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Social Media Weekly BuzzWelcome to the first of many social media recaps that will be featured right here on our eMarketing blog. We will be gathering a weekly digest of the top stories and latest happenings within the social media sphere, and from these headlines offer our suggestions and conclusions on what the overall impact might be for marketers and casual users alike. This week, not unlike any other, threw us some interesting developments in the social media world. Most of the buzz was focused on new Twitter and Facebook developments, both good and bad. YouTube also managed to make news with a new revenue sharing platform, in addition to lending a helping hand to Lindsay Lohan. Without further delay, here are the top social media headlines for the past week: • Facebook Privacy Changes – Facebook has been falling into trouble lately with Canadian authorities due to being in violation of the country’s privacy laws. In particular, the privacy issues which surround the retention of customer data after a user cancels his or her account. This could cause wider implications for other social networks concerning the way user data is currently being handled. • Should Twitter Sell? – With strong competition coming from Facebook’s end, especially after the recent FriendFeed acquisition, many individuals have suggested that it might be time for the popular micro-blogging service to sell out to a larger and stronger partner. However, while it might be profitable prospect, there is still a debate over how much growth the service still has left in it, and therefore this decision should not be taken lightly. • Woofer – 140 characters holding you back from what you really want to say? Why not use 1400? Enter Woofer, a carbon-copy of Twitter that alters the service from a micro to a macro-blogging atmosphere. Just sign in with your Twitter name and Woof away! • Bit.ly and Yfrog Partnership – One of the most popular URL shorteners available on the web partners with Yfrog, a current underdog in the Twitter picture-sharing landscape. The result? Much trouble for TwitPic, currently the leader in this segment. • YouTube lends a helping hand to Ms. Lohan – The LAPD released video footage of an apparent break-in of Lindsay Lohan’s home with the hope of catching the three suspects. Even police departments these days are realizing the true potential of social media. • YouTube Videos a Source of Revenue? – YouTube announced that it may soon be offering money to individuals whose videos have a specific number of views and the potential to go viral. The source of the income? Advertisements that the service will sell against the video. • Social Media Use in Companies Continues to Rise – In a recent report by eMarketer, it was found that currently 59% of brand marketers are now using social media. What’s really interesting is that within 12 months this number is predicted to jump to 82%. The most popular social media channels? Facebook, Twitter, online videos, and blogs. Canada continues the trend of cracking down on privacy issues that have been surfacing recently due to increased usage of social media outlets. The result could be stricter laws and regulations across the board, with increased security for users, but also a decline in the ability for companies and other services to gather important statistics on potential clients. Twitter is again in the news thanks to Facebook and bit.ly. Certainly the partnership of bit.ly and Yfrog will mean TwitPic must scramble in order to retain its dominating market share, that is if Twitter is still around in its current form. Though Twitter adamantly denies it is for sale, the prospect is that there is a lot of money to be made. The key in this situation is determining whether the service has any significant additional growth, as selling out too soon could result in lost profits for founder Biz Stone. Speaking of profits, the fact that popular videos on YouTube, which meet the correct guidelines the service has laid out, can soon be making an income from ad revenue is a pivotal move forward, and might even serve as an incentive for posters to submit higher quality material. It is interesting to see that as the service continues to grow and transform, even police departments are jumping on the social media bandwagon, with the LAPD revolutionizing the way we will search for suspected criminals. Could this be the beginning of social media law enforcement? The fact of the matter is, social media is here to stay. The eMarketer report only solidifies this position, as 82% of companies within the next 12 months will have integrated some sort of social media platform into their marketing programs. Only 13% have said outright that they do not use, or are not planning to use, social media any time soon. The main reason? They just don’t know where to begin. This is why it’s important to find a social media marketing company who has a clear strategy for this revolution. They can provide insight as to why social media marketing must be a pivotal aspect of any successful company’s overall business plan. Labels: Facebook, Friendfeed, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, YouTube Social Media: Passing Fad or New Reality?With all the hype surrounding social media these days, it’s hard not to draw parallels to the dot-com boom that took place in the not-too-distant past. The shear growth which has occurred in the past few years on well-known social media websites such as Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, Twitter, and Wikipedia, to name a few, is at the very least mind-boggling. However, social media has in fact been around for longer than most people tend to believe. One of the earliest forms of social media is the bulletin board. Here, information was exchanged freely within a network of individuals for (usually) the betterment of the organization. Anything “posted” to that board was easily accessible by one’s peers. Much the way weblogs today allow individuals to openly express their thoughts and ideas, so did the bulletin board. Social media, in today’s definition, is significantly intertwined in the processes and technologies which make these types of interactions a reality. The World Wide Web has done wonders for the exchange of information, thoughts, and ideas on a global scale. So can the recent surge in social media be considered a fad, like bell-bottom jeans? Or is this really the wave of the future, a social revolution that might someday be compared to the Industrial Revolution as a critical time of change? Here are some fascinating statistics, compiled by Socialnomics.com, which uncover how much an effect Social Media is having on our generation:
See the stats displayed visually in this video on YouTube: However, as social media continues to evolve, individual users and companies alike must discover best practices in order to take advantage of this new technology to its fullest, or else face serious repercussions. For example, lately Twitter has come under fire due to a recent study by Pear Analytics, which found that 40.55% of total tweets captured could be found to be pointless babble. The graph below also takes a stab at Twitter, condensing its community down to 100 users and classifying them on usage patterns.  In this simplified breakdown of the Twitter user base, it is easy to see that currently, very few accounts utilize Twitter in an efficient way. The majority of users seem to lack frequent updates, a pivotal part to the successful functioning of Twitter. The second largest category is “dead” accounts, where somebody had created a profile yet for one reason or another has not yet used the service. What is interesting to note is that most of the noise found on Twitter is created by a very small portion of the entire user base, yet makes up 75% of the tweets found on the service. These two sources bring to light that, while social media can be extremely useful, it can also be abused, and extremely inefficient when not correctly utilized. So is social media just a fad? Some naysayers definitely think so. If anything, this revolution that we are currently in will drastically alter the way individuals interact and the way companies must market themselves to consumers. No longer will direct marketing generate a positive ROI on its own. Socialnomics.com notes that 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% trust advertisements. Companies instead must engage consumers in conversation, spark interest in relevant communities, and not instruct consumers on what their wants and needs should be, but instead listen to them. This, in turn, will lead to a positive buzz surrounding a brand and ultimately create those valuable personal recommendations all companies strive for. Labels: Facebook, Online Media, Social Media, Twitter, web 2.0, YouTube Advertising on Highly Targeted, Niche SitesThere are websites for everything and everyone. As a media planner, it is often difficult to narrow down the list of sites to advertise on because there are so many. But what happens when a client’s campaign is so targeted that it is actually difficult to find sites to advertise?
11 Things to Measure Besides Clicks and ConversionsHere we are in the midst of a true digital revolution. Dollars are being slashed from traditional ad budgets, and anemic online ad budgets are growing in proportion with the total spend. The new media economy is turning the old on its head, and marketers are looking for new ways to measure the impact of their investments. As a result, many online marketers are still enjoying days in the sun despite all the doom and gloom. The prospects get better if you look down the road to when overall media budgets start to grow again. Even better is that branding dollars are moving online at an unprecedented rate. And why not? Online branding doesn't just drive impressions. If done properly, it encourages high-value brand engagements. And these engagement open the door to a new world of measurement possibilities that go way beyond clicks and conversions. These new metrics also have far more immediacy than awareness studies and traditional brand measurement methodologies. Today I'll share a list of high-value brand interactions that can be measured and reported. These items are often overlooked metrics that can be shared with your clients, who are more anxious than ever to show value and ROI (define) from their advertising investments. Read more... Labels: ClickZ, online marketing Recent YouTube ChangesA few days ago, YouTube quietly launched its homepage redesign (see Mashable article and YouTube blog post). The changes are pretty subtle, but are aimed at streamlining and simplifying the YouTube experience. According to the YouTube Blog, the left side is dedicated to exploration: finding videos to watch through search and browse. The right side is all about organization of the videos that matter most to you: your subscriptions, your recent viewing history, and your own uploads. Apparently, YouTube ran a large landing page testing experiment before implementing the changes and launching the new page, but personally it doesn't feel like much of a redesign for me. Being a regular YouTube user, when I saw the homepage, I thought it looked different but couldn't quite pinpoint it. After chatting quickly with YouTube account executive extraordinaire Ryan Stonehouse, he confirmed that the changes were indeed small (for instance, the Search box now has a separate area with a gray box around it) but all aimed to improving the user experience. I am glad to see YouTube constantly trying to improve and as an advertiser, I'm impressed with the expanding array of opportunitiess not just for branding but also for user engagement and entertainment. I am a big fan of the interactive masthead units, such as today's Madden 10 video. It starts out as a regular homepage video unit on the usual upper right hand side, but one of the players busts out of the frame, it expands into a full masthead unit, and the player pushes out the content on the left like he's breaking a tackle. Very fun to watch (although I thought there was still a lot of room for more interactivity/user engagement - maybe some games? video within the video?). Check out some screen grabs below.
 There is usually a companion 300x250 ad on the right - that's another avenue for branding, obviously... It becomes something like a page take-over, with all possible units promoting one brand (in this case, Chevy). And let's not forget that YouTube also offers those flash lay-overs, video within a video, and even call-to-action opportunities.We'll keep you posted on other YouTube and social media news so keep reading our blog! Labels: Industry, Online Media, POV, Social Media, YouTube Create a Media Plan and an Engagement PlanWhile working with clients, have you observed this? Clients will call a marketing initiative a branding campaign until they take a look at their reports. Like any rational person, their eyes head to the far right-hand side of report, looking past impressions, clicks, and cost per click to evaluate how many actions they are getting. And they should. Today, marketers must focus on engagement, high-value brand interactions, and of course, actual leads and sales. Think of it this way: there are banner impressions and then there are lasting impressions. Engagement helps brands make lasting impressions with target audiences. So in parallel to a great Media Plan, one should have a great Engagement Plan. An accompanying document should map not just where your creative will be placed, but what people will be encouraged to do when they see and click on your ads. Especially today, when properties offer an assortment of rich media units and engagement ads, how people respond can vary as much as what people see. Let's say you are advertising on LinkedIn. You can enable people participate in a poll and then be redirected to your landing page. Facebook's Engagement Ads let people become a fan of your company right from the ad. And on all media you place, your clicks go to landing pages that should be help trigger chains of events and engagements. So as a media planner your plan should show the whole picture: the Media Plan and the Engagement Plan. The Media Plan tells clicks where they are going to "be," an Engagement Plan tells the client what you are trying to get people to "do" and what you are going to "measure" from an action standpoint. Read more... Labels: ClickZ, Online Media Mobile Advertising in Plain English For those unfamiliar with the mobile advertising, the IAB recently released a mobile media buying guide for advertisers and agencies covering topics such as the mobile ecosystem, key mobile ad terms, shortcode campaigns and example of various mobile ad executions. This booklet contains everything one would need to get their first mobile campaign up and running.Mobile advertising is not so new anymore, but advertisers have been slow to adopt mobile as a viable advertising medium. As a recent MediaPost article stated, “An interactive marketing forecast released by Forrester Research projects mobile advertising will increase 70% to $391 million this year and to $1.3 billion by 2014. The firm called mobile one of the "most anticipated, least adopted" interactive channels in the mix.” Advertisers must remember that mobile is not so much different from any other advertising medium. You still need to set performance goals and objectives regardless of the advertising medium. You still need to determine where your target audience resides and you still need to determine how to reach them. In the world of mobile advertising, this may include mobile websites, downloadable applications, mobile messaging and mobile video. Mobile advertising shouldn’t take the place of online or offline, but rather compliment other advertising efforts. For more information on how to get a mobile advertising campaign up and running please refer to the IAB’s Mobile Guide here. Labels: Integration, Mobile Marketing, online marketing VIP at the House of BluesOn July 29, a simple act of charity netted Bill Holmes a VIP pass to the House of Blues. By donating a few bags of food, Bill won a contest through WBCN to interview Rise Against before their show at the House of Blues. Back stage passes, VIP seats, and the chance to meet Rise Against and Rancid (Bill's favorite band in the world) were all part of an amazing evening. Bill volunteers at the The Greater Boston Food Bank in his spare time and feels very strongly about fighting hunger. The Rise Against interview can be seen here and we've posted some pics from the night below. For more information on how you can support The Greater Boston Food Bank, click here.  Bill Holmes and the lead singer of Rise Against, Tim McIlrath!  Bill Holmes and Lars Frederiksen from Rancid!  Our incredible view for the show! Labels: Campus Life |
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