I recently read a statistic that blew me away. According to Outsell’s Chuck Richard, “In 2009: $65 billion will be spent on enterprises’ own sites, dollars NOT spent on TV, magazines, newspapers, billboards, etc. To scale that, compare 2009 total U.S. TV ad revenue (cable + broadcast) at $66 billion, and total 2009 U.S. Newspaper ad revenue at $42 billion. So corporations spending marketing dollars on their own sites is equivalent to (a) wiping out all TV ad revenue or (b) wiping out one and one-half newspaper industries!” [1]
This made me very happy as I have felt for some time now with the exposure of social media on the internet, a company’s best spokes people are its employees and customers. Getting the two communicating fosters the trust and relationship building that is what people now expect. And now that this money will be spent on making this communication channel better and easier to use, we will see more and more companies reaching out to their consumers directly through social media.
[1] Stratigos, Anthea. June 30, 2009. http://www.outsellinc.com/b2b_trade/insights/4110
