Social Media is no longer a buzz-phrase. At the rate it's growing and the way it's impacting our daily lives, we will soon appreciate the necessity of incorporating Social Media into your business model. Here in Toronto is no exception. Our Social Media marketing specialists based in Toronto have closely observed and actively used this medium, and it's proved to be one of the most powerful tools to solve and address a variety of business challenges, ranging anywhere from hiring an employee to acquiring a new customer.

Social Media Statistics

Statistics speak volumes. With the amount of action on Social Media web sites, as measured by some of the numbers listed below, it's clear that Social Media is no longer a small or niche medium:

Facebook

• There are more than 500 million registered users.
• The average Facebook user spends more than 55 minutes per day on it.
• About 70% of Facebook users live outside the US.
• The average Facebook user spends about twenty-one minutes plus per day at the online social network.
• The typical Facebook user visits four times per day.
• Facebook continues to add around 350,000 new users every day.
• Facebook's size doubles every 6 months.

Twitter

• Twitter is the fastest- growing Social Media medium.
• Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users.
• Twitter is adding 300,000 new users a day.
• About 60 percent of them are coming from outside the U.S.

YouTube

• 50% of YouTube users are under 20 years old.
• More videos were uploaded on YouTube in the last two months than if NBC, ABC, and CBS had been airing new content 24/7/365 since 1948 (Since ABC started broadcasting).
• The total amount of bandwidth used by YouTube is about the same as was used by the entire internet in 2000.
• One needs over 1,000 years of time to watch all videos on YouTube (but there will be billions of more videos uploaded on YouTube by then).

LinkedIn

• LinkedIn has over 75 million users in over 200 countries.

Some Scary Facts about Social Media (In General)

• The amount of years to reach target audiences:
  • Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users.
  • TV took 13 years
  • Internet took 4 years
  • iPod 3 years
  • Facebook reached over 200 million users in less than a year
• The top two Twitter accounts - Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears - contain more followers than the populations of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway, Austria and Panama COMBINED.
• Wikipedia has more than 15 million articles out of which over 75 per cent are non-English.
• There are over 200 million blogs.
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.
• Social Media has overtaken pornography as the most popular activity on the web.

There are countless reasons to use Social Media! Contrary to popular belief, Social Media is much more than "just another channel" to acquire new customers. Some of the key business objectives which can be met at our Toronto based agency, using Social Media, are as follows:

• ORM (Online Reputation Management)

  Social Media has handed the power of media to the hands of an ordinary user. Even more people will continue to express their opinions about a brand, product or service on sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Brands don't have the choice to NOT listen to the conversations about them.

• CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

  Whether you want to continuously engage with your customers, take their feedback or provide them support, Social Media is a great tool. Dell and HP are perfect examples of using Social Media, specifically Twitter and blogs, to transform the user experience.

• Crowdsourcing

  There's nothing better than including your customers and users in the creation of a product or a service. This is what 'crowdsourcing' is about. Social Media makes crowdsourcing a reality. For example, Starbucks asks their community members to provide inputs on the next coffee flavour.

• B2B Lead Generation

  Since the trend is that more professionals will continue to spend their precious time on Social Media, almost every organization has an opportunity to leverage this medium for lead generation.

• Human Resources

  In addition to employee engagement, Social Media is an excellent medium to hire new employees. It's not surprising that a LinkedIn Profile is increasingly replacing conventional resumes, especially here in Toronto.

The last, certainly not the least, important reason to care about Social Media today is the timing. Since only a few brands in few industries have started to give a serious look to Social Media, the opportunity for early movers is immense.