Studies Archives - Page 3 of 4 - Spinnaker Marketing

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 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 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

July 3, 2012July 3, 2012

Aston Martin Vanquish Social Campaign a Huge Success

British automaker Aston Martin chose digital to market its new Vanquish model and saw a more than 100 percent increase in visitors to its Web site from social media channels among users in Germany, the United States and its home country.

The digital campaign that spanned Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the Aston Martin Web site began June 20 and centered on a digital car configurator, images and a video. The automaker saw the highest traffic on its Web site ever

recorded during the first three days of the campaign.

“Luxury automotive brands have communities of people that are incredibly passionate about their product,” said Jenn Heinen, associate director of social strategies at Morpheus Media, New York.

“Leveraging any kind of community-driven platform makes perfect sense to distribute content to a group of people who are already engaged with a product and lifestyle,” she said.

“Especially with more niche communities, the excitement and eagerness to interact with this kind of content makes social platforms all the more impactful for content syndication.”

Aston Martin recorded June 20-22 as its three highest traffic days on its global Web site at http://www.astonmartin.com. It saw the average number of daily visitors to the site double in the first seven days of the Vanquish campaign, per the brand.

As compared with the same period seven days earlier, the automaker saw a 216 percent increase in visitors to the site from the German market. There were also 162 percent, 102 percent and 81 percent increases in visits from consumers in Britain, the U.S. and China, respectively.

“Luxury automotive brands have communities of people that are incredibly passionate about their product,” said Jenn Heinen, associate director of social strategies at Morpheus Media, New York.

“Leveraging any kind of community-driven platform makes perfect sense to distribute content to a group of people who are already engaged with a product and lifestyle,” she said.

Especially with more niche communities, the excitement and eagerness to interact with this kind of content makes social platforms all the more impactful for content syndication.”

May 15, 2012May 15, 2012

New Google+ Study Confirms Minimal Social Activity, Weak User Engagement

Larry Page recently called Google+ the company’s “social spine.” If that’s the case, then Google’s backbone might be much weaker than Page has been letting on, at least according to a new report from RJ Metrics.

This week, the data analytics firm provided Fast Company with exclusive new insights on Google+. The findings paint a very poor picture of the search giant’s social network–a picture of waning interest, weak user engagement, and minimal social activity. Google calls the study flawed–we’ll explain why in a second–and has boasted that more than 170 million people have “upgraded” to the network. RJ Metrics’ report, on the other hand, is yet another indicator that Google+ might indeed just be a “virtual ghost town,” as some have argued.

Let’s start with the findings. For its study, RJ Metrics (RJM) selected a sample of 40,000 random Google+ users. RJM then downloaded and analyzed every sample users’ public timeline, which contains all publicly available activity. One important caveat: RJM was only able to look at public data, which as it points out, “is not necessarily reflective of the entire population of users,” since some users are private or at least have private activity. That said, the stats are eye-opening:

May 8, 2012May 8, 2012

Three Facts About Facebook Advertising

Buddy Media. has been helping advertisers succeed on Facebook, and the other major social networks, ever since. Today, close to 1,000 companies, including 8 of the world’s top 10 global brands, use Buddy Media to manage their Facebook advertising and social marketing programs.

This has given Buddy media a front-row seat to the social marketing game, and with it, access to a large set of aggregate data about the state of Facebook advertising and the the actual results they are seen are different from some of those cited in a story from The Wall Street Journal that mentions brand advertisers are souring on Facebook advertising.

The aggregate, quantifiable numbers, as well as knowledge of brands’ ad spend, show the speed at which brand advertisers are investing into Facebook.

Companies that spent $1 million last year are spending $5 million this year. Companies that spent $10 million last year are upping spend to $25 million or more.

In the first quarter of 2011, our technology managed 3 billion social ad impressions. In the same period this year, we managed 127 billion impressions. That’s a 42-fold increase in just a year.

The Wall Street Journal quoted a brand manager at Kia Motors as evidence of advertisers’ “big doubt.” “The question with Facebook … is, ‘What are we getting for our dollars?’” asked Kia’s Michael Sprague.

To address Michael’s question–as well as any doubts about the state of Facebook’s advertising business–you need to understand three simple truths.