Why Use Social Media?

Your competition is using it.

Your industry or niche is represented on Facebook and Twitter. It is. If you don’t believe me go to Google and do a search for: “Your niche” + “Facebook” and see what comes up.

* In 2011 Emarketer estimated that Facebook’s revenue from advertising was $3.8 billion and that could be $5.2 billion in 2012.
* Emarketer also said that almost 40% of small businesses that sell on Facebook say it is their soles sales channel.

Companies are paying a lot of money to advertise and grow their brands in social media. That suggests that using social media for business is working. If you aren’t already, then you should be.
Your target audience is using it.

Think of Facebook as a shopping mall, where people are living a virtual social life, being present in this mall is one of the smartest moves you can make for your small business.

The old saying goes that, “numbers don’t lie” so here are the official statistics from Facebook about usuage.

Statistics

* We had 845 million monthly active users at the end of December 2011.
* Approximately 80% of our monthly active users are outside the U.S. and Canada.
* We had 483 million daily active users on average in December 2011.
* We had more than 425 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011.
* Facebook is available in more than 70 languages