29 Mar How Are Marketers Using Social Media

Websitemagazine.com has released their Social Media Survey for 2010. The survey consists of 186 respondents from the marketing and advertising industry. These are individuals who are working on the forefront of marketing everyday. I think it’s interesting to take a look and see how others are using their time and what seems to be working.

According to survey results, 81.7% of respondents claim that they will be dedicating more time towards their social media marketing efforts this year. It’s obvious that marketers see great utility in social media. This is a percentage that I think will continue to rise over time. I would be willing to bet that if you conducted the same survey in July, that percentage would be even larger. I believe that marketers are exploring how to use social media to their advantage and the more successful case studies we read, the more accepted it will become.

One of the larger obstacles of social media is measuring its effectiveness. I am glad that the survey included a questions relating to this. I think it’s interesting to see where people think they are benefiting from social media. According to the survey results, 66.3% say that they have seen more web traffic from their social media efforts. After that, 33.7% have received a better search engine placement.

Towards the end of the blog, you will see a list of typed responses to the question, “What is your primary goal using social media this year?”

This is interesting to me. Most marketers have different expectations and goals when it comes to social media. This makes me wonder about our expectations for social media. Can social media really accomplish all of these things? I actually think they can. This is what I like about social media. If done strategically, it can accomplish many things at once. I think as time passes, we are going to see more and more useful ways to use it.