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Marketers often spend hours selecting and producing visual content to post on Facebook brand pages. Creatives, strategists, and managers can go round-and-around debating which images work and which don’t for a brand. Sometimes they debate over whether or not the brand should show people in brand images, and everyone has their differing opinions.
At Taggs, we decided to bring data to help settle the debate – Do people pictured in brand images help or hurt Facebook engagement?
Social media marketing tips: Learn how calls to action, content strategy, email/social integration and goals play a part in your social media efforts. Are you looking for actionable tips to improve your social media marketing? Are you wondering what the common themes of social media experts are these days?
This April, 1,100 passionate marketers from every corner of the world traveled to San Diego for Social Media Marketing World (#SMMW13), to find out. The number of conference takeaways and buzz was immense.
For this article, I’ve focused on 26 takeaways from SMMW13, including notable quotes by presenters and their session titles....
Here are some of the most interesting digital marketing stats we've seen this week.Stats include a decline in PC sales, Q2 paid search data, Facebook mobile stats, mobile traffic, PPC budgets and ecommerce in Australia.
What’s the next phase of Social Business? That’s the question I’m frequently asked. Without a doubt, the next phase is the Collaborative Economy. What’s that? That’s where brands will rent, lend, provide subscriptions to products and services to customers, or even further, allow customers to lend, trade, or gift branded products or services to each other. This unstoppable trend is fueled by the social web, the specific features include relationships, online profiles, reputations, expressed needs and offerings and ecommerce. Customers are already starting to conduct these behaviors among themselves using TaskRabbit, AirBnb, Lyft, and many others tools –some of these are disruptions and opportunities to brands. The next phase of Social Business is the Collaborative Economy; Brands will enable customers to share, trade, lend, gift products and goods using social technologies....
Many CMOs see their digital future, but still struggle to make the case across the executive ranks.... ... Digital CMOs also think beyond digital marketing. They look for opportunities to create digital experiences and revenue streams enabled by the nexus of forces, which is Gartner's description of the convergence and mutual reinforcement of social, mobile, cloud and rich information. The collision of these factors unlocks opportunities to reach and engage with consumers across the physical and virtual worlds, drawing them closer with targeted, contextually relevant experiences and offers. Further, it can allow brands to redefine how value is created and delivered — the way Apple has with music, Amazon has with IT infrastructure, and Netflix has with movies. Last year, Gartner predicted that by 2017, the CMO's technology budget will exceed the CIO's. Why? Because more often than not, it's the CMO who is expected to drive this digital transformation, which is deeply dependent on technology. Is the average CMO ready to step up to this challenge?...
At the end of 2012, the University of Massachusetts presented their annual survey of the digital presence of the Fortune 500. Among their findings were the following: 28% of the Fortune 500 companies had blogs, 62% had a YouTube account, and (here’s the shocker) an incredible 23% of Fortune 500 firms had neither a Twitter nor a Facebook account at the end of 2012. Not only that. As we reported, according to the 2012 Fortune 500 Social CEO Index report from CEO.com, only 19 CEOs from the world’s top 500 companies use Twitter (or have someone use it on their behalf) – and only 9 of these are active. Like… seriously?...
Competitive brands have already developed social media strategies designed to interact with fans and followers through comments, shares and Likes, but is that enough? A new report from eMarketer shows companies will have to think on their toes in 2013. Marketers increasingly analyze social media interaction in real time to take the pulse of their brands and create compelling content to draw in new audiences....
What brands generated the most positive and active social conversation in 2012? To find out, we built this interactive brand ranking application using Social Radar, Infegy’s market leading consumer research and analytics platform. Social Radar gathers billions of brand conversations in real time from all over the Web and processes them using an advanced content analysis platform. Using the API, we tracked and analyzed conversation content, volume and sentiment surrounding some of the top brands in the world. Using that information, we generated rankings based on the quantity and quality of conversation surrounding their brands, products and services....
Content marketing that combines paid, earned, and owned media is a simple strategy that leads to publisher partnerships that can drive success for both parties. When I discuss our content marketing plans — and our budget — I make a point of letting all publishers know that my goal is to become a partner with them. And if you talk to anyone I’ve purchased advertising from, many of them have not only become good friends, but we’ve also helped each of our businesses grow in the process. The ad placements are just one part of a three-legged media stool that combines paid, earned, and owned media. This convergence helped create a simple content marketing strategy that led us to start thinking about publishers in a whole new way while putting an end to interruptive advertising....
...I think the best marketing metrics look at the total cost of marketing, including program spend, salaries of the team, and overhead, and relate that cost to the results you care about -- revenue and customer acquisition. Other metrics like cost per lead, cost per follower, or cost per page view can be useful to look at within a marketing team, because they can help you make decisions about where to focus and what parts of your marketing process are broken; but most CEOs really just care about the cost and the net results, not the interim steps. This list of metrics is meant to focus on the most critical measures of marketing that your CEO will likely want to discuss with you. Here are some metrics I've found useful over the past 5 years at HubSpot while growing our company, working with our CEO and CFO, and talking with our board members. I don’t have all the answers -- so please add your favorite metrics and thoughts on these metrics in the comments....
The Online Marketing Institute is please to honor 40 digital strategists in marketing, selected as the leaders that have lead the interactive marketing industry through innovation and education during the past year. This ‘Top 40′ list is compromised of OMI educators, authors, digital strategists and speakers, known for: Embracing the latest integrated digital strategies and technologiesAdvancing the industry through education — speaking, blogging, and teachingDriving game-changing results for their clients and organizations As marketers continue to shift offline budget to online channels, its critical that they stay on top of the latest changes, proven best practices, and newest opportunities. Through their speaking, blogging, and teaching, the leaders below are enabling marketers to do just that.... Here is our annual list of ‘Top 40 Digital Strategists in Marketing’, in alphabetical order...
So, when is the best time to post? And is it the same for every social network?
RadiumOne’s Po.st examined the social sharing data from more than 10,000 publishers, reaching four main conclusions:
1. There are two peak sharing times during the day – 10 a.m. through noon and 8 p.m. through 10 p.m. 2. If you’re looking for clicks, the worst time to share an article is between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. 3. Sharing and clickbacks remain consistent from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. 4. The hours between noon and 2 p.m. see the most shares with the highest clickback rates
The study also revealed a disconnect between the best times to post to each social network, which are as follows:
Twitter: 1 p.m. Facebook: 5 p.m. Pinterest: 11 p.m. Google+: 10 a.m....
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You can choose to be part of the online conversation and contribute to steering it. Or, you can let conversation go on without you, letting others control what is said about your business brand....
So you start your business, you get a website, and sign up for Facebook and maybe one or two other social networks. Your online marketing plans are set, right? No! One thing you forgot is social listening tools…There are now many options – Both free and paid.This is meant as a social listening tools review. Those that will benefit the most are just beginning to calculate winning customers online by connecting the puzzle pieces of their efforts...
When a group of teenagers says Facebook "confuses and scares" them and makes their eyes hurt, there may be a problem. Though Facebook is still considered the most popular social network among teens, their enthusiasm seems to be waning.
Some of them blame it on the ads and the games, but they also say it's become too popular with their parents.A recent Pew Research Center report found that 77 percent of online teens are still on Facebook compared with 24 percent on Twitter, but the latter number is up 16 percent since 2011....
...Moving along find below the latest statistics update for you, after the no less than 10 trillion billion requests I’ve gotten in the past couple of months. Also after the 34 million complaints about my lazy referencing style in past articles I’ve tried to be a bit better with this in this article. Basically if you want the source for a certain statistic it should be (should being operative word) the next hyperlink you see after the stat...
Oh and one more thing. I don’t make up any of these statistics myself. I get them from all those other, much more reputable sources. So if some of them don’t make sense or they conflict with each other or they are utterly ridiculously wrong it’s not my fault. It’s their fault. So that’s my disclaimer.
Like most people who do marketing for startups, I have a love-hate relationship with the term “growth hacker.” On the one hand, it has allowed startup marketers to differentiate themselves from their counterparts in corporate America. On the other, it just sounds like one of those Silicon Valley buzz words that makes you want to puke every time you hear it (can anyone say “pivot”?). That said, “growth hacker” is here to stay. So we may as well own it and make it clear what it means — that way, we can actually use it, hire for it and train for it. The difference between “growth hacking” and “marketing” A growth hacker really is just a marketer, but one with a different set of challenges to tackle and tools to work with. There are a few key differences between startups and big companies (for simplicity’s sake, I’ll call them “corporations”) that best explain the difference....
The current fad of big data has caused marketers to ignore the requirement that humans need to analyze conversations... ...Big data is the allure of more. More information. More access to behavior. Opportunities for more sophisticated analysis. The thinking goes likes this: If we know every move people make then we not only know everything, but we can predict everything. As business people we love it because the information is finite, scalable and measurable. It’s ironic that big data has such an allure in an age when some of the most important information happening online is coming out of conversations. And the way to analyze online conversations is to read them, participate in them and try to understand them without a formula. Conversations are not data. Anyone who has ever tried to analyze them through sentiment analysis knows this. If you ever watched Star Trek, you can imagine clearly that even an advanced, science fiction character like Data, misunderstood human conversation....
We used to turn to witch doctors when we felt angry and powerless; now we tweet. Those who feel wronged by corporations have increasingly taken to social media to get their revenge. For business, this represents a threat — and an opportunity — that obviously can't be ignored. A 2012 Nielsen survey found that people value advice from online peers on both what to buy as well as what to avoid. Almost two in tree of those who review products online say they do so to protect others; an additional one in four use social media to punish corporations for their own bad experiences. This disciplining of brands through social media is a global phenomenon, but there are important regional differences and corporations would do well to localize their response....
According to a 2012 study conducted by the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM), Ipsos ASI and Bloomberg, there is a skills gap in business use of social media. While the majority of businesses are using social media, only 6% say their social media skills and competencies are optimal. A full 50% claim to be either below their industry average or feel they are ‘fundamentally ill-equipped.’
Why does this skills gap matter? Check out these statistics: 95% of online Americans expect a brand to have a social media presence and 89% expect the brand to engage with them on social media (Cone) but the number of companies actually responding and engaging is far less than that. The updated Social Media Revolution video shows that social media has become part of the fabric of our lives....
Our unique social media campaign platform has generated over 600 million brand engagements for some of the world's premier brands, including Redbox, Microsoft®, Dell, BlackBerry®, QVC, Estée Lauder, Coach and more. In the process, Brickfish has established itself as a leader in the social media space....
Compete ran some numbers last month on the average income levels for each of the top 6 social networking sites in the US. ...LinkedIn of course has a larger percentage of high income wage earners than most social networks. But if the numbers below are correct, Google+ has an even more affluent user base than LinkedIn. Google+ has the highest percentage of it’s user base from those making $100k and above. LinkedIn counts 27 percent of their social network from this same group....
Where does all of that real-time chatter go when the moment has passed? Some entrepreneurs think it could fuel the next generation of disruptive products. “What are you doing right now?” Facebook asked its users in 2007. The social network, and its peers, have since become less dedicated to the present moment. Facebook has created Timeline, a historic presentation of daily posts.Foursquare has turned its vault of real-time check-ins into a valuable recommendation engine. And Twitter recently launched a feature that allows users to download their tweet archives. For the first time, social media platforms are looking back. By facilitating constant, real-time conversation, these platforms inevitably created a detailed log of the past. As a habit of sharing and an emerging quantified-self movement merge, the potential to recycle our real-time content grows. The next big thing, some entrepreneurs believe, will leverage not “right now,” but “then.” Here’s why: Content Gets Less Valuable Over Time. And Then It Gets More Valuable....
In 2011, marketers began saying that "content marketing is more important than advertising" and given the growth of content marketing in 2012, it would appear that they meant what they said.
And not just in the consumer space. Although selling content marketing to leadership has been a challenge for some B2B marketers, the use of content marketing at B2B organizations is growing rapidly. As B2B marketers become more familiar with content marketing specifically, best practices are emerging. But that doesn't mean that mistakes aren't being made. Here are five of the biggest....
When brands open up in social media, they need to consider that their consumers have now changed, with entirely new needs. Whenever a brand embarks on a social media campaign, they need to ask themselves what it is their customers want and how they can give it to them. With social media, this means far, far more than anything your product/service can do. When your customers are in their ‘online’ guise, their needs become entirely different to those of the typical, offline consumer. Whereas we once turned to brands to fulfill a simple need or desire with the product offering, we are now turning to them for more....
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Do pictures increase engagement? Not so fast says research.
this is a fascinating bit of research for marketers, Web designers, bloggers and content marketing pros.