Nielsen has just released its 2011 Q3 report on social media.  It delivers troves of recent social media stats, and since we can all infer things like social networks and blogs are the dominate destination online without reading a report, I’ve summarized the Nielsen report to the 4 statistics I found most interesting.


40% ARE MOBILE SOCIAL MEDIA USERS
This is interesting because there are many business owners that have done tons to bolster their social media presence but still do nothing to optimize their websites for mobile.  How many prospects do you lose when then cannot navigate easily or at all through your website?  They may have found you through a mobile product on social media but can not continue their research if you do not have mobile ready content.  Some may argue that it depends on your target market; if you still believe this, the next point is for you

AGE 55+ IS DRIVING THE GROWTH OF MOBILE SOCIAL
There has been an increase of 47% since last year!  The older generation I’ve seen pulled in by their kids and relatives, then realize the usefulness of it in keeping in touch with long lost friends and family.  This statistic is important because there are a lot of business owners that cater to older customers that may still believe that their marketing efforts should never be targeted to online, much less social media.

70% OF ACTIVE SOCIAL USERS SHOP ONLINE 12% MORE LIKELY
Retailers, read this one again and again.  If you know where your business will get the most attention, well by all means focus your efforts there.  Social media sites are full of ad opportunities both locally and national.  Even small local retailers can integrate this into their overall marketing strategy and gain an advantage.

TIME SPENT ON TOP 5 SOCIAL MEDIA SITES (000s), DESCENDING ORDER
Facebook- 53,457,258 minutes
Blogger- 723,793 minutes
Tumblr- 623,525 minutes
Twitter- 565,156 minutes
Linkedin- 325,679 minutes

Does you budget reflect this?

There they are, the most interesting stats of this report, however you can view the full report HERE and please feel free to share your thoughts on the 2011 social media stats here in the comments below.  Lastly, if you like statistics and you live in the El Paso area, check out this great blog post on El Paso Demographics.

According to Econsultancy.com 47% of businesses today are unable to measure their social media campaign ROI.  How much would you say you make for every dollar you spend on your social media campaign?  According to the Direct Marketing Association, the only interactive marketing channel that drove more sales than social media’s $14.3 billion was email marketing.  If the Direct Marketing Association can do it with a team of mathematicians and troves of raw data from years of research, why is it that it is so hard to measure for the average business owner?  It is simply the lack of raw data, time set aside to evaluate and familiarity.  Business owners are at a loss of which measuring stick to use.

There are ways to try and funnel your social media efforts into a hard summed total.  However, there are far too many variables to add up.  For example, you may find someone first hears about you on a social site, clicks through to your shopping website to research only to return in person to buy.  In this instance there is no way of tying your social campaign to a hard sales number.  Instead, let’s consider 3 separate areas, that when consistently analyzed together, can give you a more capable measuring stick.

1.        Quantitative – track how many followers, friends, or likes to you receive each month as well as how many unique visits you receive and the bounce rate of those visits from your social media sites.  Bounce rate is the percentage of visits that were the person left from the same page, signifying low interest or relevance.

2.       Qualitative – read what is being said about your company and tally how many “likes” your campaign receives.  Also consider using services like Rapleaf or Adobe Online Marketing Suite to gain valuable insight on what your customers are saying about you.  You can also do a simple Google search to see what pops up on blogs and/or comments.

3.       ROI Metrics – track what you can back to your campaigns by tagging customers’ receipt of or delivery of a social campaign.  Use a software like salesforce, zoho, or a spreadsheet if nothing else.

Mesh these together and you’ll end up with a pretty good idea of how your efforts are going.  Track in a spreadsheet at each quarter and take time to make changes and/or tend to this aspect of your marketing efforts as you do your all other important aspects of your business.  Your cash register will be glad you did.