If I had two words of advice to help a wedding professional become more successful in the wedding industry, it would be: network more. The more you reach out, participate and engage your fellow bridal industry pros, the more opportunities for business will ultimately arise. Think of it this way: It's hard for someone to recommend you when no one knows who you are! Social networking sites such at Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are 3 of the easiest ways to begin building professional relationships with others in the wedding industry and provide an outlet for building your brand and knowledge authority. Whether you like it or not, today's brides are online and eager to reach out and utilize these methods of communication, so if you're still "on the fence" about becoming active in an online social networking environment, check out the 37 social media stats below, and you just might change your mind:
If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the United States and Indonesia
1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network
Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
Years to Reach 50 millions Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet(4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
Yet, some sources say China’s QZone is larger with over 300 million using their services (Facebook’s ban in China plays into this)
comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network
2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
% of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily
Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour
Facebook USERS translated the site from English to Spanish via a Wiki in less than 4 weeks and cost Facebook $0
25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services than how Google ranks them
78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
Only 14% trust advertisements
Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
90% of people that can TiVo ads do
Hulu has grown from 63 million total streams in April 2008 to 373 million in April 2009
25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phone
According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available
24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media
More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook…daily.
Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like David Ogilvy Listening first, selling second
Successful companies in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertiser
(source: Socialnomics Blog)
Together we can advance the wedding industry.
