MediaPost, 8/31/10
According to a study presented at a Pivot Conference (in partnership with Extra Mile Research) entitled “Marketers’ Current and Future Use of Social Media,” 63% of marketers are already investing in social media marketing, and of the 37% that are not currently investing in social media marketing, 62% are planning to invest, including 46% who plan to do so within one year.
Other key findings include:
ClickZ, 8/26/10
With every passing day, it seems social media becomes more engrained in the media strategist’s daily work life. Whereas not long ago our interest in social sites was limited to the advertising options these sites afforded our clients, they are now garnering consideration on a deeper level. Buyers are collaborating closely with social media strategists to create campaigns that cover all key online touch points, and to ensure that the campaign concepts they help to devise and the placements they negotiate extend to consumers on social media sites.
The most challenging part of this newfound relationship is determining how best to correlate one form of advertising with another. Marketers have tried numerous approaches, from using online ads to promote their social media presence to employing social media to promote their site presence online. The one rule of thumb that media strategists should follow is this: the approach you adopt should be motivated by your ultimate objective.
Here’s how some major brands have used their media buys to support their social media marketing efforts – and vice versa.
ClickZ, 8/25/10
Twitter is free. Facebook is free. Foursquare is free. TweetDeck is (still) free. Google Alerts is free. So, social media is free, right? Wrong. Beyond even the obvious costs – designing and building a Foursquare application, or stepping up to a fee-based listening platform like Alterian, Collective Intellect, Cymfony, BuzzMetrics, or Lithium’s Scout Labs, social media is far from free.
In fact, social media-based marketing costs real money. While it may not be millions of dollars for 30 seconds of air time, making sense of the social Web and really getting it right takes planning, creative insight, product management, and other internal resources, all of which have costs associated with them that you may not see at the outset.
Marketing Pilgrim, 8/20/10
While it should come as no surprise that the rapid fire pace of social media change can be dizzying, it doesn’t make it any easier for marketers to stay ahead of the game.
emarketer reports on a study conducted with marketing executives asking just how tough it is to stay ahead of the social media wave. The study was conducted by The Creative Group and found that the majority of executives surveyed are being challenged by the pace of change in social media.
BtoB, 8/16/10
While the majority of b2b marketers are now using social media as part of their marketing efforts, they are still exploring how to integrate social with search and measure the results, according to an exclusive study by BtoB and Business.com.
The study, “The Impact of Social Media on Search,” was based on an online survey of 464 b2b marketers conducted July 1-16. The survey was designed to explore how marketers are integrating social media with search marketing and discover what types of measurable impact each channel is having on the other. Among the key findings: More than half of those surveyed list “improving search results” as a top goal for social media marketing.
Ad Age, 8/9/10
Contrary to popular belief, video didn’t kill the radio star, YouTube didn’t knock off TV and Twitter didn’t shut down blogging. However, in each case the steady advance of new technology definitely forced the incumbents to evolve. One can argue, for example, that some of the more established blogs on the web benefited greatly from building content strategies that engender massive link sharing on Twitter. Much the same, TV ad creative has changed to facilitate additional exposure on YouTube.
Enter e-mail marketing, which, to some degree, has been beaten down by regulation, and has taken a backseat to social networking. Nielsen revealed last week that e-mail’s share of time declined 28%, putting it in third place, while social networking, the leader, climbed 43%.
Marketing Sherpa, 7/30/10
If you’re still on the fence about the importance of a company blog, consider this trend: Many B2B marketers report that their team’s blog — not the company homepage — is now the most popular entry point for online visitors.
While judging our Viral and Social Marketing Hall of Fame entries earlier this month, I reviewed several strong entries from B2B marketers that cited impressive statistics for their company blogs. Thanks to a solid blogging strategy and the inherent SEO benefits of blog content, these marketers reported that their blogs were now outpacing their company homepages for key metrics such as:
o Total visits
o Time spent on site
o Number of pages viewed
eMarketer, 7/29/10
Driving recipients to social sites is top objective
A majority of email marketers are now making efforts to integrate social media into their campaigns. An April 2010 survey by interactive and email marketing agency eROI found that two-thirds of US marketers were doing so, and June 2010 research from StrongMail, a provider of email and social media marketing solutions, put the number who had integrated social and email, or planned to this year, at 71% worldwide.
But the vast majority are still focusing on the basics rather than more sophisticated techniques for integration.
More than seven in 10 business executives surveyed around the world said they were promoting their Twitter, Facebook or other social presence in their email marketing messages. That was even more prevalent than facilitating recipients to share messages socially (63%).
Ad Age, 7/26/10
Report Finds That Only 4% of Online Adults Use Location-Based Services
Marketers, hold off on Foursquare — for now. That’s the verdict of Forrester Research on location-based start-ups, which, despite their reputation as the hot new media, are still too small for major marketers. The research firm finds that these heavily-hyped apps currently make sense mainly for brands seeking male influencers.
In a study out today, Forrester finds that only 4% of U.S. online adults have ever used location-based mobile apps such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt. Only 1% update these services more than once per week. What’s more, 84% of respondents said they are not familiar with such apps, leaving the vast majority of Americans online still in the dark about location-based apps, which have had the marketing world obsessing over them in recent months.
eMarketer, 7/23/10
Understanding consumers’ communication preferences
With marketers engaging with consumers across multiple channels, messages must be tailored to resonate with audiences on email and social sites. But research suggests a look at simple demographics does not give a clear indication of how audiences differ; engagement in these channels is personal and depends more on psychographic characteristics.
According to ExactTarget’s “Subscribers, Fans and Followers” report, there is little cannibalization among the three channels—instead, there is significant overlap. Most internet users studied in April 2010 engaged with brands only via marketing emails, but nearly a third subscribed to emails in addition to being fans of brands on Facebook. The vast majority of social media fans or followers were also email subscribers.
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