Business and Social Media – Where is Your Business

Business and Social Media – Get on Board the Bandwagon Now

Posted February 3, 2010

In December we Australians spent more time on social media sites than any other country, whilst we only ranked ninth in the world as far as users, we spent 6 hours,52 minutes and 28 second each according to Nielsen on line. The actual number of Australians using social networks in December was just under 9.9 million.

Here’s the actual breakdown for those interested:

Given these type of usage figures you would think that every business whether they be big or small would be engaging in some sort of social media strategy, right? well actually no. The take up of social media and all it’s components, blogging, microblogging sites and social networks has been very slow, and the reason is a lack of awareness of what social media is.

The number of on line consumers using this medium is growing faster than any other form of internet usage and as a farming arena or marketing/communication tool, it’s not a question for business of should I be using it, but when can I get on board and quickly.

You may remember my story on Rupert Murdock and his concerns about Google giving his content away for free and how he wants to start to charge on line consumers for content, well it appears that what consumers really want on line is information that is free, last weeks decision by the New York Times to build a wall around it’s content was applauded by publishers, but news coming from the Long Island Daily will not be good news for promoters of charging for news content, the Long Island Daily has achieved the massive number of paying subscribers, since commencing to charge in October last year, of just 35, at $260 per year per subscriber this nets them $9000 revenue, on a launch cost of $4 million US.

Consumers using social media want information, they want to engage in conversation with you and they want to research you, your product and your brand.

Now is the time to get on board with a social media strategy, get on the front foot and take advantage of the networking possibilities.