Social Media: Who uses it?

"A Growing Tool."

Are you a social media butterfly?
Is Tweeple in your vocabulary?
Do you know anyone who is hooked on Facebook?
Out of confusion, have you decided to "just say no" for now!?

According to a social media study by Michael Stelzner for the Social Media Success Summit 2009, "88% of marketers in a recent survey say they are now using some form of social media to market their business, though 72% of those using it say they have only been at it a few months or less."

Of social media tools, the % of responders use the following:

• Twitter 86%
• Blogs 79%
• LinkedIn 78%
• Facebook 77%
• YouTube/Other video 41%
• Social bookmark sites 38%
• Forums 38%
• StumbleUpon 28%
• Digg, Reddit or similar 26%
• FriendFeed 18%

Key survey findings about the applications indicate:

• Small-business owners are more likely to use LinkedIn than employees working for a corporation;
• Men are significantly more likely to use YouTube or other video marketing than women (52.4% of all men compared with 31.7% of women);
• Newbies to social media rank LinkedIn as their number-two choice;
• Among users of a few months or more, Facebook takes second place. This group also uses Twitter more;
• Twitter is used by 94% of marketers using social media for several years, followed by blogs. This group also endorses online video more than the other groups; and
• 72% of marketers say they have either just started or have been using social media for only a few months.

Since MySpace came on the scene in 2003, numberous cyber affairs a.k.a. social media applications have been launched. Maybe because of the MySpace successes or the scandals, the Internet doors swung open to mimic, improve, create more user-friendly and also implement "safer" measures of online networking for personal and business use.

To learn how to incorporate social media into a marketing plan, whether to tweet, post, blog, get linked in, or even a lesson on how to actually the tools in the cyber world, email me at mmonte@hotmail.com, invite me to be your Facebook friend at www.facebook.com and search Monte Martin, follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/montemartin, get linked up to me at http://www.linkedin.com/in/montemartin or pick up the phone and punch in my digits (we do not dial anymore : -) 407-964-1557 to talk in real time about meeting in person! Hopefully, you won't get my voice mail - and that's a story for a future blog.