Social media data Archives - Page 4 of 8

September 10, 2012September 10, 2012

Small and Medium Size Businesses Struggle to Adopt, Integrate Social Media

Small and medium-sized businesses still lag behind when it comes to using social media and integrating it throughout the business.

In a March 2012 study from SMB Group, only 24% of US small businesses, those with between 20 and 99 employees, said they used social media to engage with customers and prospects in a strategic and structured way. An additional 20% said they used social media, but in an ad hoc, informal way. US medium-sized businesses, with 100 to 999 employees, were slightly more active, as 33% said they used social media in a strategic way and 19% in an ad hoc way.

When it comes to the specific social channels SMBs are using, Facebook, not surprisingly, tops the list, with 26% of small businesses and 38% of medium-sized businesses saying they used a company Facebook page. Additionally, 20% of small businesses and 32% of medium-sized ones said they also engaged and posted content on relevant Facebook groups. Small businesses were least likely to use geolocation services, with only 3% saying they used them. But for medium-sized businesses, only 6% said they used social bookmarking sites like Digg.

Integration of social media within company processes is one of the latest trends, as larger companies work to incorporate social beyond marketing and into customer service, sales, and research and development. SMBs are also working to do so, but still have a ways to go. Of those respondents that used or planned to use social media, 37.7% already integrated social media into the company website and 22.2% did so within marketing processes. However, more than half (55.1%) of respondents had no plans to integrate social media into the product development process, and 43.9% said they had no plans to do so within a company mobile-friendly website.

A separate May 2012 study from Constant Contact found the majority of US SMBs (60%) were holding their marketing budgets steady in 2012, and that social media marketing was considered effective by only 49% of US small businesses. These smaller companies are holding out, on budgets as well as social media integration, but they would be well-served to follow in the footsteps of larger companies and get involved.

August 21, 2012

Visual outperforms text when it comes to social media engagement

According to a new study from M Booth and Simply Measured, visual content is not only taking over the digital and social media landscape, it’s also outperforming all other mediums when it comes to engagement!

Videos are shared 12X more than links and text posts combined on Facebook
Photos are liked 2X more than text posts on Facebook
48% of all Tumblr posts are photos.
On YouTube, 100 million users are liking, sharing or commenting on videos every week.
Pinterest refers more traffic than Twitter, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Google+ combined

Graphics and videos drive engagement in social media

July 31, 2012July 31, 2012

Reviews Are Key To Build Consumer Trust

Gaining consumer trust is an important issue for marketers seeking to ensure that they’re not scaring prospective customers away. In fact, a March to June survey of US adults conducted by About.com found that 84% of respondents felt that brands needed to prove themselves trustworthy before they would interact with them or other information sources. Moreover, the study found that there were 10 primary trust “elements,” or cues, that brands must establish in order to engender trust, including accuracy, expertise and transparency.

In a social media context, customers wanted to see that brands had a significant number of positive reviews, and that they didn’t go out of their way to hide the negative ones. The survey found that 41% of respondents said the ability to see reviews on social networks added to their feeling of trust in a brand. Reviews played a bigger role in cultivating trust than seeing that friends had “liked” or recommended a brand, or that the brand had accumulated a large tally of “likes.”

Video was found to improve trust the most when it served as a complement to other types of content. This ties back in to consumers’ hunger for useful information. Brands can build trust with potential customers by demonstrating expertise through quality owned content that is also devoid of a hard sales message.

July 26, 2012July 26, 2012

Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations

The recent (2012) Search Engine Land’s Local Consumer Review Survey shows that since 2010, consumers are more likely to use the Internet to find local businesses, and they are doing it more often. They are also just as likely to turn to the internet, and trust online reviews as they are to ask for personal recommendations about local businesses.

85% of consumers surveyed have used the internet to find a local business in the past 12 months. This number is up from 79% in 2010.
The majority of consumers surveyed use online reviews to make spending decisions. 27% of consumers are regularly reading online reviews, while another 49% are occasional readers.
65% of consumers (up from 58% in 2010) are reading between 2-10 reviews when researching local businesses.
72% of consumers trust online reviews as they do to personal recommendations.
58% of consumers trust a business which has positive online reviews (up from 55% in 2010)
52% of consumers are more likely to use a local business if they have positive reviews
28% of consumers cite location &/or price as main decision making factor (down from. 38% in 2010)

If you own a business, the statistics are clear, you need a strong online presence, you also need to monitor reviews and be proactive in following up with reviewers in a positive and constructive manner.

Reviews, even negative have always been opportunities to learn, to improve and create fans, do not ignore them, acknowledge reviewers, make things right if you can, pledge to improve, be transparent and truthful

Read the article

July 26, 2012

Car Dealership Reviews Affect Purchase Decision

Almost seven in 10 consumers said dealership reviews affected their purchase decision

Just like consumers in almost every other sector of ecommerce, car shoppers are doing their research online before heading out to make a purchase. According to an April 2012 poll by Digital Air Strike of US consumers who had purchased a car in the last six months, review sites were a widely used tool by car buyers during the research phase of their purchase process. In fact, 69% of consumers said review sites had an impact on the dealership they visited.

Half of respondents said reading reviews of dealerships had affirmed their choice of where to make a purchase, while about one-quarter said the reviews had no effect on them. But online feedback from other customers held an outsized influence on a small minority of car shoppers—14% said reviews were the sole reason they had decided to visit a dealership. And 5% decided to change the dealership they bought from after reading negative reviews online.

And when it came to actually buying, almost seven in 10 shoppers said reviews had aided them in their purchase decision. About four in 10 said the reviews helped them in a general sense, while three in 10 had decided to purchase from a particular dealer based on online feedback from other customers. Moreover, if a dealership had been completely absent from review sites, one in 10 respondents would have been less likely to purchase from them.

July 26, 2012July 26, 2012

New Social Media Stats Facebook and Instagram

Facebook and Instagram (now owned by Facebook) just published new statistics

Facebook revealed in its first earning report that it has 955 million active users, 552 million of which are using Facebook daily. 543 million of them are using Facebook from mobile devices, an increase of 29% and 32%, respectively, year-over-year. Facebook “Growth Team”, yes, Facebook has a squad whose sole purpose is to grow the user base, announced that they are on track to reach the 1B users mark by the end of the year

Instagram, has hit the 80 million user milestone and about 4 billion shared photos.

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012

Social Media In Fortune 100 Companies

The third annual Burson-Marsteller Global Social Media Check-Up analyzed the social media activity of Fortune Global 100 firms – which includes such luminaries as Ford, Sony, AT&T, Honda and Walmart – on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest in February 2012. The survey discovered that 87 percent of these companies are active on at least one social media channel, with Twitter leading the way.

Since 2011, the average number of followers for a corporate Twitter account has almost tripled, from 5,076 to 14,709.

Perhaps surprisingly, YouTube finished second in the poll, with 79 percent of Fortune Global 100 corporates now using a branded YouTube channel, compared to just 57 percent in 2010.

Facebook placed third, with 74 percent of companies having an active Facebook Page. 93 percent of corporate Facebook Pages are updated at least weekly, and the average number of Likes per Page has increased by a heady 275 percent since 2010 to 156,646.

A little under half (48 percent) of firms are now using Google+. A quarter (25 percent) of these companies have Pinterest accounts.

Overall, Fortune Global 100 organizations have an average of 10.1 Twitter accounts, 10.4 Facebook Pages, 8.1 YouTube channels, 2.6 Google+ pages and 2.0 Pinterest accounts.

July 16, 2012July 16, 2012

Brands Ignore Negative Social Buzz at Their Peril

“In a world of social sites that allow consumers to post photos, videos and opinions about companies and brands, disparaging comments and other content detrimental to brands are bound to bubble up,” said a new eMarketer report “Dealing with Negative Buzz on Social Media.” “And that content can stay online forever.”

In February, American Express found that 46% of US internet users it surveyed had turned to companies’ social media sites to vent their frustrations about poor experiences.

“This buildup of negative buzz on social media can have a significant impact on brands because social media is more public and moves faster than customer complaints via traditional channels,” said eMarketer.

Moreover, companies now have accounts and brand pages on so many different social networks that it is hard to keep up. “Having a plan in place for dealing specifically with negative buzz and then constantly monitoring, tracking and responding to comments on social media are two important ways to deal with negative situations on social media,” said eMarketer. But implementing these precautions requires integration between teams within a company, expanded thinking about what words and issues to track, and, in some cases, tasking outside companies and vendors to provide monitoring services.

July 13, 2012

How to Determine Facebook and Twitter ROI

Source

July 5, 2012

Forget Engagement, Consumers Want Simplicity

In a world where brands are constantly fighting for attention, many marketers are asking themselves a key question: What is the best way to impact purchase decision and brand loyalty?

The IBM Institute for Business Value found that 60-65% of business leaders who believe that consumers follow their brands on social media sites because they want to be a part of a community. Only 25-30% of consumers agree. The top reason consumers follow a brand? To get discounts – not exactly ideal for a company’s bottom line.

On top of trying too hard to engage with consumers via social media, marketers are generally pushing out too much information, causing people to over-think purchase decisions and making them more likely to change their minds about a product, be less confident in their choice and less likely remain loyal to the brand.

So what should marketers do? Here at Corporate Executive Board, we surveyed more than 7,000 consumers and interviewed 200 marketing executives across consumer brands and industries to find out. The answer: Simplify the decision-making process, so much so that consumers actually think less about the decision. Marketers can do that in three easy ways by helping consumers:

Trust the information they receive
Learn effectively without distraction
Weigh options confidently

When used together, this approach is known as Decision Simplicity.

Download the full report