Flap of Butterfly’s Wings in Social Media Sets off Hurricane in Search for Business
How is social impacting search? Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?
Social started impacting search in December 2005 and January 2006. According to Hitwise, that’s when YouTube, a video sharing site, blew by Google Video and Yahoo! Video, the leading video search engines, in market share of US visits to online video sites. In November 2006, within a year of its launch, YouTube was purchased by Google.
In May 2007, Google began its move to universal search by integrating a few types of social content – including videos and images – into its search results. In December 2009, Google started including live updates from Twitter and fresh blog posts in its real-time search results. Last month, Google added some Facebook pages, as well.
Today, the flap of a butterfly’s wings in social media sets off a hurricane in real-time search results.
How is the butterfly effect impacting marketing? It’s creating chaos.
The Value of Social Media Report, published last month by Econsultancy in association with Online Marketing Summit, found that 85% of companies are using Facebook as part of their marketing strategy, 77% are using Twitter, 58% are using LinkedIn, and 49% are using YouTube. However, 61% of client-side marketers and agency respondents admited they “have experimented with social media, but not done that much,” and 68% acknowledge they do not spend anything on social media marketing or spend under $5,000 a year.
Is it any wonder, then, that 61% also confess that their organizations are “poor” or “very poor” at measuring ROI? If you don’t spend anything on social media marketing, can you realistically expect to get more than a 1x return on investment from social media?
Now, Econsultancy’s report also found that some companies are using social media to help meet a number of key business objectives, including monetization of this channel through generation of sales and leads. Other companies are also using social media marketing to achieve softer objectives such as improved brand awareness and reputation.
And there are a growing number of social media case studies.
For example, Aaron Uhrmacher posted “35+ examples of corporate social media in action” on Mashable in July 2008. Ellie Mirman posted “6 social media marketing case study lessons” on the HubSpot Blog in September 2009. And I posted “Social Media Case Study: Piper Aircraft Launches PiperSport Light Sport Aircraft on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter” on Search Engine Watch in February 2010.
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