Making an impact with social media pays off

The use of social media networks at this point is proliferate. Facebook has millions of users, Twitter gets millions of tweets a day and there are yet more people reading these messages and taking note of the sites' significance who haven't even started participating in the discussion. The range of consumers that a targeted social media campaign can reach is vast.

Research has shown that the average American will spend at least seven hours per month on Facebook, according to a Nielson review of Internet activity. That's at least three times more than any other leading website, according to the research, meaning that of the more than 200 million users currently online, most were spending their hours on Facebook. Businesses need to move in on this population of dedicated viewers.

Leading the pack

Nielson's data shows that Google is the only site more interesting to the online community than social media network, and the time spent there nowhere near as great as that being spent on Facebook.

Keeping a person on a page longer than a minute was also uncommon for most websites, the research showed. This means companies must make a splash as soon as a consumer looks at a web page or email in order to relay the most information to the viewer before he or she navigates away from that site.

Fortunately, this makes social media an ideal target for business advertising because consumers are less likely to move away from the channel than any other site during a short period of time. Not only do they spend the most time there, other research published by the Huffington Post shows that consumers are drawn to Facebook and LinkedIn so strongly that they show almost borderline addictive traits. The data collected from other groups including the University of Chicago and The Guardian found that compulsive behaviors were more powerful toward social media than nicotine or caffeine.

"People use social media for so many different reasons it's easy to see why they spend so much time on these sites," said Social Media Solution's senior product manager Erika Kerekes. "Job searches, news headlines and staying in touch with friends and family keep people on sites like Google + and Facebook for hours at a time. This makes them ideal for ad campaigns because users are more likely to see business promotions on these sites than any other."

A captive audience

Tricia Carr of Luxury Daily agrees with Kerekes in that respect. Not only are people more willing to view ads on social media sites, as they're spending so much time there while online anyway, but research shows they're more likely to pursue these ads if they catch their interest.

A Yesmail Interactive study found that social media-related contacts led to 50 percent more conversion when combined with other online marketing techniques. When a company contacted a user more than once about a product or service within 24 hours of showing interest on Facebook or similar sites, the conversion rate was 100 percent in some cases, Luxury Daily reported.

The study found that these techniques were successful for businesses of all sizes, so smaller companies looking to save money while engineering campaigns shouldn't be afraid of pursuing online options.

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