It wasn’t too long ago that MySpace (launched in 2003) was an amusing new type of website where people from around the world liked to socialize and share personal information with each other. Facebook (launched in 2004) has since taken online socializing and sharing – and liking – to whole new levels. In October 2012, Facebook reached one billion users per month. In less than three years since crossing that threshold, Facebook recently recorded an astounding one billion users in ONE DAY.
If you are NOT a regular user of social media for your business, you’re missing the train and just standing at the station. But at the end of this article, we offer a tool to help you get on board.
If you’re wondering why we mentioned this Facebook milestone, it’s because the number “one billion” has 9 zeroes. It looks like this: 1,000,000,000. That’s a lot of zeroes That’s a lot of people! That’s 1 out of every 7 humans on the planet logging into the same website on the same day – Monday, August 24, 2015. That’s a staggering concept!
And that billion does not include all of the people who logged onto other social networking sites that day. The point is, if you’re looking for a place to communicate with your past, present, and future customers, the odds are that you’ll find a lot of them on Facebook and many other social sites.
And Mobile Rules the Day (and Night)
In addition, if you pay attention to what’s going on in the world, you are aware of that fact that at any given moment a huge number of people are looking down at the mobile device in their hand. A large portion of those heads-down people are interacting with a social network. According to the Pew Research Center, almost two-thirds of adults in the U.S. own a smartphone – and 46% of them say they couldn’t live without it.
And the numbers keep growing every day. Younger adults practically live on their smartphones and teenagers can’t even remember a time when there were no smartphones. The future of marketing is mobile and social. According to eMarketer.com, advertisers’ 2015 social ad spending will be over $9.5 billion in the US and almost $24 billion globally. By 2017, annual US social network advertising is expected to total over $14 billion. That’s an expected growth rate of 50% in the next two years. These are staggering numbers.
We Want to Help You!
So, have you created your social media marketing strategy? Have you established accounts on all of the top social sites? Have you developed a schedule for when you’ll be posting content of value to your target audiences on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, SnapChat, Google+, Tumblr, Flickr, YouTube, and Reddit?
By the way, MySpace is still one of the most-visited sites on the Internet (and Justin Timberlake became one of its owners in 2011), so you might want to also include this ancient site in your social media strategy. There are also hundreds of other social sites to consider, some of which may have user demographics that perfectly match your ideal customer profile.
It’s okay that you don’t have a social marketing calendar today. You’re not alone.
Most businesses do not have a written plan for their social media marketing. However, tomorrow, it won’t be okay. That’s because at the bottom of this page you have an opportunity to download our FREE Social Media Strategy Template.
After you download the free spreadsheet template, you’ll be able to manage and coordinate the details of your social media content development and distribution. The Social Media Strategy Template helps you plan the tactical details of your online communications plan. It helps you keep track of an online campaign’s targeted keywords, related hashtags, target personas and buying processes, as well as offers and calls to action.
Join the Conversation Going On Around You.
Humans are social beings and consumers. It makes perfect sense that our first open global communications network is emerging as a primary place for marketers to connect with people. The Internet is the new local marketplace on a global scale. It took less than three years for Facebook to grow a billion monthly users into a billion daily users. How soon before one billion people are socializing online in one single hour?
How soon before you download the free Social Media Strategy Template?
