Some say that when you run an online business and use the social marketing strategies, you have to diversify or you die! It sounds a little bit too rough, but in fact, it is the truth! Social media marketing proved to be one of the best online strategies for those who run a business, so if you don’t use it already, you should start doing this, as you are losing a lot of ground!

Studies showed that 42% of all online businesses have already dedicated important budgets to social media marketing, will the same studies showed that 59% of Facebook users had liked a brand or a product as of April 2011. Twitter is checked regularly by 1 of 5 Canadians and 1 out of every 6 minutes is spent by internet users on social networks. I think these numbers are fantastic and they are 100% true, so what is keeping you from using the social media marketing in your favor!

If you are an online business runner, there is one important detail that you have to keep in mind: the social networking field is not already mature, so the numbers are going to grow as the field loses the adolescence into becoming a young adult and then a true adult! Can you imagine what will happen then? Can you imagine the prospects that open in front of your eyes when the social networking field is even more developed? You will have wonderful opportunities for your business, so you should use them in your favor!

Facebook and Twitter offer you the chance to create events and contests that will help you advertise your brand and your products; these events were proven that they also bring good traffic numbers, so you have to use them! Creating fan pages is simple as creating a profile, so anybody can do it! You just have to decide that you have to do it! Even big online companies with strong sales numbers should start looking at what the social media marketing has to offer, as they have to keep the pace!

Things are moving fast on the internet, so as an online business runner, you have to move fast too! Focus on what the social media marketing has to offer to you, outsource its strategies, its tools, its services and make sure that your small business grows into a big and profitable one! It is not too difficult to use the social media marketing in your favor; you just have to learn how it works and everything will become easier!

A new survey into the effects of social media marketing reveals that companies with the “greatest breadth and depth of social media engagement” benefited from revenue rises of 18% over the last year, while those that least engaged dropped 6% on average.

The ENGAGEMENTdb study by Wetpaint and the Altimeter Group is the first of its kind to look at how engagement with consumers through social media correlates with financial performance.

Social media channels taken into consideration for the study were Twitter, blogs, Facebook, Wikis and discussion forums.

The brands considered were the 100 most valuable ones as identified by the 2008 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands ranking, including the top 10:
1. Starbucks
2. Dell
3. eBay
4. Google
5. Microsoft
6. Thomson Reuters
7. Nike
8. Amazon
9. SAP
10. Yahoo!/Intel (joint)

According to the study results, the companies that scored well have dedicated teams that are active in various social media channels.

A spokesman for Wetpaint is reported as saying:  “The closer any company is to its customers, the better. It’s hard to argue with the ability for social media to create such proximity. In this day and age, companies should feel much more comfortable investing in social media. The correlation to results is so clear.”

So does this mean that every company should have at least one person dedicated to engaging with customers via social media? What are your thoughts?