The Business Relevance of Social Media: It's All About Conversations
26 Construction Equipment Distribution www.cedmag.com October 2009 Marketing So you don't get the social media thing. Based on a survey earlier this year, just 20 percent of AED deal-ers were using the social media site Facebook and only 5 percent were using Twitter, a service that lets users send short text messages from their mobile phones to a group of people. But don't assume your customers aren't. Facebook reports more than 200 million active users. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the 35+ age group. LinkedIn, a business-oriented social networking site, has 43 million users, and over-night it seems, the world is twittering. The sheer volume of activity is impressive, but the speed at which social media has taken hold is even more amazing. It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users; TV reached that volume in 13 years; the Internet had 50 million users within four years and iPod within three years. Contrast that with Facebook, which added 100 million users in less than nine months. When the Internet burst onto the scene, no one ever imagined nearly every business would have a Web site, but now, it's as essential as letterhead and business cards. Workforce demographics are changing along with technology and marketers need to adapt. Next year, there will be more Gen Yers than Baby Boomers in the workforce, and 96 percent of them have joined a social network. Social media appears to be more than just a fad. At the very least, it is time to examine which social media tools would make sense for your business. Mobility has historically been the big stumbling block for reaching contractors on the Internet. But now, with the increasing use of smart phones, PDAs and other mobile devices, communication is changing. Your mobile devices and phones The Business Relevance of Social Media: It's All About Conversations Experts suggest some ways dealers can enter a whole new, customer-centric marketing world. By joanne coStin Whether you're in end-user dialogues will go on... or out and on... and on...