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03.01.10
Social Media Continues To Increasingly Engage Customers
 By Bill Ives
Alterian has conducted its seventh annual survey on online marketing. This year's sample covered 1068 marketing professionals worldwide. It found that 66 percent of respondents will be investing in social media marketing in the next 12 months. Where is the money coming from in an ear of tight budgets? The survey found that 40 percent of those investing in social media marketing said they would be shifting more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget towards funding their social media marketing activities.
This supports other statistics from the Alterian survey that found that the majority of respondents (67 percent) feel social media is either ' increasingly important' or ' critical to success.' I have seen similar results in other studies and through my own experience.
The survey also found that 36 percent of respondents are investing in social media monitoring and analysis tools. It is a growing field and I have discussed a number of them on this blog. This is a significant percentage, considering the maturity of the channel. It appears to reflect a growing understanding that a social media marketing strategy needs to be based on listening to customers and prospects and its ROI needs to be measured. However, the 64 percent who are not planning this investment may be left behind, as you need to see what impact your efforts achieve, as well as what customers are saying about you.
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The research also explored the importance of customer engagement, a critical component to success in the opinion of many, a view I share. It found that over half of respondents (51 percent) are placing a ' fair' or ' significant' amount of effort on moving from a campaign-centric direct marketing model towards multi-channel customer engagement - in fact only 7 percent are making no effort at all. This is good news.
The Web and social media continues to change marketing, whether it is for products or politicians. The same holds for traditional news media as many long time news providers have found out too late. It appears that some marketing professionals have awakened to this change and are making steps to take advantage of it. 2010 will be an interesting year for business applications of social media, both inside and outside the enterprise.
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About the Author:
Dr. Bill Ives is an independent consultant and writer who has worked with Fortune 100 companies in business uses of emerging technologies for over 20 years. For several years he led the Knowledge Management Practice for a large consulting firm.. Now he primarily helps companies with their business blogs. He is also the VP of Social Media and blogger for TVissimo, a new TV schedule search engine. Prior to consulting, Dr. Ives was a Research Associate at Harvard University exploring the effects of media on cognition. He obtained his Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto. Bill can be reached at his blog: Portals and KM. He also writes for the FastForward blog and the AppGap blog.
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