Social Media Marketing Increases Sales Leads and Customers

Piggybacking off of the social-media-is-more-than-engaging-conversation thing, you can actually generate value beyond just "engagement" and "brand equity" from social media. Social media drives leads and customers, period. Don't believe me? Here, I have a couple ebooks for you:

• How to Attract Customers With Twitter
• How to Generate Customers From Facebook

Oh, and a few stats from our own research, too:

• Companies that use Twitter average 2X more leads than those that don't.
• Companies with 1000+ more Twitter followers get 6X more traffic.
• 45% of marketers note social media has a below average cost-per-lead compared to other channels.
• 62% of companies using LinkedIn for marketing have acquired a customer from it.
• 52% of companies using Facebook for marketing have acquired a customer from it.
• 44 % of companies using Twitter for marketing have acquired a customer from it.

Source: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33734/20-Common-Social-Media-Marketing-Myths-BUSTED.aspx#ixzz29nOhiV3u