“Ben Grunfeld is a Web Developer and Social Marketing professional at Melbourne IT, and has just released the book ‘Social Media for Business Marketing’ on the Amazon Kindle bookstore (http://bit.ly/bensbook).”

Many business owners and entrepreneurs today are asking themselves the vital question: “How can Social Media affect my enterprise? Does the return justify a potential investment in Social Marketing, or can we experience our desired growth without it?”

This has become such a hot issue in the past two years that you’d be hard pressed to find a business-related magazine that doesn’t explore it at some depth or another. Corporations like Coca-Cola and Lindt have dedicated entire marketing divisions to their Social profiles, while football teams like the Oregon Ducks have opened Social Media command centers to maximize the effectiveness of their Social campaigns (source: http://bit.ly/comcenter). This alone should suggest the answer to the above question, but let’s explore some statistics that may shed further light on the situation.

  • According to Facebook’s IPO filing amendment, submitted on the 27th of March 2012, users spend more than 10.5 billion minutes on the site every day. That’s about 20,000 years, if you do the number crunching. What’s even more impressive is that this figure only accounts for desktop use, meaning that the real number is much higher with the addition of Mobile device browsing. (source: http://bit.ly/fbipo27march)
  • 59% of Pinterest users have purchased an item they saw on the site. 33% of Facebook users have purchased an item they saw on their news feed or a friend’s wall.
  • Social media users who receive excellent customer service from brands spend on average 21% more than non-social customers.
  • 55% of consumers share their purchases socially on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other social sites.

(source: http://bit.ly/216socialstats)

When you take numbers like these into account, it really paints the picture that Social Media has become an integral part of the business life-cycle, and instead of asking “can we do without it”, the question is raised – “will businesses in the future be able to survive without a rock-solid Social Marketing campaign?”

My personal feeling is that they won’t, and this is substantiated by the marketing visions of the larger corporations who are already gearing themselves towards a Social-Mobile future, and the fact that so much commerce is simply moving online.

It was my fascination with this broiling and pressurized issue that led me to write and publish my book “Social Media for Business Marketing“ on the Amazon Kindle bookstore, as a way of teaching businesses how to plan and implement successful Social Media campaigns, not only keeping them competitive with more tech-savvy brands, but helping them excel at marketing.

Since going to market only a few weeks ago, the book has been met with an overwhelmingly positive response, with a major construction company in Sydney already adopting the methodologies listed in it as the basis of their Social Marketing work, and inviting me to New South Wales to host a seminar on the issue.

In truth, I have attempted to make “Social Media for Business Marketing” a clear and instructive manual that deals with issues like the difference in purpose between the various Social Networks and the individual effect each can have on your business, as well as more personable topics like how to make people love your brand on Social Media, and purely practical topics, such as a step-by-step guide to building a Social Marketing campaign plan.

It is my hope that the business of anyone who reads the book will benefit greatly, and ultimately succeed in their attempts at creative marketing in the Social Space.

Please visit the Amazon Kindle bookstore for more information on the book ‘Social Media for Business Marketing‘ by Ben Grunfeld.

Ben Grunfeld (@bengrunfeld) is a social media expert who specializes in helping medium-large enterprises strategize and implement social marketing campaigns. Besides being a regular contributor to the Melbourne IT blog, he has recently released the Kindle book "Social Media for Business Marketing", which has already received very positive reviews.

http://bengrunfeld.com