Digital Content, and some stats how we use it in 2013… (Infographic)

Digital content readership is changing massively. And the guys at Uberflip have done some research around how data was used between February 2010 and February 2013 via Google Analytics and Uberflip Metrics. The infographic that highlights their findings shows how much mobile content usage and consumption is evolving, as well as how much content is shareable.


From a global perspective, mobile content consumtion in terms of visits makes up 21% (from 1,6% in 2010) while desktop traffic is decreasing continously. But mobile is not the only winner in this field. Video is increasing massively as well since 2010: 22% (from 6% in 2010) of internet users are putting video into their content portfolio.

People also change their way of sharing content these days. While in 2010, users were used to sharing their content via email, in 2013 the figure of sharing content via email went down to 53.3% in February 2013 (from 93.3% in 2010). Facebook and Twitter seem to be the big winner here: 27,4% of people are sharing content via Facebook (compared to 3,4% in 2010), and 9,7% via Twitter (compared to 0,5% in 2010).

A New Don: How the sales profession has evolved from the Mad Men era

As a fan of the series “Mad Men” TV series, I have to share this comparison of the sales profession development with you. When we compare the decades from 1950-2010, we realizte that there were some significant differences. From Don and his friends’ wild office parties and massive whisky as well as martini consumption to a straight organized reality where sales automation has taken over and social media rules the communication between people.

Although, we still here at the universities and in seminars from the advertising Gods like Leo Burnett and David Ogilvy, Don Draper’s world has seen a radical shift in sales profession. But in which direction…? The guys from Leads360 have created an infographic that defines the main trends we saw lately…
- 1960: In-person pitch.
- 1970: Door-to-door vacuum pitch.
- 1980: Not really specified in any direction…
- 1990: In the beginning email messaging, later customer relationship management (CRM)
- 2000: Social integration (Social Media)
- 2010: Intelligent sales automation

“Over the last 50 years, many of these fundamental sales strategies have remained incredibly valuable,” states the infographic. Maybe you find the reasons why when reading through it.

Today, we are talking of Facebook as the barbeque with “friends and fans” and of Twitter as the chatter at the toilet. Well, it seems that we haven’t moved away from socializing. Maybe we just need to add some drinks next to our screens…

Serious Business: Facebook on mobile (Infographic)

Many companies and brands still don’t understand the importance of Facebook and how it gets driven via mobiles. However, some numbers put together by the guys at Qwaya indicate how serious decision makers should take the Facebook mobile business. The engagement of the web world turns towards mobiles, whether smartphones or tablets, and it is time to understand that Facebook cannot be taken out here. It might affect your business and the way people engage with your brand as well. Just open your eyes…!

How the Edgerank drives your Facebook marketing (Infographic)

Many people might have heard about the EdgeRank that drives the Facebook algorithm. It is the basis for the relevance of accounts and status updates, and yes obviously the users. However, how does it work is still an unchallenged question…

The aim of the Facebook Edgerank is to detect the updates people are most likely to engage with. One of the reasons why we sometimes don’t see our friends but those who are sharing updates that other people might like a bit more than others.

Some social experts suggest different types of posts that generate most traffic and engagement. Some believe in video, some in photo, and again others think that pure text is driving the algorythm most. Or is it the color that drives the customer? So, what is right? The answer is, only some people inside Facebook probably know that. It appears to be one of the well-protected next “Coca-Cola-like” secrets…

In the end, the only answer that we see is the quality of posts. They might be short or long, with or without audio-video content, and also might have a picture, or not. Not the type of post makes the difference. It’s the understanding of your audience, and there social media monitoring is the key to all social business strategy as these will lead to your success.

PostRocket just recently published a detailed infographic on the Edgerank topic. It is nicely explaining how this algorithm drives your Facebook marketing.

Facebook/IDC study finds, email top activity on smartphones

Some say, email is a dead media, some know it is not. At least not on smartphones in the U.S… For American adults email is still the most common activity on smartphones. In the second place comes Web browsing, closely followed by using Facebook. This is the result of the “Always Connected” study from IDC. The study is based on feedback from more than 7,400 iPhone and Android users between 18 and 44 years old.

These are the main findings of the study….
- 78% check email on smartphones
- 73% browse websites
- 70% using Facebook in some way
- 131 minutes per day communicating on their smartphones
- about 33 minutes of the above are spend on Facebook.

Now, it has to be mentioned that the study was sponsored by Facebook. The study supports the fact how important Facebook is for the communication via smartphones. It also makes clear how much time users of social networks spend their daily time when they are out on the streets, at work, at shopping or following sports activities. Obviously, most of the time is spend on Facebook – in eight different activities, people responded that they are almost 4-5 times more likely to be on Facebook than using Twitter or LinkedIn.

Spot On!
The value of the study can in some way put into question, although we have seen many studies in the last years that demonstrate the importance of direct one-to-one communication on Facebook and the mobile use of Facebook. Another study by Localeze/15miles/comScore Local Search found that not email but search is the main activity of the mobile users. However, the approach of the study was different. It looked at people not only in the 18-44 years range and it proved the use of smartphones and tablets. there must be a reason why Facebook sponsored this study. I would not be surprised if they will publish some new mobile advertising opportunities soon.

Performance review of the top 5 social networks in 2012 (Infographic)

After our input on Twitter’s growth yesterday, let’s have a look at the performance of the other social networking platforms: Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and… ok, again Twitter.

The guys from Pardot had a look at the changing social landscape and the challenges for marketers with respect to those social platforms in 2012. With many other challenges like lead generation, email marketing, offline activities or media, the selection of the right social networks becomes more and more difficult.

In order to offer some advice to marketer, Pardot created the following overview of each major social network’s performance in 2012. The ROI estimates are based on audience, growth rate, and audience composition, and are calculated to convey potential return for B2B marketers, says their blog post.

Global Web Index: Twitter shows fastest growth of social platforms

According to some new research by the Global Web Index, Twitter is growing faster than any other social network in the world, leaving Facebook and Google+ behind. The index polled 31 markets for the research. In their definition, an “active user” is a person who has “used or contributed to Twitter in the past month.”

The study suggests that the number of active microblogging service users increased 40% between the second quarter to the fourth quarter of 2012. Thus, Twitter gets up to 288 million monthly active users. This is an increase by over 700% compared to 2009 when Twitter just had 35.47 million monthly active users.

The research also shows that the engagement rate per user went up with 59% of Twitter handle holders being active on a monthly basis these days. Taken from a global perspective, 21% of worldwide Internet users are now active monthly Twitter users.

The study also shows the percentage change in active (last month) behaviours for Twitter users via PC and via mobile. “Comment about my daily activities” or “Comment on a friends post” is defined as the lowest ranking growth activity from both sides. The positive impact for brands is that Twitter finds more use in marketing which can be seen from “Organizing an event”, “Posting comments about brands”, “Using branded apps (with Twitter)” or “Asking friends about products”. All of these figures show that the 3Rs of the social customer get more impact through Twitter.

How do you use Twitter? Or why don’t you use it? Give us your views on which social platform is most efficient to you…

Utilizing Social Media in a Big Company

Many big companies take sales for granted. After all, they’re big for a reason, whether it be a unique service or simply providing so much for so little it’s inconvenient to go anywhere else. Even if they don’t go out of their way to reach customers, they will still get sales with a little bit of marketing. And this is technically true for some companies.
None the less, it is financially crippling. Even if the company still makes money, they could make so much more if they simply attempted to reach out to people using social media.

From an economic standpoint, social media is by far one of the most efficient and cheapest source of advertisement in history. By simply posting a post on Facebook or tweeting on Twitter, a company can instantly send out the equivalent of hundreds of pamphlets to hundreds of people. This makes it an incredibly useful source of advertising sales, new products and so forth.
Just look at how people can connect with TrueCar, Inc on Linkedin for an example of how to do it right. They have connections with every major social network, as every company now days should if they want to maximize profits.

There is another reason to use social media. Many larger companies have poor reputations, deserved or not. By being willing to connect with people ‘where they live’, so to speak, you can gain a lot of good will and this sales. However, in order for this to work a real effort must be made to connect to your customer base. Simply posting on the social media networks is not enough, you must openly participate in dialogue with people.

A good policy is to always reply to any messages sent to you or posts made on your walls, whether it be a thank you for a good message or an apology for a negative one. It is a good idea to hire a few people or even a company to handle your social media for you so you are not overwhelmed by a large volume of people, many of whom will end up feeling neglected if you cannot respond promptly.
Social Media is the future. Never before has there been such an easy to use way to instantly access millions of people. If a company can take advantage of this and connect with their customers, they will reap the rewards.

Things that connect us – Facebook started first ad campaign

If you think that Facebook is all about sharing, then you might reconsider this in your marketing plans. Below you can find Facebook’s first advertising campaign with the title “The Things That Connect Us”.

The campaign will be rolled out in over 13 countries around the world. Why Facebook starts going the commercial route? Well, maybe Facebook has got to after their stock market experience. Or maybe they are simply celebrating the 1 billion users by looking back at the physical things that connect us. And with the simple message that Facebook is now enabling the same.

The 90 second production seems to me more like a “branding supporter” than a typical advertising campaign. It is telling us how we are utilising chairs, doorbells, bridges, airplanes to showcase the things that connect people around the world.

Interested to see your views on the video and what you think about them going back in the advertising age…

Social Media & Customer Service? Companies have got 60 minutes max. to react

Many companies and brands are asking themselves (and us): “How fast do we have to give some feedback or answer when somebody is pinging us on Facebook, Twitter and the likes?” Or: Do we have to give some feedback on the weekends? And the answers we have heard were quite astonishing. Many managers in companies still think they have got a day or two to reply to their customers – whether they are speaking with them on email or on one of their realtime streams. Many test we have done so far, have shown us that most companies don’t react at all, some not on weekends, and some after one or two days. Be sure, if you offer your clients a realtime channel, they will use it – and they don’t care if the problem comes up on a weekend or not.

In a recent research by Convince and Convert we can find some clean answer now: 42% of the respondents expect an answer in the first 60 minutes! What comes even worse for companies: 57% want the some reaction time no matter what time of day it is or whether it is a Saturday or Sunday. In total, 67% expect some response by companies in the someday.

Still, many companies don’t have the right resources to satisfy their customers Social Media expectations. And there are many reasons for it: not enough resources, lack in modern process management or lack in technical establishment. Some companies started mentioning their opening hours in the info or biography fields which kind of makes sense and becomes a state-of-the-art workaround for the interim period until companies understand what a full-fledged social business with proper community management means. And this definitely goes away from the “9-to-5″ workplace we know from our fathers.

Spot On!
The main challenge for companies and brands is to find out what the deeper demand of the status update, the comment, the review or a rating is. Remember the 3R’s? In the end, what we have learned years ago, is that people want to have the feeling someone is taking care of them immediately. This does not essentially say that companies or brands have to supply the best possible answer or solution. Many managers have still not understood the fine difference between these topics.
What we would like to know is: Do 60 minutes feedback time make sense? Should we try to be more patient as users? Is a quick feedback really that important if our lives are not depending on it? You give the answer…

Nächste Seite »