70% of Australian businesses plan to use social media in 2010. What will they use it for?

70% of Australian businesses plan to use social media in 2010. What will they use it for?

A new study has found that there has been a massive jump by Australian business in their use of social media as a marketing tool. This survey of 347 companies, conducted by research company Nielsen has found that 70% plan to use social media in 2010.

What are businesses planning to do with social media and what can you learn for your business?

Here are the key findings of the research:

  • Companies are shifting marketing budgets away from print media and direct marketing into social media spend. Over 50% of large firms of more than 100 employees stated that they planned to do this in 2010.
  • 21% of businesses were planning to increase their marketing budgets to include social media
  • Small businesses have the biggest take-up of social media: in 2008, 32% of SME businesses were using social media but by Jan/Feb 2010 this had grown to 67%
  • The average amount of marketing budget allocated to social spending was stated to be between 5-20%
  • Brand building is seen as the most important reason for using social media (rather than direct response sales), with customer feedback, customer engagement and word-of-mouth as secondary objectives
  • 54% of organisations had a formal social media strategy in place or were developing one
  • 42% said that senior management still didn’t buy into social media which was a barrier to further investment

Australian businesses recognise that if they don’t use social media in their marketing efforts they run the risk of not connecting with their target audiences which could hurt their long run sales.

What content can be offered by social media?

The most popular uses for social media reported by users in the study are as follows:

  • Company and product information and updates (81%)
  • Offer deals and offers (46%)
  • Breaking news (34%)
  • Competitions (32%)
  • Video, Podcasts etc (25%)

What can I learn for my business?

Here are our outtakes from this study for Australian online shops:

  • If you’re not planning to use social media, rethink your plans because your competitors will be using it!
  • Get your customers involved with product updates and giving you feedback
  • Add a social bookmarking link to your web pages – this is included as a free add-on in new Ozcart packages and can be installed into older sites for a minimal admin fee
  • Here are some social sites you can build into those plans, also courtesy of separate Neilsen social media research:
    Australian Social Media 2009
Ozcart Ecommerce

Ozcart has been in business since 2006 and is an online, hosted shopping cart that you can use for your current or new online store. We offer so many features for the same low price. In fact, we are addicted to adding new ones to ensure that we remain one of the best choices for a shopping cart. https://ozcart.com

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