Does social media really make a difference? Yes – in fact, social bookmarking services can be expected to see an upturn in demand for their talents this year and next.
Social marketing experts often tout social bookmarking or media sites as such as Twitter and Facebook as the ultimate in ecommerce business promotion. A reader survey at practical ecommerce let readers chime in as to whether this helps or hurts their businesses.
The Feb 2010 survey looked at social media’s present and future role in regard to ecommerce. Four questions were asked, and comments solicited. The survey asked what social media sites were used the most, presenting Twitter, Facebook and “Other” as choices.
LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace, Google Buzz, Squidoo, Delicious, Flickr, Ning and blogging were also mentioned, making up the 29.3% marked ‘other. Facebook gathered in 78% of the crowd, while Twitter was also used by 75.6%. Only 11% of people said they use no social networking tools whatsoever.
That may change however, as the survey went on to show. The question having to do with future plans revealed that only 1.2% said they have no plans to use social media in the future, and 2.4% of respondents plan to decrease their use of social media. 26.8 percent said they will maintain their current level of social media use and 69.5 percent of respondents said they plan to increase social media marketing.
When asked if social media has helped or hurt them, respondents were not as decisive in their answers. A whopping 25.6% of respondents said they don’t believe that social media has helped their business at all, while an additional 18.3% admitted to not knowing if it helped or not. Another 18.3% committed to the standpoint that social media definitely had a positive impact on their business, while the largest faction, 35.4%, said they had seen improvement.
The respondents were from a survey pool that leaned heavily towards ecommerce, with 70.7% representing ecommerce companies. The remainder were split between developers, designers or programmers (8.5 percent), Software, SaaS or other vendor / ecommerce merchants (6.1 percent), or “Other” (14.6 percent).
With the most telling figures being the ones stating more companies will use social marketing in 2010-2011, it might be wise to hire out some of your needs to professionals, to ensure quality social bookmarking.
Tags: social bookmarking, social media