by Mike Mulvihill
Some days, the marketplace just spews out interesting mile markers about social media and the steroid-infused future of social media (i.e., mobile social media). Here are a few or the more strategically significant tidbits from the past several days:
· Nearly half (43 percent) of all businesses have used social media networks to acquire customers in 2010. According to eMarketer, social networks had the biggest impact for companies operating in developed markets (i.e., Western markets and Japan). More specifically, a significantly higher percentage of companies that used social networks for customer acquisition in the US, the UK, Japan and Canada saw a revenue increase over the previous year versus companies in these same markets that did not use social networks for new business acquisition. Pretty logical given the higher penetration of social media among consumers in these markets, but also very telling about the role social media can and should play in the marketing mix.
· Oh how that little mobile media baby is growing like a weed. Just last year, mobile advertising, weighed in at $2 billion. Now it is forecast to hit $7 billion in 2012 and then $24 billion in 2016 (the same size as the entire online advertising industry is today)! According to the Wireless Federation, experts believe the pieces are falling in place in terms of technology, behavior and the funding. These stats just reinforce an overwhelming body of market research that points to mobile access to social media and the internet as increasingly critical in reaching customers and prospective customers.
· A compilation of 30 great social media stats observed over the past few months from Jeff Esposito at socialmediatoday is a great source for cocktail party chit chat and senior management presentations. For instance 96 percent of Americans use Facebook (Business Insider). For PR folks, 47 percent of journalists will use Twitter as a source for a story (Digital Journalism Study). And, while 89 percent of companies note that social media will become a useful cog in their marketing mix moving forward , 41 percent of the companies report that they have no staff dedicated to social media (Useful Social Media). (That’s not going to work too well, now is it?) Go to the socialmediatoday site for the other 26.
Social media is here and it is growing more important day-by-day. If your company or client isn’t hot on the social media trail, you may just want to hit them over the head with some of these stats.
Mulvihill–
A perfect post for the students in my online computer-mediated communication class! We spent yesterday reading Pew Internet research and today in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Great way to introduce these folks to proprietary research.
Any word on apps that enable everyday users to create their own apps? It would seem that such a platform could be to the mobile world what facebook was to the personal webpage world. Not sure how it would be monetized, unless through ads & cultivating informtion for marketers.
Peace,
Professor X
Excellent! Good to hear from you, Bill. Let me look into mobile app creation tools and perhaps that will be my post Holiday blog. See you the week of July 11 (I get the 5th off since we closed that day).
Thanks, Professor Mulvihill!