ANN ARBOR – The results are in and social media marketing for businesses is here to stay. The benefits of social media marketing to business are countless: it provides a way for businesses to market without having to loosen their financial belts. A survey by Re:NEW Michigan reported that 74.6 percent of respondents state social media to either be “very important” in their marketing strategy or that they were “trying and learning” to implement social media techniques in their businesses.
The survey, which was conducted by Re:NEW Michigan, a trademark of Eiler Communications, was designed to investigate the growing prevalence of social media marketing in business by comparing the recent April 2010 survey to a similar survey conducted among Michigan businesses in December 2008.
According to the most recent survey, the heavy hitters in social media marketing have been Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and blogs. All dramatically increased in usage in the period between surveys except for blogs, which declined slightly. The biggest leaps came from Facebook and Twitter; Facebook saw a 28.5 percent increase in usage, and Twitter saw a 30.3 percent jump.
However, a surprising new trend was found that Michigan businesses reported heavily using social media websites in seeking news and information.
“We believe this is due to news sites directly posting on Twitter and Facebook and links of some social sites to news sites,” said Larry Eiler of Eiler Communications. Survey respondents admitted to using Facebook, Twitter, and blogs just as often as they use more traditional news sites such as CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times when they seek news and information. Many even reported using social media websites as their primary source of information.
With social media websites, people can post stories from news sites and all their friends will see it. Because of the high usage of these social sites, news travels fast. Everyone wants to share something big or exciting first.
What do these results mean for the future of both social media and news information websites?
After some consideration, the benefits of using social media websites for seeking news and information are obvious. They provide the instantaneous results that people?s quest for instant gratification of information demands. But are social media websites sufficient in providing a business with all the information it needs, or are they simply being used to find leads that require further investigation? Do social media websites have the potential to make news information sites obsolete? Re:NEW Michigan plans to address these questions and others involving social media websites in a follow-up survey to be released in October.
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