Social Media Archives - Page 12 of 17

April 11, 2012

Consumer Trust In Traditional Media Ads Fall, Confidence In Mobile, Social And Online Rise

Word-of-mouth recommendations and reviews, either from someone they know or a stranger’s opinions online, are the most trusted sources of information for buying decisions, according to the latest Nielsen’s latest Global Trust in Advertising report, The findings speak highly for information gathered through social media or other forms of user-generated content.

Meanwhile, though traditional paid media still are trusted by a great number of consumers, their influence is on the decline. Nearly half of consumers around the world say the trust ads on TV (47%), in magazines (47%) and in newspapers (46%), but those numbers dropped by 24%, 20% and 25% respectively, in a relatively short period of time — between 2009 and 2011.

April 11, 2012

Google + Gets a Facelift and New Features

With over 170 Million registered users but dismal usage stats, Google + was in need of CPR

Google just announced a major redesign of Google+ “to make the social network “more functional and flexible.”

According to the official Google blog, the redesign is part of its plan to make Google+ easier to use.

“By focusing on you, the people you care about and the stuff you’re into, we’re going to continue upgrading all the features you already know and love—from Search and Maps to Gmail and YouTube,” says Senior Vice President Vic Gundotra in the blog post. “With today’s foundational changes, we can move even faster—toward a simpler, more beautiful Google.”

It looks like Google took a hint from critics and finally recognized that they did not need to reinvent the wheel just make it better. Did they succeed, it’s a little early to say since the new look and features are being deployed as we speak but we can already see that the home page looks pretty familiar, actually, a lot like a mix of the pre “Timeline” Facebook and the new Facebook interface.

Every Facebook redesign draws a lot of criticism and discontent, but will that be enough to breathe life in Google + and increase time spent on the site, which has been seriously lagging ( a few minutes a month, versus Facebook 7+ hours) and recent CNet statistics showing that March time spent increase 27% over February do little to close the gap.

The redesign does not seem to address the botched integration of Google’s other services particularly when it comes to YouTube, and Picasa

April 11, 2012

LinkedIn Rolls Out New Targeted Follower Tools For Marketers

LinkedIn will launch two new functions for companies who have followers on LinkedIn, both of which will be of interest to marketers and advertisers: “Targeted Updates” and “Follower Statistics.”

Targeted Updates will allow companies to segment their followers by a range of variables such as industry, seniority, job function, company size, non-company employees, and geography. Companies will be able to send different status updates to different groups of followers,

Follower Statistics will essentially be an analytics dashboard that will allow companies to see how effective their updates have been.

March 30, 2012March 30, 2012

Top B2B Firms Gaining 230% More Leads via Social Media Than Peers

Best-in-Class B2B companies generate on average 17% of their leads from social media channels, roughly 230% more marketing-generated leads than other companies (5%), according to a new report by Aberdeen Group, which examines the social marketing strategies of top-performing B2B companies.

In the new report, titled “B2B Social Meeting Marketing: Are We There Yet,” Aberdeen uses four key performance criteria to distinguish the Best-in-Class (top 20% of aggregate performers) from the Industry Average (middle 50%) and Laggard (bottom 30%) organizations.

The top 20% of companies (i.e., Best-in-Class) have achieved the following performance metrics:

Average annual company revenue growth of 20%, compared with 8% for Industry Average and -3% for Laggard firms.
10% average year-over-year improvement of marketing leads resulting in closed business, compared with 3% for the Industry Average and -1% for Laggard firms.
44% of sales-forecasted pipeline generated by marketing, compared with 10% for Industry Average and 5% for Laggard firms.
73% annual customer retention rate, compared with 27% for Industry Average and 7% for Laggard firms.

Overall, 84% of all surveyed B2B companies are using social marketing in some form.

However, Best-in-Class companies are more likely to use social media primarily for lead-generation purposes, and more likely to integrate social marketing with other core channels and processes, the study found.

March 21, 2012March 21, 2012

7 Lessons From The Nikon Social Media Faux Pas

In the world of social media you have to be careful as to who posts on your walls, what they say, how it can be interpreted and what the consequences can be.

Nikon, the famed photographic equipment manufacturer learned the lesson the hard way.

Back in September of 2011, a the following post appeared on Nikon’s Facebook page:

“A photographer is only as good as the equipment he uses, and a good lens is essential to taking good pictures! Do any of our Facebook fans use any of the NIKKOR lenses? Which is your favorite and what types of situations do you use it for?”

Now, anybody involved to some degree in photography knows that a statement like this will infuriate most of the photographers who read it.

I understand what the Nikon employee may have been trying to say, but the way he or she said it came out totally wrong. It is true that a good camera and good lenses will make a big difference on the quality of the photograph, but at the end of the day, the talent of the photographer remains the key.

Withing hours, the post received a couple of thousands of comments, something most brands would rejoice at, unless, like in this case, the comments were overwhelmingly negative and the brand had just invested a lot of money on the launch of a new camera.

What can we learn from Nikon?

1-Monitor the conversations about your brand

2-Who you allow to post on your wall is important, make certain they understand and relate to your community

3-Before posting, think about your post a few times. Is that the message you want to send out? In doubt, ask a few colleagues, insure it’s congruent with your communication and marketing message

4-Remember that it does not take long for a post with a lot of comments on a business page to attract the attention of search engines, influential websites and blogs and be indexed. Do a search for the Nikon Facebook page and you will see several pages of websites and blogs with negative reactions to the post, not something you want your community to see. Bad news travels faster than good and stick longer.

5-When you put your foot in your mouth, don’t wait to see 2000 negative comments to react (it took Nikon over 12hrs to apologize), apologize, do it quickly, sincerely and repeatedly. If you take into account that a Facebook user has an average of 150 friends, at least 300,000 Facebook users saw the post, that’s not counting the re postings and shares.The kind of exposure no brand wants.

6-Reach out to the blogs and websites that covered the story

7-Building a reputation takes time, damaging it only a few seconds and repairing it a long time.

What are your thoughts?

March 20, 2012March 22, 2012

Consumers Prefer Reading News From Aggregators

The Pew Research Center has come out with a massive new report on the state of media as part of its Project for Excellence in Journalism, and it comes to a number of conclusions about where the industry stands—including the fact that Twitter and Facebook are still driving a fairly small amount of traffic to media outlets (although this segment is growing quickly) and that such tech giants as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft control almost 70 percent of online advertising. But one other thing that becomes clear from the Pew report is just how big a role aggregators of all kinds—both human and machine-powered—are playing in news consumption.

Despite the growing evidence to the contrary, many newspaper companies and other traditional media outlets still seem to think the vast majority of their audience comes to them directly and prefers to read their content above all other sources. More than anything else, this is the core philosophy behind the rise of paywalls—which more and more papers are implementing—and also the millions of dollars media companies have poured into developing iPad apps and other walled-garden-style approaches to news delivery. The assumption is that readers will want only the content that comes from that specific outlet.

March 16, 2012

Social media is about social science not technology.

A Pivot study conducted in 2011, asked brand managers and marketers if they had a clear picture of who their Social Consumer is. An astounding 77 percent said yes.

When asked specifically if respondent organizations asked Social Consumers what they expect from engagement, most responded, “No.” This is intriguing because we have 77 percent of organizations who say they know what their Social Consumers want, but 53 percent haven’t really asked. They do not—cannot—really know how to deliver value in social and mobile networks. On the other hand, 35 percent did note that they asked Social Consumers about their expectations.

March 14, 2012March 14, 2012

Facebook Timeline for business off to a strong start

Eight million brands, from carmakers to rock bands, switched to Facebook’s new Web page format 10 days after the revamped pages were introduced at a splashy launch event in New York last month, according to Facebook.

Some businesses say new advertising offerings that take advantage of Facebook’s latest Web page capabilities are helping them reach a broader audience on the 845-million-member social network.

February 28, 2012February 28, 2012

Google + a virtual ghost town?

Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with Facebook. PC users spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between last September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook.

It turns out Google+ is a virtual ghost town compared with the site of rival Facebook Inc., which is preparing for a massive initial public offering. New data from research firm comScore Inc. shows that Google+ users are signing up—but then not doing much there.

Visitors using personal computers spent an average of about three minutes a month on Google+ between September and January, versus six to seven hours on Facebook each month over the same period, according to comScore, which didn’t have data on mobile usage.