Social Media Examiner’s Michael Stelzner has released its third annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report, with data based on responses from 3300 marketers. The survey was not conducted across a controlled universe, but was promoted via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, so the population is likely to skew toward early adopters of social media marketing. 78% of participants are from companies with less than 100 employees. Still, it’s interesting to look at some of the trends:
- 90% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that social media is “important for their business.”
- B2B companies are more likely to have been using social media longer (52.6% reported 1 year or more) than B2C companies (46.2% indicated 1 year or longer)
- 58% of marketers are using social media for 6 hours or more each week. The longer you’ve been doing social media marketing, the more time you spend: 47% of marketers who have more than 3 years experience spend at least 16 hours per week on social media activities.
- The top business benefits of social media marketing are generating more business exposure (88%), increased traffic (72%) and improved search rankings (62%).
- 72% of marketers who have been using social media for more than 3 years report it had helped them close business.
- 77% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing, with large businesses even more likely to see this as an area of increased investment. 73% plan to increase their use of Twitter.
- 28% of marketers outsource some portion of their social media efforts–double from last year’s study, when 14% said they outsource.
Click here to download the complete report: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingReport2011.pdf
