Blog Archives

100 awesome social media marketing stats, charts and graphs

Posted by on February 6, 2012

This excellent collection of social media marketing stats, graphs and charts is brought to you by the great folks at Hubspot.

Highlights from the collection broken down by categories are:

Inbound Marketing

  • In 2011, 61% of marketers invested more in earned media compared to 58% in paid digital media and only 14% in paid traditional media
  • B2B marketers are shifting their budgets towards inbound marketing with 69% investing in social media
  • More than half of marketers increased their inbound marketing budgets in 2011
  • The average budget spent on company blogs and social media has nearly doubled in the past 2 years
  • Inbound marketing is a lot more cost effective than traditional outbound marketing with a cost per lead  62% less on inbound than outbound lead

Search engines and SEO

  • Google is the new yellow pages. 20% of the monthly Google searches are for local businesses
  • 75% of users never scroll past the first page! If you are not on first page of Google for your keywords, you need to improve your SEO
Social Networking
  • 2/3 of Internet users regularly use social network
  • The world and business is becoming more and more social
  • Social media conversations actually influence purchases
  • More than 1/2 of small business owners say social media sites play an important role in active sales
Blogging
  • 2/3 of marketers say their blog is critical or important to their business
  • Blog articles influence purchase decisions
  • Companies that blog have 55% more website visitors
  • B2C companies that blog generate 88% more leads per month than those who do not and B2B companies generate 67% more leads
Facebook
  • Facebook has become the preferred method for sharing content second only to email
  • 51% of B2B marketers agree that Facebook is an effective marketing tool
  • Both B2C and B2B acquire customers on Facebook
Twitter
  • More than 1/2 of active Twitter users follow brands and companies on social networks
  • 79% of US Twitter users are more likely to recommend brands they follow
  • B2C companies with over 100 followers have 146% more leads/month than those with less than 100

To see the charts and graphs of these and many more stats as collected by Hubspot, check out the PDF document below. Enjoy!

 

 

Categories: Blog Business eMarketing Facebook Interactive marketing LinkedIn Measurements SEO Small Businesses Social Media Social Media Marketing Twitter Web 2.0 tools | 1 Comment »

5 reasons a business needs a blog?

Posted by on November 3, 2009

20000blogSocial media is changing they way businesses do business and people are demanding this change. Companies no longer have complete control over their brand. Some very savvy companies and CEOs are turning to blogs as a way to create online communities, communicate with their customers and employees and bring transparency to their business. Below are 5 reasons why a blog is a good idea:

  1. Listening tool: It creates online space for people to interact with your brand. They can leave comments on your posts and allow you to get feedback. Although there are better ways to listen to what people are saying about your business, your own blog provides one more channel to receive feedback.
  2. SEO: A blog can help you with search engine optimization. By continuosly adding engaging and fresh content, while still incorporating your main keywords in your posts, your positioning on the search engine will improve. Google, Bing and Yahoo will rank your website higher with your blog (make sure your blog is connected to your domain) thanks to your content and it will improve your overall search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.
  3. Create a vibrant online community. By providing interesting content, uploading videos and photos and writing often about topics of  interest to you, you will create loyal readers on your blog. By building trust with these people, they will be most likely to purchase from you than from a competitor business that doesn’t show interest in engaging with their customers.
  4. Expert positioning: By writing a blog about the topics you are knowledgeable and expert in, you will position your business as a leader in the industry. You don’t always have to write about your business, products and services. If you represent a hotel, you can write about the surrounding areas, special events and happenings, local tips, shopping places, ways to save when you travel, and anything else related to general travel or the activities that your customers mainly engage with why staying at your  place. You can highlight your chef’s specials, contribute some specials recipes and cocktails and make people feel at home before they have even arrived. When people start looking for a place to stay,  they will consider your hotel first because of the existing relationship they already have with you.
  5. Engagement & Transparency: You are not afraid to put yourself on the web and open up to people’s feedback whether that’s positive or negative. You embrace the fact that people now have a lot more control over your brand than they used to. You are open to receiving feedback, you are listening and hopefully making changes to your business based on customer feedback.

These are my 5 reasons why a business can benefit from a blog. There are many more reasons why a business blogs. What are yours? What do you think abusiness blog can do for the bottom line of an organization? What are your favorite blogs? Why?

Image used under creative commons license: Annie Mole

Categories: Blog Business eMarketing Interactive marketing SEO Small Businesses Social Media Technology Web 2.0 Web 2.0 tools | No Comments »

Using Web Video Marketing

Posted by on October 18, 2009

Videos are extremely powerful marketing tool and can be used very well in business. People like to watch not read and videos can sometimes showcase your product much better than any press release or print ad will.  With social media gaining more and more momentum and people spending countless hours consuming user-generated content, videos will become a part of your overall marketing mix. Did you know that it will take you 460+ years to watch all videos on YouTube?  It’s fairly easy to integrate videos in your overall marketing campaign. You just need some strategy, creativity, a Flip camera and some time.
I found this great presentation from ReelSEO on how to incorporate videos in your online press releases. You can use videos to help with your SEO efforts as well.
There are some excellent video stats in this presentation. I recommend that you quickly read through it. As marketers, we need to know how to use this medium well. Even a small business can benefit from videos distributed online on various portals.
Do you use video for your business? What have you found that works or doesn’t work?

Categories: Blog eMarketing Interactive marketing SEO Social Media Social Media Marketing Technology Video Web 2.0 Web 2.0 tools | No Comments »