According to MENG (Marketing Executives Networking Group) more companies will be turning to social media in the next year than ever before. Senior-level marketers and execs are rapidly realizing that a strong online presence can be obtained through the use of social bookmarking, and the following stats from the third annual MENG Marketing Trends Study:
- Over 70% of respondents admit that their company will be initiating new social media initiatives in 2010
- 43% of respondents said their company was on Facebook, and the same percentage said the same for LinkedIn. 34% said their company had a presence on Twitter, and 28% of respondents pointed out the fact that they had a company blog – a huge increase from last year.
- Interestingly, companies are more likely to maintain a blog. Execs are less likely to have a personal blog (with the exception of execs at companies with less than 2,000 employees).
- While 71% of execs surveyed will implement new social media initiatives internally in 2010, 28% said they would rely on interactive agencies, 25% on social media consultants, 20% on PR agencies, and 16% on ad agencies.
- Large companies (46%) and small (41%) will probably choose a social media consultant if they decide to outsource, with interactive, PR and Ad agencies running up.
- However, the biggest companies that outsource social media initiatives will depend first on Interactive agencies (33%), then Ad agencies (31%), PR agencies (26%) and Social Media Consultants (24%)
- Companies most often choose their social media outsource company based on Examples of Previous Work (94%), Recommendations (91%), Quality of Response to RFP (82%), and Cost (80%).
Having someone in the know work on your social marketing for you is often the best choice – the learning curve is steep, and the time invested may make it too expensive to do yourself (especially if you are your own exec, and your time is worthy a hefty per hour salary.
SEO is an integral part of social media, so having a knowledgeable firm provide social bookmarking services is a great plan. You can get quick traffic, plenty of backlinks, and lots of attention from properly tagged submissions, and promote your company’s brand as well. Twitter, Digg, Mixx, Propeller and Newsvine are only a few places you can kick start your social marketing plan.
Tags: social marketing, social media, Twitter