Market Research Report – Trends In Using Social Media

Here are some statistics from TrendWatching.com illustrating the ever-growing popwer of social media in our world:

• Twitter has more than 100 million users who send 50 million tweets a day.
• Facebook has close to 500 million users with an average of 135 friends each.
• LinkedIn has more than 65 million users, with a new user joining every second.
• Meetup, a social networking engine that creates real world events for members of virtual networks, has 6.1 million members.
• Nearly three quarters (73%) of online teens and (72%) young adults (72%) use social network sites. Seventy-three percent of adult profile owners use Facebook, 48% have a profile on MySpace and 14% use LinkedIn.

The challenges that social marketers and businesses face is the utilization of this massive network of potential clients and converting them into actual marketing ROI. What we are seeing are a face paced growth of social networking, but yet a lack of education at the most basic levels of the brick-and-mortar businesses on how to harness its power and growth.

While the numbers from this market research report are absolutely staggering, so is the disproportionate numbers of how few businesses are using social media correctly and consistently. But when it comes to blogs, according to an article in Bloomberg Businessweek, 71% of bloggers have increased positive visibility for their company. When utilized correctly, a blog can automatically feed its posts into the various social media outlets.

With your blog providing original content that is informative, educational and even entertaining, one now has a voice and a positive means to generate interest, new customers and eventual ROI. Social media can be a powerful means in which to distribute that message to literally millions when you know how.

I look forward to your comments or questions on this new research.