As we begin the New Year, a lot of companies are thinking about the coming year and how to make social media marketing work for them. Which social networking sites should you invest in? How can you make your company’s social media marketing more powerful? Last year, a post on jeffbullas.com shared 72 fascinating social media marketing facts and statistics. Yes, it’s been several months since this article was written, but I think there’s still a lot of helpful information in it for small business owners and entrepreneurs to refer to. Here are a few of my favorite points the post made:

Social Networking Sites (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest):

• B2C Facebook interaction is 30% higher than average on Sundays. 
• Facebook is the leading source of referred social media traffic to websites, at 26%. Twitter is second at 3.6%. 
• 52% of consumers say they have stopped following a brand on Facebook because the information it posted had become “too repetitive and boring.” 
• 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter, and 20% have closed deals. 
• The average Pinterest user spends nearly an hour-and-a-half per month on the site, behind only Facebook and Tumblr. 
• 83% of Pinterest users are women. In the U.S., the most popular categories are Fashion, Desserts, Clothes and Birthdays. 
• Pinterest is virtually tied with Twitter (at 3.6%) for the amount of referred social traffic it sends to websites. 

Mobile Marketing

• 4.8 billion people now own mobile phones. Just 4.2 billion own a toothbrush. 
• Although the percentage of visits to B2B websites coming from smart phones has increased nearly 50% in the past year, they still represent only about 1 out of every 24 site visits on average.

Blogging

• Social networking sites and blogs account for 23% of all time spent online — twice as much as gaming.
• Increased frequency of blogging correlates with increased customer acquisition, according to HubSpot. 92% of blog users who posted multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog, a figure that decreased to 66% for those who blogged monthly and 43% for those who posted less than monthly.
• B2B companies with blogs generate 67% more leads per month on average than non-blogging firms.
• It shouldn’t be a surprise, but content has to be good in order to be effective. B2B buyers say that less than half of vendor content is useful–and vendors who produce such low-value content are 27% less likely to be considered and 40% less likely to win the business. “Good” content is concise, entertaining (includes stories), more educational than promotional, and is contextually personalized.

As you can see, effective social media marketing can make a huge difference for companies, whether your business is B2B or B2C. Is your business using social networking sites effectively? Do you need to revise your social media marketing strategy? Our blog shares a lot of helpful tips and tricks for blogging, social networking sites and more. Browse our articles for helpful advice, or contact us to find out how we can help!

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Photo Credit: Jason A. Howie