For all of the hype surrounding social media marketing these days, you’d think there would be very few firms left on the planet that aren’t adopting Facebook, Twitter and MySpace strategies.
Unfortunately, if you happen to think that, you would be wrong.
In fact, a Q4 2010 study conducted by eMarketer suggests that a full 20% of companies with 100 or more employees have no plans to utilize social media marketing tools in 2011. And although we’re encouraged that the reciprocal of that number means there’s 80% participation from mid to large sized companies, we’re still a little surprised.
If your firm is among the 20% still resisting the loving embrace of social media marketing, you might want to consider the fact that your customers aren’t resisting at all. A February report by Comscoreindicates that nine out of 10 U.S. Internet users visit at least one social networking site per month. Further, the average Internet user spent four hours per month on such sites in 2010.
The bottom line? Even if your company isn’t rushing to jump on the social media bandwagon, your customers very probably are.
Whether your firm is adopting a social media networking strategy or not, it’s becoming increasingly important to monitor what the rest of the world is saying about you on social media platforms. Most companies that bother to monitor such things aren’t using the best technology, according to an InformationWeek Analytics study. In their survey of 237 companies that monitor consumer and competitor activity on social networks, the most often-used tool was search engine alerts at 56% participation.
In other words, Google and Bing were being relied upon more heavily than anything else.
There’s a better way, of course. Companies likeAvenue Social offer expanded monitoring tools like ManyHands, which is designed to offer a dashboard-style peek at all the social networking activity related to your brand – from one convenient place. The ManyHands solution offers campaign launch, management, and measurement across multiple social media platforms, and provides optimum visibility into effectiveness and ROI, all from a single stopping point.
Users of monitoring solutions like ManyHands find that the customized, comprehensive look and feel of a specialized tool is far superior to the more generic offerings of applications like Google Alerts. And if your organization plans to wait awhile before it starts launching any social media marketing campaigns, you might suggest that your CEO or Marketing Director take a hard look at what’s being said about your brand in the meantime.
Who knows? You might just find your firm siding with the 80% that are already on board – and sooner than you think.
