Social media data Archives - Page 3 of 8

February 19, 2013February 19, 2013

Statistics on Social Media and Purchasing Habits

Social media is not a replacement for traditional marketing; it is only another tool in your marketing toolbox. You might ask the reason you need to engage with social networks at all. Some statistics on social media and purchasing habits:

Consumers are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals. (HubSpot)
49% of consumers use Facebook to search for restaurants. (Mashable)
58% of Facebook users expect offers, events or promotions when they become a fan. (HubSpot)
81% of U.S. survey respondents say friends’ social media posts have directly influenced a purchase decision. (Forbes)
15.1 million consumers go to social media channels before making a purchase decision. (Knowledge Networks)

What does one take from all of this? First, you do not control your brand anymore, not in the traditional sense. Consumers are talking about your brand (your restaurant) whether you like it or not, so it is up to you to engage the “community.” Even if you are not using any social media channels, check out your business listing on websites such as Yelp and Local.com. You will see reviews of your establishment, and, yes, some of them are negative. Knowing the above statistics, you need to engage the community. If a user gives you a rave review, thank the person. If the review is negative, you need to address it and not arbitrarily dismiss it. Show the consumer you care!

What will be the big social media trends for 2013? Let’s start with mobile. More than 100 millions users have a smartphone. Mobile Internet is due to overtake wired use by 2015. Are you ready? The second big trend is video. This is such a no-brainer, especially when combined with the growing use of mobile devices.

Source

January 30, 2013

Companies’ Approach to Advertising on Social Media

Since the arrival of social media platforms, companies have tried to figure out how to best use them to get their messages to consumers, often with mixed results. Some brands have embraced the notion that social platforms like Twitter allow constant interaction, for better or worse, with their customers.

Others have turned away from some strains of social media, as General Motors did last spring when it stopped advertising on Facebook while raising questions about the return on its investment. The move had a ripple effect in the advertising world, with many brands questioning whether the costs of being on social media were worth it.

A new report issued Tuesday by Nielsen and Vizu, a research company owned by Nielsen, shows that brands think they might be turning a corner, specifically when it comes to paying for their use of social media.The report examined the opinions about social media marketing among more than 500 digital media professionals — including brand marketers, media agencies and advertisers — from September to October 2012.

The study found that that

89% of advertisers continued to use free social media products. Nielsen did not release the names of specific social media platforms mentioned by the respondents, but they are likely to include Facebook and Pinterest, as well as Twitter.
75% of the companies surveyed said they were also spending more for social media content, which could include paying bloggers to write posts about a product or using third-party technology to push videos on to the Web in the hope that they become viral.
70% of the advertisers surveyed said they dedicated up to 10 percent of their budget to paid social media advertising, while 13 percent dedicated more than 21 percent of their budget. Those numbers are expected to increase in 2013.

The results come as companies like Twitter and Facebook are making more diverse advertising options available to brands. Last year, Twitter announced a number of advertising and media initiatives, including a survey product that enables marketers to ask Twitter users a handful of multiple-choice questions. Facebook began testing a new advertising mechanism using a technology called real-time bidding, which allows advertisers to place bids on ad space at specific times.

“Advertisers are starting to look at social media as an integrated part of their advertising strategy,” said Jeff Smith, the senior vice president of product leadership for advertising effectiveness at Nielsen.

January 24, 2013January 24, 2013

Across Channels, Retailers Push to Keep Customers Happy

The rise of the internet has meant big changes for customer service, according to a new eMarketer report, “Multichannel Customer Service: Best Practices for Building Retail Loyalty.” Consumers today have an array of digital customer service tools at their disposal, the newest of which include live chat, social networks and smartphones.

And the stakes are high for retailers trying to keep up. Consumers are quick to punish retailers that do not meet their customer expectations—and reward those that do.

Findings from a Q1 2012 study by the Temkin Group, a customer experience research and consulting firm, showed that customers are loyal to businesses that provide good customer service. Some 86% of survey respondents who reported being very satisfied with their most recent customer service interaction with a company were likely to repurchase, as opposed to only 9% who said they would likely purchase again after being very dissatisfied with their customer service experience.

et another benefit of good service is that satisfied customers become brand advocates who refer other people to the company. A 2012 American Express study found that 48% of internet users told other people “all the time” about a good customer service experience with a business. The survey also found that people were roughly as likely to share their poor customer service experiences.

But consumers have different expectations and preferences for customer service depending on where they are in the purchase journey and the types of questions they have. A 2012 global customer experience study sponsored by Capgemini found that social media was most important in the awareness stage (learning about products and promotions), while smartphones were most valuable in the delivery and after-sales care stages.

October 22, 2012

Social Media Helps Doctors Improve Care And Stay Current

Many doctors turn to social media to to stay on top of the information they need to know to provide quality care.

A recent study (Sept. 24) published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research shows that

85% of oncologists and primary care physicians use social media at least once a week or once a day to scan or explore health information.
60% said social media improves the care they deliver.
25% of doctors use social media daily to scan or explore new medical information.
24.1% said they use social media daily to scan or explore new medical information
14.2% contribute information daily
61% scanned and explored and 46% contributed information weekly
58% perceive social media to be beneficial and a good way to get current, high-quality information

Unlike other studies on physician use of social media that tend to lump professional and personal use together, lead author Brian McGowan, PhD, an education technology consultant, and fellow researchers narrowed the focus to how social media can be used for professional development and lifelong learning.

Many doctors prefer closed communities to open social media platforms but according to Bryan Vartabedian, MD, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, physicians who limit themselves to closed networks are missing some of social media’s benefits.

“Democratizing media has completely opened my eyes to the experience of the patient,” said Dr. Vartabedian, a co-author of the study. He said his social media connections with patient advocacy groups have given him “a huge appreciation for how they think.”

McGowan said the attention to the dangers of social media and the widespread circulation of a few horror stories have prevented many from embracing it.

20% of physicians think using social media sites is a bad idea
30% think it’s great
50% are undecided and could move toward social media if more studies highlight its positive side

October 19, 2012October 19, 2012

Most top 50 Brands Not Social

Old habits die hard: most top 50 brands not social

The more things change, the more they stay the same, 15 years ago, brands had static websites and a unique way to interact with their followers through email or phone, what did they do? They remove phone numbers, addresses and email from their websites.

Fast forward 15 years, in the social media era, most brands have not changed. reminiscent of their old ways, they block followers from initiating conversations and/or only allow them to respond to posts.

In short, brands are still afraid or at best awkward when it comes to one on one communication. They are still stuck in their old broadcasting ways, using social media as a one way communication tool.

According to an A T Kearney study, out of Interbrand’s Top 50 Global Brands on Facebook,

27 of them won’t even reply directly to their customers
20 of the 50 companies have a 4:1 company to customer ratio of posts on their Facebook pages.
71% of the company posts were promotional
Only 5% of all posts actually sought to create real conversation with their customers
Companies as consumer-facing as Disney, McDonald’s, and Sony only allow posts that were created by the companies themselves
Only one of the Interbrand Top 50 routed fans to an unfiltered Facebook wall, while the other 44 initially choose to show consumers and fans a filtered selection of company posts only.
Of the more socially engaged companies, 25 companies in our study had consumer-to-company post ratios in the 3:1 range—three consumer posts for every one company post. These companies include Coca-Cola, BMW, eBay, H&M, Kellogg’s, Pepsi, Heinz, ZARA, NESCAFÉ, Nintendo, Amazon.com, Nokia, Honda, Gillette, Philips, HP, Samsung and L’Oréal Paris. The remaining 20, however, demonstrated nearly a 1:4 ratio between consumer and company commentary.
Only 5 percent of company-to-consumer posts engaged consumers in discussions, while 71 percent of posts were promotional

Most traditional marketers are still not comfortable engaging consumers one on one and default to their traditional ways. they are afraid to lose control of their message and brand and do not understand the dynamics of social media and as a result, budgets may not be available to hire dedicated social media staff or dedicate employees to interact with consumers.

Most brands consider social media to be exclusively a marketing tool and lose sight of the value social media conversations bring to other departments like customer service, R&D, quality, HR to mention only a few. As such, social media can considerably cut customer service costs, development time, correct product or service defects faster, attract valuable talent in a more cost effective way and fail to include these savings and/or revenue generation in the overall ROI

Can you teach an old dog new tricks, sometimes, but past behaviors and trends are not exactly encouraging most top 50 brands succeed at generating “likes” and followers but fail at social engagement and miss out on the real value of social media.

October 2, 2012

Google+ SEO/SEM tool or social media platform?

Since its launch 15 months ago, a big question still remains: Is Google+ a SEO/SEM tool or a social media platform?

Google+ has grown tremendously in the past year (400M users as of September 2012) but the lack of engagement has led to comparing the platform to a ghost town. Is the comparison fair, if you look at the figures, it certainly seem so.

A study from RJ Metrics shows that

The average post on Google+ has less than one reply, reshare and +1.
15% of users will not post publicly again even after posting publicly five times.
The average time between posts is 12 days for active users.
The average number of public posts per active users declines steadily month after month.

In contrast, a the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 52% of Facebook users and 33% of Twitter users engage with the platform daily and a ComScore survey shows that Google+ users spent an average of 3.3 minutes on the site in January vs. 7.5 hours for Facebook.

In response to these dismal figures, Google decide to flex its muscle and leverage its strength in searches by weaving Google+ in their search results, forcing businesses in Google+ by shelving Google places and integrating Google+ and +1 in their search algorithm and the approach seems to show some results

According to an August 2012 survey by SEOMoz,

54.9% of online marketers worldwide said Google+ was one of their top five most-used sites for social media marketing, compared to 87.7% who cited Facebook and 82.7% who cited Twitter. Google+ did, however, come in above YouTube, which 48.9% of respondents cited.
63.8% of respondents stated that they had set up a Google+ business profile, compared to 75.8% who set up or ran a Facebook business page.

89.5% cited changes in Google’s algorithm, like Google Panda, and Google+ as likely to make authorship, site and author ownership of content more important in the coming years

56.4% said Google+ was likely to become massively influential in search engine results pages. Adoption and use of mobile and Facebook’s domination were also mentioned by 81.7% and 69.1% of online marketers, respectively.

56.1% use Google+ for SEO
65.9% use Google+ for branding,despite the lack of user numbers and buzz

In that respect, it looks like the arm twisting is working, boosting the numbers in terms of new accounts, but the growth in new account still has not translated into engagement.

The question still is: Is Google+ a social media platform or a SEO/SEM tool

September 11, 2012September 11, 2012

Social Media Influencial in Food Decision

According to a new survey by eMarketer, social media influences purchasing decision when it comes to food: 36% bought a new brand after seeing a close friend’s recommendation, 30% after not so close friend recommended it, 20% after they saw products highly rated by users in their network and 17% after they read highly rated reviews from people they do not know

In addition, the survey shows that when it comes to food, users are primarily sharing two thing: photos and recipes.

A May Blogher survey shows that recipes are one of the most sought-after pieces of food content online with 89% of internet users interested in food content going online for recipes.

Ina another survey, Allrecipes.com found that 65% of females who regularly used recipe sites bought branded ingredients called for in the recipes at least sometimes. 21% said they “usually” did this.

In yet another May survey, Compete found that food was by far the leading topic category for interactions on Pinterest leading to conversion. 25% overall had bought a product after discovering it on Pinterest, and surprisingly, considering Pinterest’s reputation as a female stronghold, 37% of male users were spurred to buy, compared to just 17% of female users.