An article released by Mashable this afternoon notes a growing trend toward the use of social media amongst marketing professionals. A survey released by BtoB Magazine and The Association of National Advertisers indicates that marketers are increasingly using new media as apart of their marketing repertoire.
Not surprisingly, the amount of money marketers spend on social media is expected to continue to grow as well. The idea is not “if” but “when” will online business networking become a De facto practice amongst successful small business owners.
“That said, social media (including blogs) remains the quickest growing marketing segment, and as we recently reported, it’s expected to grow to a $3.1 billion industry by 2014. In all, it looks like social media marketing still has a healthy amount of growth in front of it.”
-Adam Ostrow, Mashable
Things to Consider
Although the findings are exciting for both small business marketers and us in the social media industry, like most surveys regarding social media, it leaves a few areas of warranted skepticism.
After a some digging I found that the survey consisted of 172 respondents and it is unclear what “using social media for marketing” specifically means. Does a marketer who has a Facebook page from which he occasionally sends business related media constitute as “social media marketing” Do business networking marketers count as marketing via social media? How much time is being spent using these particular tools?” What does social media spending refer to; the cost of having someone on these particular sites, advertising, or something else?
The survey was also conducted online, which may have some significant affect on the results.
We still encourage groups like B to B Magazine and The Association of National Advertisers to continue pioneering social media research. The more we know, the better we can leverage new technologies.
Tags: Business Networking
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[...] to anyone (and I’d appreciate if you’d send feedback to padmapper@gmail.com if it is slow). Survey Finds Business to Business Marketing Moving to Social Media - referralkey.com 08/14/2009 An article released by Mashable this afternoon notes a growing trend [...]
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