Google now reports over 34,000 searches per second. Twitter is seeing 50 million tweets per day. That is 600 online marketing messages per second. Facebook has a social media marketing stats page which shows Facebook users post 60 million status updates per day. That is 700 Facebook online posts per second. YouTube is now the second largest search engine online, followed by Bing and Yahoo.
The New York Times has more Twitter followers, than people subscribing to the paper.
Google Insight shows exponential growth in search for social media marketing. Online brand reputation and individual reputation management begins in social media.
So the question is:
How do we manage that growth in social media marketing?
A discussion was opened to social media marketing professionals, business analysts, and corporate executives, considering these options:
Social Media Marketing - In-house or Outsource? What do we do?
Marketers are learning that consumers are responding to conversation within social media - and consumer endorsements are likely to convert to sales. They are moving traditional media expenditures online, with higher allocations of budget going to social media marketing. Their decisions may depend on current skill-sets of their employees, consumer involvement in social media within the target market of the corporation, and budget associated with online marketing.
According to a recent study of How Americans Use Social Media by EPM Communications,
83% of consumer focused companies maintain an account on Facebook, and 45% do the same on Twitter.
Managing social media marketing campaigns takes time. It takes an understanding of the brand as well.
What would you consider in deciding whether to handle social media in house or outsource?
The social media - in house or outsource debate continues.
To follow are a few things you can do to save time - and billable hours associated with marketing employee expenditures, should you decide to manage social media marketing in house.
1. Contribute to Social Networks. For example, Ask and Answer Questions on Linked In, start and participate in industry related discussion groups on Linked In and Facebook.
2. Post updates to your status on Linked in, and link the profile updates to your Twitter account.
3. Offer promotional incentives, as part of your social media marketing strategy, such as Facebook promotions including promotional giveaways to fans.
4. Set up a blog within a social media community, where your consumer is, to build additional opportunity for communication with your customer. Blog and post in the blog weekly.
5. Set up a Feedburner Account and Bookmark your blog feeds. To follow is an example of what the feed looks like for this social media marketing feed.
Please comment with any other ideas to assist in house marketing departments in saving time, money and resources in social media marketing.
1 comments:
This is a good start, and managing the social media for any business can be a complicated and frustrating experience for those who are newbies. My advice is to get specific training from a Social Media expert if you are going to take it in house, so you have steps specifically designed for your needs.
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