Social Media Trends: Where does your business fit?

It's ironic that at the same time developing a social media policy is a social media "trend", social media usage trends are showing that businesses - at least the ones surveyed by a Smartbrief and SummusLimmted partnership  - are still new to social media. Not to blame them, of course - social media is a frightening, daunting whirlwind of a world - but it is to surmise that businesses are entering the social media worth either with a policy already in place, or one in the works.  While this is probably a good thing overall, there are some limiting impacts this can have.

That is, many businesses are probably under the impression that Facebook is a vital, though somewhat scar tool (though they're not quite sure for what) and that everybody who's anybody is registering with LinkedIn.  It's true, the "big 5" in social media are (in order from biggest, to "smallest"): Facebook, Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Youtube. These are the major sites providing the forward momentum in the social media world, and most businesses are doubling their efforts to get involved in at least one of these social media giants because that is where their current customers are.

The only problem with that is if you want to improve - and this often means growing your customer base - you're going to need new customers, not just the loyalty of your old ones.  Less popular sites like Flickr and other media-sharing digital "co-ops" have, in many cases, just as big a user-base as the social media Neanderthals, but are, for whatever reason, less popular.  The "most important" designation doesn't always mean that it's most important for businesses.  It's vital to have a good working understanding of Facebook and Twitter, and it would do wonders for businesses to have at least one small video clip that is searchable on Youtube, but the more social media savvy of businesses - that is, the ones who will grow the most in the near future - will be the ones who are branching out into other social media platforms that may not be making headlines as much, but have just as much user activity and just as much potential to spread information.

It's hard to know all that, though, when you're only 7 months to a year into the game, as over 20% of businesses are.  Almost ten percent of those businesses surveyed don't even know how long they've been engaging in social media (and only five percent have been using social media for more than five years), so don't worry if you're still a little clueless about this world.  Perhaps the best thing that businesses can do in the coming months is become educated about the latest in social media and its use this knowledge to inform how they do business.

Photo Credit: Scott Rich