Social Media is Changing SMB Marketing + Hurricanes & Marine Micro Fauna

During the course of this year’s AMI-Partners Social Media Marketing awards presentation on November 11^th in NYC, MyVenturePad received the best of class award in social media marketing demand generation. I want to thank the Social Media Today staff and all the bloggers and members of MVP for their continuing participation in this growing community focused on the issues facing small business. Nearly all the major technology vendors, AT&T, Dell, HP, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Intuit, Oracle and Avaya received awards for excellence in social media marketing to SMBs globally. SMBs are an increasingly important opportunity for technology vendors as there are now an estimated 80-100 million small and medium businesses worldwide. http://www.ami-partners.com/index.php?target=news&mode=details&news_id=157#157

It is always great to receive awards but I thought the data AMI presented about social media in the SMB world would be of significant interest to the MVP community. AMI-Partners presented an excellent overview of how SMBs are shifting to electronic media & information sources driven by relevancy, trust, and interactivity. This is really no surprise, although there are a lot of old schoolers out there that are ignoring the opportunity to get closer to their customers. Let’s take a big picture look at their findings from a purely business perspective first, as a “data dog” I love research, reading the data, and found their data points to be insightful.

Key business challenges facing SMBs globally are:

• Decreased Revenue
• Canceled Orders
• Restricted Cash Flow
• Slower Payment
• Tight Credit

Nothing surprising here, but what was really interesting about their findings was that only 5% of those SMBs surveyed were aware of any stimulus packages and were benefiting from it. Nearly 50% were unaware of any stimulus money available for them. So much for the stimulus packages, were did the money go?

Globally there was a slight decrease in concern about economic conditions, which ranged from 70% in North American and close to 50-55% for the LATAM, EMEA and APAC, this is again very insightful.

SMBs are Shifting their IT Decision Making

Information technology can and is delivering competitive advantage in all business and new media is gaining significant ground on traditional media when it comes to the purchasing decision making for IT products.

• Traditional Print and Media (decreased significantly in small businesses).
• Internet sites (increased overall globally).
• Search Engines (increased overall globally).
• Social Networks (significant increase overall globally).
• Referrals VARs IT consultants (decreased significantly globally).
• Trade Associations & Industry Conferences (decreased significantly globally).

AMI’s findings show that an estimated 4.8 million SMBs in the U.S. and (76%) use some form of social media for business use. This represents $180 billion in information technology spend and 48% used some form of social media in the purchase decision making process.

Two other important points:

• Nearly $23 billion of information technology sending was impacted by Social Media in 2010
• AMI projects that social media will impact $53 billion in U.S. SMB ICT spending by 2013

Vital Statistics:

• Data collected during Q1 2010
• Total sample size N=378, from a sampling pool of 11,000 US SMBs.  The sample was representative of all employee size bands, verticals and geography.
• Employee size bands:  1-4, 5-9, 10-19, 20-49, 50-99, 100-249, 250-499, 500-999
• Verticals: Agri/Min/Utils/Trans/Cnst/Bldg (AMTUC), FIRE/Finance/Real Estate (FIRE), Manufacturing, Professional Business Services, Retail,  Wholesale, Other Services

 

 Net/Net

Social media is accelerating the purchase decision making of SMBs and enabling them to purchase more technology faster. This is something that early SNCR research identified last year in The New Symbiosis of Professional Networks study which can be found on this site http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/143500. The growing level of trust in social media peer groups is now certainly a factor in many B2B business arenas and definitely a major factor in purchase decision making in anything B2C.

The Personality of Fish: Hurricanes and Marine Micro Fauna

Now that hurricane season is nearly over I think it is safe to talk about them. What always blows my mind about Atlantic hurricanes is that many of them begin their evolution as warm air and dust that blows off the Sahara desert into the Atlantic Ocean. Research shows that dust collected during hurricanes in Barbados originated from Africa and the Alps. These mini storm systems then follow the traditional track of the westerly’s (the trade winds the early explorers used) into the Caribbean where they begin to intensify into tropical storms and hurricanes. In many cases they find the Gulf Stream and follow it up the Eastern Seaboard of the United States and approach Cape Hatteras, once known as the graveyard of the Atlantic.

 I have spent many days at sea and the day I awakened to find myself near the Cape was one I will never forget. I didn’t know exactly where we were, but I distinctly remember the smell of fear in the air; there was something different about this place and its energy. I thought as if I could smell death. Thanks to modern meteorology Cape Hatteras is no longer the graveyard it once was.

Hurricanes have a seminal role in the distribution of plants and animals, primarily because of their tremendous strength, long track duration and course. Marine micro fauna in the form of plankton like Foraminfera, Ostracods and other high order microorganisms are transported great distances by hurricanes. In 1967, the ship Vidal encountered rain with fresh water diatomites in the middle of the Atlantic. Birds, butterflies and insects often find refuge in the eye of a hurricane and are transported great distances. In 1917 a paper by Hurd, he details the transportation of insects, in this case locusts over 2000 KM from the African coast. We still have a lot of work to do when it comes to understanding our atmosphere-ocean interface and in this case the distribution of organisms like marine micro fauna. Who knew that hurricane rain would be a good garden fertilizer? I hope you have enjoyed this year’s personality of fish sections and I wish you great marketing and selling in the millennium.  

 

 

 

Comments

[United Gold Direct]

Awesome write-up and I totally agree most of it!! =)

[United Gold Direct]

I am really impressed about your ideas and knowledge about social media. Looking forward to see more of your post. Good Luck! :)

[Peter Auditore]

Thanks for your kind words being on the front lines of social media has been a lot of fun and blogging has reinvigorated my job. You can also read more blogs at www.thesocialcustomer.com and www.myventurepad.com.