Importance of Social Media
A new report from eMarketer shows the growth and potential of social media to businesses.
A couple of the interesting statistics cited in the piece include the percentage of ad spending that is going to social media, and the popularity of social media sites as compared to search sites.
This chart shows the growth in spending and is an indication of how seriously businesses are taking the media. This is a new factor in marketing and is still being explored to determine where and how it works best, but, whatever the findings, it is a factor that businesses must take into account when developing their strategy for the Internet.
This next graph shows the popularity of sites on the Internet in New Zealand. New Zealand may not be the biggest target in your marketing strategy, but the graph is still interesting because it reflects a trend that is much broader than NZ, which is that different applications are occupying more and more time of people on the Internet.
A recent magazine article in Wired announced that “The Web is Dead”. This may be an overstatement (not uncommon in selling magazines), but the point they are making is an important one to keep in mind, which is that the pattern of usage on the web is changing quickly and dramatically.
The question, as always, is, “What does this mean to me and to my marketing strategy?”
We will continue to explore that issue, and I plan to post some comments about the Wired article later after I have had more time to review it. Watch this space!