Welcome to the first-ever ASJ Social Media Boot Camp. This 20-day program is designed to get you where you need to be in the often overwhelming world of social networking, so that you can build a stronger lead system, gain better referrals with more ease, expand your reach, and interact with your clients and prospects to learn what they need from you.
We wanted to start this program by offering some insight into why we felt it necessary to run a social media training program for insurance advisors — but decided to let the statistics speak for themselves.
Here, then, are eight social networking statistics you absolutely need to know to get yourself on the road to success.
- Three of the world's most popular brands online are social-media related (Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia), and the world now spends more than 110 billion minutes on social networks and blog sites, which. equates to 22 percent of all time online, or one in every four and half minutes. (Nielsen)
- In early 2010, Facebook overtook Yahoo to become the No. 2 most popular site in the United States. Google is No. 1. (Compete.com)
- LinkedIn reported 60 million users in February, which means it grew by 5 million users in just two months. Half of LinkedIn's membership is international. (TechCrunch)
- LinkedIn, Reddit, and Twitter have the largest proportion of members who earn more than $150,000 annually. (Flowtown)
- The average Facebook user is 38 years old; the Twitter user is 39; LinkedIn has an average user age of 44. (Pingdom)
- At 24 percent of users who share info on the site, Facebook leads any other method of sharing, including email (11 percent). Eleven percent of Twitter users share content on the microblogging service, 6 percent on Yahoo, and 5 percent on MySpace. (Silicon Valley Insider)
- 56 percent of Twitter users say they use the site for business purposes. (MediaPost)
- 68 percent of small businesses will increase their social media marketing efforts in the next year. (Marketing Charts)
| Social media tools independent agents use to network with other insurance professionals | Social media tools independent agents use to network with clients and prospects | ||
| 5% | 6% | ||
| 17% | 24% | ||
| 26% | 21% | ||
| Social bookmarking sites (e.g., Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon) | 2% | Social bookmarking sites (e.g., Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon) | 3% |
| Discussion forums | 7% | Discussion forums | 5% |
| None | 43% | None | 41% |
