By Jami Gibson

How important is social media marketing to your organization? Whether you’re marketing a community, building, or product, social media can greatly enhance your efforts and help you reach a vast audience in a minimal amount of time. In fact, according to Wishpond, a developer of social marketing apps, social media produces nearly double the leads of traditional marketing efforts, such as direct mail, pay-per-click, and telemarketing. It’s faster, easier, and inexpensive (or free)!

Facebook, Twitter, and even Pinterest have all found their place in marketing strategies. However, it seems LinkedIn provides some of the greatest benefits. There are over 27 million brands that have a LinkedIn page, and Wishpond also states that 77% of LinkedIn users conduct product and/or service-related research on the site. This means that customers want to find you! Statistics show that 43% of marketers have gained a customer via LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has become very valuable to Whittaker Associates and our clients, so much so, that last year we incorporated it into our lead-tracking database, WALTER. This feature allows our clients to see their connections to executives at prospective company leads and helps facilitate the building of a relationship. It’s like having a friend personally introduce you to your next customer.

How do you and your organization use LinkedIn and other social media for marketing purposes? Have you had greater success generating business with these tools rather than traditional marketing methods?

Source: Information gathered from Wishpond and Entrepreneur