Social Media

Should you get hung up on Social Media?  What's it all about?  

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and all the rest - If you are going to get involved, where do you start and how much time should you devote to this?

Where do you draw the line between personal use and where it fits in your business and how can you tell the difference it makes?   My personal belief is that in many cases it is over-hyped to the extent that you feel 'out of it' if you are not involved but the fact is that you as the business owner need to see where it fits with your plans, your target audience and perhaps most importantly - your available time.  Download and read the Hubspot e-book on how to enhance your internet presence with Social Media.

Most small businesses generally feel that they neither have the time or the real inclination to use Social Media as a proper and effective channel to reach their markets but in saying this, even if you are only playing around with it, you may already have seen a growth in the number of contacts you have made or the information you have received that has been worth the effort.

Google Trends shows a very clear and absoluite growth in Social Media usage in the United Kingdom as indicated on the chart below. This data is relative from 2004 to September 2011.


Facebook has seen a massive growth in popularity and use and in the UK, Wales tops the chart for traffic volumes to Facebook.  What is unclear is the proportion of business using the channel as opposed to those using it for personal reasons. There is no doubt that there is a much younger generation making use of this channel for communication at a personal level.

The recent BBC article on the over 50's engaging with Facebook might give some indication of the growing audience demographics in the UK and the following charts help to illustrate this in a bit more detail.
 


What you can't ignore commercially, is that there are many millions users of Facebook worldwide across the entire demographic and this is an opportunity that should be embraced sensibly and pragmatically in business.

 


In essence, you need to research your market and decide which are the best and most effective channels for you to use in your business and how you can measure the benefit of effort to reward.

These channels can be very effective in helping you reach Page 1 rankings on Google search returns.  It may be that your website needs an overhaul and an injection of Scoial Media wisdom.

Contact us to see how we can help you achieve your ambitions.

 

Graphics sources: Clickymedia