Posts Tagged ‘Social Media Marketing’

Facebook Insights Pared Down

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

Amy Porterfield, a successful Facebook marketing coach, has an essay where she offers some advice for the digital agency overwhelmed with Facebook metrics. She argues that there only three of the available metrics that really need observance.

facebookinsights

The most important new metric is People Talking About This. Unlike the other metrics it is visible to the public. This metric is simple: it measures any engagement. If a person comments, shares, likes or links to a post then it is counted in the measure. The metric operates on a weekly basis and shows the percentage change from the previous change. This is easily the easiest way to measure engagement and it is easy to know when a post needs attending.

Another metric is Engaged Users. This measures every time in the past 28 days when a person has clicked anywhere in the post. The metric will also reveal where people clicked, so the digital agency can see what people are responding to.

The other invaluable metric is External Referrers. It measures every time a page is landed on from an external site. This is helpful to measure of the social media marketing agency is adequately performing outside of Facebook. It also helps reveal how to better reach people outside of Facebook.

Facebook Metrics

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.

Social Media Restaurant

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

Mobile Browsing On the Rise

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

More and more the digital agency needs to optimize its advertising for mobile platforms. New research from Google and the Mobile Marketing Association show that among users who have smartphones and computers, the smartphone is becoming a more preferred method of internet browsing. 58% of respondents said they had used their smartphone to go online every day. 78% of respondents had the said the same thing of their computer. That 20 point gap shrinks to 9 points when users are asked about methods for connecting to social networking sites. The nominal numbers will also rise. 2011 sees 31% of mobile users owning a smartphone and by 2015 that number will rise to 43%.

smartphone-sales-surge-top-pcs-for-the-first-time_1

ElectronSpy.info

The digital agency needs to begin thinking about mobile viewing options, even when the campaign is not geared to mobile users. The easy difference is the differences in web sites when viewed on a mobile site. Usually these sites are optimized, but the digital agency needs to ask what then happens to the advertising. Mobile advertisements need to also be scaled for small resolutions as well as for slower bandwidths. There are also more abstract and theoretical approaches that need to be considered.

E Marketer: Mobile Activities Rival PC for Smartphone Owners

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

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.

LinkedIn New Advertising

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

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.

banjo

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

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.

Facebook Music

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

Businesses Need to Better Utilize Twitter

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

Data shows that Twitter users are quite likely to ask questions but not to direct those questions with an @ or a hashtag. Many of these users are asking for input from their followers or from businesses. Six out of ten Twitter users wish businesses would answer questions over Twitter and data also shows business replies are as trustworthy as replies from regular users.

how-to-use-twitter-business

webdevils.biz

This is a high burden for businesses. Monitoring Twitter usage is relatively easy when people use the hashtags or the @ sign. Monitoring Twitter without those tools requires much more time, but the payoff seems entirely worth it. The digital agency needs to incorporate this into its brand monitoring portfolio. It would also be a wise move to incorporate a method of Twitter contact into an advertising campaign. Maybe some users do not use the Twitter tools (hashtag, etc.) because they are not sure about the appropriate use of those tools. The digital agency can incorporate that education as a means of increasing affective communications.

E Marketer: Twitter Users Want Businesses to Answer Them

Children’s Exposure to Digital Advertising Is Increasing

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

The news that 7.5 million children under 13 were on FaceBook reached near scandalous proportions last month. That number, however, is not at all surprising given new data recently released about children’s online behaviors. 30% of children 3 and younger spend some time each week on online. That number increases as the children grow older. 90% of children between 6 and 8 are online at least some.

kidsoncomputers

Photo: MonitoringSoftwareBlog.com

While there are laws making data collection of children more difficult there are ways the digital agency can capitalize on this changing demographic. Advertising which appeals to multiple age groups can be effective and also does not require data collection. While children are increasingly online, the parent is never far away and advertisement that is child friendly and yet appealing to parents is important. Data shows parents are still the main influence of children’s consumptive desire, even though children are increasingly spending more time on social networks.

E Marketer: Young Children Consuming More Digital Media

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.

sina-weibo-iphone-app-300x206

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