72% of marketers are social media noobs

By Molly Flatt

The great thing about Michael Stelzner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report, based on the habits of 900 marketers, is the way it shows marketers waking up to the importance of social media: 88% of them are using it in some way. The worrying thing is that 72% of them have only begun using it in the past few months, and that 81% see the top two benefits as generating exposure and increasing traffic.

Hmm. This paints a picture of an awful lot of new marketers flinging themselves at the space without really understanding what they’re doing or why. When their priorities are, apparently, ‘gaining the all-important eyeball’ and raising their search engine rankings – rather than learning from the conversation out there, encouraging peer to peer word of mouth and building sustained advocacy – you feel a little chill.

Stelzner’s report does encourage marketers to observe and build some insight before they act, and it’s a glimpse into the explosion of the industry. But it also reinforces the suspicion that many of them are more interested in projecting their own waffle than listening to consumer WOM…

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Brought into the world on Friday, March 27th, 2009 and filed under Uncategorized.

  • http://www.thehussy.co.uk art

    if marketers start using social networking as an advertising media, won’t that kill social networking? how will you figure out who is socialising and who is selling? kinda like the way product placemnts seems more underhand than the adverts in between programmes.

  • Molly Flatt

    It depends how transparent it is. You might want to look at our posts about Pay Per Post situation…