streams to

around 375 million unique visitors during 2009.

• The online photo sharing site Flickr now hosts more than 3.6 billion user images.

• The online bookmarking service Delicious has more than 5 million users and more than

150 million unique bookmarked URLs.

So, you see, perhaps this social media thing is going to catch on after all.