DreamGrow Social Media

Social Media Weekend: Case Studies, E-Commerce, Social Media Budget, Strategy

7 Key Findings On The Use of Social Media And E-Commerce: New Study. Online retailers have been rushing into using Social Media as the next big marketing thing and yes it is showing some promise. A recent study by Compete which evaluated online shopping trends, unearthed some interesting findings about the use of Social Media and online shopping, especially about Facebook and Twitter.

The Compete study overview: Consumers Slow to Embrace Social Media As Shopping Resource.

Where Will Social Media Budget Flow to in 2010. Where will the money go? This post explores some of the avenue where social media budget will flow to this year.

Case Study: Social Networking Does Work. M+R Strategic Services released their 2010 NonProfit Social Media Benchmark Study: An Analysis of Growth and Social Engagement Metrics for Nonprofit Organizations. The findings in the study are quite re-assuring for some of the best practices we already know.

Paul Gillin’s Guide to Choosing Social Media Tools. Most companies have the same problem: They’ve dabbled in blogs, Twitter and Facebook fan pages but after several months they lack traffic, followers and fans. They’re frustrated and confused. Wasn’t this supposed to be a cheap and easy way to build their brand and bring in sales? Social media demands a strategy, and that’s where businesses usually don’t go far enough.

B2B Case Study: How to Get Started in Social Media. The second in a series of “How To’s” to help you add social media to your integrated marketing communications program. Integrated Marcom Minute interviewed Katherine Watkins, Marketing Communications Manager, Eastman Chemical Company, to learn how she and her marcom team integrated social media into their marcom mix.

Adopting Social Media in the Enterprise. Most enterprises have made attempts at dipping their toe in social media mostly by establishing a presence on what we will call the “free social web” – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. While these social outposts are extremely important for branding and driving traffic to an enterprise’s web site or online community, they are difficult to measure and track and, most importantly, it’s difficult for the brand to own the conversations happening within the broader social web.

Social Media and Young Adults

Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study about internet and social media use among Millennial generation by situating it within similar data for adolescents and adults older than 30. The data on teens is drawn from a survey conducted between June 26 and September 24, 2009 of 800 adolescents (ages 12 to 17). The adult data are drawn from a survey conducted between August 18 and September 14, 2009 of 2,253 adults (age 18 and over). Here are some of the key findings:

Blogging is down among young adults

• One of the findings is that young people are blogging less than they used to. 14% of online teens say they blog, down from 28% in 2006.
• Also the commenting activity is lower as 52% of teen social network users report commenting on friends’ blogs, down from the 76% who did so in 2006.
• In 2009 15% of internet users ages 18-29 maintain a blog —a 9% point drop in two years. However, 11% of internet users ages thirty and older now maintain a personal blog (7% in 2007).

Social networking sites’ usage numbers

• 73% of wired American teens use social networking websites. 55% of online teens used social networking sites in November 2006.
• 47% of online adults use social networking sites, up from 37% in November 2008.
• 72% of online 18-29 year olds use social networking websites, significantly higher than the 40% of internet users ages 30 and up who use these sites.
• Adults are increasingly fragmenting their social networking experience as a majority of those who use social networking sites – 52% say they have two or more different profiles.
• Among adult profile owners 73% have a Facebook profile, 48% have a MySpace profile and 14% have a profile on LinkedIn.

Teens are not using Twitter

• 8% of internet users ages 12-17 use Twitter. Older teens are more likely to use Twitter than their younger counterparts; 10% of online teens ages 14-17 do so, compared with 5% of those ages 12-13.
• Young adults lead the way when it comes to using Twitter or status updating. One-third of online 18-29 year olds post or read status updates.

Mobile

• Three-quarters of teens and 93% of adults ages 18-29 now have a cell phone.

Internet usage

• 93% of teens ages 12-17 and young adults ages 18-29 go online. 74% of all adults ages 18 and older go online.
• 48% of online teens have bought things online: books, clothing or music, up from 31% in 2000.

Image credit Bina Sveda

Social Media Weekend: Facebook vs Twitter, Sports, Olympics, Ski Resorts, Retailers

Olympics’ Social Rings. TV may still be the big marketing vehicle around the Olympics, but sponsors use social media to build buzz and get fans involved.

“People are blogging with their phones and taking photos with them,” says David Steel, svp of strategic marketing, Samsung Electronics America. “The timing seems perfect to have a program oriented around mobile social networking.”

A Third of Adults Now Post to Sites Like Facebook, Twitter Once a Week. The ranks of these networkers, dubbed “conversationalists” in a report released today by Forrester Research, have grown in the past couple of years. They’re mostly women, and they aren’t only young people — 70% of the adults in this category are 30 and older.

Ski Resorts and Snow Reports and Social Media: A match made in heaven? The Top 10 North American Ski Resorts Utilizing Social Media.

Retailers Lure Moms with Social Media, Free Stuff. The study found that women with children at home are more likely to use Facebook (60.3%), MySpace (42.4%) and Twitter (16.5%) than average adults (50.2%, 34.4%, 15.0%, respectively). Moreover, 15.3% maintain their own blog.

Study Reveals Facebook Better Than Twitter for Marketers. Can’t say that it surprises me. Facebook encourages users to aggregate external content on Facebook to be viewed within the network, while Twitter encourages users to link externally, viewing content outside of the network.

Led by Facebook, Twitter, Global Time Spent on Social Media Sites up 82% Year over Year.

People in the U.S. continue to spend more time on social networking and blog sites as well, with total minutes increasing 210% year-over-year and the average time per person increasing 143% year-over-year in December 2009.

Top Social Brands of 2009

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in the land is fairest of all? Today I came accross a list of 100 top social brands of 2009 put together by a social media management company Vitrue. The top 10 is…

1. iPhone
2. Disney
3. CNN
4. MTV
5. NBA
6. iTunes
7. Wii
8. Apple
9. Xbox
10. Nike

…and it looks weird. I really couldn’t put my finger on it but then I read that:

Some powerhouse technology brands were omitted from the list as they provide the backbone of many social networks. While Google, Facebook and others are top brands, The Vitrue 100 is measuring companies that are using social technology, not those who are the technology.

So you have to take that with a grain of salt. A list of social brands that excludes Google, Facebook, Youtube, Ophra, etc. So I started to look for a second opinion. It wasn’t too hard to find Social Radar Top 50 Social Brands of 2009. Their top 10 is a bit more believable (at least for me).

1. Twitter
2. Google
3. Facebook
4. iPhone
5. YouTube
6. Obama
7. Mac
8. Apple
9. iPod
10. Microsoft

Maybe it is my tech bias or something else but this list seems more in step with my understanding of top social brands. So what do you think?
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Image credit Melodi T

North Dakota is embracing social media

Among hundreds of other cities, companies and states, the state of North Dakota is also on the bandwagon of social media now.

Their tourist agency has gained presence for the state in almost all of the available social media channels, the main ones being facebook, youtube and twitter.

At rulegendary.com , people are asked to write about the experiences they have about North Dakota and then link back the URL with their story. The story can be written in a blog, made into a video or a photograph.

They are also giving out prizes to the first 10, but you can argue about the prize itself – being a T-shirt picturing North Dakota. Leaving out the prize though, North Dakota is doing a great job here. They have over a thousand followers on Twitter, and the amount of fans on Facebook is also growing near to that.

Since the campaign itself is relatively new, we have no data on the success of it yet. But seeing the amount of followers they already have in Facebook and Twitter, North Dakota has definitely done well. They are answering questions, engaging in conversations and telling it all about the latest activities in their state.

If the rulegendary.com campaign will be a success, they will also have great video material to put up on video sharing sites like Youtube. North Dakota is definitely going the right way here.

Social Media Will Get Real Budgets

In our 2010 trends post we mentioned that social media marketing will start to get real budgets. Every marketer who hasn’t been hiding under the rock for the last several years has noticed that something important is happening.

In a recent MarketingSherpa study almost half (49%) of the respondents say that they believe that social media will eventually produce ROI. Seven percent of respondents already see ROI and intend to increase budgets as needed to get better results.

Emarketers Debra Aho Williamson estimates that paid Facebook advertising will grow 39 percent in 2010 and reach 605 million dollars worldwide. The total spend on social network advertising would grow to 2.2 billion dollars worldwide and 1.3 billion in US.

But that is only paid advertising. In social media adaption paid ads are only one step and not very social at that. So we expect to see a lot more budgets to be earmarked for social media marketing. Building communities, setting up Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages, creating content, capturing leads, measuring results. There are a lot of way to spend on social that will be hard to measure or classify.

We believe that bigger chunks of media and marketing spend will be channeled to payroll to hire community managers, bloggers and other specialists who are a key ingredient to make social media marketing really social. This in-house part of the social media spend may take up to two thirds of the budgets. This means that the total social media spend may be more than 7 billon dollars in 2010.

In the same category the payroll will finance social media when engineers talk directly to consumers and support personnel answers customer questions on Twitter or Facebook. As the organizations start to open up, more and more of social media interaction will be an integral part of employees daily routine and this way “social media budgets” may look smaller than they actually are even if we include in-house.

Higher budgets mean higher level decision-making. This will probably mean that some budgets will increase simply by added frictional costs of meetings and consultants. But higher level decision-making will also put pressure to produce real and measurable social media ROI.

Research: Student Grades Not Affected By Social Networking

The study “Social Networking Usage and Grades Among College Students” (PDF) finds that students who heavily engage in social networking do just as well academically as students who are less interested in keeping in touch with the medium.

The study indicates that social media is being integrated with rather than interfering with students’ academic lives. College students have grown up with social networks, and the study shows they are now simply part of how students interact with each other with no apparent impact on grades. – UNH adjunct professor Chuck Martin

It seems that most of the time that is used for social networks comes from TV, idle surfing, and gaming. This way the time spent on social networking sites could be said to be a “higher quality” activity. The time for studying and other important thing stays the same.

The research shows that there is no correlation between the amount of time students spend using social media and their grades. Grades followed similar distributions for all colleges.

63% of heavy users received high grades, compared to 65% of light users. 37% of heavy users of social media received what were defined as lower grades and 35% of light users fell into same category.

The study showed that Facebook and YouTube are the most popular social media sites, with 96% of students saying they use Facebook and 84% saying they use YouTube. 20% said they use blogs, 14% use Twitter, 12% use MySpace and 10% use LinkedIn.

89% of students use social networks for social reasons and 79% use them for entertainment. 26% of students use social media for educational reasons and 16% for professional reasons.
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Image credit Mary Gober

A Simple Social Media Platform

Yesterday when I was running on treadmill I let my mind wander how all this data that is generated in the equipment could be used to improve my exercise, services offered and the overall wellbeing of everyone involved.

The data from the equipment and scales should be sent to a server where I can access it. I would be able to track my progress set goals and share my achievements with friends. Posting to Twitter and Facebook will make my experience more social and I would be less likely to quit exercising. A special Facebook application can handle the competition with other member of the club. This will tie the users to the brand’s fan page and application on Facebook.

On the other hand the owners of the fitness club could get incredibly valuable data about how people behave, what are the motivating circumstances and what patterns indicate that somebody is going to quit. This will enable them to customize their offers to meet the individual needs of each client.

In the end people would exercise more, socialize more, be more healthy and happy. I would really, really love this in my gym. The overall happiness index would go up a few notches.

Of course, this platform could be used for other things than just fitness club, but it’s a good example. Here is a picture to get a better understanding how this should work.

Top Twitter topics in 2009

On tuesday, Twitter released their top keywords, hashtags and phrases for 2009 in their blog. Since 2009 is coming to an end, it’s quite interesting to see the main topics discussed there at the end of this decade. The list is segmented by numerous categories, ranging from news events to TV shows.

A great list to see what was happening in the starchild of social media, at the end of the decade that gave birth to social media on the internet itself.

Social media weekend: Women, ROI, Social Sales

Another installment of resources for people who just can’t let go of social media.

Identification of Influencers Increases Campaign Effectiveness by 50%. Vibrant customer communities enable companies to identify their most influenctial customers through behavioral profiling and social network analysis (SNA) techniques, and are therefore vital tools not only for their immediate benefits in member-driven support, promotion, and innovation, but as a means for attracting customers to serve as influencers in future marketing campaigns. Here’s the PDF(http://www.lithium.com/pdfs/whitepapers/Building-Customer-Networks-for-Successful-Word-of-Mouth-Marketing_DNn9P5Hp.pdf).

US Women in Social Networks, 2nd Annual Social Media Study (PDF). 86% of women have a profile on a social networking website, up 48% since last year. This increase is even greater for older women (126%), whose participation grew from 31% to 70%. Women under 30 boast a 96% participation rate on social networks. Facebook overshadows all other social networking websites.

2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study (PDF). Business.com’s 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Study was designed to assess current trends in the use of social media in North American businesses. Based on 2,948 valid responses to our online Business Social Media Benchmarking Survey during August and early September, 2009, the results provide a very useful benchmark for where businesses, and business people, are finding value in social media across different activities and sites. Registration page, if PDF does’nt work.

Dell drives $6.5 million in revenue from Twitter. @DellOutlet is now close to 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and back in June we indicated that @DellOutlet earned $3 million in revenue from Twitter. Today it’s not just Dell Outlet having success connecting with customers on Twitter. In total, Dell’s global reach on Twitter has resulted in more than $6.5 million in revenue.

The Art of Social Sales: Sales 2.0 Strategies in 5 Industries. Learn how high-tech, non-profits, retail, sports and telcos leverage new strategies to engage with customers. Develop strategies to use social networks to generate leads and cultivate relationships. Learn how companies like newScale and ConnectandSell are using LinkedIn and Twitter. Participate in the conversations that your newly empowered consumers are having.

Marketing Shifts: By 2014, Interactive Spend Hits $55 Bil. Interactive marketing will approach $55 billion and will represent 21% of all marketing spend in 2014 — benefiting from search, online display, email marketing, social media and mobile marketing, per Forrester’s Interactive Marketing Forecast. I believ this number to be much higher as we factor in other budgets that are connected to e-channels: salaries and IT.
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Image credit: Ivan Petrov