Our Social Media Services:

• Facebook Marketing
• Blog Management

What is Social Media?

In 2008, 79.5 million people (41% of US internet users) visited a social media site at least once a month. This is an 11% increase compared to 2007.

Wikipedia defines Social Media as “participatory online media where news, photos, videos, and podcasts are made public via social media websites through submission. Normally accompanied with a voting process to make media items become “popular”. Examples of some popular Social Media Sites are Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, and Active Rain.

According to a study released by IDC in November 2008, more than 50% of U.S. consumers with internet access are using social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. More than three quarters of social network site users visit the site at least once a week. During each session, 61% of the users spend at least 30 minutes on the site.

What’s so great about Social Media?

Social Media sites are becoming more and more popular because they are dedicated to allowing the customer to have a voice. For so long, large corporations have had complete control over the messages delivered to their customers. This is no longer the case. Dave Evans talks about the importance of this in Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day:

“Because consumers tend to trust conversations between themselves more than they do advertising, marketers are now finding their messages routinely held up for verification in forums over which they and their ad agencies and PR firms have little, if any, control.”

The only way for small business owners to respond to this, is to make sure they have a presence on the social web so that their voice can be heard. Dave Evans indicates that not participating is “your implicit endorsement of whatever it is that they are saying” (page 27).

If your company has a presence on Social Media sites, the outcome can be remarkable. As Sean Driscoll, the General Manager of Community Support Services at Microsoft, puts it:

“Both the customer you serve well and the customer you under-serve have the loudest voices in social media.”

To start your small business Social Media campaign, please contact an Imprezzio Marketing Consultant at 1-866-430-0457, or fill out the short form on this page.