Social Media: Talk It Up!

Social Media: Talk it up

Social Media has become the hot term on the tip of every marketers tongue, but is it worth all the talk?

It’s surprising that, still, a lot of business owners today don’t know what a social media strategy is, or at least, how it might concern them in the market.

Social media strategy, also known as social networking, or Internet 2.0, refers to the utilisation of contemporary mediums of social interaction, to reach goals in marketing, communication, and exposure.

Many of these modern channels of communication, such as facebook, twitter, myspace, linkedIn, and Flickr, are being used in the household everyday. Many business however are yet to buy into social media for alignment with corporate strategy.

Recent Nielson reports (2010) have global usage for Facebook up by 600% in the last year, still the most popular social interaction site with over 400 million users globally. Twitter climbed an astounding 2600 usage percentage points in the last year, being the second most popular, right above Myspace.

The statistics certainly articulate the amount of people, or potential consumers, who use social media. Levan (2009) stated that smart businesses in the new decade would incorporate these figures into their marketing budgets and decision-making. Agreeing with Levan was Smithe (2009) who stated that Marketers could now unobtrusively, often undetectably, not only monitor the interaction and sayings of their targets, but also manipulate and modify them to their advantage.

Whether or not you think it’s worthwhile incorporating social media into your company strategy, the numbers are undeniable! Social media appears to be infecting the globe and growing as an acceptable form of business networking and communication. Everybody’s talking about it!

- Indy, 2010