Everybody you speak to these days about marketing strategy is buzzing about social media. In fact, while browsing LinkedIn today, I found an individual that claimed to be an expert with 18 years of social media experience. Wait a minute, what year did Al invent the Internet, and how long have social networks existed?

Hopefully, by now, you have resigned yourself to the fact that we do have a new communication medium on our hands. And this medium has a direct impact on how individuals and businesses consume products and services. But the new medium doesn’t only include social networks. It’s really just an expansion of how people interact using the Web. So in order to utilize the new medium effectively, your objectives should be more focused on visibility, and less focused on the number of friends and followers you have. Here are some extremely important trends to be aware of:

1. 80% of decision makers found their current vendors, as opposed to the other way around. Consumers and businesses are using the Web to find, validate, form their consideration set, and consume – with little to no direct company contact.
2. 72% of Baby Boomers are actively engaged in social networks, and 70% of executives feel they’ll be perceived as ‘out of touch’ if they don’t engage in social media. You didn’t think that only young whipper-snappers were reachable on the Internet, did you?
3. 74% of consumers engage with brands online after a purchase experience. You mean they might be talking about you, and you don’t even know it? You mean that customer loyalty and repeat business could be accelerated with sound social media strategy?

Notice the title of this post included the words “potentially disturbing.” In other words, these trends should only be disturbing if a visibility strategy is NOT part of your current marketing plan. If you are up to speed on social media marketing, and understand the opportunities associated with the three levels of the Web, then these trends should make you feel very excited about lowering your marketing costs while growing your market share.
If nothing I just said made sense to you, then I’d love nothing more than to sit down and demonstrate a few advantages associated with an active visibility strategy – real-time market intelligence, improved customer service, targeted lead generation with measurable ROI, and branding like you’ve never experienced…just to name a few.