2. Social Media Marketing Should I Use It In My Business?

3. What Is Social Media? “Social media is the collective of online communications channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content- sharing and collaboration. Websites and applications dedicated to forums, microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, social curation, and wikis are among the different types of social media.”

4. Some of the More Popular and Most Used Social Media Sites Blogs Facebook Twitter YouTube & Vimeo Flickr Instagram LinkedIn Groups

5. Statistics As of September 2013: 71% of online adults use Facebook 18% of online adults use Twitter 17% use Instagram 21% use Pinterest 22% use LinkedIn In May 2013, 74% of women were users of social networking sites, compared with 62% of men. 40% of cell phone owners use a social networking site on their phone, and 28% do so on a typical day.

6. How Does Social Media Benefit Businesses? According to Madhur Chaturvedi, Director of Insight and Customer Strategy at Oracle; it allows you the following benefits: Overall Increased followership on social media sites and increased brand share Improved sales and conversion of leads, driving greater brand advocacy Customer service improvements reduces the time of responding to customers and improved customer satisfaction Efficiency improvements reaching a larger number of customers, prospects, candidates at a lower cost compared to traditional advertising. “A social media strategy that incorporates the key principles listed above, can result in significant benefits from social media usage for companies.”

7. Consistency One of the most important things to keep in mind when starting a social media presence is that it requires consistency. It requires some time, effort and dedication to be effective.

8. Consistency Social media marketing requires that you have or create a plan and a schedule to allot the appropriate time and/or personnel to assure a consistent presence Involving their employees to take part in their social media efforts by posting comments, pictures and helpful advice adds to the brand awareness of their business

9. Forbes magazine contributor Drew Hendricks sums it up well… “As social media continues to influence everything businesses do, everyone from the CEO to the new summer intern will need to realize the part it plays in day- to-day duties. Those professionals will be forced to keep up or be left behind. But it’s equally important that professionals balance their social media efforts with face-to-face networking and traditional advertising to stay in touch with the customers who aren’t on social media around the clock.”

10. Conclusion As the Internet and Social Media evolves, it will be ever more important for business owners to stay abreast of the changes in social media marketing and be willing to embrace those changes. Many even believe that social media marketing is one of those changes that will soon become a necessity, rather than an option to be successful in business in the very near future.

11. Social Media Marketing Should I Use It In My Business?