From the NM MainStreet eNewsletter August 2011
Social media has changed the face of marketing. Businesses and organizations have the opportunity to not only share their message, but to interact with the people who receive it.
Recently, the City of Los Angeles announced that they would begin construction on freeway 405 on Friday, July 15. The 405 is one of the most heavily traveled roads in the country. In addition to all the traditional means of communicating to the public about the issue, the City asked several local, well-known celebrities to share the announcement on their… Twitter accounts. Imagine that, city road construction announcements – sent to millions of people – via Twitter.
Are you still not sure about using Twitter, Facebook and other social media in your marketing campaign? Here are some facts you should know. Americans have access to over…
- 200 cable television stations
- 5,500 magazines
- 10,500 radio stations
- 65,000 iPhone apps
- 1,000,000,000,000 web pages
And…
- Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US
- If Facebook was a country, it would be the 3rd largest in the world
- The Ford Explorer launch on Facebook generated more traffic than a Super Bowl commercial
- 90% of customers trust peer recommendations… 14% trust advertisements
- 93% of marketers now use social media for business
Bottom Line: The return on investment of social media for your business will still exist in FIVE years
(Source: Social Revolution and Did you Know? videos on YouTube)
So what does this mean to MainStreet? People are out there, it is up to us to reach out to them. We should be using every opportunity to promote our downtowns through social media and encourage the businesses in our district to use these tools also.
“We don’t have a choice whether we DO social media, the question is how WELL we DO it!” – Eric Qualman