I found this great article showing some statistics on social media marketing for e-retailers.   According to this article, 34% of e-retailers say social media marketing has increased their sales.   The study was conducted by Forrester Research.

The study also shows the following results:

• The return on investment is unclear, 66%
• Now is a great time to experiment with it prior to the 2009 holiday season, 63%
• The primary ROI is in listening to and understanding customers, 58%
• We’re pursuing it now to avoid being latecomers, 54%
• We’re pursuing it because of the buzz surrounding it, 50%
• We use a specific set of metrics to measure social marketing initiatives, 36%
• It has helped to grow our business, 34%
• We’re pursuing it because our competitors are, 28%
• We’re pursuing it to satisfy senior management, 15%

Social media marketing for your business is worth looking into.  Our social media marketing assistants can help you get started.  Call us today at 888.828.9826 to find out more.

Social media is not only beneficial for your personal needs but it is proven effective for growing your business as well. Many companies, knows this for a fact and have been hiring social media virtual assistants to join social media sites left and right to promote their business. You can use such sites to advertise and market your company and let your brand be known. This is an effective campaign because it gives you access to millions of social media users that are a growing population every single day.

There are many benefits of joining social media sites for your business but always the end result is desirable and it is a step forward in growing your business. If you are a newbie in social media marketing, then the easiest solution is to hire social media virtual assistants. Starting and joining social media sites can be quite time consuming and can be hard for first timers, with social media virtual assistants, you can jump start your social media marketing campaign because you bypass the learning curve.

Joining social media sites can drive traffic to your website. The more traffic that your website gets, the more chances of making more sales for your business. It increases the amount of people that will know about your website and the products and services that you offer. Although traffic does not guarantee a sale, it will arouse the curiosity and spread the word that such a service and product exist which could then lead to a future sale.

It’s a given fact that joining social media sites will need time and a certain level of dedication. For you to keep hold of your followers you always have to have something new to offer and you always have to be good content in the circulation. This is where social media virtual assistants can help you with time consuming tasks. They can do the hard work and labor for you while you enjoy the rewards that it brings for your business. It is important for you to define what you need and what image you need to portray when joining social media sites and from there, you can communicate it to your social media virtual assistants so that they can make it a reality.

One concern for many business owners is the fear that some social media virtual assistants will replace them and jeopardize their social networking efforts. Although a valid concern, you must understand that simply hiring a marketing company or a social media virtual assistant won’t replace you, in fact it should be stated clearly that your participation in social networks is imperative for the campaign for be successful.  Interacting with your audience is still a must to know! Your social media virtual assistant acts strictly with your set of instructions and materials will still come from you because more than anybody else, it is you who knows your business and where it is headed.

If you are not using social media to market your business, your competitor is!  Get started right away.

Many businesses are affected because of the global financial crisis, some even to the point of closing down. This is especially true for small and medium enterprises that do not have immense resources to keep the business going. It is very critical for business owners to spend wisely on their investments and to find ways to keep the business running without sacrificing quality of work. Some would even delay their plans of expanding their business because of fear of loss of investment. The fear of not getting your money back is only natural especially during this hard time however this should not stop you from growing your business. In fact this maybe the time for you to explore and get resourceful in making business decisions to gain that extra edge from your competitors.

We all know that for you to be able to expand your business to higher grounds you will need to have that extra cash or capital to spend. This is where your resourcefulness comes in as a businessman.  Venturing to outsource some jobs maybe the answer to your cash flow and needed capital.  With the accessibility of the internet, outsourcing jobs became a greater option especially for the non-vital business processes that can be done even without the comfort of the four walls of your office.

To bring down overhead expenses and gain more capital you will need to cut down a couple of expenses. Now here is where outsourcing comes in very handy, hiring employees offshore can lower a significant amount on your operational expense. Even big businesses know this that is why they continue to outsource jobs to other countries. Imagine how much you can save if you can cut down at least 30 to 40 percent of your operational expense. Look at it this way, the local cost of an employee who is offshore ranges from $6- $10 per hour or it could even be lower and compare it from an onshore employee that charges $12- $20 per hour. Off course you also have to consider the money you will save from employee’s benefits, taxes, office space and equipments, electricity and other factors. These factors normally are inclusive when hiring offshore companies.

If you are worried about monitoring and quality of service from outsourcing jobs, well don’t be. There are a lot of ways to monitor employees offshore. Communication is not a problem anymore because of e-mails, chat programs, VOIP and some programs are even created to view what your employees are doing. This is all accessible with a couple of clicks from your own computer. Plus most employees offshore are easily trained to handle the job properly not to mention they are polite and hardworking. They can also assure you of great customer service skills that your customers can take advantage off. Everybody knows that a great customer service is the secret on why customers will keep on coming back to transact business with you. Another advantage is the ability to hire more employees that you can afford to hire to give legendary customer service for faster business transaction and more opportunity for growth.

Bottom line is there are significant advantages when you outsource your business and a good businessman would take advantage of these opportunities especially if it can assure growth and expansion for your business. With the recession ongoing getting more for less is what you need.  Beat your competitors by expanding and offering more by paying less.