Why do #HigherEd Students Need to Use & Understand Social Networking to Get and Keep a Job? [A Few Recent Studies]

Why do #HigherEd Students Need to Use & Understand Social Networking to Get and Keep a Job? 

Answer:  Students need to be prepared for what is and what will be, not what was. Social Networking is growing and becoming even more important.

Here are a few recent findings from studies that demonstrate why Higher Ed students need to use Social Media to learn, communicate, and collaborate in a professional way to get and keep a job, especially in the fields of Marketing, Advertising, Public Relations, and Communications. 

Getting a Job:

• 92% of companies actively hiring in 2010 currently use or plan to recruit via social networks.

       Of this group, which social networking Sites do you or your company use to find

        candidates?

•   86% LinkedIn / 60% Facebook / 50% Twitter

              Source: Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey 2010

Acceptance of Social Media by Marketers: 

• 63% of marketers are already investing in social media marketing and of the 37% that are not currently investing in social media marketing, 62% are planning to invest,

• 57% welcome social media users involvement and participation with their brands
  

• 70% say that social media marketing is a powerful tool for brands or products

• 62% feel that their prospective audience is on social media sites

• 47% note that social media users/always-on consumers gather information differently

•  40% plan to use social media as part of customer support and relationship management

           Source: Research Report: Marketers' Current & Future Use of Social Media August 24,   2010                                                                       Pivot Conference (in partnership with Extra Mile Research)

Spending on Social Media by Marketers:
 

• Spending on internet marketing to grow by 13.6% in the next 12 months, a much larger increase than in any other area of marketing.

• Spending on social media will increase by 50% in the next 12 months to 9.9% of the total marketing budget and almost double again to 17.7% of the total marketing budget in the next 5 years.

            Source:  The CMO Survey, August 2010 - Duke's Fuqua School of Business

Consumers / Customers:

• 90% of consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trusted consumer opinions posted online.

            Source: The Nielsen Company 

Social Media Demographics:

       Facebook

• More than 500 million active users globally / 150 million users are in the United States

• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day

• Average user has 130 friends

• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

• More than 30% of active users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices

          Source: Facebook 2010 

      Twitter

• 175 million registered users globally, adding about 370,000 

• 180 Million unique visitors per month

• 75% of Twitter Traffic comes from outside of Twitter.com

• 37% of users update their status with a mobile phones

        Source:  Evan Williams, Twitter's co-founder at Chirp: At the Twitter Developer Confernce. April 2010

NY Times Oct. 30, 2010

I look 4Ward to your feedback.

Keep Digging for Worms!