Research on Social Networking – 3 Tips

The UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2009 is now available with some interesting facts

• Search engine optimisation is the area where companies are most likely to be investing more money, with 55% of respondents expecting an increase in their budget.
• According to agency respondents, social media marketing is the channel where clients are most likely to be boosting their investment over the course of the next year.
• Google remains king, with 85% of responding companies utilising the search engine for paid search.
• In the social media arena, Facebook continues to dominate, with 65% of companies currently using the social networking site as part of their marketing strategy. Twitter in particular has shown phenomenal growth since last year. Last year only 3% of responding organisations said that they were using Twitter in their marketing strategy, compared to an overwhelming 49% for this year.

So what does this tell us  ?

1. The world of search is not a web activity but a marketplace
2. We need to work harder if we want to get noticed. The more people enter the space the more innovative you have to be
3. The shift is happening quickly between advertising where people buy (websites) to where they decide to buy (social networks)