B2B Marketers Increasing Social Media Spend

There is always a lot of talk about how important Social Media is these days, but todate, most commentators thought that only the B to C (those selling to the Consumer market place) would really be interested in using Social Media to any great degree.


The figures from the USA (data & images courtesy of www.emarketer.com) tell a different story it seems, more than half of all B2B marketers expecting to increase their spend on
Social Media in 2010.


The percentage of those using SM at the moment is also up on last year, the rise being quite consistent throught late 2008 and 2009.

What is perhaps more interesting is that in 2009, only 14% were in fact using Twitter and just 18% relied on Blogs. Podcasts were the most popular (at 20%), whilst many had already started a user community in some way (33%).




As to why they are thinking of using SM, well it is not it seems to get sales (well at least in the short term) but instead it is all about being thought of as experts in their field, so that their name springs to mind first (rather than the competition).

To me this is very useful data and shows that there could be a huge amount of growth in the use of Twitter etc in 2010 as these B2B market types start to realise the potential for establishing their brand as the top dog (or should it be the top bird now?) in their market place. This being now especially important with the implementation of Googles 'Social Media Marquee' in the main results.

What is for sure is that there is going to be a lot of change in the Social Media Arena in 2010.