How Many Marketers Are Using Social Media?

Nearly three-quarters this year

As consumer usage of social media continues to increase in the US and around the world, marketers have transitioned from cautious engagement to full deployment.

Next year, four in five US businesses with at least 100 employees will take part in social media marketing, eMarketer estimates. That’s up from just 42% as recently as 2008, and the number of marketers using the channel will continue to rise through 2012.

“Marketers that have spent the past few years ramping up their internal social media marketing infrastructure—and their presence on sites such as Facebook and Twitter—will take social media to new heights in 2011,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report “Social Media in the Marketing Mix: Budgeting for 2011.” “And as they do, they will evolve the way they market across all media, not just online.”



How Many Marketers Are Using Social Media? .

Who's Using Twitter? The Pew Center Report!

The Pew Center has a new report focusing on Twitter usage in the U.S., and it reveals that 6% of the entire U.S. adult population uses Twitter.

The report also reveals women and those with college educations are also slightly more likely than other groups to tweet.

One-quarter of Twitter users check the service multiple times per day to see others’ tweets, while one in five never look for new updates.

These are just a few select statistics about the actual tweets that are going out there:

72% of Twitter users say they post updates about their personal life, activities or interests.

62% post work-related updates.

55% use Twitter to share links to news stories.

53% use the service to retweet others’ material.

40% use the service to share photos with others, while 28% use it to share videos.

24% tweet their location.

The report was compiled as a result of multiple surveys: Data on overall Twitter usage and demographics is from the Pew Internet Project’s November 2010 tracking survey. Information on how often people use Twitter, as well as the topics they post about, were from two October 2010 surveys.

According to the center, this is the first time it has conducted research that focuses solely on Twitter users. This is because Pew typically looks into general online activities, as opposed to particular brands. So in most instances, the center’s research has involved asking Internet users if they “used Twitter or another service to share updates about yourself or to see updates about others?”

In August 2008, 6% of Internet users answered “yes.” By September 2010, the number had changed to 24% — but some analysts and readers assumed this pertained to Twitter users alone. This is what led researchers to decide that Twitter usage was worthy of being examined on its own.  Mashable

Download the full Report.

Big Jump in Social Media for Holiday Marketing!

Three-quarters will market on social sites this holiday season

Holiday advertising budgets are shifting as marketers increase their reliance on online channels, according to research from BDO USA.

While print advertising remains on top for holiday spending, nearly 27% of retailers reported they would spend most of their budget for the period online, including on social networks. That was up just from 18% last year and puts online ahead of broadcast for the second year in a row.

Big Jump in Social Media for Holiday Marketing - eMarketer.

Consumers Believe in Positive Word-of-Mouth!

Good news about brand buzz! Many marketers still struggle with the loss of control over their brand that comes with the ability of consumers to discuss them—and have those messages widely disseminated—across social media. But most brand-related chatter, both online and offline, is positive. And positive buzz carries more weight with consumers, according to research from Keller Fay Group. In a study of hundreds of thousands of conversations, the firm found about two-thirds of word-of-mouth brand references were “mostly positive.” Those can be powerful. Two-thirds of study respondents thought positive word-of-mouth was credible, compared with fewer than half who believed negative buzz. Positive information was also more likely to be passed on to others, more than twice as likely to get people to look for more information, and had nearly four times the chance of pushing consumers to make a purchase.



Overall, word-of-mouth is generally positive, but some industries do get better buzz than others. Children’s products and food brands tended to get the most positive mentions, while net advocacy on behalf of companies in the telecommunications, financial services and healthcare industries was lowest. But even for those brands, the majority of word-of-mouth was still upbeat.

Consumers Believe in Positive Word-of-Mouth

Is Cyber Monday Dead?

According to eMarketer Cyber Monday is dead. Various sources are reporting an uptick across the board in both on and off-line spending for the Thanksgiving holiday. That alone is something to be thankful for. Digging into the numbers from Coremetrics there's real evidence that a segment of the population is also using their mobile devices. Whether they are making a purchase or just browsing the site for the latest deals is irrelevant. That fact is they are online and looking for something - right; coupons, discounts, promotions, directions, etc.

Whether your business is retailing online or just driving traffic to your site to spur offline sales, your online presence, image and ability to just be found is increasingly important. Last week we interviewed several businesses who maintained they must go it alone due to costs - they can't afford to outsource or hire someone to manage or run their interactive marketing; or even worse - they "know how to do it, (we) just need to commit some time." Sleeping on the job never got me a pay raise. Neither did being stubborn.

Trying to shoot a moving target is a difficult task. So too is Interactive Marketing. Reason being, you've got to be up-to-speed on where the target is now, or where it's going. Unless you're entrenched in the in's and outs of the marketing industry, you're more than likely going to miss the target, or at best, get there after it has moved.

Don't get bogged down in the details of learning how to do interactive. Educate yourself on what you think you need and get with (hire) a firm that can help you meet your needs & goals. Small and Medium size businesses that opt to go-it-alone are missing opportunities 24/7. And at what cost?

How can you cost-justify outsourcing? How much does your average sales agent generate each year?

Social Media Is Top Priority for Search Marketers

Social will be at the center of SEO and PPC campaigns

Is 2011 set to be the “year of Facebook,” even among search marketers? Based on what US advertisers told search marketing agency Covario, it’s definitely the year of social.

Search marketers have discovered how social media marketing can help build their search engine optimization efforts, and respondents to the Covario survey said their No. 1 priority for SEO next year was integration with social media programs. According to the report, “leveraging social media for scalable link-building efforts is a major initiative for advertisers.”

Social media will also play an important part in paid search efforts next year. Search ad campaigns on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn were top of mind for nearly half of advertisers surveyed—far ahead of priorities like local search or dealing with recent changes to major search engines (for example, Google Instant and Yahoo!-Bing integration).

Social Media Is Top Priority for Search Marketers

Leveraging Best Practices for Social Media!

Achieving social media marketing goals, whatever your level of participation Brands and marketers have different levels of participation in the social media space, but many have similar goals and strategies. The “2010 Social Media Benchmarking Study” from Ketchum and FedEx found when looking at 62 study participants from a variety of industries that 100% had some degree of social media presence.But they demonstrated different engagement levels, including observers who are determining how to best use social media and leaders who push boundaries and innovate.

Leveraging Best Practices for Social Media

Does Social Media Marketing Make Sense for the Smallest Businesses?

Small businesses unsure about reaching audience on social sites

eMarketer estimates that 127 million people in the US, or 57.5% of internet users, will use social networks at least monthly this year. Facebook alone has over half a billion active users worldwide. Still, many of the smallest businesses don’t believe their customers can be marketed to on such sites, according to an August 2010 survey from customer review platform RatePoint.

Respondents, the majority of whom were business owners with just one to five employees, were split on whether social media was a quick way to connect with current or future customers, but sentiment was largely negative. When asked if they thought customers wanted to hear from them on social sites, only a quarter of businesses thought they did.

In addition, 20% of small businesses did not think their customers spent time on social networking sites; another 27% were undecided. And nearly a quarter did not believe their customers did research online before doing business with their company.

Does Social Media Marketing Make Sense for the Smallest Businesses?

Social to Boost SEO!

Majority of companies have blogged with goal of search optimization

The majority of search marketers have recognized the importance of social media to their search engine optimization efforts, according to a November 2010 study from search marketing software provider SEOmoz.

Nearly 71% of respondents said they use social media as part of their SEO strategy. Social media marketing can be an excellent driver of content visibility, by helping to keep content fresh and abundant, and also by increasing the number of inbound links a site receives.

Social to Boost SEO

Emineo Media

Have Click Rates Finally Stopped Declining?

Stabilizing, but there’s more to performance

One of online marketers’ simplest metrics to keep track of, the clickthrough rate, has been in decline for years. As many recognize the importance of other measures in determining the success of online campaigns in attempts to capture the branding as well as the direct-response effects of advertisements, fewer and fewer web users were clicking on fewer and fewer ads.

Based on longitudinal data from digital ad solutions provider MediaMind, however, that decline appears to have stopped. The company’s analysis of data from July 2006 through July 2010 shows that annual average click rates have plateaued, at 0.09%.

According to “Standard Banners—Non-Standard Results,” it was the success of online display ads that caused the drop in clicks to begin with. As users saw more and more ads across the internet, many continued clicking, but not fast enough to keep up with the expanding inventory. Clickthrough rates fell steadily until reaching an equilibrium.

Have Click Rates Finally Stopped Declining?

Emineo Media