Business Solutions

If you are an Entrepreneur in business, or getting ready to start your business and still wondering what the big deal about social media is, and why you should consider using it as part of your marketing strategies, you have to look first at who your target market is, and determine how to most effectively and with the least cost, get your message in front of them.

In today’s global market, social media technology has revolutionized how people communicate with each other, and created a “virtual conversation” that takes place 24 hours a day across multiple platforms designed for social networking and sharing information including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube to name a few, and as with any target market, the more you know and learn about the trends, tendencies and habits of the market, the more focus and precision you can bring to both your message and delivery mechanisms and channels.

Before deciding if you need to integrate social media technology into your businesses marketing strategies, you need to determine the market demographics of the social media users, along with what they’re doing and what they’re going to do. Keep in mind while you are gathering information to help you make your decision, that you can learn a lot about your target market by listening to the “virtual conversation” taking place, and remember the single most important factor in reaching your market with the most effective message is your ability to “listen and learn,” and what better way to obtain real-time information that used to be cost prohibitive to all but the largest companies, than through a social media presence that is “free” in comparison.

Not only will you learn vital information about the market and what it is “thinking” at any given time, but you will learn what it “thinks” about your business, both good and bad, and here are some statistics to consider:

Worldwide Internet users: 1.2 Billion
Worldwide social networking site users: 506 Million
% of Internet users registered on at least one social networking site: 42%

Worldwide online advertising spending: $40 Billion
2008 Worldwide social networking advertising spending: $2.0 Billion
2009 Worldwide social networking advertising spending: $2.4 Billion
% of online advertising dollars spent on social networking sites: 6.00%

Advertising spending has started to increase as businesses increase awareness of the benefits from developing and maintaining a social networking presence.

Research Results: They are young and affluent and active consumers