| matt |
| The Social-Site Trend |
| 2009.11.07 12:46:50 | |
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One cannot ignore the growing impact social networking sites are having on the online community. According to a recent Neilson report of August 2009, online traffic to social networking sites now makes up 17% of the time spent on the internet, up from 6% from this time last year. Consider that for a moment. The time spent online dedicated to social networking sites has tripled in the last year. When it comes to having an online presence, you cannot be taken seriously if you don’t take social networking sites seriously. This trend is indicative of the online community changing the way they search for information. While search engines like Google and and portal sites like Yahoo!, MSN and AOL make up for 71% of all search queries, the remaining 18% are handled by social networking sites. This is an increasing trend and can be attributed to a simple precept: people trust their friends more than they do strangers. A Forrest Research report discovered that when rating how much one trusts the information they are given, email from a friend ranked highest at 77% while corporate blogs rated lowest at 16%. As a company looking to distinguish yourself in the marketplace, you cannot rely on the information on your company’s site alone to do the trick. You must expand out into the social networking community, where your message is more believable. If you haven’t already, now is the time to start expanding the presence of your business in Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc… Tags: socail networking | trends |
