New Statistics on How Marketers are Using Social Media

The Social Media Marketing Report by Michael Stelzner lists some new and interesting insights on how marketers are utilizing social media.  The full report can be found here: http://www.whitepapersource.com/socialmediamarketing/report/

Here are some highlights:

• Top three questions marketers want answered: (1) What are the best tactics to use, (2) how to do I measure the effectiveness of social media and (3) where do I start?
• Marketers are mostly new to social media: A significant 88% of marketers surveyed are using social media to market their businesses, BUT 72% have only been doing so for a few months or less.
• How much time does this take? A significant 64% of marketers are using social media for 5 hours or more each week and 39% for 10 or more hours weekly. Marketers using social media for more than a year time went up to 20+hours per week.
• The top benefit of social media marketing: The number-one advantage is generating exposure for the business, indicated 81% of all marketers, followed by increasing traffic and building new business partnerships. 52% said a rise in Search Engine results. As the search engine rankings improve, so will business exposure, lead generation efforts and a reduction in overall marketing expenses.
• The top social media tools: Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook were the top four social media tools used by marketers, in that order. 61.62% of marketers who have been using social media for years report it has helped them close business. More than half who spend 16 or more hours per week find the same results. After only a few months and with as few as 6 hours a week, more than half of marketers have generated qualified leads with social media marketing.
• Social media tools marketers most want to learn about: Social bookmarking sites were ranked of highest interest, followed closely by Twitter.