Social Marketing & Digital Agency

Social Media is the Icing on Top of the Marketing Cake

A new report from the Nielsen Company has quoted some incredible statistics about Social Media. Here’s just some of them.

“Three of the world’s most popular brands online are social-media related (Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia) and the world now spends over 110 billion minutes a year on social networks and blog sites.

This equates to 22 percent of all time online or one in every four and half minutes.

For the first time ever, social network or blog sites are visited by three quarters of global consumers who go online, after the numbers of people visiting these sites increased by 24% over last year.

The average visitor spends 66% more time on these sites than a year ago, almost 6 hours in April 2010 versus 3 hours, 31 minutes last year.”

It’s pretty compelling isn’t it?

However another report from The Online Publishers Asssociation carried out by Harris Interactive found that online users trust content to varying degrees according to where it’s published. Media sites come out tops (giving ongoing credence to digital PR) with portal channels second and social media bringing up the rear.

Of  course, trust translates to buying patterns as well.

In an interesting article by Jason Fell at FOLIOmag.com he discusses these issues with Joe Pulizzi and the conclusion seems to be that brand marketers are beginning to invest more time and money in developing their own content on their own sites and driving traffic to it.

We couldn’t agree more.

The line that we’ll ‘get a student to do a bit of  tweeting’ is looking even more ridiculous than ever. The reality is, is that social media has become a hugely powerful, friendly interface to your customer base – it’s the icing on the top of the marketing cake if you like. But people don’t just want icing, they want some cake, some substance – which is why it’s so important for companies to look at developing sophisticated content strategies which will be search engine-friendly and generate leads.

Social media without solid professional content behind it doesn’t work all that well. Just as well, then, that we’re very good at making cakes here as well as a dab hand at icing!

Contact us now on 0845 862 0017 or email us on hello@themediamarketingco.com and find out how we can help you market your brand effectively online or join our mailing list and get regularly tips and information straight into your mailbox.

According to Hitwise, Facebook was visited more times than Google in the week ending 13th March 2010.  This the first time that Facebook have outweighed Google in terms of visitor numbers for a whole week, and certainly is a feather in Facebook’s cap.

Hitwise reports that in the week ending 13th March 2010, 7.07% of all US internet visitors went to Facebook, this was compared to 7.03% who visited Google over the same week.

With over 400 million members, Facebook is on target to generate a revenue of over $1 billion in 2010.  As we have already seen, Facebook ads now receive more interest than Google adwords, if Facebook continue with this strength it will create a serious dent in Google’s advertising revenue and find itself becoming King of the internet.

The growing popularity of smartphones and their applications is having a game changing effect on brand marketing strategies according to Punch Communications.

Phones such as the iPhone and Nexus One have been just part of the massive
growth in popularity of mobile technology over the course of 2009, with
many consumers taking advantage of mobile internet access to engage with
their preferred online communities and social networks on a far more
regular basis.

With research group Nielsen reporting substantial growth in mobile internet
usage, there is a huge opportunity for brands to engage with their users
through the implementation of brand focused applications for smartphones
such as the iPhone. The ability an interactive application to engage users
and provide a genuine service to them can potentially be a game changer in
help a brand to stand out from the crowd explains Pete Goold, Managing
Director of PR Agency Punch:

“Mobile phone applications that provide a genuine service or solve a
user’s problem can have a significant impact on the way that a brand is
perceived. Whether it is an app that facilitates the creation of user
generated content, such as Nike’s “Nike True City” app, or an app
that provides simple solutions for users like Jamie Oliver’s app, this
engagement can go a long way to influencing consumer perception”.

Twitter is the most popular of the leading social community networks (SCNs) and interactive sites for online PR, according to a new survey of 107 PR professionals.

It narrowly beats YouTube, in second place, and Facebook, in third, as a
preferred online PR tool.

But the survey, conducted by New Venture Publishing for its new Perfect
Online PR Masterclass, finds that no SCNs or interactive sites are yet
rated as very important for PR use.

On a scale of one (not important) to five (very important) the PR pros
rated top-ranking Twitter at an average of only 2.96.

YouTube scored 2.88 and Facebook 2.73. LinkedIn was on 2.4, Flickr on 2.1,
MySpace on 1.76, Bebo on 1.67 and MSN Messenger on 1.59. Ecademy on 1.53
and Xanga on 1.47 brought up the rear.

Overall, the PR pros rated “making use of social community networks” as
only thirteenth out of fourteen possible online PR priorities for the
future. It came behind front-ranking issues such as “integrating online
with other PR activity” and “developing online PR expertise
in-house”.

Independent News & Media has partnered with iome to launch the first white-labelled social event planning tool on The Independent newspaper’s website. The service creates new web and mobile revenues for the publisher, as part of its 2010 digital media strategy.

The free-to-access service provides the 10 million* monthly visitors to the
Independent’s website with a useful tool that helps them plan their social
lives and make savings via discount vouchers.  In this socially-connected
world, with demands on people’s time and money, consumers want to easily
discover new things to do and places to go, find offers and share that
information with friends; until now, no one service has been able to
provide consumers with an easy way to do so.  The iome white-label service
fills this gap.

The Independent will generate new revenues through the service, on
purchases made through the portal (such as theatre tickets and restaurant
bookings) in addition to advertising and sponsorship.  And, by partnering
with iome, the Independent has been able to go to market with its new
branded service in less than three weeks from inception of the project,
enabling readers to start using the service in time to organise their
Christmas events.

Bill Swanson, managing director (Digital), Independent News and Media (UK)
said: “We are very excited to be the first business to launch this service
in the UK.  It not only enables us to extend our reach to readers, but also
to create new revenues via web and mobile.  We recognise that consumers are
hungry for new ways to organise their social lives through the web – this
service is the first of its kind to enable people to organise themselves,
make savings and interact with friends in a single location.  Plus, the
service has the ability to learn behaviour including likes and dislikes,
giving us the opportunity to deliver highly targeted services and offers.
This is a significant step forward with our digital media strategy for
2010.”

Added Phil Eames, CEO, iome: “People like to share information online and
there are a plethora of sites out there that help with individual elements.
The iome service lets people not only identify what’s going on near them,
but also access discounts, make bookings, create plans and share them with
friends via Facebook and other such sites.  It gives businesses the
opportunity to develop a better understanding of their consumers, allowing
for greater targeted services, content and advertising to be offered in the
future.”

Wow!  Don’t things change fast.  Not so long ago, no serious marketer would’ve let senior executives talk off the cuff on a video and slap it up on the internet for all to see.  But after reading this article in US Advertising Age, that’s just what’s happening at MasterCard no less.

Quoting from the article, Andrew Foote, senior VP in the digital media practice at WPP’s Cohn & Wolfe, MasterCard’s PR agency, said unlike three to five years ago when web content had to be polished and professionally produced, MasterCard has gone the low-production route. It’s taping its executives using Flip video camcorders, editing the video on laptops and uploading them to YouTube.

“They’re realizing they can comment on issues and get the points of view of their experts out there and on the record,” Mr. Foote said. Once the videos are up, the company will often tweet the links and follow up with reporters letting them know MasterCard commented on the topic.

“Sometimes those videos end up on the blogs of those publications and [it] leads to building online relationships with reporters, analysts and industry influencers,” Mr. Foote said. He said MasterCard isn’t “necessarily becoming less reliant” on mainstream media; the company just realizes it’s not the only game in town, and, when speed is of the essence, creating its own content or relying on digital channels is the best approach.

“Sometimes mainstream [media] can’t keep up with the needs of the company to get stuff out,” Mr. Foote said.

Precisely.  We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.  Here are The Funky Agency we are all experienced ‘traditional’ marketing and PR folk, but also experts in the new shiny digital and social media.  Things have moved so rapidly that traditional and digital are of equal importance now – the days of letting a student or somebody junior with some spare time to ‘do a bit of Twittering and Facebook’ are well past.

We’re encouraging clients to take digital cameras and flip camcorders with them to meetings, so that they can capture material to use in their SM campaigns.  Of course, we are on hand to ensure that their corporate messaging stays true and that they are communicating the right information to their target audience. But the days of the uber polished corporate video and the ‘planned months in advance’ photo shoot, are diminishing.

Social Media is fast, furious but a deadly serious business now – you have been warned!