Tag: social media
B2B marketers intend to increase spend on social media by 43% in 2010, while overall marketing budgets remain static, a survey by US research firm Outsell has reported.
However, when asked which social media sites carried the most influence for B2B marketers, surprisingly, Facebook was considered effective by the most respondents – 51%, followed by LinkedIn – 45% and Twitter – 35%.
As eMarketer points out, this is at odds with Hubspot’s survey of lead generation amongst North American B2B marketers where 45% considered LinkedIn most effective with Facebook at 33%.
The contradiction perhaps reveals a gap between understanding that social networking is important and knowing how to implement a social media strategy in the B2B market. I’m with Hubspot, LinkedIn is definitely the better route for B2B marketers at this point, combined with Twitter.
Facebook overtook Google as the most visited site in the US last week.
Figures for week ending 13th March, released by Hitwise shows Facebook visits accounted for 7.07 percent of all websites, compared to 7.03 percent for Google.
Facebook has temporarily spiked ahead of Google before, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2009 but Hitwise charts show that Facebook, with more than 400 million members, may now surge ahead of Google permanently.
Membership growth is one factor, the rapid rise in social gaming another, with games like Mafia Wars generating nearly 10 million Facebook fans.
Facebook’s marketshare of visits has grown 185% in a year, compared to Google’s 9% rise in the same period.
Shoe brands VANS and Converse along with Starbucks and Skittles were the four fastest growing Facebook brands this week, according to Inside Facebook, a blog that monitors fan pages.
While VANS and Converse may be benefiting from the consolidation of old Facebook fan pages into one main page, Skittles appears to be growing due to a voucher offer which allows registered fans to buy two packets of Skittles for the price of one (BOGOF).
Outside of consumer brands, the top twenty is dominated by pop stars, footballers and social media games. From a British perspective, good to see hit TV programme House, starring Hugh Laurie make an appearance at number 20 with a gain of 65,800 fans following its return to TV screens last week.
The overall rankings for brands’ fans on Facebook looks like this, Starbucks (6.1m) Coca-Cola (5.1m) Skittles (3.9m) Nutella (3.6m) Pringles (3m).
This week’s fastest risers chart below. More »
LinkedIn was the favourite social media site for professionals at work in 2009, with 86% of worldwide internet users referring to it, a jump of 24% on 2008.
The survey from internet security firm FaceTime Communications shows that most professionals use LinkedIn to network with colleagues (79%), to learn about colleagues (66%) and for general research (61%). Only 37% were using LinkedIn for marketing to customers.
While only 13% said they used Twitter in 2008 for work purposes, the number leapt to 76% in 2009, overtaking Digg, Delicious and YouTube in the professional social networking pecking order though these also experienced substantial increases.
Facebook is still regarded as mainly a personal social networking site and in another survey reported in eMarketer, by Liberty Mutual, three quarters of employees More »
A survey into the perceived risks of social networking to organisations has found most employers unprepared for potential employee misuse, according to Brisbane City News.
Conducted by social media legal specialists, Rostron Carlyle, spokesperson Malcolm Burrows, said while 76 per cent of respondents claimed they used social networking sites at work, 54 per cent said their work place did not have a social media policy.
“When it comes to legal safeguards, it seems most are unsure what to do, or simply underestimate the dangers involved,” Burrows said. “Social media comes with serious risks, such as loss of confidential information, breach of copyright and privacy, discrimination, defamation, even infringement of industry specific legislation.”
The survey also found that while 55 per cent of companies fear social media will affect their business reputation, few precautions have been put in place to protect it. More »
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has conceded that 140 characters are not always enough to get your message across, especially when it comes to summarising the amazing growth of your micro-blogging site in the last year.
Stone used 1552 characters in his email newsletter to account holders yesterday, offering some insight to the highlights of Twitter’s ‘annus miraculous’
Accounts opened were up 1,500%, Twitter employees rose 500% to 146 – the latest being Aaron, “an engineer focused on building internal tools to help promote productivity, communication, and support within our company. We celebrated with a little dance party.”
Stone mentions the new features introduced – Twitter lists, retweets and mobile apps, plus the humanitarian and charitable uses Twitter has been put to, “Twitter is more than a triumph of technology — it is a triumph of humanity. Projects like Fledgling and Hope140 were inspired by you.”
In a veiled reference to the huge proportion of unused accounts, estimated to be 83% of the 50 million plus opened, Stone says in the opening paragraph “If you haven’t visited in a while, we’d like to invite you to come have a look at http://twitter.com — we’ve been busy!”
According to estimates from blog Inside Facebook, revenue for the pre -eminent social network is expected to exceed $1bn in 2010.
Revenues have typically doubled each year, according to the research carried out amongst industry experts, from $150m in 2007, to $300m in 2008 and so on, with advertising revenue from fan pages believed to be the main driver.
2009 is seen as an important transitionary year for the site which grew to more than 350m monthly active users, from 150m at the beginning of the year. Of those, 100m were in the US and another 100m were in Europe – the two markets where brand advertising brings in the most money.
Brand advertising is estimated at $225m for 2010 and Inside Facebook predicts this stream could eventually grow to $20bn, taking share away from more established sites like Yahoo and MySpace. More »
Chief marketing officers in the US are quickly increasing their predicted social marketing budgets, finds a survey from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the American Marketing Association, reported in eMarketer today.
Marketers researched in January 2010 now say their percentage spend on social media will increase further than they were predicting just six months previously. Their estimates show that in five years social media will represent 20% of their budgets.
Across sectors, B2B spending is expected to be in line with B2C except in the B2B products category.
B2B marketers see customer relationship management and brand-building to be the priority areas for them in the next year with social marketing seen as an ideal channel for delivery due to its effectiveness in boosting brand engagement and loyalty.
Social media is proving a valuable crisis communication tool for people affected by the Chile earthquake.
Mashable reports that one woman was able to track down her sister-in-law via Twitter using local hashtags which were picked up by a man in Santiago who was able to confirm her safety. Photos of the aftermath have been uploaded to Twitter and Twitpic, providing a photo log of the destruction.
Google has launched a version of its person finder application for Chile, to aid those looking for or offering information about friends and family.
On Facebook, pages like Chile Earthquake have sprung up, with 8,500 fans creating links, photos, videos and links to Google’s person finder. More »
Managed hosting provider NetBenefit has appointed Furlong PR to implement an online pr and social media strategy, following a three way pitch.
Furlong will also undertake traditional media relations work for NetBenefit in the UK
Kristel Scattergood, Marketing Manager for NetBenefit commented, “We appointed Furlong PR because we were impressed by their ability to combine expertise in online pr and social media, with an ongoing traditional media relations service.”
NetBenefit is the third new client Furlong PR has added to its portfolio in recent weeks, following appointments by FESPA and Freedman International.
Ross Furlong, CEO of Furlong PR commented “Online pr is generating a lot of interest from companies who seem just a little jaded with traditional pr approaches. Online and social media pr strategies are proving an attractive proposition, not least because their success is more measurable” More »
