Unconvinced?  Some social media marketing statistics for cynical construction professionals

If you’re yet to be convinced that social media marketing can help grow your construction firm from an unknown local business to a highly respected competitor, here are some statistics which may help you to change your mind (Source:  Social Media Today, Aug 2009 and econsultancy.com, Aug 2009).

1.   Of 900 in-house marketers, 88% indicated they were using social media marketing as part of their marketing plan.

2. 64% of those marketers said that they were posting to sites including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in excess of five hours each week ; 39% were using it for 10 hours or more – we warned you it was time intensive!

3. The main reason for carrying out social media marketing was to increase online exposure for the firm.  81% of marketers said that this was their principal objective, with over half actually seeing a rise in Google rankings.

4. At the time the research was released, LinkedIn had 45 million members.  80% of companies were planning to use LinkedIn as a principal means of finding future employees.  In 2011 LinkedIn now has over 100 million members.

5. On average, around 900,000 blog posts are created over the course of one 24 hour period.

6. Between April and August 2009, Twitter was receiving on average, around 20 million new unique visitors to the site each month. Twitter in 2011 has 190 million users tweeting about 65 million times in one day.

7. And finally, our personal favourite.  It took radio 38 years and TV 13 years to reach an audience of 50 million.  It took the internet four years to reach 50 million people. Facebook achieved 100 million users in nine months.

Convinced yet?