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5
Creative Ways to Fund Your Business
There
are very few good things that can be said about the
Great Recession, but one of them is this: There are a
lot more ways to fund a business than there ever used to
be — necessity being the mother of invention and all...........
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5
Surprising Social Media Statistics
That Affect Your Business
By
Dave Johnson, Business Hacks
How important is
social media to the success of your business? Perhaps more so
than you think. A recent study from the Nielson consulting group
on the
state of social media in 2011 suggests that a smart online
presence is more important than ever. Here are five key
takeaways from the report, as chronicled by
Wisebread:
Americans spend three times as much time on social media as on
email. Specifically, we spend 7.6% of our time
on traditional email and 23% of our time on social networks. If
your marketing campaigns are tied up in email, you might be
talking, but no one is listening. Instead, you should be
investing in social network profiles and blogging.
More than 70% of social network users shop online.
The stereotypes are wrong — social networkers are computer
savvy, older, and use their PCs for online commerce.
More people follow brands than celebrities.
Speaking of stereotypes, Facebook isn’t just full of people who
follow Justin Bieber. Fifty-three percent of adults follow
specific brands online, while just 32% of them follow
celebrities. That’s a real opportunity to engage.
Well over half of users write reviews of products and services
online. You have heard that personal reviews are
more persuasive than endorsements from traditional media, and
statistics are starting to back that up. Neilson found, for
example, that 60% of social networkers are writing reviews and
sharing them with friends. This is another huge crisis,
challenge, and opportunity rolled into one (Homer Simpson would
call this a “cris-atunity”). You need to figure out how to tap
into that conversation and set up an appropriate dialog.
Mobile users increased by 62% in 2011. Getting
optimized for mobile is no longer an option. Twice as many
people over 55 years old visited social media sites on their
phones compared to 2010, and mobile use of social networking is
up 62% overall.
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