With a record number of women on social networks, getting to the heart of their motivations for participating in these social spaces is more important to marketers and business owners than ever before.  A recent survey by a women’s social networking site called ShesConnected attempted to tackle the question “What do women want out of social networks?” Their findings not only illuminated what women are looking for on social networks, but also where they’re going to get what they want.

Why is this so important? Well, if you’re looking for the perfect gift to get the woman in your life for her Birthday or trying to decode what she means when she says “It’s fine!” this information won’t help you; but, if you’re selling women’s products online this will give you a good idea of where you need to be to reach your market.

Where Are All The Ladies?
Facebook and LinkedIn were by far the most popular social networks with the women surveyed. Below is the percentage of women who indicated that they were members of each social network:

• Facebook 83%
• LinkedIn 73%
• Twitter 55%
• MySpace 41%

The results of the survey show that the women on these social networks are very active. In fact, more than half of women check their networks multiple times per day, and 48% reported being a member of four or more social networks.

What Makes These Social Networks Appealing to Women?
When surveyed, the top five responses that women cited as being “very important” reasons for them to join social networks were: (more…)

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Throughout the month of November we will be running our “SMB Blog Series.” While SMB traditionally refers to “Small/Medium Business,” here at Volusion it has come to mean something else: “Small Made Big.” This month we will be sharing resources, tips, stats, and inspirations to help you turn your small ecommerce endeavor into something greater- something BIG!

We all know Twitter can be great for advertising your business and connecting with your customers, but what business owners sometimes overlook is the value that Twitter provides them as entrepreneurs. Twitter can help business owners stay on top of industry news and connect with fellow online store owners.

Here are some great hashtags to get your business plugged in on Twitter:

• #smb
• #smallbusiness
• #SMBs
• #entrepreneurs
• #startups
• #ecommerce

(more…)

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Earlier this year eMarketer wrote an article based on MarketingSherpa’s surprising findings concerning social media effectiveness and measurability.

MarketingSherpa’s study asked US Social Media Marketing Professionals to identify the most appropriate marketing uses for social media. Here are the results (in order of effectiveness):

1. Influence brand reputation
2. Increase brand awareness
3. Improve search engine rankings
4. Increase website traffic
5. Generate leads
6. Improve internal communications
7. Increase online sales

If you have a small company, chances are you’ve heard the following phrase in a marketing meeting while discussing whether or not to engage in social media: “It will increase our online sales!” As you can see, however, this oft cited justification for involvement in social media is actually the least effective marketing use for social media. When you’re thinking about social media involvement you have to be thinking long term. The biggest marketing impact you will have will be changes in brand reputation and brand awareness. Next in line will be SEO benefits, and an increase in traffic and leads. It’s likely that all of these things will ultimately lead to an increase in sales, but not overnight.

Social Media Tactics That Get the Most Bang For the Buck

Since your company’s social media efforts are going to be a long-term commitment you should determine what’s most important to your company and which activities align with those factors. Ask yourself “Is it more important to be able to measure the results of my social media efforts now or is it more important to focus on social media efforts that will be the ‘most effective’ in the long-run?” (more…)

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There is a whole sea of blog posts out there telling you how to tweet and what to tweet and when to tweet, but the common theme among them is that they rarely provide actionable specifics. In this post, we will try to give you an idea of what you should tweet about in a way that encourages your business to develop a plan of action.

What are Users Tweeting Now?

To get started, let’s look at what individuals and companies are already tweeting about. A recent eMarketer article revealed that all tweets on Twitter as of August 2009 could be broken down into the following categories:

• Pointless Babble (also known as the “Sitting in my chair now!” tweets*) 40.55%
• At Replies (@TwitterUser) 37.55%
• Retweets (RT @TwitterUser) 8.70%
• Self-Promotion 5.85%
• Spam 3.75%
• News 3.60%

Unfortunately the three types of tweets that give Twitter a bad name (the pointless babble, self-promotion, and spam) account for more than half of all tweets, leaving the beneficial and insightful aspects of Twitter (the replies, retweets, and news) in the minority.

What Should You Tweet?

As a business, you will need to make sure that you use your Twitter account correctly. But how? What should you tweet about? There is no one “right way” to approach tweeting on behalf of your company, but here is a good model to follow: (more…)

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In light of Facebook recently announcing that that they are now cash flow positive, we felt it was important to look at how the “Big Four” of social networks are stacking up these days. In Internet Retailer’s August publication* profiles for Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter were compared on the basis of everything from unique monthly visitors to time spent by visitors on the social networks, to how many of the Internet Retailer Top 500 companies were using them. The results were a bit surprising!

Appeal

In terms of unique monthly visitors, YouTube and Facebook swept MySpace and Twitter. The great appeal that YouTube and Facebook command is likely as a result of the mass appeal strategy that they have both mastered.

YouTube started mainly as an amateur home video and performance video platform. Since then though, YouTube has allowed businesses into the party too, letting them post their branded video content, training videos, commercials, and more.

Similarly, Facebook started off with a base of just college students. Eventually they expanded to allow high school students as well, and now people of all ages can join the site. They then went a step further, inviting businesses to create a profile, build a fan page, and use all of the applications and features offered.

MySpace never really embraced all users. They didn’t ban businesses from joining, but they didn’t make it easy for businesses to set themselves apart from teens looking for friends and bands trying to gain exposure. The result was a poor user experience for business owners and very little perceived return.

Twitter is letting businesses do their thing, but it has only been around for a mere two years compared to Facebook’s five years and YouTube’s four years, so we don’t really know what it can do yet. There have been rumors that Twitter may be rolling out “premium accounts” for businesses looking for a more business-specific experience on the social media platform. We shall see! (more…)

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