As 2011 comes to a close, many social media-related organizations are compiling numbers, facts and statistics about the exponential growth of social media over the past year. They’ve put their findings in some pretty creative and engaging infographics that give you a great perspective of how much social media is growing. We’ve picked out our favorites in relation to the financial industry and explained how these numbers can in turn boost your numbers in 2012.
Facebook isn’t just for the kids anymore. With more than 30% of the Facebook user base consisting of a 35 demographic, it’s safe to say that Facebook is harboring a large majority of your clients, potential clients, AND your competition. With 57% of people talking to people more online, it’s clear that many typical offline conversations are now happening online. Think: potential client introductions, marketing efforts and current client correspondence.
In 2011, Twitter soared past the 200 million member mark, and more financial professionals are inquiring as to what a “tweet” is. It’s for this reason that the “How to Twitter” infographic made our list. It has simple and easy directions that allow you to see just how easy Twitter is, as well as what you can do to increase your followers and network interaction, such as adding a picture and a short bio. It’s also full of Twitter definitions and “Good to Know” tips that will help you better understand the platform.
As the top professional networking site, LinkedIn has an arsenal of online tools that allow financial professionals to connect, network and share their content with other professionals. The LinkedIn Bootcamp infographic maps out the basic techniques and strategies to employ when utilizing the platform. With the ability to research and connect with a target audience, financial professionals can tap into a networking pool with an average household income of $109,000.
YouTube
This infographic, “YouTube Killed TV” paints an amazing picture of how far video has come in an online setting. More and more organizations are utilizing video in their marketing strategy, and this infographic explains why. With a 50% increase in views per day from 2010 to 2011, growth in TV advertising has subsided dramatically. And with YouTube holding its place as the 2nd ranked search engine online (behind Google), financial professionals can easily increase their SEO rank simply by creating, uploading and posting their videos on their social networks.
Content Marketing
Aaah, finally, the bread and butter of a social media strategy: content. Check out the percentage that social media has in relation to the most popular content marketing tactics used by businesses today: 79%. And that excludes blogs! This infographic is quite possibly my favorite when it comes to showcasing how important content marketing is within each social media strategy. It lists the reasons why: risk mitigation, lead generation, lead nurturing and lead scoring (notice that hot word: LEADS). It also lists the percentage of marketers using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube to distribute their content.
If you’d like to check out more cool infographics on social media and their growth throughout 2011, check out the following blog post: Social Media Marketing: 10 Inspiring Infographics
Amy McIlwain
@amymcilwain
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Here’s another great infographic: How Social Media Changed the Ad Game http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-marketing-infographic_b16501
What a great collection. Thanks for assembling! And I agree on the last one being the best. There are too many infographics that are more “graphic” than “info.”
Those are some great infographics. But they’re all fairly social-media oriented. What about finance-oriented infographics?
(Disclaimer: we created one ourselves, though we missed the deadline for your article: https://www.rplan.co.uk/post/1067/an-investor-s-2011-the-year-in-numbers-infographic )
Thanks for your feedback, Nick. Currently we havent found many finance-oriented infographics that focus online marketing but if anyone has some please send our way. We are working to create our own infographic specific to finance and social media in 2012. Stay tuned!
Amy, thanks for the reply and apologies for the late response.
It’s true that we haven’t been very good on that front as an industry. I look forward to seeing what you come up with - we’ll certainly be going ahead with more infographics on our site, probably more finance- than social media-oriented. Hopefully we’ll all do better (as an industry) in 2012 - infographics are a great tool to put complex information across in an easy-to-follow way, it would be a shame not to take greater advantage of them!
Thanks, Tim!