Social Media Networks: The New Advertising Mecca

Since being highlighted as the “true engine of job creation” in the president's 2010 State of the Union address, the nation has turned to small and midsize businesses (SMBs) as the White Knight to lead us out of the current recession.

The U.S. government has lent unwavering support, making good on promises of SMB funding and tax cuts by signing the Small Business Jobs Act last September, which is arguably the most significant piece of small-business legislation in more than a decade. And a few weeks ago White House officials announced that the Small Business Administration will direct $2 billion over the next five years to match private-sector investment funding for startups.

Many major companies have taken note of the funds being dedicated to SMBs, and have begun to capitalize on it by putting their own advertising dollars into the SMB marketplace. Large companies have found that by marketing specifically to SMBs, big-name brands can cash in on SMB success. Determining the best advertising medium to reach the most appropriate SMB customers used to be a challenging, but social media marketing is making it much easier.

Marrying the SMB Marketplace With Social Media Networks 

While traditional advertising methods using TV, radio, magazines and newspapers are still popular, big companies are increasingly turning to social media to reach an untapped cache of customers.

In fact, eMarketer estimates that U.S. businesses will spend $3.08 billion to advertise on social networking sites in 2011, a 55% increase from 2010. Further reinforcing the growth of social media is LinkedIn’s recent S-1 filing, underscoring the general worth of the social media network space.

Given the government’s generosity with SMBs and major companies’ documented interest in using social media as a means to reach new SMB customers through advertising, it makes perfect sense that a social media network dedicated to SMBs would be a popular--and extremely profitable--advertising medium.

Capitalizing on the Opportunity

Heralded by everyone from the president to analysts as a driver of economic recovery, and with billions pumped into it to ensure its stability, the SMB marketplace is surely the Beverly Hills of business sectors.

Now, by leveraging new, specialized tools (ie: social media networks) to mine the rich SMB marketplace with specialized advertising, companies will be able to capitalize on the many lucrative opportunities that are awaiting discovery.

Russell Rothstein is the Founder and CEO of Sales Spider http://www.salespider.com/, a business social network specifically geared for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Sales Spider features $25 Billion worth of qualified sales leads, networking with thousands of business professionals, classified ads and online tradeshows to users – for free. Sales Spider was launched in March 2006 and has since attracted over 750,000+ members and is growing by 20,000 per month. Prior to the development of Sales Spider, Rothstein was the President and Founder of NorthPath, a Sales Outsourcing company offering lead generation and field sales outsourcing to leading technology companies. Before joining NorthPath, Rothstein served in numerous sales and application capacities for Oracle, and was awarded Highest Performing Application Sales Manager. He was also the Managing Partner and Founder of Bizware, a software supply chain for retail petroleum and major convenience stores, where he successfully built Bizware into the industry market leader before selling to a NASDAQ listed public company in 1995.