Is it time to be Social for Lead generation and Inbound Marketing
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Fri, Jun 11, 2010
For any type of lead generation or inbound marketing is appears that social network website like Facebook is the way to go. A recent study has found that social networking sites, led by Facebook, are now more popular among UK web users than Google and other search engines such as Bing or Yahoo. Experian Hitwise, which gathers browsing information from 8 million people in the UK, said social networks accounted for 11.88 per cent of internet visits in May, which overtook search engines at 11.33 per cent of visits. So for any type of lead generation or inbound marketing the best place to be is where the people are and that is social media.
For Lead generation and inbound marketing social media is only starting as according to Robin Goad, research director at Hitwise UK "Social content is growing at a very fast rate, much faster than search". Facebook, which has about 500m users globally and makes up 55 per cent of UK social network visits, has driven social media's charge against Google. But Google's lead over other search engines was greater in the UK than the US, which meant it was unlikely to be overtaken by Facebook here in the near future, Mr Goad said.
In terms of lead generation or inbound marketing there were many people concerned about the recent stories over Facebook security. However in spite of the controversy over its handling of personal information, interest in Facebook shows no sign of waning. "Based on what we know from Bebo and MySpace, when the average session [visit] time starts to drop, it means people are leaving," Mr Goad said. "Facebook's session time continues to hold up and slightly grow. There are still new people joining, although at a slower rate. The people using it are using it more." So there you have it is time to look at social media for Lead Generation and Inbound Marketing.
If you are looking for more help on lead generation and inbound marketing, SiliconCloud are running a free webinar next week to people business make the most of social media for lead generation and inbound marketing. You can check it out here: What is Inbound Marketing.