According to Nielsen*, 359,403 adult consumers in the Augusta, Georgia area use social media every month, an audience that continues to expand. As a result of this growth, social media has become a crucial part of local advertising campaigns.

Social media allows Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) business owners to continually be in front of their target customers and to stay top-of-mind. It allows businesses to communicate daily and be the first company on call when needed. Social media has become essential for marketing local goods and services.

The best part is that social media is free to use for both CSRA consumers and business owners.

There is no subscription service for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram which, according to Nielsen, are used by 76.7% of Augusta area consumers each month. There are no monthly payments or premium memberships required to unlock more services.

Every month, 340,000 adults in the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) use social media, according to Nielsen. Seventy-five percent of these consumers use Facebook, far more than other sites like Instagram (also owned by Facebook), Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

As a stand-alone medium, Facebook is used by more people in the CSRA than watch local TV stations. Only Augusta radio and local cable reach more consumers.

The large audience commanded by social media has attracted a significant amount of advertising dollars from local advertisers. According to Borrell Associates, a company that measures advertising expenditures across the county, Augusta area businesses are expected to spend $31.7 million on social media advertising, a 26.2% increase over 2022. The overwhelming majority of these dollars are being spent with Facebook.

Yesterday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was changing its name to "Meta".  This change, though, only affects the name of the parent company. There will be no change to the company's brands like Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp.

How will this name change affect Augusta businesses that advertise on Facebook?

Central Savannah River Area business owners are expected to invest $96-million during 2021 to advertise to consumers connected to the internet. This forecast was produced by Borrell Associates, a company that tracks business advertising expenditures across the country.

These online marketing dollars will be spent on banner advertising, search engine marketing, email, as well as audio and video advertising. This is all to capture the attention of shoppers and buyers as they go about their connected days.

According to Nielsen, 95.2% of adult consumers in the Augusta, GA area have access to the internet. They connect, primarily, with desktop and laptop computers; smartphones; or tablets.

Ninety-four percent of Augusta adults spend at least one hour per week online, with most spending at least 10 hours connected.

How important is Twitter to Central Savannah River Area consumers? Yesterday, for instance, the social media platform was mentioned in at least ten articles published by the Augusta Chronicle yesterday.  Almost every local TV newscast included references to the site as well.

Twitter's outsized presence in the news, however, is enormously disproportional to the importance of the micro-blogging app in the life of Augusta's consumers.

According to Nielsen, only about 15% of adults in the CSRA use Twitter during the course of a month. This is minuscule compared to other social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

Twitter offers 20 different options that Georgia and South Carolina small business owners can utilize to market their goods and services to local consumers.  The platform's minimal reach, however, can hamper the success of any advertising campaign.

Following the lead of many national marketers, some Central Savannah River Area small business owners are considering canceling or, at minimum, pausing their advertising schedules with social media network Facebook and its co-owned photo-sharing platform, Instagram.

According to the New York Times, "more than 400 companies, from Coca-Cola and Adidas to Ford and Lego, have vowed to halt advertising on the social network, in a growing protest over how it handles hate speech and other harmful content".

With the pandemic figured in, CSRA small business owners were expected to spend $14.7 million on Facebook and Instagram advertising in 2020. This is according to Borrell Associates, a firm that specializes in the collection and analysis of local marketing expenditures in every city across the United States. But these expenditures could shrink if the protests become louder.

Every type of CSRA business imaginable, including clothing stores, plumbers, HVAC repair, funeral homes, restaurants, dentists, and nonprofits, has come to realize how powerfully social media can contribute to their bottom lines.

Part of what makes Facebook and Instagram attractive to small business owners is the enormous reach these platforms have among consumers. Locally, the audience size for these two social media sites now rival Augusta radio, TV, cable, and newspaper outlets.

For small business owners considering a hiatus from social media advertising, there is a viable way to redirect these dollars into a different medium without losing the marketing equity or momentum built-up on Facebook.

Central Savannah River Area retailers spend a considerable amount of time and money marketing their small businesses on social media.  Is this effort paying off?

Each month, an estimated 348,000 CSRA adults use Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. This equates to 78% of consumers.  This reach is rather anemic compared to Augusta radio and TV, which attracts considerably more users in a single week than these social media platforms do over 30 days.

Among local millennials, the monthly reach of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is eclipsed by the weekly reach of Augusta radio.

The number of consumers reached by an advertising campaign, according to Nielsen, is the media consideration that has the most significant effect on increasing sales.