Business owners cannot afford to think that social media is a passing fad. The Social Media Revolution is sweeping away established notions of how companies should market their products and connect with customers. In the YouTube/Twitter/Facebook/Blogging era, companies need to consider themselves as content providers first, advertisers second.
Some facts:
- Social media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the internet.
- 1 out of 8 couples married in the USA last year met via social media.
- Wikipedia has over 13 million articles (studies have shown it to be more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica).
- There are over 200 million blogs (54% of bloggers update content or use Twitter daily).
- 78% of people trust peer recommendations, only 14% trust advertising.
- 34% of bloggers post opinions about products or brands.
- If Facebook were a country it would be the worlds 4th largest.
- YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine.
- 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in reader circulation.
- Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI.
- 70% of 18-34 year olds have watched TV on the web.
- 35% of Amazon book sales are in Kindle e-book format.