MIAMI — Laid off after 23 years in the mortgage- lending business, Dede Parise couldn’t find a job. So, she took a marketing class to reinvent her career, and before long, she turned an assignment into a company.
Parise invented the “Bandee,” a headband women wear while playing golf or other sports. She sells her product mostly on the Internet, working from home.
Her audience is vast, and growing. In a year, using Facebook, she has parlayed her reach into 15,000 fans.
For small businesses such as Parise’s, social media have become a portal to success.
“It’s really important,” said Parise, 49, of Weston, Fla. “It’s just the way the market has gone.”
The use of social media by businesses is booming.
According to a recent study by EMarketers, 80 percent of leading companies will participate in social-media marketing in 2011, nearly double the number from three years ago. And a 2011 Social Media Marketing industry report by SocialMediaExaminer.com found that 90 percent of marketers said social media are important for their business. Eighty-eight percent said it generates more business exposure, and 72 percent said it brings increased traffic to their website.
The most-commonly used social-media tools, the 2011 report found, are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs, in that order.
Parise didn’t have — or even want — a personal Facebook page a little more than a year ago. But she knew she needed one for business.
Now, she said, Facebook is the main contributor to the worldwide reach of her sales.
“Sometimes they say, ‘I saw you on Facebook,’ ” she said.
When Kelly Lyles launched a website in July to begin selling her invention, “Tip Top Shoe Savers,” she went immediately to social media to get the word out, garner feedback and drive customers to the website. She posted on Twitter and Facebook to pique interest in her product — small shoe forms that women can place inside their pointy shoes to avoid creases and preserve the tips.
“One person putting a ‘like’ on your product or your page reaches hundreds of people because someone will see it on their page and say, ‘I like that,’ ” said Lyles, 34, of Aventura, Fla.
What’s more, Facebook gives her a weekly update of how many people visited her site and how many people “liked” her product.
And she can link Facebook and Twitter, so that her postings go out on both.
“So, if I say, ‘Come visit Tip Top Shoe Saver at the Summer Sale,’ it goes out to Twitter,” Lyles said. “It’s cross-promoting.”
Even more-established companies that sell to other businesses can get a boost from social media.
“It is a way to keep people engaged with the website and engaged with us,” said Valerie Holstein, chief executive of CableOrganizer.com, a 9-year-old Fort Lauderdale cable-management products company with 45 employees and $16 million in revenue.
“Customers use it to get tips and use it to tell their other friends if they are happy with the product,” said Holstein, 36.
Social-media users say it’s amazing how fast businesses can gather followers.
Holstein said that when CableOrganizer.com redesigned its 2-year-old Facebook page, it got 250 “ friends” in two days.
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