07-09-2014, 10:23 PM
If your marketing strategy doesn't have a serious social media component you should probably consider adding one. While most people in the U.S. still use traditional search engines such as Google to find what they're looking for online, users-especially younger ones are increasingly discovering websites by way of social networks. Last year, half of all internet users ages 18 to 23, and 43 per-cents of users ages 24 to 32, used social networks as their go-to internet-discovery resource, according to a new report from Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research. Overall, social networks like Facebook and Twitter are the preferred means of discovery for nearly a third of all Americans, up from 18 per-cents in 2010. At the same time, 54 per-cents of American internet users still relied on traditional search results to find the information they were looking for. As expected, that number is on the decline and, according to the report, represents a seven-point drop in overall search engine popularity from 61 per-cents in 2010.