Are You Using the Right Social Networks for Your Marketing?
Social networking websites are an important strategy for any online marketing and promotion of your business.
Knowing which sites are growing and which are shrinking enables you to make decisions are to where to place your effort and budget.
There have been big changes to the social networking landscape over the past couple of years as can be seen in these charts.
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The big winner is Facebook, which has grown from 9.61% in June 2008 to commanding a huge 54.96% of social networking site visits. Facebook also recently announced that they have reached 500 million users. In New Zealand it is reported that there are over a million Facebook users, a staggering quarter of the population.
Facebook is a great tool from a marketing point of view. There are numerous ways in which to use it for marketing and promoting your local business and generating new leads.
Other notable mentions in the charts are YouTube, Twitter, and MySpace.
Of all the video sharing sites, YouTube has almost the entire market share. When it comes to social networking, YouTube primarily does this through the process of sharing videos, compared to Facebook where video is just one of many media options.
Twitter has come from nowhere to #4 on the list. Twitter did not go mainstream until 2009, 3 years after it was founded. Although it was in the news a lot in 2009 it has been less so in 2010. Twitter is still an important marketing strategy and often best used as a way of alerting people to other marketing such as blog, Facebook, and other content updates. One of the difficulties many people face is getting people from seeing you on Twitter to then visit your other online sites.
The biggest loser over the past couple of years is MySapce. Previously commanding over 40% of social networking visits, it has dropped from #1 to #3 and has shrunk to 11.54% of visits.
Last words: Social networking is an important marketing strategy. The sites that give you the most benefit change over time and knowing this helps maximise your marketing effort. Currently the big increases are in Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. Although still an important site, MySpace the once big social network, has shrunk significantly over the last 2 years. If you are not already using social networking, start today.
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