Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category
Five Reasons to “Dislike” Social Media
Sunday, January 27th, 2013Guest post by Megan Totka.
The benefits of social media are clear: huge outreach, easy to use, low cost and (assumed) high ROI, not to mention a wide variety of options. In no way would I recommend anyone stop using social media as a marketing tool. In fact, I’m a huge advocate of it. But after months or even years of use, you will likely learn, there are a lot of things to hate about these websites; that even though it’s become an essential marketing channel, social media still sucks. There are plenty of posts about Facebook rants as well. These things can sap the life from you if you aren’t careful. Be sure to be aware of these bad qualities so your business can still make the most of this marketing phenomenon. Here are five things I dislike about social media and how to overcome them:
The grammar, typos and autocorrect errors. Everyone is in a rush these days. “I love you” suddenly becomes “I luv u.” There are shortcuts for everything. LOL, TTYL, BRB… I could go on 4evr. Grammar goes out the window when users are squeezing their message into 140 characters. Typos are a normal occurrence since many messages are posted quickly without being double checked for errors. And with smart phones becoming the standard, autocorrect has become the new typo. You spell a word wrong and you can blame it on autocorrect. Or if your thumbs are just going at it too fast, who knows what your message will end up looking like. For businesses, I’d encourage you to treat your Facebook statuses and Tweets just like you would print ads. Give them a second glance and make sure your writing is up to par. Try to use a laptop or desktop if possible. Phones simply make it too easy to make mistakes. If you want followers to take you seriously then you don’t want them to see you as another one of their lazy buddies.- The minimal shelf life. If you have a sale or promotion going on at your business, one post about it just won’t cut it. What you post on Monday morning is long gone by Tuesday. Social media has a multimillion user reach, but for each individual update, the reach is short lived. To overcome this, businesses need to be consistent with posts and updates. If you are running a sale for the week, make sure your followers know. Make each post a little different and make it fun. Don’t overdo it though; I wouldn’t recommend more than two of the same topic posts in the same day.
- The lack of control over the software. Let’s face it, social media changes at the drop of a hat. The minute you get used to a forum and style, it gets changed. There is nothing you can really do to prevent this because you don’t own the software. To prepare though, keep your marketing strategy simple. Do not rely on posting an update in an exact way, shape or form but instead just plan on what you will say and when. Do not plan too far ahead, so if there is a change, there is only a one or two week transition to your new plan.
- The overkill. Personal users of social media talk about everything. Moms post about being thrown up on and every milestone their child reaches. Students post about drinking too much, sleeping in and college sports. Men post about cars, electronics, guns and politics. And nearly everyone seems to post abundantly about what they are eating or what they are doing all day long.If you are a business, post only about your business.If you are a small business owner and you have a basic fan page versus a huge sponsored costly Facebook business page, it may be tempting to mix your business with personal. “Little Sophie had a big diaper explosion so I’m behind on custom necklace orders this morning. Sorry ladies!” In a sense, you want your followers to know you are human but bringing your kids into it, especially with something that’s way TMI (see I did it…) is not acceptable. It’s not professional and enough gross excuses will have your readers running.
- It’s transparent. The worst thing about social media is the ability for an individual to be anyone they want. One user can have five profiles if they really wanted. ROI cannot be determined because of this. There’s a systematic approach to knowing how many people read each of your posts, follow you or like your page but this does not tell you how much money you are making based on the time you spend on social media. This is one of the biggest complaints businesses have about social media. Facebook has a pages app that helps businesses in this respect but it still has the loophole of not knowing how many of those “reaches” belong to an individual person rather than the same person 100 times. Keep this in mind before putting a lot of money into your social media marketing, especially if you need to know accurate figures for ROI.
What do you think? What are your least favorite qualities about social media websites or marketing using them?
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. Browse the local business directory by state and city to find a local business near you.
24 More of the Best Facebook Guides, Stats and Rants of 2012
Tuesday, January 15th, 2013As noted in 21 (of the) Best Facebook Guides, Tools and Rants of 2012 So Far a few months back, Facebook remains the 800-pound gorilla of the social networking world. It’s now exceeded one billion users, and as noted below, 80% of all businesses maintain an active Facebook presence.
But its incessant changes, moves to charge brands and celebrities for exposure they’ve become accustomed to getting for free, and possibly even (gasp!) aging demographic may be cause for concern.
Will Facebook lose ground to Google+? Is it becoming uncool? Or if not—how have recent changes in Facebook’s layout changed best practices for marketers? what are the secrets to Facebook advertising success?
Find the answers to these questions and more here in two dozen of the best Facebook guides, tips, stats, facts, raves and rants of 2012.
Facebook Tips and Guides
The Simple Science of Facebook Engagement by MyBeak Social Media
Laura-Lee Walker shares an infographic that reveals the “formula to follow” for greater engagement on Facebook. Among the key findings: “Include images with posts. This increases the likelihood that fans will engage with your fan page (39 percent higher than average).” The infographic also shows the best (and worst) times to post, contest ideas, “winning words” to include in updates and more.
SEO for Facebook – New Video Revealed by Search Engine Journal
Adria Saracino points readers to a video produced by Facebook that provides business owners and marketers with tips on how to optimize their Facebook pages for search engines. She writes that “The video takes users step-by-step through a number of processes for building an optimized Facebook page with a good name and quality, relevant content.”
How to Add A Twitter Tab to Your Facebook Page [Quicktip] by Hongkiat
Mustaza Mustafa presents a richly illustrated, step-by-step process for using the CertifiedSeller app to add a Twitter profile link to your tab on Facebook timeline. Commenters note that Facebook could certainly do something to make this process easier, but the method here does work.
Nine Ways To Improve Your Facebook Engagement and ROI by MENGonline
David Lund details nine tactics for improving marketing effectiveness on Facebook, such as “Use Facebook to communicate your new news and introduce new products. Your followers are more interested than most consumers in news about your products and brand. They will likely be early adopters and advocates that can help build word of mouth BUZZ about your new products.” Though targeted at consumer marketers, many of the tips apply to b2b marketing as well.
Understanding the 6 Facebook Post Types by Practical eCommerce
***** 5 STARS
Paul Chaney explains in detail the six types of posts that can be added to a Facebook page along with “reasons why you would use them and best practices for each post type” and tips for the best use of each post type, for example on video posts, “Don’t put logos in the video. Harvard researchers found that the more prominent or intrusive the logo, the more likely viewers are to stop watching, even if they know and like the brand.”
How to Do a Facebook Personal Profile Security Audit by Seriously Social
Ian Anderson Gray shows how to do an in-depth personal security audit on Facebook, covering everything from password updates and recognized devices to adding a “do not track” plugin and navigating Facebook’s privacy settings. While this process is for personal profiles, Ian notes “if you do manage a Facebook page, make sure all your admins run a security audit on their personal profiles each month. There are serious issues here, because your page could be compromised by the security settings of one of your page’s administrators.”
Social Media Marketing: How I found the Facebook topic that was 371% more effective by MarketingSherpa
Jonathan Greene provides a detailed, illustrated five-step process for using Facebook Insights to identify patterns and trends that can make your social media marketing much more effective, or as he puts it, “Filtering your posts by certain KPIs might reveal very rewarding patterns in engagement and syndication, which could be the push you need to take your social campaigns to the next level.”
13 ways to boost your Facebook Page reach by Socialbrite
Arguing that “Marketers who are whining about (Facebook forcing people to pay to have their page updates reach their Facebook fans) need to put down the tissues and realize that promoted posts are simply one option among many to amplify reach,” John Haydon delves into the inner workings of Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm and offers 13 recommendations for reaching fans without writing a check, including posting awesome content (based on thorough analysis of past performance) and using your blog, events and webinars to increase visibility.
5 Successful Facebook Marketing Campaigns – Case Studies by jeffbullas.com
It’s easy to generate tremendous traffic and buzz on Facebook if you’re a major brand advertiser with buckets of money to spend, but what about small businesses with much more limited means? Jeff Bullas very helpfully here offers small to midsized business marketers some proven tactics for Facebook marketing success and then shares five case studies from small firms that have made a splash on the giant social network with cleverness and creativity, on a budget.
Stop Looking at Facebook’s Insights by Inkling Media
Ken Mueller makes a compelling case for, well, not quite ignoring Facebook’s Insights, but at least putting those numbers in proper perspective. Noting that “I honestly put very little weight in Facebook insights. They change how things are measured on a regular basis, and if you spend any time poring over the numbers, you know they clearly don’t add up. I wish they did, but they don’t,” he outlines five reasons not to obsess over these metrics—and what to focus on instead.
Facebook Changes
Facebook Promoted Posts and Other Recent Updates of 2012 by Vertical Measures
Sarah Schager shares updates on nine post-Timeline Facebook changes, including promoted posts (only for brands with at least 400 fans), changes to how to links are handled within status updates, events, and the inclusion of mobile views in the reach metric (finally).
Facebook Simplifies Ad Creation With Redesigned Self-Serve Tool by Sprout Social
Jennifer Beese explains Facebook’s recent changes to its self-service ad creation tool and notes “Once you’ve chosen what you’d like to advertise and listed your main objective, Facebook will recommend a combination of traditional sidebar ads and Sponsored Stories. Additionally, you’ll receive a preview of how our Sponsored Stories will appear in people’s’ News Feeds.”
12 Latest Facebook Page Features You Might Have Missed by Social @ Blogging Tracker
The delightful Wong Ching Ya details a dozen of Facebook’s relatively new features, including onsite notification (which provides page administrators with “instant page notifications in your profile’s homepage for new posts, fan messages, comments or whenever someone liked your page posts”), target page posts, and Facebook custom audiences (“Brand pages can now target their offline audiences on Facebook through relevant ads by uploading info such as email addresses, phone numbers or Facebook user IDs”).
Facebook Advertising
10 Examples of Facebook Ads That Actually Work (And Why) by HubSpot
You’ve probably read about the dismal click-through rates for Facebook ads, but Dan Slagen here offers guidance on beating the averages through high relevance and a compelling call to action, then presents examples of brands generating strong performance with Facebook advertising.
Facebook Upgrades Small Business Site by MediaPost
Noting that small business advertisers are vital to Facebook (and Facebook is an important marketing platform for many small businesses), Mark Walsh reports on efforts by Facebook to help small businesses create more effective ads and generally use the social network more effectively, including tips like: “Ensure you know people are coming to your business because they found you on Facebook: whisper codes, unique Facebook links to your site, friend referrals, exclusive Facebook discounts. Also, put your Facebook URL on more of your in-store materials—receipts, napkins, brochures, etc., to increase fanning of your Page.”
15 Tips For A Successful Facebook Ads Program by MediaWhiz
Adam Riff shares 15 “secrets” to optimize Facebook advertising, such as rotating ads frequently to combat banner blindness, tracking metrics beyond basic “likes,” testing occupational targeting, and leveraging Facebook data to make smarter media buys through other channels (“The great thing about Facebook data is that it can give you insights about your consumer base that you might not have otherwise known”).
A Simple Breakdown of All Your Facebook Advertising Options by HubSpot
Noting that “Facebook seems to be launching a new form of advertising—or some new feature within the advertising—every day,” Amanda Sibley details the features and usage of Facebook’s five forms of on-page advertising in this thorough and helpfully illustrated post.
Facebook Stats
Facebook 2012 Facts and Figures for Small Business Success by MyBeak Social Media
Laura-Lee Walker (again) shares a huge collection of Facebook facts in this infographic, such as that 58% of Facebook’s one billion+ users visit the site daily; the average Facebook visits lasts 20 minutes; 80% of businesses are active on Facebook; the two most popular apps are the Blackberry Smartphones App and Texas Holdem Poker; and much, much more.
Facebook Focused On Upping Services For Small Businesses by MediaPost
Frequent best-of writer Laurie Sullivan reports on Facebook’s efforts to make it simple for small businesses to connect with their customers on Facebook, noting “About one-third of the 100,000 small businesses that have published Offers are new Facebook advertisers, and about 30% are claimed on mobile devices,” and that “Facebook (now) supports more than 13 million small and local business pages.”
Facebook Rants and Raves
Is Google Unstoppable? by MediaPost
John Capone details advertising statistics and projections that suggest, over the next couple of years, in terms of advertising revenue, “Google will begin to leave Facebook and the rest (of the major ad sellers) in the dust.” He describes Google as The Predator of the online advertising world, while Facebook is more like Barney the purple dinosaur.
5 reasons your brand doesn’t need Facebook by iMedia Connection
Peter Platt sets out to dispel five “myths” of Facebook marketing, among them that Facebook is an engagement platform for brands: “A couple of years back, we wanted to ‘like’ brands so we could see what their offers were. But all too often, brands became that annoying friend who posted too much, and we quickly learned to hide or unfriend those brands. Brands also started building out complex Facebook platforms with lots of functionality and engagement tools, but the reality is that the news feed is the core of Facebook activity. Complex portals garner some interest, but at the end of the day, the news feed is where most of the users are.”
Before You Buy Into The ‘Zuckerberg Put’: 5 Things Facebook’s CEO Won’t Tell You by Seeking Alpha
Kyle Spencer advises investors that although Mark Zuckerberg may have discovered he really does need to listen to the market, there are five things to keep in mind before diving into this stock, such as that the kids are somewhere else: “There was a time when Facebook was cool. Not anymore. 65% of Facebook users are 35 and older, and adults are the fastest growing demographic…Why is it important where teens hang out? Because parents follow their kids around on the Internet. Teens are the first adopters, the fastest social innovators and have more free time to surf the net. Jumping ship keeps teenagers one step ahead of mom and dad. Remember AOL? It’s an old folks home, now.”
Facebook is for Likes Not Leads by Brent Price Carnduff
Writing that “The truth is, most of those 900 million people (actually over a billion now) aren’t there to be marketed to. And frankly, Facebook doesn’t make it that easy for businesses to connect with them,” Brent Carnduff outlines what he believes Facebook can, and can’t, do for marketers and business owners.
Facebook: Are the Good Times Really Over for Good? by WindMill Networking
Chris Treadaway laments recent changes by Facebook that make it more expensive—much more expensive—for brands to reach fans with their content. He cites recent criticism of the social media network by Mark Cuban, George Takei, and a range of Facebook community managers, yet in the end concludes “It’s going to cost us more to do the things that we’ve gotten for low cost so far…but we won’t go anywhere.” Maybe.
102 Compelling Social Media and Online Marketing Stats and Facts for 2012 (and 2013)
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013With 92% of companies now incorporating social media into their marketing efforts, it’s no longer sufficient to just “be there” on social networks. Today’s most effective marketers are optimizing content across channels, coordinating search and social marketing activities with traditional PR, and measuring their web presence and performance with sophistication.
The first step to improving digital marketing results is to understand the emerging trends and best practices. This post, along with 79 Remarkable Social Media Marketing Facts and Statistics for 2012 and 87 More Vital Social Media Marketing Facts and Stats for 2012 previously published here, provide a solid foundation for that understanding.
What do buyers really want from social media marketers? What’s the key to generating more inbound marketing leads? What is the source of the largest share of social traffic to websites? (It’s not what you almost certainly think.)
Find the answers to these questions and many, many more here in over 100 engaging and intriguing social, search, content, inbound, email, mobile and other marketing stats and facts from the past few months.
25 Social Media Facts and Statistics
1. While 76% of marketers believe “they know what their consumers want” in terms of social media content and interaction, only 34% have actually asked those buyers. (e-Strategy Trends)
2. At least on the B2C side, there is a disconnect between what marketers think consumers think is important and what consumers actually value. Marketers believe the highest consumer priorities on social media are insights for buying decisions (59%) and customer service (58%). Consumers actually place the highest value on deals and promotions (83%) and rewards programs (70%). (e-Strategy Trends)
3. B2B buyers are most likely to share useful vendor content via email (79%), followed by LinkedIn (53%), Twitter (39%) and Facebook (18%). (Earnest Agency)
4. While three-quarters of marketers consider measurement of social media impact important, 70% say that measuring those results is difficult. (Marketing Charts)
5. 79% of marketers measure website traffic from social media, and 68% track engagement metrics on social networks, but just 26% measure the relationship of social media activity to leads and sales. (Marketing Charts)
6. Just 4% of marketers said their companies were “very effective” at measuring social marketing in 2012. While 47% felt somewhat good at social measurement in 2011, just 38% said the same in 2012. “Nearly half of respondents (47%) feel they or their companies are either not very good at social marketing measurement, or do not measure well at all.” (Marketing Charts)
7. Ever feel frustrated and less productive than you’d like to be at work, even though you’re working hard and putting in a ton of hours? There’s a reason for that! Interruptions (like email and social media) are messing us up. Consider:
- • The typical worker is interrupted once every 28 minutes on average.
- • 28% of the average work day is spent on interruptions and recovery time.
- • 45% of workers believe they are expected to work on too many things at once.
- • And tasks done in parallel take on average 30% longer to complete than those performed in a sequence.
8. Everyone knows women vastly outnumber men on Pinterest, but how about on other social networks? Women make up the larger share of users on Facebook (58% to 42%) and are a slightly larger share on Twitter (52% to 48%) while men are the predominate users of LinkedIn (63% to 37%) and Google+ (71% to 29%). Furthermore, half of all Google+ users are under 25 years old. (iMedia Connection)
9. Social CRM is still confusing. Only 16% of companies say they currently have a social CRM system in place. 21% plan to implement such a system in the coming year, but another 17% “don’t know what a social CRM system is and why businesses need it.” (Convince & Convert)
10. Only a quarter of all U.S. small businesses (20-99 employees) and a third of midsized companies say they use social media “to engage with customers and prospects in a strategic and structured way.” Another 20% of both groups say they use social media, but in an ad hoc manner. (eMarketer)
11. Despite growing interest in the concept of social business, less than 20% of U.S. companies have integrated social media with their customer service, sales, or product development processes. (eMarketer)
12. Worldwide, 86% of companies have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, while just over half use YouTube and Linked and only slightly more than a third have a presence on Pinterest and/or Google+. (eMarketer)
13. More than 80% of small to midsized businesses (SMBs) plan to increase their use of social media in 2013. Not suprising, considering that 87% of SMBs say that social media has helped them either somewhat or a great deal in th past year. Of those using this channel, social media accounts for 32% of SMB marketing activities. (Marketing Charts)
14. Okay, so most marketers have now embraced social media. But why? 84% of marketers say they use social media to “reach customers at multiple touchpoints,” while 62% want to reach customers where they spend time and 56% say that “customers expect them to be on social media.” (Marketing Charts)
15. Still, not every small business should be using social media—or at least not using it as they are currently. 79% of small business owners on Twitter post just once per day or even less frequently, yet one out of three want to spend less time on social media. These business owners would be best advised to either spend their time on other tactics or hire someone who knows and enjoys social media to interact on their businesses’ behalf. No deposit, no return. (Leaders West)
16. Social media may be good for 99 things, but lead generation ain’t one of them. According to research from MarketingSherpa, just 12% of marketers rate social media as “very effective” for lead gen while 27% say it is “not effective.” The only tactic that fares worse is print advertising (9% very effective vs. 30% not effective). (B2B Lead Blog)
17. Which social network sends the largest share of website traffic? The answer is…unknown. Literally. The well-known social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit account for, combined, on average, less than half of all social traffic. The majority (as much as 70%) is “dark social”—links shared through email or instant messaging that generally get lumped in with “direct” traffic in analytics programs like Google Analytics. (The Atlantic)
18. The most popular social media sites for distributing B2B content are LinkedIn (used by 83% of B2B marketers), Twitter (80%) and Facebook (also 80%). After that, it falls off sharply; 61% use YouTube, 39% are on Google+, 26% utilize Pinterest (really?) and 23% share content on SlideShare. (MarketingProfs)
19. Using social media boosts website traffic: companies gain a 185% lift in Web traffic after achieving 1,000 Facebook likes, and businesses with 51 to 100 Twitter followers generate 106% more traffic than those with 25 or fewer followers. (MarketingProfs)
20. 92% of U.S. companies now use social media in their marketing efforts. (Heidi Cohen)
21. Different social media channels serve different purposes. Blogging is generally seen as most valuable for SEO, YouTube for content marketing, and social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn most helpful for branding and engagement. (Heidi Cohen)
22. Globally, eight different social networks have now reached the 100 million user mark. Three of those (Weibo, the fourth-largest social nework, RenRen at #5 and Badoo at #7) are primarily used by non-English speakers. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
23. The average user spends nearly seven hours per month on Facebook, but just 21 minutes on Twitter, 17 on LinkedIn, and only three minutes on Google+. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
24. Social media now accounts for 18% of all time spent online, and the average American spends 6.9 hours per month on social networking. But we are spending less time on the phone, sending/reading email, and watching TV than we did just a few years ago. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
25. One-third of CEOs fail to consider their compananies’ social media reputation when making business decisions. (The Backup List)
12 WPO, Inbound and Content Marketing Stats
26. Leads from inbound marketing cost on average 61% less ($135 vs. $346) than outbound marketing leads. (Earnest Agency)
27. Though it varies across industries, of course, 24% of overall marketing spending last year was on digital/online marketing. Social media and SEO together account for 70% of that spending. (iMedia Connection)
28. Blogging generally gets the largest share of inbound marketing budgets, followed by social media, SEO (if calculated separately from blogging) and PPC advertising. Most outbound marketing spend is on telemarketing, followed by direct mail and trade shows. (iMedia Connection)
29. 57% of companies say they generated sales through their blogs, and an identical share have closed business through LinkedIn. 48% have generated customers through Twitter and 42% through Facebook. (iMedia Connection)
30. Why web presence optimization metrics are vital: half of marketers say tightening integration between social media and traditional marketing is a key goal for 2013, yet nearly a third identify that as one of their top social marketing challenges, and a whopping 57% way measuring social ROI is a challenge. (Convince & Convert)
31. 9 out of 10 marketers say they measure social presence (e.g., number of followers and fans) and social media-driven website traffic, but only about half measure share of voice and sentiment. (Convince & Convert)
32. Need more evidence that measuring social media ROI is hard? While about 90% of all companies do some form of social media marketing, just one out of eight measure the revenue impact directly from social media. (eMarketer)
33. The two biggest challenges faced by B2B content marketers are producing enough content (cited by 29% of marketers) and producing the kind of content that engages (18). Only 2% of marketers say that finding trained content marketing professionals is a big challenge. (MarketingProfs)
34. More content = more leads. On average, companies “with 51-100 web pages generate 48% more traffic than companies with 1-50 pages.” What’s interesting though is the differential is larges for very small companies (those with less than 10 employees), likely because larger companies make greater use of lead gen tactics like tradeshows, webinars and video. (Polaris B)
35. Lots more content = lots more leads. Companies with 101-200 web pages generate 2.5x more leads than those with 50 or fewer pages. More landing pages and more blog posts also mean more leads. On average, companies that have published 200 or more total blog posts generate 5X as much traffic as those with 10 posts or fewer. (Polaris B)
36. Inbound marketing leads cost on average 62% less than outbound-generated leads, and the “big three” inbound channels—blogs, social media and SEO—all cost less on average than any outbound channel. (Polaris B)
37. The financial services (75%), insurance (50%) and software (50%) industries are the most advanced when it comes to having separate content marketing strategies for each channel through which they distribute content. Companies in these industries are also the most likely to have formal content marketing editorial calendars. The automotive (14%) and banking sectors (14%) were the least likely to have separate strategies in place. (MediaPost)
8 SEO Stats and Facts
38. SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation for B2B companies. 59% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on their lead gen goals, followed by social media (21%) and pay per click (20%). Not surprisingly, 98% of B2B marketers plan to maintain or increase SEO budgets next year. (Marketing Charts)
39. SEO also has the biggest impact on B2C lead gen. 49% of B2C marketers rank SEO tops for impact on lead generation, followed by pay per click (26%) and social media (25%). (Marketing Charts)
40. Agencies do SEO better. 21% of marketers who work with agencies on SEO report being highly satisfied with their program performance, compared with 11% of those who do SEO in-house. (Marketing Charts)
41. 78% of Internet users say they use the web for product research, and almost half (46%) of all searches on the average day for information on products and services (iMedia Connection)
42. Search is as popular as ever, but the percentage of searches actually done on search engines declined slightly in 2012 (by about 1%). More searches are taking place on websites (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and on Amazon.com, which is the top destination for product search). Still, organic search on search engines drive 50% of all referring traffic, compared to less than 8% for social media. (MediaPost)
43. SEO is rated as the most effective lead generation tactic, with 34% of marketers calling it “very effective” while just 7% say it is not effective. The next-most-effective lead gen tactics are paid search (32% vs. 9%) and webinars (30% to 6%). (B2B Lead Blog)
44. Demand for SEO skills has never been greater. SEO job postings on job board indeed.com increased 1900% last year and people with ‘SEO’ in their LinkedIn profile have increased by 112%. Still, few SEO jobs pay six figures. (Conductor Blog)
45. The largest number of SEO job openings are in New York and San Francisco, with Boston at #5, Austin at #11 and my own Minneapolis at #12. (Conductor Blog)
3 SEM Facts
46. Think AdWords isn’t important? For “commercial” searches on Google, actual organic links can take up less than 20% of the screen real estate and links. (Founder’s Blog)
47. Agencies do SEM better. 20% of respondents working with agencies for PPC report being highly satisfied with their program’s performance, compared to 15% who manage pay-per-click programs in-house. (Marketing Charts).
48. Search (paid and organic) is a leading driver of new customer sales, while email matters most for repeat business. Social media isn’t a significant driver of either type of sale, though of course it is vital for support SEO, brand image (which leads to higher PPC click-through rates) and customer service. (Marketing Pilgrim)
3 Email Marketing Stats
49. There are 62 billion emails sent every day. The average worker receives 112 emails and spends 28 of his or her time on email each day. (Visual.ly)
50. Email is the most common lead gen tactic, used by 81% of marketers. (MarketingSherpa)
51. SEO drives traffic, but email drives conversions. While 43% of marketers say that organic search drives the greatest volume of traffic to their websites, only 29% say that traffic converts at the highest rate. On the other hand, though just 22% cite email as their largest web traffic generator, 25% say those visits convert at the highest rate. (MarketingSherpa)
7 Business Blogging Stats and Facts
52. Just 139 of the Fortune 500 corporations maintain public-facing blogs, only 29 more than in 2009. (e-Strategy Trends)
53. Only 185 of the Inc. 500 (fastest-growing companies) had a blog in 2011, down from 250 firms in 2010, despite the fact that 92% of all companies with blogs say it has been successful for their business. (e-Strategy Trends)
54. Meanwhile, 55% of small businesses have a blog. (Leaders West)
55. On average, companies that publish 15 or more blog articles per month generate five times more Web traffic than companies that don’t blog at all, and those that blog 9-15 times per month generate three times more traffic than companies that don’t maintain blogs. (MarketingProfs)
56. Companies that publish new blog posts just 1-2 times per month generate 70% more leads than companies that don’t blog at all. (MarketingProfs)
57. 57% of companies that blog have acquired a customer through their blogs. (Polaris B)
58. Blogs are the core of social media marketing. Among companies that use social media in their marketing efforts, 59% rank their company blog as critical or important to their business, higher than any other social sharing site or network. (Heidi Cohen)
8 Facebook Facts and Statistics
59. There are one billion posts per day made on Facebook. The average user spends nearly 7 hours per month on the social networking site, and one out of every five pageviews on the Internet is on…Facebook. (Visual.ly)
60. Three out of four American moms use Facebook. (iMedia Connection)
61. Facebook accounts for one out of every five pageviews on the Internet. It’s used by more than half of all people in North America, more than a third of all citizens in Australia and New Zealand, and more than a quarter of the population in Europe. (iMedia Connection)
62. Of Facebook’s one billion-plus users, 57% access the site at least occasionally from mobile devices. The most popular operating systems for mobile Facebook access are iOS (26%) and Android (21%). (Jeff Bullas)
63. Among Facebook marketers, 64% have used Facebook Events to inform fans about online or offline events, making this a far more widespread tool than display ads and targeted posts. (Marketing Charts)
64. 90% of small businesses are on Facebook, and roughly two-thirds post more than once per week. (Leaders West)
65. All of the Ad Age Top 100 Advertisers have now established Facebook pages for their brands. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
66. Facebook grew 18% in 2012 and accounted for more than half of all social content sharing. (AddThis Blog)
6 Twitter Stats
67. There are 400 million tweets per day on Twitter. A million new Twitter accounts are opened each day. The average user spends nearly and hour and a half on the site each month. (Visual.ly)
68. Twitter now has more than 500 million users worldwide, including more than 100 million in the U.S. Twitter’s second-largest user base is in Brazil. (Jeff Bullas)
69. Almost two-thirds (64%) of Twitter access is via Twitter.com (web access), while 16% of use is mobile and 10% is via Twitter clients like HootSuite and TweetDeck. (Jeff Bullas)
70. What’s the most popular marketing tactic on Twitter? 30% of marketers report using hashtags tied to specific campaigns, while 26% use Promoted Tweets. (Marketing Charts)
71. Twitter grew 55% in 2012 and accounted for 15% of all social content sharing. (AddThis Blog)
72. 42% of companies have acquired at least one customer through Twitter. (Polaris B)
6 LinkedIn Facts
73. LinkedIn has more than 150 million users, but less than 20% have reached the level of having 500 or more first-degree connections, and only 8% are using the paid premium version. (Jeff Bullas)
74. Also, only 51% of LinkedIn users have “complete” profiles, and just 52% spend two hours or more per week on the site. (Jeff Bullas)
75. The most popular use of LinkedIn is for researching people and companies (77%). Other popular uses include building relationships with industry influencers (50%), finding job opportunities (38%) and increasing brand recognition in the marketplace (37%). Just 28% of companies say they have generated identifiable business opportunities on the site. (Jeff Bullas)
76. The most popular marketing tactics on LinkedIn are the use of LinkedIn groups (cited by 33% of marketers) followed distantly by InMail messaging (14%), LinkedIn Events (13%) and LinkedIn ads (10%). (Marketing Charts)
77. LinkedIn is the most powerful social site for driving B2B sales. Pinterest is most valuable for driving B2C business. (Heidi Cohen)
78. Want to connect with top-level executives? 26% of Fortune 500 CEOs are on LinkedIn. Less than 8% are on Facebook. o% use Pinterest. (Heidi Cohen)
3 Google+ Statistics
79. Google+ has more than 400 million users, with 100 million accessing the site each month. The typical user is a male in his late 20s with a technical position or background. (Jeff Bullas)
80. Google+ users tend to be more technical than Facebook users. The top three brands on Google+ are Android, Mashable, and Chrome; on Facebook, the three most popular brands are Coca-Cola, Disney, and Starbucks. (Jeff Bullas)
81. 12 of the top 15 interest categories on Pinterest are related to commerce, including jewelry and accessories (#1), flowers and gifts (#2), food (#4), books (#7), travel (#8), apparel (#11), home furnishings (#14) and toys (#15). (Jeff Bullas)
3 Pinterest Facts
82. Mothers are 61% more likely to use Pinterest than the average American. Pinterest ranks as the #1 “family and lifestyle site” for moms – ahead of Disney Online. (iMedia Connection)
83. Pinterest’s user base is 79% female, and Apple-centric. The iPad is the most device for mobile access (55%), while an additional 17% of mobile access is through the iPhone. (Jeff Bullas)
84. Pinterest grew an astounding 379,599% in 2012. The biggest driver of growth was pins of food photos. (AddThis Blog)
6 B2B Marketing Facts and Stats
85. 9 out of 10 B2B buyers say when they are ready to make a purchase, they will find a vendor. 81% use search, 59% look for peer recommendations, and 41% read content from “thought leaders.” (Earnest Agency)
86. For purchases over $10,000, 70% of buyers review four or more pieces of content before making a decision. (That actually sounds quite low, doesn’t it?) The most popular type of content: white papers, read by 88% of buyers. (Earnest Agency)
87. Traditional marketing tactics are not dead. 74% of B2B marketers rate direct mail as very effective, while 72% say the same about live events and 71% call email marketing critical. (Earnest Agency)
88. 75% of B2B marketers use SEO for lead generation. 72% utilize social media, and 54% have embraced content marketing, while just 15% of marketers say they are using mobile marketing. (MarketingSherpa)
89. B2B marketers are spending more on content marketing. “On average, B2B content marketers are spending 33% of their marketing budgets on content marketing (in 2012), up from 26% (in 2011, and) 54% plan to increase content marketing spending next year.” (MarketingProfs)
90. The most popular B2B content marketing tactics are the use of social media other than blogs (used by 87% of B2B marketers), articles on their own websites (83%), eNewsletters (78%) and blogs (77%), followed by case studies, videos and externally published articles, all at about 70%. On the other end of the scale is gamification, used by just 11% of B2B marketers. (MarketingProfs)
3 Video Marketing Statistics
91. 75% of senior executives watch videos on business sites every week. 65% go on to visit a vendor’s website after watching a video. (Earnest Agency)
92. 71% of American Internet users watch online videos; 28% do so on a daily basis. (iMedia Connection)
93. YouTube is the world’s second largest social media site, with 800 million unique monthly visitors, and the second largest search engine. (Heidi Cohen)
6 Mobile Marketing Stats and Facts
94. Of the four billion mobile phones in use globally, more than a quarter (27%) are smartphones. Half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices. (iMedia Connection)
95. The top online uses of mobile phones are gaming (61% of users do this), checking the weather (55%), maps and search (50%) and social networking (49%). (iMedia Connection)
96. Despite the growing popularity of local mobile search and social activity, only 3% of U.S. small businesses use geolocation services. (eMarketer)
97. Mobile marketing is “becoming mainstream” for small to midsized businesses (SMBs). 18% said they were “very likely” and 31% “somewhat likely” to incorporate mobile elements in their advertising and marketing efforts to reach potential customers in the coming year. Meanwhile, 7 in 10 plan to either maintain or increase spending in this area (Marketing Charts)
98. Is mobile marketing effective for lead generation? The jury is still out. In a recent survey, 15% of marketers rated mobile marketing as “very effective” for lead gen while an identical share said mobile is not effective. (B2B Lead Blog)
99. 30% of all the time spent on mobile device use is on social networks. (MediaPost)
And Finally, 3 Other Miscellaneous Online Marketing Stats
100. While 45% of all B2B businesses have now implemented some type of marketing automation software, less than 20% of SMBs have done so. However, smaller companies that have embraced marketing process automation are nearly 50% more likely to report revenue growth above plan than those that haven’t. (MediaPost)
101. Half of all employed people in the U.S. have been with their current employer for less than five years. The average tenure for all employees is 4.6 years. Professionals in architecture and engineering (7 years) and management (6.3 years) tend to have the longest tenures, while occupations with the shortest tenures include food service (2.3 years) and sales (3.4 years). (westXdesigns)
102. Social media crisis management in crisis? More than 10% of companies report they will not take any action to respond to a damaging article or social media post. Worse, less than two-thirds of B2C executives and just 43% of B2B leaders even believe their companies could respond to a negative post within 24 hours. (The Backup List)
21 (of the) Best Facebook Guides, Tools and Rants of 2012 So Far
Wednesday, September 19th, 2012Despite a shaky IPO last spring, Facebook remains the 800-pound gorilla of social media marketing, as it now approaches the billion-user mark. Though often associated with bands and brands, Facebook is viewed as the most effective social media tool (by a fairly large margin) by both B2C and bB2B marketers.
So what are the best tactics for marketing and advertising on Facebook? How can marketers best utilize social plugins for the platform? Which apps are still worthy (and functional) in the Timeline interface? How can brands most successfully drive fan engagement? Will Facebook continue to grow and dominate the web, or is it headed for a fall like AOL and MySpace before it?
Find the answers to these questions and many others here in more than 20 of the best Facebook guides, tactics, observations, tools, stats and rants of 2012 thus far.
Facebook Guides, Tips & Techniques
7 Unbelievably Cool Facebook Ad Tactics by AllFacebook
Dennis Yu provides an outstanding set of techniques to use in various circumstances, such as when you hosting an event, promoting a video, or if your customers are other businesses: “If you know the names of the actual companies you’d like to have as clients, include them in the your list of workplace targets. But be careful to attract only decision makers. If you’d like to get the attention of Walmart executives, narrow down to folks age 25 and up who live within a 25-mile radius of Bentonville, Arkansas, or else you risk targeting employees in stores across the country.”
15 Ways To Use Facebook Pages for Business by Social Media Today
Matt Hamilton lists “some great ideas for your own business Facebook use,” such as for product testing, news release promotion, customer service, ideas to feed your new product development process, employee recognition, and even growing your email list: “it is important to make sign-up very easy. Using a software service such as MailChimp allows you to add a simple sign up form to your Facebook business page and also get some great tools for creating the newsletter.”
28 Things You Need To Know About The New Facebook Pages by KISSmetrics
Though this post is now old news for many Facebook marketers, this piece by frequent best-of contributor Kristi Hines nonetheless provides a great review of Timeline features to go back to and make sure nothing was missed or sub-optimized from Facebook brand timeline pages. For example, “While you can have a total of 12 custom tabs (including your Photos and Page Likes), only four are showed at the top of your page. This means visitors to your page have to be savvy enough to click on the down arrow to find the rest. You can swap the position of your custom tabs to make sure the best ones are up top by clicking on the down arrow, hovering over the tab, clicking on the pencil, and selecting which tab to swap it with.”
The Complete Guide To Facebook Timeline Pages by AllFacebook
As with the post above, this post is pretty much old news at this point, but still worth a quick skim to make sure you haven’t overlooked anything important in your brand’s Facebook Timeline development.
Simple Step-by-Step Instructions for Setting Up a Facebook Ad Campaign by HubSpot
Dan Stagen walks through a dozen steps to create a Facebook ad campaign, from determining a call to action and writing an ad through all of the various targeting criteria to pricing, review and launch.
Facebook Apps and Tools
25 Timeline Ready Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page by Social @ Blogging Tracker
Ching Ya reviews more than two dozen helpful (and Timeline-compatible) Facebook apps for functions like providing FAQ information, creating contact forms, displaying a Google Map for your business, showcasing your YouTube videos, encouraging discussion and sharing, integrating Twitter, and more.
6 Tools Social Media Experts Use to Update Facebook Pages by KISSmetrics
Kristi Hines (again) presents the pros and cons of updating Facebook using third-party apps (e.g., the impact of Edgerank: “One thing that EdgeRank has the potential of doing is lowering the value of an update from a third-party tool and prioritizing updates that are made directly on Facebook. This means that pages with updates from third-party apps may not get as much engagement”), then reviews six such tools, including HootSuite and Buffer, for those who choose to go the third-party route regardless.
The Ultimate Guide to Marketing With Facebook’s Social Plugins by HubSpot
Explaining that “a Facebook Social Plugin is basically a widget you can add to your website to extend the benefits of your Facebook marketing efforts beyond Facebook. It’s a way to get more marketing mojo out of Facebook on your own website,” Pamela Vaughan reviews 11 of these plugins, explaining what each one does, its marketing value, and how to install and use it.
18 Tools to Develop Your Brand on Facebook by Practical eCommerce
5 STARS *****
Sig Ueland showcases 18 tools for engagement, promotion and monitoring on Facebook, including the Wildfire (now owned by Google) suite of apps for social media promotion, the Forum for Pages discussion board app, and EdgeRank Checker for post optimization. Missing from the list though is Workface, the first non-Facebook-owned interactive profile and multi-format chat tool to be fully functional in Facebook.
Facebook Changes
The evolution of Facebook features by EngageSciences
A fantastic infographic illustrating the history of Facebook feature changes from 2006 through the beginning of 2012. The narrative also points out why keeping up with Facebook’s constant changes, though maddening, is essential: “the introduction of the Facebook Mobile App has been fantastic as it is now the worlds largest mobile app with 400m users, which has stimulated more people to use the site more often, but businesses have been caught out as they have not realised that apps and tabs they create currently cannot be accessed by users of the Facebook Mobile App. With up to 40% of traffic coming from smartphones that is a lot of lost interaction.”
Facebook’s biggest change yet: Actions are here by VentureBeat
Jolie O’Dell explains what Actions are and why they matter:”Actions are kind of the Holy Grail of semantic data, defining relation types between people, objects, content, places, businesses, and so much more. If users warm to the idea of Actions, it might also be one of the most valuable and lucrative move Facebook will ever make.” But she concludes by writing “As Facebook executive Bret Taylor explained it, with the addition of Actions to Facebook profiles, ‘You can see everything you have ever done in any app.’” Do Facebook users really want that?
Facebook Timeline for Brands: The Complete Guide by Mashable
Christine Erickson puts a positive spin on the March Timeline change and provides an extensive list of Timeline-related resources from Mashable, including Timeline for Brands: How to Prepare for Your Company’s New Facebook Page and Facebook Timeline: 10 Fresh Designs for Creative Inspiration [PICS].
Facebook is telling businesses to become better content marketers by iMedia Connection
According to Doug Schumacher, the “big story” of Facebook’s switch to Timeline format “is that Facebook is essentially telling all marketers that they’d better get their content game on. That’s because your paid advertising on Facebook and the content you publish on Facebook are now one and the same, from a messaging standpoint. The focus on Facebook paid ads won’t be on crafting individual messages that you then optimize, as it’s been in the past. Instead, you’ll simply pipe your best content pieces into different ad units, and measure performance based on how your content attracts interest.”
Facebook Opinions, Observations and Stats
Facebook’s Potential Search Power Could Surpass Google’s by MediaPost
Diane Mermigas is bullish on the long-term value and potential of Facebook, and explains how the social networking behemoth could develop a “torrent of new revenue and value that eventually will make its $100 billion IPO valuation look like child’s play” through a combination of mobile, social search, its relationship with Microsoft / Bing, gaming, and image sharing.
Facebook to Brands: You’re Posting Stuff Wrong by Ad Age
Matt Creamer reports on data showing that the most engaging brand content is generally, well, content closely related to the brand. Attempts to “humanize” the brand through off-topic surveys, questions, and recommendations don’t increase “likes” or grow a brand’s following. And if you want to use questions to drive engagement? “Buddy Media found that brand fans are more willing to comment when asked a question, especially if the question begins with ‘where,’ ‘when,’ ‘would’ and ‘should.’ But other interrogatory words don’t work as well. Avoid asking ‘why’ questions,’ advised the Buddy Media paper. ‘Why’ has both the lowest ‘like’ and comment rates and may be seen as intrusive and/or challenging.”
Facebook on SecondMarket (Infographic) by SecondMarket
An interesting graphical depiction of the rise in Facebook’s value from early 2008 (when the social network had a mere 145 million users and had just introduced Facebook chat) through the company’s IPO in May of this year. In terms of the dollar volume of shares traded at the IPO, 79% of sales were by former Facebook employees, while more than half of purchases were by hedge funds and asset managers.
Facebook Skeptics and Rants
Why there will never be a Margie Clayman Facebook Fan Page by Margie’s Moments of Tiyoweh
The delightful Margie Clayman uses her dagger-sharp pen to skewer the concept of personal fan pages, observing for example, “Isn’t your profile on Facebook kind of a fan page already?…even though the word ‘friend’ is used rather loosely these days, isn’t it more comforting to think that you have 500 friends versus 500 fans?”
Facebook: Why is nobody listening? by ComMetrics
How much is your brand spending on its Facebook strategy? You may want to reevaluate that after reading this scathing but meticulously data-supported post from Urs E. Gattiker. “Facebook status updates are similar to broadcasting a message to an empty football stadium…900 out of every 1000 people do not even see your status update or tweet. Only 0.05 percent (1 person per 2,000 readers) engage by joining the conversation with a comment on your blog or Facebook page.”
14 Ways New Facebook Betrays Small Business by Convince & Convert
Jay Baer contends that “the new design and rules accompanying the new Timeline version of Facebook pages is a boon to big business, and a blow to small business,” for 14 reasons he details, including the death of the landing tab (One area where small businesses could excel in ‘old’ Facebook was with the default landing tab. This became a de-facto landing page/microsite for many companies, and made it relatively easy to drive fan behavior – especially when using inexpensive software. Of course, Facebook killed it in Timeline”) and the penalty on third-party apps.
Why Facebook Could Disappear by MediaPost
Contemplating the future of Facebook in the wake of losing advertising dollars from GM (and potentially other large brands), and the fate of predecessors like AOL, George Simpson writes “MySpace was well on its way to becoming that iconic, can’t-live-without-it kind of company, and Facebook came along and cut its legs off. As soon as the aunts and uncles and grandpas showed up on MySpace, the kids that were the cornerstone of their business hit the exits and ran straight for Facebook. I contend the exact same thing could happen to Facebook.”
The Facebook Fallacy by Technology Review
If you are having too nice of a day, or perhaps even feeling a bit optimistic about the future of online marketing, Michael Wolff will bring you back to earth with his explanation here of why “Facebook not only is on course to go bust but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it.” Stock up on canned goods and ammo.
What Could Kill Google and Facebook
Wednesday, July 18th, 2012Imagine that you walk into a restaurant and there’s no one there to take your order. You can’t even find anyone working in the place. Or you are waited on and place your order, but have to repeat it to three different people, because the servers won’t talk to each other. Or you’re told shortly after placing your order that you’ll need to choose a different item, because the menu has changed in the last five minutes. Twice.
You’d probably rip the place on every review site you can think of and then never return to that establishment. Yet we tolerate exactly that type of behavior from leading search and social media sites every day, and even reward them with growing traffic and more of our precious time. Why?
A potential Google killer, Facebook killer or even Twitter killer may not do it with superior technology, but simply with a better user experience.
One of the biggest complaints about Facebook is of course its constantly changing interface, and its convoluted privacy settings have also repeatedly come under fire (as have changes to its privacy settings). The constant changes are a problem for brands not only due to the expense of keeping up to date, but also because the newest (Timeline) layout has reduced tab engagement.But the most appalling shortcoming of the world’s most popular social network may be how un-social it is.
Granted, even with its never-ending UI changes, Facebook is easy enough to use even for technophobic grandmas. But imagine that you did have a question, or something wasn’t working quite right, and you wanted to contact Facebook for assistance. Try this: go to Facebook and see how long it takes you to find any way to contact the company: phone number, email address, even a fax number. I’ll wait. Let us know in the comments below how long it took.
Given these issues, it’s little wonder that Facebook has the lowest user satisfaction rating of all the major social media sites. And Facebook’s size may be no defense against ultimate demise; it wasn’t all that long ago the MySpace was the largest social network, and the experience of social news site Digg—once valued at $100 million but sold recently for just 5% of that—is a cautionary tale.
Google not only accounts for 85% of all web searches but controls an astounding 44% of the global online advertising market. It’s the 800-pound gorilla of the web, and acts like it with increasing frequency.
The search giant has annoyed everyday users with moves like dropping popular tools (Picnik, Knol, Gears) and presenting search challenges when it sees an “excessive” volume of searches from a single IP address (yes, this was designed to thwart automated rank-checking tools—though it isn’t clear why those are a problem—but can be triggered by a much lower volume of searches; my daughter has had these thrown up while doing research for high school English papers).
Google has thumbed its nose at businesses, advertisers and SEO professionals as well through a series of recent moves like hiding a significant share of keyword data in the “not provided” category within Google Analytics, eliminating the Website Optimizer tool in AdWords, and the recent Panda and Penguin algorithm updates, which were designed to eliminate webspam but caught a lot of innocent sites in their wake.
The leading micro-blogging tool isn’t as friendly to other web services as its cute little bluebird icon would make it appear. Last year it stopped sharing tweet data with Google (bad for the SEO results of Twitter users) and more recently the company eliminated the ability to automatically share tweets on LinkedIn. And after six years, the platform still doesn’t offer simple and obvious functions like the ability to download one’s followers and tweet history.
These web giants are assuming we’re so addicted to their services that we won’t quit or go elsewhere, no matter what they do, change, or eliminate. But the next Google killer or Facebook killer may very well not be a better search engine or social network, but simply one that treats its users with respect. And listens.
