Kinesis marketing and design blog

Many businesses are still wondering about why they should care about social media.I’ve addressed this in a few recent posts that you might be interested in reading:

Online Marketing: Employers Using Social Media to Screen and Report

10 Surprising Ways that Twitter Has Helped My Business…and Ideas On How it Can Help Yours Too

Small and Medium Businesses Are Not Using Web 2.0 for Marketing (Here’s Why They Should!)

Recent reports from the Nielson Company give more compelling reasons. According to Nielson, social networks and blogs are grabbing a bigger share of the Net. Stats show that Americans have nearly tripled the amount of time they spend at social networking and blog sites such as Facebook and MySpace from a year ago.

In August 2009, 17 percent of all time spent on the Internet was at social networking sites, up from 6 percent in August 2008. Advertising spending on social networking sites and blogs more than doubled despite the recession, going from about $49 million in August 2008 to about $108 million in August 2009.

Nielsen VP John Gibs says that “advertisers that want to connect with core fan bases, such as movie studios, are allocating more and more dollars to online communities like Facebook and MySpace, where they can engage in an ongoing dialog with their target market.”

And a LOT of people are spending at least a bit of time on social networking sites. Consumers are deeply engaged with them. Nielsen’s data shows that about half of the U.S. population visited a social networking website in the last year and that number grows every quarter.

Here are some interesting trends in how the big social media sites break out demographically (and which will affect your choices in how you leverage these sites for your marketing efforts):

• Facebook users have a largely upscale profile. The top third of lifestyle segments relative to affluence were 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the those in the lower third.
• The bottom third segments related to affluence are 37% more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third.
• Users of Facebook were also much more likely to use LinkedIn, a network geared towards business and professional networking, than those who use MySpace.
• The blogging and tweeting community at large isn’t necessarily more affluent, but bloggers and tweeters do live in more urban areas such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.

Let’s look at one more report from Nielsen. This one relates to traditional advertising. U.S. ad spending fell 15.4% in the first half of 2009, according to data released today by The Nielsen Company. A total of $56.9 billion was spent on advertising in the first six months of the year, more than $10.3 billion less than the same time period in 2008.

So, traditional ad dollars fell while social media ad dollars more than doubled. The big players are shifting the ad dollars because they are following the trends that consumers are setting. Mashable has a  great article listing some fantastic case studies citing examples of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media.

If you aren’t on the social media bandwagon yet, it’s time to hop aboard.

If you need help planning and implementing your social media campaign, call Kinesis for a free initial consultation at 503-922-2289.

Kinesis is a Portland Web Design and Branding Firm. We help our clients reach their marketing and growth goals. Call us at 503.922.2289.