3. 6. The average cost to influence purchases via social networks is 3x lower than the average for online spend (Never Ending Friday) 7. Ability to predict customer behaviour is 36% higher for companies who are adept in the use of social media (Digital Influence Group) 8. Usage of social media channels among marketers jumped 84% last year (Mashable) 9. There are over 200m blogs worldwide (Technorati) 10. 25% of search results for the world’s 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content (Marketing Vox / Nielsen BuzzMetrics) 10 reasons why I need a social media strategy cont’d