A GREAT study of how marketers are using social media

When you have a moment, I’d encourage you to check out the study linked below by Michael Stelzner. Michael is the author of the book, “Writing White Papers,” and has several big name clients, including Microsoft, Dow Jones, FedEx, LinkedIn, Citrix, HP, Monster and S&P. The attached report is an analysis of 700 responses from marketers all around the country asking questions about social media uses, time commitment, benefits they have seen, tools they want to learn more about, etc…

A couple of interesting tidbits included:

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. What’s most amazing about this statistic is that as people grow more accustomed to utilizing the tools on a day-to-day basis the time spent goes WAY up.

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

http://marketingwhitepapers.s3.amazonaws.com/smss09/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport.pdf