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2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2012

Click the image above to download your copy of the report.

While the speculation, pontification and monetization of social media is reaching momentum of tsunami proportions, many businesses looking for practical advice are asking, “Exactly how are marketers using social media to grow their businesses?”

Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner has posed that same question and others like it to a sample of marketers on the front lines of the social web to help bring some clarity to what works, what doesn’t and where to focus.

When asked about the bearing of the report on the intersection of search and social, Mike said, “With Google integrating results from its Google+ network into search, we’ll begin to see an Amazon type social proofing of search results based on the activity of friends.  This will make search even more important.” We agree!

The 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report is out today and offers 42 pages of insights, tables, graphs and examples of tactics. Over 3,800 respondents provided their advice on the who, what, when, and where of social media marketing. They also shared where they plan on investing in the future.

Key subject matter covered in the report includes:

  • The top 10 social media questions marketers want answered:
  • The time commitment
  • The benefits of social media marketing
  • Commonly used social media services:
  • Social media sites people want to learn more about
  • Social media outsourcing
  • B2B vs B2C
  • Changes since the 2011 report

social media time allocation

How much time should you spend on social media marketing tasks each week? It’s a reasonable question and the responses broke down as:

  • 59% – 6 hours / week or more
  • 33% – 11 hours / week or more
  • 15%  – 20+ hours / week

Other key findings from the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report include:

  • 83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.
  • Top benefits of social media marketing:
    85% Generating more business exposure
    69% increasing traffic
    65% providing marketplace insight
  • 76% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing
  • While only 40% of marketers are using Google+, 70% of marketers want to learn more about it and 67% plan on increasing Google+ activities

This report is a perfect compliment to the upcoming Social Media Success Summit online conference coming up on May 1st. You can get your basic questions answered and some alignment with what others are doing from the report and then get practical advice, tips and training from consultants and practitioners from the online conference.  It’s a great example of content marketing to promote an event actually.

Lee Odden

About Lee Odden

@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of Online Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he's the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he's likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

Comments

  3. AvatarJoe kyle says

    Could not seem to download. Caption says, “Click the image above to download…” Did not seem to work. 

  4. azeckmanazeckman says

    Sorry, the link has been updated and should be working correctly now.  Please let me know if you have any other questions. 🙂

  7. AvatarRobert Clark says

    Good article! In my personal experience the most important thing in Social Media is to be engaging. Ask questions, give value, show an interest. When you engage others, they will engage back with you AND share your stuff with others!

  8. Avatarmdwebpro says

    Great findings. Its always important to show interest and passion for whatever you do online because this is where success begins when it comes to social media.
    Erick Kinuthia
    Team MDwebpro

  9. AvatarBabuli Nayak says

    Business to Business marketers have been using social media longer than their B2C counterparts. Only 4 percent of all marketers surveyed said they have no experience with social media for examples:-

    * 75 percent have no plans for TV ads
    * 67 percent will not do radio ads
    * 48 percent will not use webinars for marketing
    * 42 percent have no plans to use print ads
    * 34 percent will not practice direct mail marketing
    * 29 percent have no plans to advertise online outside of social, including PPC
    * 13 percent have no event marketing plans
    * 9 percent have no plans to use SEO
    * 4 percent will not use email marketing

    Thanks to sharing
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  13. Avatarwww.paydaybox.co.uk says

    By going through your post, report suggest that social media has a big impact on the business. so i should start using this for my websites..Thanks for the report

  14. AvatarB'wire Consulting says

    Youtube or video marketing is the need of the hour. Social sharing results have surpassed the results we used to get from search engine optimization or submissions. This article is just perfect as a reference to know the latest stats of social media sharing.

  15. AvatarJane says

    I usually spend about 1 hour daily on social media sites. Its good enough for me to communicate others 🙂

  17. Avatarstefano grigoletti says

    The report was really interesting! I tried to combine key findings of this report with data taken from the previous ones. Here is my personal review, where I point out – to give some example – that youtube might be as important as facebook within social media marketing strategies; Twitter should be more focused on specific purposes as LinkedIn is; what is you opinion? Just for sharing, take a look at the Galaxy of Social Media Marketing http://stefanogrigoletti.blogspot.com/2012/07/social-media-industry-market-forecast.html