New Media and Customer Engagement; Time to Jump on Board!

As every employer and job seeker alike has come to realize, social media is the next wave in the future. It has grown tremendously impacting the culture of businesses and communcations across the board forcing us to jump on the bandwagon or get lost in dust. What is the true impact and results of this new mode of communication?


Social media by definition enables relationship growth and development as well as an outlet for two way conversations across multiple facets in a way never expected. To better explain just the impact of social media alone, there are roughly 200 million US internet users with 86% of those utilizing soical media sites, consequently spending 73% of their online time updating, researching, marketing, promoting or chatting these sites such as Linked In, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and the list goes on and on...This is a huge statistic especially as the number of internet users alone has jumped 86% in the past 7 years, making an increase of 883% logging onto social media sites.



The trend is apparent, social media is a necessity and spikes in usage is seen across all demographics. What is the result of this? Businesses are creating new jobs for experts within social media to promote their company, recruit and to provide customer service.


Ready to jump aboard yet? Where to start? Remember, social media has many outlets and there is not one particular site that works for all, really think about what you are trying to do and to who before you dive in.


When looking at your Social Media and Marketing strategies you want to incorporate your corporate brand into everything you do. You want to be sure you are involving the entire business so that you are engaging not only current employees but also potential prospects and customers. Some questions to really disect are: what's your goal, who's your audience, what is the best network for me to join - this is done by researching and commenting, how do I integrate with my existing network and lastly how do we measure this success.


Remember to keep it professional and business oriented, the internet can be a scary place so research, research, research.