Online Real Estate Technology

Bloggers comment on brands and post to social media, expanding reach

Bloggers, from hobbyists to professionals, often write about brands, and their growing influence should make brand representatives continually evaluate the relationships they have with these bloggers.

Most bloggers write about brands in some way or another. According to the “State of the Blogosphere 2011” report from blog directory website Technorati, 38% of all bloggers post about brands that they love or hate and 34% write product or service reviews. Professional full-time bloggers or part-time professional bloggers who write as a way to supplement their income are more likely to blog about brands than their hobbyist, corporate or entrepreneur counterparts.

Bloggers are increasing in their influence over readers and other bloggers. Last year’s Technorati “State of the Blogosphere” reported that 29% of bloggers are influenced by other blogs they read. This year, that number jumped to 68%.

As bloggers gain influence and write about brands, the relationships between blog writers and brand representatives are important for companies to focus on. Most bloggers have a good relationship with brand representatives. Nearly half of all bloggers (49%) characterized their interactions with such representatives as somewhat or very favorable. Only 3% said their interactions were not at all favorable. However, 40% of all bloggers said they didn’t know how to characterize their interactions with brand representatives.

This large group of unsure respondents could have mixed feelings about the communications they receive from these brand representatives, affecting their relationships with the reps and their brands. Of all bloggers, 17% said brand representatives had asked for things that would compromise the credibility or content standards of the blog. This is roughly the same percentage of those that said the representatives were knowledgeable about their blogs and content (14%), are genuinely interested in building a relationship (16%) and provide information that has value for readers (23%).

As bloggers continue to grow in influence, their coverage of brands and their interactions with brands’ products, services and employees will be of greater interest to companies. Brand representatives who connect with bloggers must be sure to work with these writers to keep the relationships thriving.

Before you launch your next big social media campaign, you may want to ask: Is anybody really listening?

A new TNS report reveals that as many as half of all social media marketing campaigns are going unnoticed.

Matthew Froggatt, the company’s chief development officer, says in a press release that 57 percent of consumers in developed markets do not want to engage with brands in the social sphere. The number is as high as 60 percent in the U.S., while 61 percent in the U.K.

TNS’s Digital Life study drew on findings from 72,000 consumers in 60 countries. It also revealed that 54 percent of people admit that social networks are a good place to learn about products.

Fear not—there’s hope for us yet.

Froggatt has advice for social media marketers:

“The key is to understand your target audience and what they want from your brand — social networks aren’t always the right approach. If consumers in one market don’t want to be talked to, can you use an alternative online method — creating owned digital media platforms, targeted sponsorship or search campaigns — to engage in an appropriate way that will achieve business results without adding to the digital waste pile?”

Story source: www.prdaily.com

Brands that include photos and calls to action see higher engagement rates with those posts

Companies on Facebook and other social sites are always trying to determine what to post to get fans engaged. While each brand is different, and its fans will respond to different things, there are some common threads that companies can keep in mind when planning social media posts and status updates.

Digital marketing agency Web Liquid analyzed 16 brands and more than 1,500 brand posts from March to May 2011 to see which Facebook posts saw the most engagement, such as comments and “likes.” Web Liquid found that Facebook posts with photos saw a 0.37% engagement rate, higher than posts with videos (0.31%), text only (0.27%) or links (0.15%).

Momentus Media, which provides marketing software for use within Facebook, came up with similar findings, even when analyzing the top 20,000 Facebook pages and between 10,000 and 250,000 posts overall. Facebook posts with photos saw a 0.21% engagement rate, while videos saw 0.11% engagement rate and links saw 0.07% engagement.

Within the text of a post, companies can encourage action by asking fans to “like” or comment on the post. Momentus Media found that Facebook status updates that contained the word “like” saw a 0.38% engagement rate and those that said “comment” saw a 0.14% engagement rate. Text updates without “like” or “comment” saw 0.11% engagement.

While these statistics are interesting, brands should determine which tactics work best for their Facebook page and their fans. Additionally, the upcoming changes to Facebook’s Timeline feature and brand pages will change the way consumers interact on the social network.

Facebook’s new Timeline relies heavily on photos, so it seems that posts with photos and videos will continue to perform well for brands. And as Facebook introduces more verbs beyond “like,” companies could develop interesting ways to increase engagement on their pages. By testing different types of posts and continuing to learn what spurs a reaction, marketers can keep up with what content fans prefer on their brand Facebook pages and keep engagement up.

A majority of social shoppers trust user reviews and recommendations on social network sites more than other sites, according to a study released in October 2011 by Performics and conducted by ROI Research. Data from the “2011 Social Shopping Study” indicates that among participants who use social networks at least occasionally during the shopping process, 58% trust the recommendations they find on social networks more than other sites. Shopping sites (57%) and deal sites (53%) follow closely as trusted sources of product recommendations. According to the study, about one in 2 social shoppers are positively influenced by favorable reviews and recommendations. This compares to roughly 45% of social shoppers adversely influenced by negative reviews.

Shopping Sites Most Important During Process

Almost three in 4 (72%) social shoppers consider shopping sites to be an important part of the purchase process, about 25% more than those who report deal sites (58%) to be an important factor. Just four in 10 (41%) find social networks to be a significant part of the shopping process.

1 in 5 Use Sites Daily to Find Deals

Among active social networkers, nearly one in 5 (19%) turn to deal sites to find specials, coupons, or deals on a daily basis. Social networks (18%) and shopping sites (17%) follow closely as deal sources. While 15% of social shoppers use social networks daily to learn about new products, only one in 10 use social shopping sites on a daily basis for other key stages of the shopping process, including to research product information, read product reviews, compare products, and find product availability.

Shopping Sites Most Popular Before Purchase

Although social networks are most frequently used to learn about new products, the vast majority of social shoppers (87%) turn to shopping sites while searching for a product, while 83% use these sites right before committing to a purchase. This compares to roughly two-thirds of social shoppers who frequently use social networks or deal sites prior to purchasing a product. After the purchase, however, the focus shifts to social networks: almost six in 10 (59%) frequently share their experiences on social networks after the purchase, compared to 57% for shopping sites and 51% for deal sites.

Other Findings

• Almost seven in 10 (69%) social shoppers visit Amazon at least once a month, making it the most popular shopping site, ahead of eBay (53%) and retailer websites (52%). Search sites fare less well: just 27% visit Google shopping on a monthly basis, followed by Yahoo shopping (23%) and Bing shopping (13%).
• Close to half of social shoppers (47%) have a Groupon account, far more than those with a Living Social (27%) or Eversave (15%) account.

Nielsen: SocNet Users Most Trust Info from Consumers

Social network users are most likely to trust product and service information provided by other consumers, according to data released in October 2011 by NMIncite and The Nielsen Company. Sixty-three percent say consumer ratings are a preferred source for product information, while 62% say consumer reviews are a preferred source. Company websites come in a distant third, preferred by 50% of social network users for product and service information. Call center (47%) and email (45%) closely follow. Interestingly, company Facebook page (15%) and company Twitter (7%) are among the least preferred product information sources.

About the Data: The Performics survey was conducted among 1000 participants who were required to have an active social network account and use social networks at least occasionally in the shopping process. The online survey was in field from 9/27/11 to 10/4/11.

6 in 10 Twitter Followers are Existing Customers

More than six in 10 (64%) people who follow a brand on Twitter are existing customers of the company, according to [pdf] a study released in October 2011 by Chadwick Martin Bailey. Results from “10 Quick Facts You Should Know About Consumer Behavior on Twitter” indicate about six in 10 (61%) also want to be the first to know information about the brand.

No other reason for following a brand on Twitter is shared by more than half of followers. However, almost half (48%) follow to receive discounts and promotions. Another 36% want to gain access to exclusive content and 28% want to receive content and information to share and retweet with others.

6 in 10 Followers More Likely to Recommend

Six in 10 Twitter brand followers are either more likely to recommend many (18%) or a few (42%) brands as a result of following them. Another three in 10 (31%) are not more likely to recommend a brand they follow on Twitter and about one in 10 (9%) don’t know.

Twitter brand followers 35-49 are much more likely to recommend many brands they follow than those younger than 35. In the 35-49 segment, 33% are likely to recommend many brands and 14% are likely to recommend a few. Although a much higher percentage of followers younger than 35 are likely to recommend a brand overall (61% compared to 47%), only 14% are likely to recommend many brands and 47% are likely to recommend a few brands.

Interestingly, 33% of brand followers in both age groups are not more likely to make brand recommendations. The differentiator comes in the percentage who don’t know: 20% for those 35-49 compared to only 7% of younger followers.

Half of Twitter Users Go Online More than Once an Hour

Fifty percent of Twitter users go online more than once an hour, compared to 34% of Facebook users and 29% of overall online users. Facebook users are slightly more likely to go online once every couple of hours (46%) than Twitter users (40%) or overall online users (45%).

Meanwhile, 20% of overall online users go online once per day, compared to 17% of Facebook users and 7% of Twitter users. Only 5% of overall online users, and 3% of both social network users, go online two to six times per week.

Nearly Half of Twitter Users Been Tweeting Less than 1 Yr

Thirty-eight percent of Twitter users have been tweeting for six months or fewer and another 9% have been tweeting for seven to 11 months, meaning 47% have been tweeting for less than one year. Thirty-eight percent have also been tweeting for one to two years, and 15% have been tweeting for more than two years.

In addition, one-quarter of Twitter users older than 50 have been tweeting less than one month.

1/3 of Followers Interact w/More Brands This Year

Thirty-three percent of brand followers on Twitter are interacting with more brands this year, while 57% are interacting with the same number and only 11% are interacting with less. Men increased their rate of brand interaction more from the previous year (38% compared to 27% of women).

Other Findings

• 79% of Twitter users follow fewer than 10 brands, with 36% following one or two.
• 75% of Twitter followers have never unfollowed a brand.
• 26% of Twitter users 18-35 follow a brand, compared to 17% of followers 35-49 and 13% of those 50 and older.
• Half of followers say they are more likely to buy a brand after following, including 55% of men and 45% of women.

Performics: Entertainment Top Twitter Category

Entertainment is the brand category most followed/liked on both Twitter and Facebook, according to an August 2011 study from Performics and ROI Research. Data from “S-Net, The Impact of Social Media” indicates 46% of brand fans on both social networks are fans of at least one brand in the entertainment category.

While the top five brand categories are the same on both social networks, there is some variation in how the next four categories are ranked. After entertainment, Twitter users are most likely to follow brands in the restaurants, food, electronics, and apparel categories. In contrast, Facebook users are most likely to like brands in the food, restaurants, apparel, and electronics categories.

About the Data: Data was collected through a 15-minute online questionnaire of 1,491 US consumers age 18 and up fielded in January 2011.

Email remains the top choice for marketing communications among all age groups

The latest death knell for email was sounded by data in comScore’s “2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review” report, which noted a decline in time spent with web-based email among all US internet users under 55. Users ages 12 to 17, who have been most likely to drop email in favor of other online communications like social networking, had the steepest decline in usage, down 59%.

But web-based email checked at a desktop computer is only one slice of all email communications, and email represents an overwhelmingly important communications channel.

According to research from customer relationship marketing agency Merkle, 87% of internet users checked personal email daily in 2010, a number that has changed little since 2007. Among those with a separate email account for commercial email, 60% checked daily, down just 1 percentage point since 2008.

Further, social media usage is hardly taking away from email. Rather, social media users are significantly more likely than other internet users to check their email four or more times per day, and less likely to check infrequently.

Mobile access is also encouraging email users to check more often. More than half (55%) of those surveyed who had an internet-enabled mobile phone checked their personal email using their phone, and nearly two-thirds of mobile email users checked their account at least once a day.

There is some evidence that personal communications are shifting away from email, though. Messages from friends and family are taking up a smaller share of all time spent with email, while the share spent with commercial emails is rising. And the proportion of respondents spending at least 20 minutes per week with email from friends and family fell from 71% in 2009 to 66% in 2010.

But email is still a major method of communicating for the vast majority of internet users. Across all age groups, it was the top choice for receiving commercial communications. Most respondents preferred the phone for personal communication, but email was the most important online channel for communicating with friends and family among every age group except 18- to 29-year-olds, a demographic for whom email was tied with social networks.

One of the easiest ways to stay up to date with the latest on social media, technology and internet marketing, is to get the news delivered straight to your email inbox as it happens.

By subscribing to our weekly newsletter, you’ll receive the latest updates on research, technology and social media as well as tips and handy advice on how to improve your internet marketing.

Included in our weekly newsletter is advice on how to improve your web sites rankings on search engines such as Google and we also look at the impact of social media and technology on search engine rankings.

We respect your privacy and one of my pet hates is when you subscribe to a newsletter, your email address is sold to 3rd parties and you get a whole heap of spam, we do not sell or promote your email address to anyone, so you can subscribe with the knowledge that your email address is protected.

If you would like to get our newsletter delivered to you, please click on the subscribe link below and you’ll start to receive our weekly updates.

Yes please, Subscribe me to Mike Andrew Consulting’s Weekly Newsletter

comScore, today released The State of the Internet in Australia, which looks at the latest trends in digital consumer behavior in the market.

The findings of the report were also recently presented at a comScore-hosted industry event in Sydney. Among the report’s key findings was that Social Networking now accounts for the largest amount of total time spent online at 22 percent, an increase of 5.3 percentage points from the previous year, as social media plays an increasingly prominent role in Australians’ digital lives.

A complimentary copy of The State of the Internet in Australia can be downloaded at the following link: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/State_of_the_Internet_in_Australia

“2010 was dynamic year for the digital media industry in Australia,” said Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia Pacific region. “Consumers are turning to the Internet with increasing frequency for a vast array of activities including entertainment, commerce, news & information and communication, as digital media becomes embedded in the daily lives of Australians. Look for 2011 to be another year of continued innovation and increased competition as brands vie for consumers’ attention in this rapidly fragmenting digital environment.”

Social Networking Accounts for Nearly 22 Percent of Time Spent

Social Networking accounted for 21.9 percent of Australians’ time online in December 2010, up 5.3 percentage points versus the previous year, and leading as the top online activity. Portals accounted for 19.7 percent, down nearly 10 percentage points from the previous year, while Instant Messengers accounted for 11.6 percent of time, down 7.7 percentage points, as both categories lost share to Social Networking throughout the year. Entertainment which accounted for 9.1 percent of time in 2009, increased 2 percentage points to 11.1 percent.

Additional key insights from the report include:

• In December 2010, Microsoft Sites led as the most-visited Internet property in Australia, followed by Google Sites and Facebook.com. When looking at the top sites by total minutes spent, Facebook.com assumed the #1 spot followed by Microsoft Sites and Google Sites.
• More Australians visited Retail sites compared to last year, outpacing increases in the global average. Amazon and Apple led as the most-visited retail destinations.
• Group-buying sites continued to gain traction over the past year. Cudo, an MSN property, currently leads the space with 418,000 unique visitors in December 2010.
• 3 out of 4 online users in Australia watched online video in December 2010, with an average viewer watching more than 7 hours of video during the month.
• Nearly 12 million Australians conducted an online search query in December, with an average searcher performing 115 queries. Google Sites accounted for 80 percent of searches in December.

The man credited with inventing the internet has lashed out at Facebook and other social networking sites saying they are moving the web away from its founding principles.

In an essay in Scientific American magazine, Tim Berners-Lee says social networking sites are tightly controlling the information put on there by users meaning the internet’s being split into fragmented islands.

Berners-Lee said there is a chance Facebook could become so big that it could limit innovation.

Source: www.ninemsn.com.au

Searching the web recently keeping up with the goings on with social media, I came across an article by a self proclaimed social media guru on the subject of auto thank you messages on Twitter.

These are messages that you can send out automatically to thank someone who decides to follow you. I’ve had them programmed on my Twitter accounts for ages now and what surprised me was this guru stating in his article that if he receives one of these auto thank you messages he automatically un-follows the company or person. He says it annoys him, oh really you poor dear, I think you’re forgetting that the whole concept of social media is being social.

In my mind, it is just a polite way of acknowledging the follow and as long as the message does not contain a blatant add or sales pitch, I have no problem with these messages at all.

This guru’s belief is that common courtesy rules, apparently don’t apply to social media marketing, well he’s wrong, because I think they do and I will continue to send out my messages to those that do decide to follow me, and by chance if this social media expert is offended by this, then goodbye.

Being social and communicating and connecting with your followers is the essence of social media and I won’t decide to follow or un-follow someone because they sent me an auto thank you message.

That’s just too ridiculous for words, and I wonder if this guy is consulting to companies on social media strategy, what he is advising his clients to do, I just hope he’s not working for you.

There are a lot of instant social media experts around today, and most of them don’t really have a clue.

Decide who you are going to follow by the quality of information they are providing, how interesting and unique it is and if it is informative and relevant.

Oh and if they happen to send you a thank you message for the follow, then that’s good manners.

Remember, Focus on being social not doing social.