Business Networking

Social Networking a Must for Millennials To Decide

Friday, July 1st, 2011

New research about Millennials, the demographic ranging from 16 to 34 years old, shows that 68% of them consult their social network before deciding which restaurant to visit. The new report contains more data that is quite illustrative about Millennial preferences.

YourSocialMove.com

All of this is important for the digital agency to absorb and keep in mind for clients. Restaurants clearly need to increase their social media marketing presence, even at the expense of search results. When examining how Millennials wish to purchase their groceries, grocery stores (34%) are the losers earning just as high a preference as big retailers like Target and Wal Mart (32%). That is a losing statistic because people outside of the Millennial bracket prefer grocery stores 44% to 27%. The good news for the small client of the digital agency is a preference for local mom and pop shops over the chains that are not big retailers. Millennials prefer these stores 11% to the non-Millennial 8%. Somewhere in the data is a unifying theory for these differences. Even without understanding the larger cultural trends the digital agency can learn a lot by studying just the data and tailoring campaigns around it.

Ad Age: Stat of the Day: 68% of Millennials Ask Friends Before Choosing a Restaurant

Tags: advertising, Ann Arbor, Business Networking, Business Social Networking, Digital Marketing, Facebook, Internet Marketing, social media, Social Media Marketing
Posted in Business Social Networking, Digital Marketing, Facebook, Twitter, advertising, social media | No Comments »

Dish Might Acquire Pandora

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

Just a few weeks after Pandora’s IPO, there is talk that DISH Network might be interested in acquiring it. For now this is merely a rumor, and there are some reasons to discount it as a serious move, however, a move like this is inevitable. The question is not ‘if’ but ‘when?’

DISH currently offers limited streams of Sirius XM as its music option to subscribers. Replacing Sirius with Pandora makes sense for DISH. Pandora would automatically gain 15 million members. DISH would acquire a cheaper (cheaper in daily operating costs, the acquisition cost would be exorbitant) music provider than another satellite based company.

OnlineMusicNews.WordPress.com

Digital marketing agencies only indirectly benefits from this acquisition. There would be, however, two aftereffects of the merge. The first is that there would then be more people using Pandora. DISH subscribers might learn to enjoy it and then when they move about, DISH is geographically confined, they are more likely to then tune into Pandora. All of the advertising on Pandora will become more effective as traffic will ramp up. The second effect is part of a wider trend of people transitioning their media consumption from non-internet to internet based providers. Even if the digital agency does not advertise on Pandora sites, this trend will still help propel larger demographic shifts into digital marketing.

Seeking Alpha: Weighing the Takeover Rumors About Pandora

Tags: advertising, Business, Business Networking, digital agency, Digital Marketing, DISH, Internet Marketing, New Media, Pandora, Satalite radio, social media
Posted in Digital Marketing, Location based, Mobile, advertising, digital agency | No Comments »

FaceBook Begins Implementing Comment Advertisements

Monday, June 27th, 2011

FaceBook, the king of affective attachments, is experimenting with a new advertisement type that capitalizes on it as a platform for engagement. The ads are delivered like any other ad but appear like a status update. Viewers are then free to comment on those ads, and others will be able to see those comments.

Social media agencies should take advantage of these types of ads. Engagement has always been the key for brand advertising and FaceBook has been a great platform for creating that engagement. Until now, however, a user had to actively “like” a brand to have a place for engagement. There are a couple of reasons why some people who may actually be fans of a brand would hesitate to “like” the brand. Now, however, those hesitations are bypassed. These ads will probably make several companies a lot of money.

Mashable: Facebook Experiments With Comment Ads

Tags: advertising, Business, Business Networking, Business Social Networking, digital agency, Digital Marketing, Facebook, Internet Marketing, Linkedin, Mashable, New Media, social media, Social Media Marketing
Posted in Business Social Networking, Digital Marketing, Facebook, Internet Advertising, Mobile, Mobile applications, advertising, google, social media | No Comments »

LinkedIn Offers New Ad Types

Friday, June 24th, 2011

Like FaceBook, LinkedIn is trying to find ways to leverage its social network into its advertising options without compromising privacy. LinkedIn has announced two new types of advertisements to capture this effort. One of these changes is to display within the ad how many of a user’s contacts recommend or follow the advertising company. The other new advertisement shows relevant people from a user’s contacts within the banner ad. It is possible for users to opt out of being featured in these advertisements.

IconSpedia.com

While LinkedIn specializes in type of contacts that may limit its appeal to the digital agency’s client, the digital agency should think about how to incorporate LinkedIn. Because of its business specialization it may never be as successful as FaceBook, but its specialization makes LinkedIn a particularly viable option for advertising solutions. These new social media marketing features will help LinkedIn advertising attain stickiness and a level of affect that makes FaceBook so successful.

Mashable: New LinkedIn Ads Leverage Recommendations & Follows

Tags: advertising, Business, Business Networking, Business Review, Business Social Networking, Digital Marketing, Internet Marketing, Linkedin, Mashable, New Media, Online Profiles, Social Harbor, social media, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking
Posted in Business Social Networking, Linkedin, Mobile, Mobile applications, Social Harbor News, advertising, digital agency, social media | No Comments »

New Social Network Tools Offer Potential

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

There are two new social networks, Sonar launched in May and Banjo this morning, which may offer the digital agency a new and inventive way to market for clients. Instead of marking friends and then telling you where those people are, these networks treat locations as the friend and then tell you whom else is nearby. Sonar will also flag the other nearby people by how many FaceBook friends you have in common. Both are available for the iPhone, but only Banjo is currently available for Android.

AllThingsD.com

The verdict is still out on these location friending networks. Effective mobile application development means increasing the apps base usage, so others join up and continue to check in. The other problem plaguing these apps is their counter-intuitiveness. For a brick-and-mortar storefront to appear it would need to be logged into the app and only then would someone else logged in, who also happened to be nearby, see the storefront. Among early adopters, however, that might be precisely why these apps can drive some traffic. If they do take off in popularity then there might be too many nearby contacts to attract much attention, but in the nascent stages it might work very well, especially since the account is free. Digital agency’s using these networks for advertising and social media marketing should wait until there is some growth.

Read Write Web: New Wave of Social Networks Have You “Friending” Your Location

Tags: advertising, Banjo, Business, Business Networking, Business Social Networking, digital agency, Digital Marketing, Facebook, Internet Marketing, Linkedin, location, Location based, location friending networks, Network friend, New Media, Online Profiles, Social Harbor, social media, Social Media Marketing, Sonar
Posted in Business Social Networking, Facebook, Location based, Mobile, Mobile applications, Social Harbor News, Twitter, advertising, digital agency, google, social media | No Comments »

More FaceBook Music Rumors

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011

Since FaceBook reached out to Spotify a few months ago rumors have been circulating about FaceBook Music. Since then Apple and Amazon have launched their own cloud based music players. The industry seems to be in consensus that cloud based music is the future. The digital agency looking for a way into this should be rooting for FaceBook music because both iCloud and Amazon are not in advertising publishing mode, at least, not yet. A FaceBook Music would change that.

iClarified.com

The f8 Conference, FaceBook’s large conference for developers, is being panelled with online music developers. Many see this as the writing on the wall. FaceBook is now dominant in games, news and retailing and this move is their attempt to target media delivered over the internet. Digital agencies will see their advertising on FaceBook gain more stickiness the more FaceBook becomes a portal for internet activities. If there is a music offering, then users will not even need to leave FB exposing them to more FB published advertising.

Gigaom: Revealed: Facebook’s music plans tap Spotify, others

Tags: advertising, Amazon, apple, Business, Business Networking, Business Social Networking, cloud, Facebook, iCloud, Internet Marketing, New Media, Online Profiles, social media, Social Media Marketing
Posted in Business Social Networking, Facebook, Mobile, Social Harbor News, advertising, digital agency, social media | No Comments »

Google’s Launches Brand Management Application

Friday, June 17th, 2011

Google has launched a new app called “Me On The Web’. It can be found on the Google Dashboard in between Account Information and Analytics. Most of the available tools are available as alerts, which were previously available. Managing the alerts is now easier to set up.

Google.com

Most digital agencies now incorporate brand management into their products available for clients. This release will make that management easier to do. Of course, that is a potential problem for the digital agency, as now it might be so simple that businesses will not outsource this task. To counter this potentiality, the digital agency needs to differentiate its brand management portfolio by offering a more sophisticated service.

Mashable: Google Launches Tool for Online Reputation Management

Tags: AdAge, AdWords, Business Networking, Business Social Networking, digital agency, Digital Marketing, google, Internet Marketing, Mashable, New Media, Social Networking Survey, web 2.0
Posted in Mobile, Mobile applications, advertising, google, social media | No Comments »

Demographics of Online Coupon Use Are Changing

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

A new report by Morpace shows the use of online coupons will continue to grow in nominal numbers, but who constitutes those numbers is slowly changing. Estimates don’t predict much change in the percentage of internet users adopting online coupons. 2009 saw 44% of internet users using them and 2013 predictions put that number just shy of half. With the growth of internet usage, however, that percentage bump will be almost 20 million people. Of the 2011 47%, 33% of those people have previously purchased a Groupon.

Photo: AllThingsD.com

Groupon is clearly the darling of online coupon vendors, but the fundamentals may be changing. Normally Groupon caters to the small business, which is great for the digital agency. However, larger firms are now beginning to experiment with daily deal vendors including, but not limited to, Groupon. This changing daily deal partner may have the adverse effect of crowding out some smaller businesses.

Photo: EMarketer.com

Not only is the daily deal partner changing, but so too is the demographic of users. Normally the Groupon market is mainly married women, akin to regular coupons, making more than $50,000. The largest single group to visit Groupon in January 2011 was over 55. The digital agency has often neglected this older group because of the lack of digital integration in their lives. That assumption seems to be changing, and it may be changing precisely because of economic savings offered by digital integration.

E Marketer: Groupon and the Deal Revolution

Tags: Add new tag, Ann Arbor, Business Networking, Business Social Networking, demographics, Derek Mehraban, digital agency, Digital Marketing, google, Groupon, Ingenex Digital, New Media, online coupon, Social Harbor, Twitter
Posted in Business Social Networking | No Comments »

A New Twitter Competitor

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

Sina Weibo is a Twitter-like service that is currently available only in China. In China it is huge and the plan is to move the service into English speaking venues with Sina English. Budweiser is already on board and one of the few differences between Sina and Twitter is geared to marketing. One of those differences is Sina content is also linked to its portal, so links to longer content can still create exposure for advertisements. The main marketing advantage is the layout. Videos and pictures are displayed below the tweet-like message, Sina also operates on 140 characters messages, so viewing the content is easier.

Photo: PennOlsen.com

Even though this service will make itself more of a marketing platform, digital agencies should remain cautious. Consumers are notoriously cautious about gumming up their processors with another app that offers a redundant service. To answer the redundancy question, Sina supporters point to the explosive growth Sina has had in China. However, Chinese affords more communicative potential in 140 characters than English does, and the inline display advantage is also mitigated by using apps instead of visiting the web page. The good news Sina does offer the digital agency is competition. Twitter will now have external pressures to develop, especially the in the realm of the pro-marketing differences that Sina offers.

The Wall: Can Twitter still be beaten? Chinese rival to launch in the US

Tags: Business Networking, China, digital agency, Digital Marketing, Ingenex Digital, Internet Marketing, iphone, New Media, Sina, Sina Weibo, social media, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, SocialHarbor, Twitter
Posted in Business Social Networking, Mobile, Mobile applications, Twitter, social media | No Comments »

Google Improves Image Searching

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

Google has rolled out, currently only available in English, some improvements to its image searching. The first change will be allowing roll over functionality. When a user puts the cursor over an image it will widen for better viewing. Google is also changing the results when “image” or “photo” is specified in the search query. Images will be displayed in a grid so the viewer will have side-by-side comparison ability instead of requiring scrolling. Google has also said it will now be easier to search for images and throughout image hosting sites. Specifics about those improvements were not announced.

Photo: Google Images

Anytime Google updates its logarithm, already considered by many to be the best, then it is good news for digital agencies. The advertising becomes more potent, and better searching means more searching as well as more time for viewers to spend elsewhere. Google updates also drive updates and changes across the internet.

Mashable: Google Search Becomes More Image Friendly

Tags: AdWords, Business Networking, digital agency, Facebook, google, Google Images, Ingenex Digital, Internet Marketing, Mashable
Posted in Mobile, Mobile applications, Social Harbor News | No Comments »

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