Small Business Social Media Trends

Posted on August 4, 2015 by bermanevansretail
Interested in seeing how small businesses use social media to generate sales? Curious about which social media platforms are working well for small firms?
For its seventh annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report, Social Media Examiner surveyed 3,720 marketers, business owners, and solopreneurs from the United States and overseas, to uncover various trends. Here are 12 of the most important trends:
  1. Social Media Critical for Small Business — “96% of survey participants use social media marketing, and 92% of those agree or strongly agree with the phrase, ‘Social media marketing is important for my business.'”
  2. Facebook Dominates Small Business Social Media Marketing — “The majority of respondents carry out social media marketing on Facebook. 93% use Facebook, ahead of Twitter at 79%.”
  3. B2B Small Businesses Use Social Differently Than B2C — “Breaking down Social Media Marketing Industry Report averages is useful. B2B respondents for this survey report that LinkedIn is their number-one choice for social networking.”
  4. Most Small Business Marketers Don’t Know if Facebook Efforts Are Working — “Despite the fact that 92% of small businesses agree that social media is important for their business AND that the majority use Facebook for their social media marketing, most also report that they don’t know whether their Facebook outreach is ‘working.’”
  5. Small Businesses Plan to Expand Facebook Activities This Year — “The Social Media Marketing Industry Report also found that, again, despite the cloudiness surrounding Facebook’s effectiveness, 62% plan to increase activities on it.”
  6. Most Small Businesses Spend 6 Hours or More Weekly on Social Media — “Because of the crush of responsibilities they have, small business owners worry about the time it takes to keep an audience engaged on social channels. Tools like Hootsuite and Post Planner cut down on time spent, but social media marketing still requires significant time.”
  7. Small Businesses Identify Increased Exposure as Social’s Top Benefit — “Even though ‘increased exposure’ is more difficult to measure than a metric like traffic or bounce rate, marketers and small business owners rank it the number-one benefit of marketing on social media.”
  8. Increased Traffic to Website Is Number-Two Benefit of Social Marketing — “77% of the survey respondents have appreciated the traffic that comes to their sites via social referral (clicking from Facebook or LinkedIn to the website for a blog post or landing page offer). Google Analytics and other tools make getting this data possible, even easy.”
  9. Social Media Cuts Marketing Expenses for Small Businesses — “Early on, social media developed the reputation of reaching audiences at a low price.”
  10. Small Business Direct Social Sales Rise Over Time — “More than half of marketers who have been using social media for more than 2 years report their channels helped them improve sales. Seventy percent of those with a 5-year social media marketing investment report it helps improve sales.”
  11. Facebook Dominates Social Media Paid Ads — “The low cost associated with social media ads is just one aspect that appeals to small businesses. The ability to target ads to a narrow geographic (down to the zip code) and demographic market provides another.”
  12. Types of Social Media Content — “Blogging and visual assets nearly tied at 70% and 71% respectively. The self-employed depend on blogging, with 79% of that faction reporting they blog. At this time, just 10% of marketers use podcasting, but some speculate that podcasting could be an opportunity. Requiring higher budgets and more technology, video content finishes third.”

 

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Posted in Online Retailing, Part 1: Overview/Planning, Part 2: Ownership, Strategy Mix, Online, Nontraditional, Part 3: Targeting Customers and Gathering Information, Part 7: Communicating with the Customer, Social Media and Retailing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

New Technology Words Added to the Oxford English Dictionary :-)

Posted on August 3, 2015 by bermanevansretail
Each year, new words are added to the Oxford English Dictionary. Some are culturally-driven; others are technology-driven. Many are unusual.
As Lindsay Kolowich writes for HubSpot:
“Although the Oxford English Dictionary editors get the final say, they actually look to us to dictate whether a word should be added. In other words, we have no one but ourselves to blame for all the weird words that make the cut every year.”
“But we can at least share the blame with technology. None of us would be saying “srsly” if we hadn’t felt the urge to shorten words for text messages and E-mails. We wouldn’t be voting anyone off the island if not for the television series Survivor.”
“Want to see what [20] weird words were added to the OED thanks to Internet slang and technology? Read on.”

 

Here are ten of the words. They are in alphabetical order:
  • Cyberchondriac (n.) – “A person who compulsively searches the Internet for information about particular real or imagined symptoms of illness.”
  • Dox (v.) – “To search for and publish private or identifying information about a particular individual on the Internet, typically with malicious intent.”
  • Egosurf (v.) – “To search the Internet for instances of one’s own name or links to one’s own Web site.”
  • Lamestream (adj. & n.) – “Used to refer contemptuously to the mainstream media.”
  • MOOC (n.) – “A free course of study made available over the Internet to a very large number of people.”
  • Netiquette (n.) – “The correct or acceptable way to use the Internet.”
  • Phablet (n.) – “A smartphone having a screen which is intermediate in size between that of a typical smartphone and a tablet computer.”
  • Screenager (n.) – “A person in their teens or twenties who has an aptitude for computers and the Internet.”
  • Slacktivism (n.) – “Actions performed via the Internet in support of a political or social cause but regarded as requiring little time or involvement, (e.g. signing an online petition).”
  • Woot (exclamation) – “Used to express elation, enthusiasm, or triumph, especially in electronic communication.”

 

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Posted in Online Retailing, Part 3: Targeting Customers and Gathering Information, Part 7: Communicating with the Customer, Social Media and Retailing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Must Reading: How Vulnerable are YOU to Being Tracked by Hackers?

Posted on July 31, 2015 by bermanevansretail
Earlier this week, we posted about “What Happens to Our Privacy If a Company Is Sold?” The answer was pretty disconcerting!!
In this post, we are furthering the discussion by publicizing a very recent article Josh Keller, K.K. Rebecca Lai, and Nicole Perlroth for the New York Times — “How Many Times Has Your Personal Information Been Exposed to Hackers?” This article includes a a brief vulnerability quiz and many useful observations:
“Half of American adults had their personal information exposed to hackers last year alone. In a recent attack at the federal Office of Personnel Management, hackers stole the most sensitive personal data for 21.5 million people.”
“Answer the questions below to learn which parts of your identity may have been stolen in some of the major hacking attacks over the last two years and what you can do about it. Not all attacks are included here, and many attacks go undetected, so think of your results as a minimum level of exposure.”

Click the image below to take the quiz and to learn more about this important subject.

Posted in Part 1: Overview/Planning, Part 2: Ownership, Strategy Mix, Online, Nontraditional, Part 3: Targeting Customers and Gathering Information, Part 5: Managing a Retail Business, Part 7: Communicating with the Customer, Privacy and Identity Theft Issues | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment