Marketers are placing both social marketing and content marketing among their top business priorities this year, as both channels are set to mature in 2012.
Some 70% of marketers cited social as their top priority for 2012, followed closely by content marketing, cited by 59%, according to the State of Social Media Marketing: Top Areas for Social Marketing Investment and Biggest Social Marketing Challenges in 2012 report by Awareness.
Most encouraging is the approach that marketers plan to take in the coming year. Having already established and grown their social presences on the major channels (Facebook and Twitter), they now plan to extend their social media strategy to include previously overlooked sites such as YouTube, foursquare and Tumblr.
Content is playing a major role in the growth of social. Pairing both channels has enabled businesses to boost interactivity on their sites with social sharing buttons, with shared content proving ready-made fuel for social marketing efforts.
Along with this enhanced approach from companies comes a fresh focus on active social media management to improve lead generation and sales from social media.
Said Brian Zanghi, CEO of Awareness: “We expect less-experienced marketers to follow their visionary peers, adopting established practices as they move along the maturity continuum.”
Staffing remains one of the key challenges, according to the report. Most of the 320 businesses surveyed employ between one and three people to monitor their social media marketing campaigns, and nearly half (45%) claim to struggle to find qualified talent to manage most of their new media activity. More »
I was lucky enough to be joined by New Media Age editor Justin Pearse in our London PR Taxi recently to get his take on social media adoption, what will be the next big thing and which social brands have impressed him lately.
We know that social media is radically changing the way that we all work, shop, communicate and relate to the world around us.
It is surprising, then, to see evidence of how many B2B companies are still blind to its possibilities within PwC’s new paper: ‘Uncovering B2B social media: Value innovation and engagement’.
While the findings kick off on a promising note, with confirmation that B2B firms are investing in social media (between $416,000 and $185m), the rest of the results make for frustrating reading. Here are three highlights (or should we say lowlights) from the study:
1. Nearly 50% of respondents are not undertaking any kind of measurement of ROI, or are only using the most basic qualitative measures.
2. Two-thirds of company cultures do not support the use of social media, or offer only basic guidelines to their staff. Such negligence leaves businesses open to reputational risk.
3. Less than 12% of those surveyed have full time, dedicated social media teams in place. More »
She is aged between 18 and 34 years old. She is Asian or a Pacific Islander. She lives in New England, holds at least a bachelor’s degree and earns under $50,000 a year. Who is she? The person most likely to be visiting social networks and reading blogs, according to Nielsen.
Nielsen’s State of the Media: The Social Media Report, Q3 2011, offers this titillating profile of the active social networker, along with detailed analysis of the current state of social.
Findings of the new US-based study include the news that blog posts and social network messages reach nearly 80% of Americans and account for nearly one quarter of time spent online. Drilling deeper, we find that social networks take up 22.5% of our online time, trailed in second place by online gaming at 9.8%.
Other top takeaways from Nielsen include:
1. Americans spend more time on Facebook than any other US website. The social site now reaches 70% of active US internet users, who spent 53.5 billion minutes Facebooking in May 2011 alone.
2. Social media users are the most likely to share their opinions and influence others, specifically creating product reviews (60%), swapping views on current affairs (26%) and TV programmes (33%). More »
Social media users have an insatiable hunger for content. The proof? A whopping 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month on Facebook including blog posts, news stories, photos, videos and links. So why is some content not seen by anyone other than the poster?
A brand new study of 2,500 participants from the New York Times in conjunction with Latitude Research reveals the top 9 reasons (or skip straight to the end for a somewhat surprising Key Takeaway):
1. Your customers don’t trust you
Corporate mistrust is rife. Globally, only 56% of people trust businesses “to do what is right” (Source: 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer), falling in the US, the UK and Japan from 2010 to 2011. People won’t share your content if there is a lack of trust, so use the social space to drive honest and open public conversations.
2. Customers don’t care about your brand
Sorry, but customers are a fickle bunch. If you don’t offer at a minimum: valuable information, great deals and a forum to meet other like-minded people, they will look elsewhere. Don’t just feed them what they want; actively exceed their expectations.
3. Your posts are boring
Intriguing and funny content gets the most shares. Look to Volkswagen for inspiration. Their Star-Wars spoof video ‘The Force’ racked up over 40 million views. Of course, it helps to have an established power brand behind you, but the principle is to create ‘got to share it’ content. More »
We know it’s only half way through the year, but 2011 has been such a pivotal period for social media that we can’t help but do some crystal ball-gazing for 2012.
Social media monitoring and analytics have come on leaps and bounds over the past year, making the case for management to shift budgets to social marketing.
We’ve witnessed a bigger focus on real-time search, and welcomed investment into insightful research.
So what trends are going to influence our wonderfully dynamic sector in 2012? Here are a few thoughts from Simon Jones, Digital Visitor’s director of marketing:
1. Social media as a customer service tool
For speed and efficiency of high volume communications, nothing parallels social media. Remember Heathrow Airport’s use of Twitter to placate grounded passengers during last December’s heavy snow? Expect to see more and more organisations wising up to the potential of Twitter in particular for customer service purposes.
2. Creative competitions on social media
Facebook is an ideal medium for competitions. Invest time in making yours exciting and creative enough to grow your online audience while telling your brand and product story. However, take heed of the network’s recent changes to the rulebook – see Digital Visitor’s resource for further info. More »
A poll of marketers and PR practitioners by Furlong PR has shown that the majority (51%) think social media is the most valuable expertise PR agencies can bring to a pitch scenario in 2011.
Both social media & online content generation polled way ahead of old school media relations expertise which only 16% think is now key to winning new business.
However the poll did reveal a massive disagreement between the older and younger pollsters. In the 45+ age category media relations is considered most important and social media the least.
Search engine optimization came in last with 7%, underlining that clients do not expect SEO to lead the agenda in PR pitches.
Furlong PR CEO Ross Furlong commented; “The poll confirms that age is a massive factor in the perception of ‘new fashioned’ pr techniques. While the young clearly believe a social media ingredient is crucial to winning a PR pitch in 2011, anyone over 45 just as clearly thinks it isn’t. This is disappointing but not surprising. Convincing senior management of its value is the chief obstacle to adoption.”
232 votes were cast in the month long poll conducted on LinkedIn during April 2011. Full results of the poll are available here:
Branded content is helping to fuel the growth of social media for business, especially when it comes to shopping activity.
Writing for Clickz.com, interactive media expert Heidi Cohen has mapped out how social media complements consumer needs for different types of content right along the shopping process.
With its multi-format content and connected consumers willing to share feedback and reviews, social media is an important part of the initial research phase. Even though consumers will ask around their social network for advice, it is vital to offer information about your products and company online.
The next stage sees consumers drilling down into specifics and finalising their decisions. They’re still likely to turn to their online peers at this point. Offering detailed product images and customer reviews, as Banana Republic does, will strengthen your position.
At the next step a prospect becomes a customer – but only if they purchase your product. Supplying content which covers delivery, shipping costs, directions, and best prices can help seal the deal. Increasing numbers of people are actually purchasing via social networks, so it’s worth considering setting up a fully functioning Facebook store, as 1-800-Flowers.com has done to great success. More »
Insurance giant Aviva is trying a new online strategy, which will see the brand highlighting positive customer comments in social media.
Using a service provided by feedback reporting provider Service Tick, customers that have given positive feedback scores following online transactions will be given the option to post comments on social networking sites. Glowing comments can be easily linked through to Facebook and Twitter, where they will generate special promotional offers.
It’s an interesting strategy, especially as only the relatively limited audience of an individual’s social network will see the offers.
According to Service Tick, one of the unique properties of its Social Advocate service is that it operates in real time – prompting customers to comment at the precise moment when they’re feeling warm towards a brand.
“In the past, we’ve seen attempts by organisations to get their marketing messaging out to customers via the social networks, but consumers see straight through them as it’s not what the networks are about. At best, the campaigns simply fail – at worst, they can damage a brand,” said Kevin Goodings, managing director at ServiceTick. More »
A new survey provides a snapshot of current trends in B2B marketing tactics with a continued shift towards online in the ways in which marketing budgets and resources are spent.
While traditional online tactics – website, search and email rank highly amongst marketers, expectations for social media marketing are high with 62% of online B2B marketers planning to increase budgets in this area.
The research from BtoB magazine and featured in eMarketer this week reveals that more than two-thirds of those surveyed already use social media marketing tactics (as of December 2010), although their objectives varied.
The most popular use of social media marketing by far, was for brand building (80%). This was followed by ‘thought leadership’ (54%) – notably only 47% of respondents cited social media as a tactic for lead generation.
The findings are remarkably similar to the statistics released from MarketingSherpa’s 2011 Email Marketing Benchmark Report. More »
Marketers are placing both social marketing and content marketing among their top business priorities this year, as both channels are set to mature in 2012.
Social media users have an insatiable hunger for content. The proof? A whopping 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month on Facebook including blog posts, news stories, photos, videos and links. So why is some content not seen by anyone other than the poster?
A poll of marketers and PR practitioners by Furlong PR has shown that the majority (51%) think social media is the most valuable expertise PR agencies can bring to a pitch scenario in 2011.
Branded content is helping to fuel the growth of 
A new survey provides a snapshot of current trends in B2B marketing tactics with a continued shift towards online in the ways in which marketing budgets and resources are spent.