According to Nielsen, 802,781 adult consumers in Southwest Florida 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 Fort Myers-Naples-Cape Coral area 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 SWFL consumers and business owners.

There is no subscription service for social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram which, according to Nielsen, are used by 75.1% of Fort Myers consumers each month. There are no monthly payments or premium memberships required to unlock more services.

Every month, 802,000 adults in Southwest Floria use social media, according to Nielsen. Eighty-six 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 Fort Myers area than watch local TV stations. Only Fort Myers radio reaches 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, Fort Myers area businesses are expected to spend $112 million on social media advertising, a 27.9% 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 Fort Myers area businesses that advertise on Facebook?

How important is Twitter to Fort Myers area consumers? Yesterday, for instance, the social media platform was mentioned in at least ten articles published by the News-Press 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 Southwest Florida consumers.

According to Nielsen, only about 12% of adults in the Fort Myers area 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 Fort Myers 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.

Southwest Florida retailers spend a considerable amount of time and money marketing their small businesses on social media.  Is this effort paying off?

Each month, according to Nielsen, 586,000 SWFL adults use Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. This equates to 62.7% of consumers.  This reach is rather anemic compared to Fort Myers 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 Fort Myers 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. 

The first radio station in Southwest Florida went on-the-air in 1940.  Seventy-nine years later, Facebook inaugurated the social media era.  Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat, Pinterest, Reddit, and hundreds of other sites quickly followed.

As social media matured from a novelty to part of consumers' daily rituals, some SWFL business owners began to experiment with advertising.

By every key advertising metric, though, Fort Myers radio remains the best choice for a small business to market their goods and services. Here's why.