More and more agencies are ramping up staff understanding and expertise on new media. The latest is Lessing-Flynn. Lessing-Flynn has introduced a new, turnkey service developed specifically to assist businesses in both developing and executing social media marketing strategies. The new service, called Reel Social, was designed to help marketers tap into the marketing potential of emerging new media tools like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs.
“Most companies know there is tremendous potential in social media marketing because research shows that’s where people are spending more and more of their time,” said Josh Fleming, Interactive Marketing Director at Lessing-Flynn. “However, most either don’t know where to start, don’t know how to use social media effectively or just don’t have the internal resources to do it themselves.
Recent studies support a growing need for companies to engage with their customers using social media:
• 88% of marketers surveyed indicated they were employing social media for marketing purposes.72% reported this was a new initiative within the past few months. (Michael Stelzner, WebProNews)
• Social networks and blogs beat other online activity, including personal email, to become the 4th most popular online activity. (Nielson Online) • 80% of companies use LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees. (NielsonOnline)
• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. (“Socialnomics”,ErikQualman)
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (Web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook daily. (“Socialnomics”, Erik Qualman)
• YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. (“Socialnomics”, Erik Qualman)
“Social media is essentially a whole new type of marketing tool,” said Fleming. “It’s totally different from traditional media like tv, radio and print. There’s no reason why social media can’t be a very effective tool for any company – if it’s backed by the right strategy, then well executed.”
I won’t argue with that.