Passionate people all have something that they enjoy looking forward to. Football fans love Super Bowl Sunday, music lovers are already planning for next year’s Coachella Festival and social media marketers can’t wait to read the annual Social Media Industry Report.
The Social Media Examiner published the 2012 Social Media Industry Report on April 3, 2012. This year’s report surveyed over 3800 marketers of all ages employed in a variety of different industries including agencies, small businesses and B2B/B2C companies.
Didn’t catch the report? Here’s what you missed:
- Social media management is a big time commitment. No surprise there, but do you know how much of a time commitment? Well over half (59 percent on participants) spend 6 hours or more each week on social media. Meanwhile 33 percent spend 11 hours or more. Also, interestingly enough, more experience in social media directly correlates with more time spent working on social media marketing.
- It is safe to assume that the majority of us believe there are a lot of benefits to working in social media marketing. The top two benefits are increased exposure and increased traffic.
- As we all know by now, social media is ever-changing. Just think: who was using Pinterest one year ago? But how do marketers plan on changing their future social media activities? The number one platform for the second year in a row was YouTube, followed by Facebook and Twitter.
- Along those same lines, which tools do marketers want to learn more about? An overwhelming amount of social media marketers replied with ‘Google+’. Many are also interested in learning more about blogs and Facebook.
- To outsource or not, that is the common question. The greater majority (70 percent) said no. Although this percentage increased over the last year, many prefer to manage their social media strategy in-house.
- Social media marketers wear many digital marketing hats. The top three activities that these professional participate in is email, SEO and event marketing, in the appropriate order.
Obviously, this is a very brief overview of the 42-page report. If you haven’t had a chance to take a look at the 2012 Social Media Industry Report, you’ll want to do so. Sometimes, it’s just nice to know that you’re on the same page as other marketers. You can find it by visiting the Social Media Examiner blog.
