Small business use of social media marketing doubled from 2009 to 2010. Yet, there is still enourmous room for growth. In the cool infographic below [hat tip to Social Media Examiner for bringing it to my attention] you'll see that only 8% of small businesses are using business blogs as a means of building visibility, connecting with customers and generating leads. What???
Click on the image to see the infographic full size. At the bottom you'll find sources of the stats.
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My concern is that many businesses have no plan for their social media marketing and they forsake all control by not using a blog as their primary online real estate. In the words of John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing, "Facebook is not the house.". You merely rent space on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social sites. You don't control them and you operate based on their terms. Not only that, your message can easily get lost or not seen at all due to the unrelenting flow of content on those sites.
Use social media to bring your fans and followers and connections back to your "house" where they can engage with you with no distraction and get your message and how you solve their problems, loud and clear.
What do you think of the stats and how small businesses are using social media? Let's discuss in the comments!
I’ve seen how the social media signals are impacting our sites’ positions. Very good info
[image: Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squad]Denise Wakeman
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Social media signals now have a huge impact on SEO with Google’s release of the Panda algorithm. Thus, building relationships with the right people will be most valuable to your online business.
Great article Denise! I particularly like your thoughts on the controllable “real estate”. Putting the pieces of the jigsaw together to make the whole picture is imperative if you want to control reputation and influence.
In today’s marketing world, it is the customer who will control when and how they want to interact with your content – make sure you are where they want to “speak” with you!
to be honest with you – and myself – I have no idea exactly how to utilize the tools the way they are meant to be used or at least how others are talking about how they are meant to be used – I am however in a constant experiment as to how I would like or think they might be utilized for what I have to offer the world – in the way of blogs I have begun recently to have blogs that have specific focus for different types of images that I create – for example for Fifth Avenue in New York City:
http://bebirianartfifthavenuenyc.blogspot.com/
as opposed to the general Bebirian Art blog that I created a while ago which is very generalized and contains images from many different categories:
http://bebirianart.blogspot.com/
and on Facebook I have created a number of general fan pages with topics that are of interest to me to perhaps draw diverse people from around the globe who might be interested in such general topic in hopes that I might have discussions with them and meet them in a more congenial setting:
http://www.575488trillion.com/Marketing_Tools.html
and some fan pages for the specific blogs that I have created as well:
http://www.575488trillion.com/page12.html
but one thing I would like to mentions is that I am definitely not in a rush to see any specific results and in this way I am leaving things open for many relationships and opportunities to develop – many clients after first getting my business cards from my “Doubling Project”:
http://www.575488trillion.com/files/38880100.pdf
do not actually contact me – for 6 months -3 years and even up to 12 years later – and after that their repeat appearance in my studio and/or recommended new client might not occur until 4 years later in some cases –