Why Social Media: The Numbers are There…

This week we look into the reasons why you need to be on social media. The biggest reason why I hear my clients say they need to be is “because everyone else is.” That is the worst reason. There are so many good reasons to have a social media presence… because everyone else does is not a valid answer.

The first and number 1 reason is because there is a gigantic audience there that is easily segmented. Traditional advertising is centered around television and print advertising. Let’s look at the numbers…

Television advertising

• Super Bowl XLVI (Giants and Patriots) was the most-watched television event in American history with 111.3 million people

• Obama’s inauguration was one of the most talked about events in recent history and only 38.4 million people tuned in to his first inauguration. He second inauguration was only watched by slightly more than half of the first audience (20 million).

Newspaper advertising

• The Wall Street Journal has the largest daily circulation of any newspaper in the United States with 2,378,827 subscribers.
• The New York Times is number two with a mere 1,865,318.
• In the Chicago market, the Chicago Sun-Times has the larger circulation number at 470,548 (the Chicago Tribune has 414,930)

When we think of these numbers, they sound astronomical. But they are a mere fraction of the social media numbers. Let’s look at the number of users on some of the most popular social media sites.

• Facebook boasts 1.11 billion people using the site each month
• Twitter and Google+ both boast a user base of roughly 500 million.
• LinkedIn has roughly 200 million.

Besides the fact that there are so many people that are actively using these platforms, social media offers marketers the opportunity to reach super-segmented groups. This will be discussed in more depth tomorrow. But for today, the number one reason why you need to be on social media is that your customers are (as well as your competitors).