“Listening first, selling second” – How Social Media Change The Way We Do Business

By Peter Metzinger

“Listening first, selling second” is equivalent to what I say about Campaigning: first listen, then talk. The following video is an impressive summary of current figures and trends on social media and how they change the way we communicate and gives an impression what this may mean about how we do marketing and do business. A few quotes got my special attention:

1. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
2. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
3. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
4. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
5. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
6. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; 95% of these using LinkedIn
7. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
8. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
9. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
10. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
11. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations. Only 14% trust advertisements. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
12. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
13. We will no longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
14. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
15. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years
Source: http://socialnomics.net