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Posts Tagged ‘Andy Beal’

Best Random but Interesting B2B Marketing Posts, Articles and Resources of 2010

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011

If you’ve been following the Best-of-2010 series here, you’ve seen collections of some of the best articles and blog posts from last year in neatly organized categories including market research, cool social media and web tools, social media marketing guides and tips, WordPress hacks, Twitter marketing techniques and resources, guides to effective email marketing, content marketing, local SEO and more.

In this penultimate best-of-last-year post you’ll find a compendium of interesting, informative and valuable but difficult-to-categorize marketing-related articles and blog posts from 2010. The pieces presented here range from an extensive list of marketing cliches to avoid and tips to shorten the B2B buying cycle to guidance on branding, presentation skills, freelancing, job hunting and more.

Next week will feature the must-see Best-of-2010 season finale post here, then it’s on to new ideas and putting 2010 in the rearview mirror. Enjoy!

B2B Marketing Tips, Insights and Resources

101 B2B Marketing Cliches

Looking for inspiration for an original B2B marketing campaign? You won’t find it here! What you will find however are an extensive and insightful list of 101 over-used ideas to avoid, from the lightbulb (bright idea! Not.) and the baton pass to the mountain climber, the Post-It note and of course the ubiquitous handshake.

27 Marketing Lessons B2B Marketers Should Know by HubSpot Blog

Kipp Bodnar shares more than two dozen marketing lessons gleaned from the MarketingProfs B2B Forum event, among them: repackage expensive content (such as white paper content) into different formats—blog posts, webinars, bylined articles—to get the most out of your investment. Marketers are now publishers, and almost all content can be optimized for search. And one of my favorites, “Social media thought leadership is built by empowering employees to talk about your company and industry.”

The Business of B2B Social Media by Brian Solis

Brian Solis reports that social media is that area getting the biggest increase in B2B marketing budgets, explains why B2B vendors are embracing social media, and identifies which social networks are viewed as most effective in the business world.

5 Steps To Shorten The B2B Buying Cycle by Search Engine Land

Kerry Spellman shows how customer understanding, keyword research and content tailored to each stage of the buying decision process can be used together to shorten the buying cycle and bring revenue in the door more quickly.

Just how connected are the world’s top 5 IT services companies? by Earnest about B2B

If you work for a small to midsized company and are concerned that your company hasn’t quite perfected its use of social media yet—relax. Many large companies haven’t either. This post compares the social media activities of IBM, Fujitsu, HP, CSC and Accenture. While most are active to some degree on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and blogging, none exhibit a truly consistent, integrated social media presence. Efforts of the big five seem most mature in video, not surprising considering that as this post points out, “47% of IT professionals watch videos to research technology solutions on YouTube.”

The Top 7 Organizations & Events Every Agency Marketer Should Know by Business.com’s B2B Online Marketing Blog

Details on five associations that can help online marketers keep current as well as possibly connect with future clients, including the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Business Marketing Association (BMA), and local interactive marketing association chapters.

Is Traditional B2B Marketing Dead? by Everything Technology Marketing

Presenting “an overview of the key dimensions of B2B marketing that I see changing…very dimension (including balance of power, audience focus and presence) has significant implications on the way we plan, organize, and execute B2B marketing going forward,” Holger Schulze contends that in the new world of B2B marketing, buyers have the power; messages must be more focused than ever before; a vendor’s primary marketing presence is digital; and key marketing skills have shifted from creative to analytical, among other changes.

Social Media for B2B Technology Companies by MarketPlane

In this Slideshare presentation, Ronnie Ray and Alison O’Brien share stats on B2B use of social media, show how to align different social media tools with marketing objectives, review several B2B social media success stories, and outline a phased approach to building a social media strategy.

5 Must Watch B2B Videos by Modern B2B Blogs

Maria Pergolino highlights five entertaining and informative videos for B2B marketers on the state of the Internet, social media, changes in business buyer behavior and B2B branding.

A Simple B2B Marketing Framework by Everything Technology Marketing

Another noteworthy post from Holger Schulze, again focused on the B2B marketing process but from a different angle. Building upon the Pragmatic Marketing framework and the RocketWatcher framework, Holger presents his own elegant 4-layer model, with marketing knowledge at the base and progressing through business strategy and tools & content to the marketing tactics layer at the top.

Seven Ways to Convert Online Contacts Into Sales by Entrepreneur Magazine

Starr Hall outline seven “marketing strategies you should add to your daily practice to set yourself apart and turn your online communities into profitable business transactions…these activities will increase the ROI for your online efforts without looking or sounding sales pitchy.” Her recommendations include sharing your knowledge and expertise willingly and generously online, build your “social proof” (testimonials and recommendations), and don’t ask for the business too soon—but don’t shy away from asking for it at the proper time.

The 10 Best Infographics for Internet Marketing Pros by Marketing Pilgrim
***** 5 Stars
Opening this post by writing “Look, we both know that this is linkbait—a top ten list combined with infographics, c’mon!—but you have to admit, it’s worth bookmarking or tweeting. Right?,” Andy Beal proceeds to deliver just that: a list of infographics worth bookmarketing and passing along, sharing 10 outstanding infographics for marketers, covering topics ranging from the history of search to Google’s failed social media forays to the CMO’s guide to the social media landscape.

Presentation skills: 5 secrets of the pros by iMedia Connection

Judging by some of the presentations I’ve seen recently, a lot of people need to read this post. Bronwyn Saglimbeni highlights several techniques for making presentations more dynamic and useful, such as focusing on the needs of your audience, involving them in the discussion, and fearlessly being yourself.

35 Most Useful Tools and Resources which helping Freelancers by Dzinepress

The English here isn’t perfect (“Today we are helping Freelancers for maintain design tasks using famous tools and resources for make better performance even track work”), but the list of online tools for freelancers and consultants is outstanding, ranging from time tracking tools like Slim Timer and timepost2 to apps for SEO, social media management, accounting, promotion and design.

5 ways to turn company slide decks into marketing weapons by iMedia Connnection

Heidi Jackman explains how to use social tools to make any live or web-based presentation more interactive and engaging for the audience. For example, before the presentation, “Online community tools like MeetUp  and Ning, as well Twitter hashtags or a dedicated Facebook page, allow you to spread the word about your upcoming presentation.” During the presentation, invite feedback through Twitter (though Heidi acknowledges this can also potentially lead to “disaster if the audience begins posting negative or inappropriate comments while you are speaking”), and after the event, get additional mileage out of the presentation by posting it to YouTube, Slideshare and your company’s Facebook page.

Job Hunting and Careers

Cut Your Job Search Time in Half by CBS MoneyWatch

Eilene Zimmerman offers five tips for standing out from other candidates in today’s tough job climate, such as using social media and phone calls to conduct research on the company through customers and former employees.

Top 100 Niche Job Sites by New Grad Life

While the big job boards like Monster and CareerBuilder offer volume and convenience, they are also highly competitive; recruiters and HR managers may receive hundreds or even thousands of resumes for a particular position, making it extremely challenging to make yours stand out. Chad Bauer recommends an alternative—or rather 100 of them—niche job sites. This outstanding compilation lists niche sites for career opportunities in fields like accounting, advertising, banking, design, engineering, health care, higher education, IT, pharmaceuticals, public relations and more.

7 Ways to Find a Job Using Social Media by U Stand Out

Noting that “employers are looking for their next all-stars on social media channels,” HubSpot’s Diana Freedman shares tips for using social media to help find your next career opportunity, such as following individuals from a company you’d like to work on Twitter, watching their posts for news of job openings, and leaving insightful comments on the company blog.

Uncategorizable

Philip Zimbardo: The Secret Powers of Time by RSAnimate

This time-lapsed video presentation on differing perceptions of time is difficult to categorize, but fascinating. Factors like where you live, what religious beliefs you hold and how stable your family life has been all contribute to your perception of time, e.g. living in the moment vs. being future-oriented.

Tags: Alison O'Brien, Andy Beal, b2b marketing cliches, b2b marketing framework, b2b marketing lessons, b2b marketing model, b2b social media marketing, b2b videos, Brian Solis, Bronwyn Saglimbeni, Chad Bauer, cut job search time, Diana Freedman, Eilene Zimmerman, Heifi Jackman, Holger Schulze, Kerry Spellman, Kipp Bodnar, Maria Pergolino, niche job sites, Philip Zimbardo, presentation skills, Ronnie Ray, shorten b2b buying cycle, Starr Hall, using social media to find a job
Posted in Random | 2 Comments »

12 of the Best WordPress Guides, Hacks and Plugins of 2010

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

WordPress is no longer just the leading blog platform, but is now the most popular open-source CMS (content management system) as well. Among the many reasons for the popularity of WordPress: it’s affordable, search engine-friendly, reasonably easy to use, and extensible through an incredible array of plugins.

Discover some great sources for free and reasonably-priced themes, essential plugins you may not be aware of, SEO tips, and other interesting techniques and hacks here in a dozen of the best WordPress guides of last year.

WordPress Themes and Plugins

31 Websites Where To Find Free HQ WordPress Themes by W3Mag

The English is broken but the list of free template sources, like Wp Mojo, eBlog Templates and ThemeLab is excellent.

20 Excellent Free WordPress 3.0 Themes by Blogfreakz

Another excellent selection of free themes, including Heliumified which has a nice Apple-like look and feel.

10 Free WordPress Themes for Small Businesses by American Express OPEN Forum

Zachary Sniderman highlights 10 interesting free themes, along with recommendations on how each could be used and optimized.

32 Essential WordPress Plugins I Use…And You Don’t! by Andy Beal

An outstanding list of useful WordPress plugins from Andy Beal, author of Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online and the brain behind the Trackur social media monitoring tool.

25 Top WordPress Plugins You Should Know About by Ask WordPress Girl

Angela Bowman shares her “clean and simple list of the plugins I use most often on my WordPress sites” for SEO, feeds, forms, security, Twitter and more.

WordPress SEO

10 SEO Tips To Get Your WordPress Blog Ranking Highly In The Search Engines by SEOheap

Helpful guidelines on plugins, post titles, pages, permalinks and pinging improve the search engine rank of and increase search traffic to your WordPress blog.

8 Effective SEO Techniques Every WordPress Blogger Should Use by BloggingPro

Robyn-Dale Samuda offers guidance on navigation setup, image tagging, sitemaps, permalinks, plugins and more for search-optimizing a WordPress site or blog.

WordPress Tips, Techniques and Hacks

How I Create and Manage A WordPress Website by Graywolf’s SEO Blog

Michael Wolf likes to use WordPress to create “magazine or newspaper style site(s)…(because) it’s easier to administer, easier to get writers to upload and format their own content, and it has RSS and other social tools built in or that can be integrated very easily with plugins,” and in this post explains his process for setting up a WordPress site from keyword research and “evergreen” content to design and backups.

The Comprehensive Guide for a Powerful CMS using WordPress – Part one: 101 Techniques for a Powerful CMS using WordPress by Noupe Design Blog
***** 5 Stars
A nicely crafted and illustrated reference to how to do a variety of things with WordPress from setting up a static home page and custom navigation bar to adding breadcrumbs and widgetizing a theme, footer and page menu.

5 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do with WordPress by Let’s Do It!

Zeke Camusio shows that WordPress isn’t just for blogging; it can also be used to build an e-commerce site, social network site, image gallery, email auto-responder system or message board.

Code to Create Custom Share Buttons for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Delicious by B2B Online Marketing

If you want to make it easy for readers to share your blog posts socially—but find social media sharing tools such as ShareThis overkill because of the overwhelming number of options they present—here are simple code snippets to create custom sharing buttons for the most popular social networking sites.

35+ Most Essential WordPress Tricks and Hacks by Artatm

Ever wondered how to insert some standard text after each post? Automatically display each post’s word count? Number your comments, or make author comments stand out? Learn how to do all of that and more in this outstanding list of WordPress tricks, categorized into Post Hacks, Comment Hacks, Tags,categories and Archives hacks, Search hacks and Other General Hacks.

Tags: Andy Beal, Angela Bowman, blog platform, CMS, content management system, plugins, Robyn-Dale SamudaMichael Wolf, themes, WordPress guides, WordPress hacks, WordPress Tips, Zachary Sniderman, Zeke Camusio
Posted in Business Blogging, Social Media Marketing, WordPress Tips | 5 Comments »

What’s the Best Social Media Monitoring Tool? It Depends

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Until fairly recently, keeping track of your organization’s online presence was relatively easy. Other than your company’s website, most mentions were likely in well-known online news sites or trade industry publication sites. Your PR team was aware of most of these as it often had a hand in generating those placements. A simple tool like Google Alerts would pick up most stray citations.

No more. The explosion of social media has led to a corresponding need for more sophisticated monitoring tools that can crawl the hundreds of social networking and bookmarking sites and millions of blogs across the globe. A rapidly proliferating collection of tools are being developed to meet the need. You can find a list of more than 150 social media monitoring tools here or close to 200 here, but—that can seem overwhelming. For those short on time and seeking a shorter list of tools to evaluate, below are nine tools at various price levels that may or may not be the best but are certainly among the most popular and capable social media monitoring tools currently available.

Budget: $0 (I have no budget, I need something free!)

Alterian SM2 Freemium

Though limited (in terms of filters, number of search terms and results) in comparison to the fee-based version of the tool, SM2 Freemium is still an excellent tool for getting a snapshot of your social media landscape—discovering who’s talking about you, your competitors and your industry, what they’re saying, and where they are saying it. Results can be exported to Excel for further sorting and analysis. I’ve used this tool on behalf of small clients for finding hundreds of key influencers on Twitter, blogs and various other social networking sites and forums. The only caveat is that this may whet your appetite for the full version (see below).

Social Mention

Another excellent free tool for finding relevant influencers across the social media sphere, Social Mention is a real-time social search engine that also provides alerts and a cool buzz-monitoring widget you can add to your website or blog. If Google Alerts had been developed with a focus on social media, this would be it. This tool is fast, easy to use, and offers a useful set of filters for finding mentions of a company or topic in specific types of social interaction (e.g. blogs, microblogging sites, social networks, etc.).

Budget: Under $500 per month

UberVU

An easy-to-use, graphically rich tool that provides monitoring (who’s talking about you, your competitors, key industry terms and trends, etc., and where they are talking about it), sentiment analysis, and collaboration tools for acting on the information. It may not catch everything, but it finds a lot (via blogs, Twitter, social news sites and Facebook public pages) and presents the information through useful charts and graphs. Several pricing options are available, most under $500 per month.

Trackur

Along with the monitoring and alert features you’d expect, Trackur also includes a proprietary algorithm for displaying the influence and reach of individuals discussing your brand or topic—so you can focus on power users and ignore trolls and spammers. Andy Beal and his team have built a nice tool that’s garnered favorable reviews from TechCrunch and other prominent tech sites. As with UberVU, several pricing / service levels are available under $500 per month.

Budget: $500-1,000 per month

Social Media Monitoring

Alterian SM2

The fee-based version of SM2 does everything the freemium version does plus providing unlimited searches and results, filters, boolean search strings and alerts. Its monitoring covers blogs, message boards, forums, microblogging sites, wikis, media sharing sites, social networks, online classifieds and review sites. SM2 provides enough social media monitoring power to be relied upon by some fairly large brands, at a price point affordable to midsized and even socially active smaller companies.

Radian6

Popular with agencies as well as corporate users, Radian6 offers a rich set of tools for social media monitoring, responding, tracking, benchmarking and analytics. The Radian6 Dashboard enables you to monitor conversations in real time, while the Engagement Console lets you respond directly or route posts to appropriate individuals or teams and analyze the results of social media interactions.

Traditional PR + Social Media Monitoring

Cision

Cision combines its own PR tracking capabilities built on the former Bacon’s clipping service (older PR pros, you may need to explain to your younger counterparts what a “clipping service” was back in the day) with a white-labeled version of Radian6 to provide markets and PR professionals with a 360-degree view of brand mentions and trends across traditional and social media. Cision’s tools are designed to help organizations of almost any size that are active in PR and social media relations “plan their stories, connect with audiences, monitor media coverage and analyze results.”

Vocus

Vocus provides a rich set of tools for traditional and social media monitoring, media outreach and news distribution. The company’s built-from-the-ground-up monitoring tools cover more than 50,000 traditional media outlets, every major social media site and 20 million blogs. Its database of 270,000 U.S. / 500,000 global media contacts is invaluable for connecting with the right writers and performing effective outreach. Through PRWeb, which Vocus acquired in 2006, it offers extensive news distribution and tracking capabilities. Social media monitoring can be purchased separately for $3000 per year (putting that tool effectively in the $0-500 per month category) though most users combine at least a subset of the PR tools with this.

Budget: We don’t need no stinkin’ budget

Nielsen BuzzMetrics

If you’re familiar with terms like product placement and slotting fees, and your brand is familiar to consumers through prime time TV advertising, you should probably evaluate this tool. If all of those things are true and your company is social media savvy, there’s a good chance you’re already using it. Nielsen’s monitoring covers more than 100 million blogs, social networking sites, discussion boards and other sites where consumers can post content. It provides capabilities for capturing customer insights, response, brand management and social media outreach tracking. Forrester Research has named Nielsen a leader in brand monitoring solutions, saying “the vendor has the strongest strategic vision and currently competes at a scale unmatched by any other competitor.”

These tools are among the best for social media monitoring, whatever your budget and needs. But, as noted above, the social media monitoring space is highly dynamic, with new tools and improvements to existing tools constantly being introduced. If I overlooked your favorite tool, leave a comment below.

Also, as a test—since this post is about social monitoring tool vendors, let’s see how many of them promote it or respond to it, either with a comment here or on other social media outlets, and how quickly they do so.

Tags: Alterian SM2, analytics, Andy Beal, Bacon's clipping service, Cision, Forrester Research, Google Alerts, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, pricing, PRWeb, Radian6, sentiment tracking, social media monitoring tools, Social Mention, Techrigy, Trackur, UberVU, Vocus
Posted in Social Media Marketing, Social PR | 24 Comments »

20+ Cool Social Media and Web Tools

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Looking for a way to monitor social media activities and results on a tight budget? Want to show the world how social you are with a cool widget on your website or blog? How about a real-time search tool to see what’s being said about your company or any topic of interest right now?  Interested in an easy way to stay current on key Google Analytics traffic stats from your desktop? Need a way to edit video and photos without the expense and overhead of a pricey editing application?

You’ll find all of this and more in this collection of tools and reviews of some of the coolest free or low-cost social media monitoring and web tools so far this year.

Cool Web Tools

Social Mention
***** 5 stars
A powerful real-time social search engine that not only displays results for a specified term or phrase, but lets you filter results by source (e.g., blogs, microblogging sites, social bookmarking, images, video), and shows associated metrics like sentiment, top keywords, top users (who’s talking about this topic most actively) and sources. You can narrow search results to a specific timeframe and sort by date or source. Social Mention also lets you set up alerts (simiar to Google Alerts) and offers a widget that can be installed on a website or blog to display the real-time buzz about your specified topic.

uberVU

A social media monitoring tool that combines powerful features (e.g., historical and real-time data, sentiment analysis, platform filtering) and ease of use with a more attractive monthly price than many well-known competitors.

Social Website Analyzer

A quick and handy way to get a snapshot of the “social media rank” of any website. Metrics include traffic stats from Alexa, Compete and Quantcast; backlinks and results by search engine; backlinks and mentions on the major social news sites and more.

Outbrain

A cool, free blog widget that automatically displays links, along with thumbnail images, to related posts on your blog at the bottom of each blog post you publish. Visitors can rate posts and you also get click statistics. It takes a bit longer to install than they claim but isn’t terribly difficult.

monitter

A dead-simple to use Twitter monitoring dashboard; keep tabs on tweets for three phrases, hash tags or Twitter handles. Monitoring can be filtered by location as well.

Collecta

A real-time search engine that displays results from blog posts, articles, blog comments, microblogging sites (e.g., Twitter) and social content sharing sites.

Stupeflix

An online video editor than enables you to mix videos footage, images and soundtracks and add effects to create standard or high-definition online videos. Your first video is free. After that, their standard pricing model is designed for high-volume production but plans are available for less frequent use as well.

Polaris

***** 5 Stars
Want a quick snapshot of how your website—or any number of websites you track through Google Analytics—is performing? Now there’s no need to log in to GA just for a simple check. Polaris is a slick, free Adobe Air-based desktop tool that displays eight GA charts at a glance, including the dashboard, traffic sources, top content, keywords and goal values.

Amplicate

Do you really love a particular topic, company, website or public figure? Or really hate one? Care what others think? This is the site for you. Amplicate is a user-driven site that shows you at a glance how many people love or hate any of thousands of different entities across dozens of categories. For example, (at last check) in the social networks category, three times as many (67 to 22) people loved ecademy as hated it, while more than twice as many (18,163 to 8,632) hated Facebook as loved it (not that Zuckerberg is terribly worried). Joe Biden gets 86% love, but Barack Obama only 48%. Okay, so it may not be scientific, but it is fascinating.

BackUpMyTweets

Twitter saves “only” your last 3,200 tweets. For those who feel they really need to hang on to more than that, BackUpMyTweets offers a free service to save all their snippets of 140-character brilliance. The site also offers tools for backing up web mail accounts, blogs and online photos.

Reviews of More Cool Tools

5 PowerPoint Search Engines To Seek Out Publicly Available Presentations by Carpe Diem

According to some estimates, there may be as many as 50 million PowerPoint presentations publicly available on the web. But searching for them can be a pain. Sure you can use a general search engine with PPT as a filetype query, but you can save yourself work and typing by utilizing one of these PowerPoint-specific search engines to do the digging.

The 39 Social Media Tools I’ll Use Today by Social Media Today

Jay Baer provides concise reviews of his favorite social media tools for Twitter management, comments, search, photo sharing, analytics, video creation, social media monitoring and more.

Trackur Launches Free Version Of Its Social Media Monitoring Tool by TechCrunch

Robin Wauters reviews Trackur, an online reputation management and social media monitoring tool created by Andy Beal and team. Trackur is sort of Google Alerts on steroids and competes with products like Radian6 and Attentio. This is a slick tool, and my one experience with their support team was impressively brief and helpful.

10 Must-Have Web Apps Every Internet User Would Love To Know by Smashing Apps

Mini-reviews of 10 helpful tools such as WobZIP, an online utility for unzipping files on admin-proteced computers; Mitto, an online password manager; and Web Page to PDF, which is kind of self-explanatory.

10 Free Web-based Alternatives to Photoshop by LifeClever

Chanpory Rith reviews 10 free online tools that offer many of the features of PhotoShop with the high cost or complexity, including Picnik (possibly the best free online photo editor), PhotoShop Express, Snipshot and flauntR.

5 Free B2B Marketing Tools by Modern B2B Marketing

Maria Pergolino of Marketo reviews five popular tools including CoTweet, a Twitter tool that enable users to track keyword or brand mentions and even assign responses to particular individuals (for example, by product line). These are familiar but essential tools for the b2b marketer’s toolbox.

List of Search Engines – Top Search Engines in 2010 by Secret Search Engine Labs

Google may be the 800-pound gorilla of search engines but as this post reminds us, it’s not alone in the jungle. Here you’ll find a alphabetical list of 30+ alternative search engines from Ask and Rich Skrenta’s Blekko to social search engine Stumpedia and “computational knowledge engine” Wolfram Alpha.

Interesting websites to check out by iMedia Connection (video)

Shelly Palmer discusses four tools worth checking out including BugMeNot (for creating website logins that won’t get you spammed) and Phonezoo, a site where you can find and create custom cell phone ringtones.

10 Simple Google Search Tricks by The New York Times

Simon Mackie of GigaOM explains 10 cool little tricks for Google searches including site search, using Google as a calculator, performing currency conversions and finding specific types of documents online.

12 alternatives to Basecamp by Popwuping

Clark MacLeod reviews a dozen alternatives to popular online project management / group collaboration tool Basecamp, such as Huddle, Kindling and Mindquarry.

Tags: Amplicate, Andy Beal, Attentio, BackUpMyTweets, Basecap, Blekko, BugMeNot, Champory Rith, Clark MacLeod, Collecta, Cool Web Tools, CoTweet, flauntR, GigaOM, Huddle, Jay Baer, Kindling, Mario Pergolino, Marketo, Mindquarry, Mitto, monitter, Outbrain, Phonezoo, Picnik, Polaris, Radian6, Rich Skrenta, Robin Wauters, Shelly Palmer, Simon Mackie, Snipshot, social media monitoring, social media tools, social media widgets, Social Mention, Stumpedia, Stupeflix, Trackur, Twitter management tools, UberVU, video editing tools, WobZIP, Wolfram Alpha
Posted in Cool Web Tools, Social Media Marketing | 12 Comments »

Best Social Media Stats and Market Research of 2010 (So Far)

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

Data junkies, stats addicts, web trivia buffs rejoice — here are a deluge of social media, search and other marketing research facts and figures from 50 articles and blog posts published so far in 2010.

How are marketers planning to allocate budgets this year? What percentage of Fortune 100 companies are on Twitter? Which social networking site is used by 92% of senior marketing executives? What social media tool helps small business double their reach on Twitter? How do B2B social media marketing practices differ from B2C companies? What percentage of web searches stop after page one of the results? How much do small businesses spend on search engine marketing? How many journalists also maintain blogs?

Find the answers to these questions and many, many more here.

Social Media Statistics

Study: Spending On Email, Social And Search Rising by MediaPost Online Media Daily

Despite the fact that more than half of marketers responding to an ExactTarget survey planned to to either reduce their overall marketing budget for 2010 or keep it flat, 54% planned to increase spending on email marketing and 66% planned to increase expenditures for social media “even though about 80% of those acknowledged the difficulty in tracking ROI in the medium.”

National Survey Finds Majority of Journalists Now Depend on Social Media for Story Research by Cision

A national survey of reporters and editors revealed that 89% use blogs for story research, 65% turn to social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and 52% utilize microblogging services such as Twitter. While the use of social media sources by journalists is growing rapidly, the reliability of such information remains an issue, as “the survey also made it clear that reporters and editors are acutely aware of the need to verify information they get from social media.”

Social Media Not Preferred Recommendation Resource by MediaPost Online Media Daily

In a study asking consumers to rate the most influential sources of information for their purchase decisions, 59% said “personal advice from friends or family members,” followed by 39% search engines, 36% articles in newspapers or magazines, online articles 28%, email 20% and social media 19%. Three caveats: first, though low, the influence of social media is growing. Second, social media and search are rated more influential by younger buyers and high-income consumers than by other groups. Third, the survey was heavily consumer-oriented; b2b figures would be different. The key takeaway — companies can’t put all of their marketing eggs in one basket, but need to balance budgets across several areas including email, social media, organic SEO, paid search and offline campaigns.

Social Media: Everybody’s Doing It, But For Different Reasons [Charts] by Pamorama

While 28% of U.S. adults say they give advice about purchases on social networking sites, only 17% say they seek out such advice when making buying decisions. “70% of social media users between the ages of 18-34 regularly use Facebook more than other sites such as MySpace, Twitter, and Classmates.com,” and women use Facebook more than men.

Senior marketing execs see their companies moving to social media in 2010 by The Viral Garden

In a recent study of high-level marketing executives, 70% plan new social media initiatives in 2010. 92% said they personally use LinkedIn, versus 56% on Facebook. While 28% planned to use internal resources to launch new initiatives, 25% turn to social media consultants. The two most important criteria when hiring a social media consultant are examples of previous work and recommendations; number of Twitter followers is the 12th-most important factor.

Social Media Users’ Interests and Expectations Vary by Network [Stats] by Pamorama

Another notable Pam Dyer post, this one summarizing a study from online advertising network Chitika which shows that Twitter is the best place to share news: 47% of the outbound traffic from Twitter goes to news sites, vs. 28% from Facebook, 18% from Digg and an imperceptible share from MySpace. Digg is the most technical; 12% of its outbound traffic goes to technology sites, vs. 10% from Twitter and 7% from Facebook. And for what it’s worth, Pam points out that “celebrity/entertainment is the only genre in the top 5 of all sites.”

What Type Of Social Media Ads Are The Most Effective? by MediaPost Online Media Daily

According to a recent study from Psychster, “Among the seven most common formats, sponsored content ads — in which consumers viewed a page that was “brought to you by” a leading brand — are the most engaging, but produced the least purchase intent. Corporate profiles on social-networking sites produce greater purchase intent and more recommendations when users can become a ‘fan,’ and add the logo to their own profiles, than when they can’t. And ‘give and get’ widgets are more engaging than traditional banner ads, but no more likely to produce an intent to purchase.”

Study: Americans’ Social Net Use On The Rise, But Services Not Entirely Wasted On The Young by MediaPost Online Media Daily

Nearly half of all Americans are now members of at least one social network, double the proportion of just two years ago. While social network use is highest among the young, it’s not exclusively their club: two-thirds of 25- to 34-year-olds and half of those aged 35 to 44 also now have personal profile pages. 30% of social media users access a social media site “several times a day,” up from 18% in 2009. Also, nearly half (45%) of all mobile phone owners send text messages on a daily basis.

Deciphering Shady Social Media Stats by Social Implications

Yes, Facebook is a big deal, but there is no way it “controls 41% of social media traffic” as was reported in a post on Mashable back in April. Jennifer Mattern rips the statistical methodology behind this reporting to shreds and reminds us all of why it’s important to be skeptical of social media statistics that don’t sound quite right.

Social Media Revolution by YouTube

Social media stats in video form. Some of the numbers shown here lend themselves to the skepticism recommended in the post above, but all are documented so take `em for what they’re worth. There are more Gen Y’ers than Baby Boomers, and 96% of them have joined a social network. 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees. 80% of Twitter use is on mobile devices. YouTube now hosts more than 100 million videos and is the second largest search engine. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations when making purchase decisions; just 14% trust advertising. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (videos, photos, blog posts, links etc.) are shared on Facebook daily.

New Chart: Survey Says Inbound Marketing Budgets on the Rise by HubSpot Blog

In a study of 231 (likely a bit more social media-savvy than average) companies, 88% planned to maintain or increase inbound marketing budgets in 2010. 85% view company blogs as “useful,” while 71% said the same for Twitter (up from just 39% in 2009). More than 40% of respondents reported acquiring at least one new customer from Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or their company blog in the past year.

Social Media: What a Difference a Year Makes by ClickZ

Erik Qualman updates some statistics from 2009, showing how rapidly this landscape is changing. If it were a country, Facebook would the third-largest on earth, up from fourth-largest in 2009. 80% of companies use social media in some manner for recruiting; of those, 95% use LinkedIn. 50% of mobile Internet traffic in the U.K goes to Facebook. And my favorite: “The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in five years.”

Look Ma, No Hands: More Than Half Of Companies Say They Are Using Social Media With No Strategy by MediaPost Online Media Daily

Among companies who say they are using social media in a recent Digital Brand Expressions survey, only 41% said they had a strategic plan in place to guide activities, and only 69% of those (28% of all social media-using companies) have set up metrics to measure the ROI of social media activities. Worse, on 29% of firms with a plan in place (12% of the total) had written social media policies in place for employees.

52 Cool Facts About Social Media by Danny Brown

Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook. Twitter adds 300,000 new users and gets 600 million searches daily. LinkedIn has more than 70 million members worldwide — including executives from every Fortune 500 company. More than half of YouTube users are under 20 years old, and let’s hope they live long lives: it would take 1,000 years to watch every video currently posted on the site. 77% of Internet users read blogs, but only 14% of blogs are published by corporations.

Twitter Statistics

Twitter Demographic Report – Who Is Really On Twitter? by PalatnikFactor.com

Who’s really using Twitter? According to this report, 44% are between 18 and 34 years old. A slight majority (53% to 47%) are female. Just over a quarter of tweeters qualify as regular users, accounting for 41% of all traffic, but the 1% classified as “addicts” account for a third of all tweets. Twitter users tend to be readers of TechCrunch, Wired magazine and CNN.com, but also (ugh) PerezHilton.com — so make what you will of that.

2009 Twitter Demographics and Statistics Report by iStrategyLabs

The largest cohort of Twitter users (47%) are in the 18-34 age bracket — but the second largest (31%) are 35-49 years old. 74% of twitterers have no kids at home. Almost half are college graduates and 17% have post-grad degrees.

Twitter Usage In America: 2010 Statistics and Ad Agency New Business by Social Media Today

While many executives still dismiss Twitter as a waste of time, recent research suggests it is one of the most valuable social networks for business. Awareness of Twitter has exploded; 87% of Americans said they were “familiar with” Twitter in a poll taken earlier this year, versus just 5% in 2008. Although only 7% of Americans maintain an active Twitter account (vs. 41% who are on Facebook), Twitter users “are far more likely to follow Brands/ Companies than social networkers in general. 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks. Twitter users frequently exchange information about products and services.”

Facebook Statistics

Facebook: Facts & Figures For 2010 by Digital Buzz Blog

Interesting, though slightly out of date (Lady Gaga’s page is listed as 9th-most popular) Facebook infographic. Half of all Facebook users log in on any given day, and more than 35 million update their status. More than 100 million users access Facebook through their mobile phones. The US and UK have the highest number of Facebook users, but the #3 country? Indonesia.

Report: 6.8% Of Business Internet Traffic Goes To Facebook by All Facebook

How are employees using the Internet at work? A recent study concluded that almost 7% of all business web traffic goes to Facebook, twice as much as Google (3.4%) and well ahead of Yahoo! at 2.4 percent. DoubleClick got 1.7% of all business traffic due to its massive online banner advertising network. In terms of bandwidth use, YouTube takes the single biggest share at 10%, followed by Facebook at 4.5% and Windows Update at 3.3%.

The Ultimate List: 100+ Facebook Statistics [Infographics] by HubSpot Blog

Men and women both average about 130 friends on Facebook, but men there are more likely to be (or least claim to be) single (33% to 26%) while women using Facebook are more likely to be (or at least say they are) married, engaged or in a relationship (47% to 41%). The three most “liked” types of food pages are about ice cream, milk or chocolate. Facebook pages that use the words “collaboration” or “blogger” have on average three times as many fans as pages about SEO or optimization. Pages about movies and TV shows generally get the highest number of “likes” while those devoted to government and public service get the least. Within the U.S., Washington DC and South Dakota have the highest percentage of residents with Facebook accounts (one of the very few phenomena they have in common), while New Mexico has the smallest percentage of its population (10.3%) on Facebook.

Social Media Use in Large Enterprises

Social Media Trends at Fortune 100 Companies [STATS] by Mashable

Among the world’s 100 largest companies, two-thirds are using Twitter, 54% have a Facebook page, 50% manage at least one corporate YouTube channel and 33% have created company blogs. Overall, 79% of Fortune 100 companies are using at least one social media channel, with the highest use in European (88%) and U.S-based (86%) companies. However, only 20% of these companies (28% in the U.S.) are using all four major social media platforms. 69% of U.S.-based firms in the study have a Facebook page, but just 32% have posts with comments from fans.

Fortune 500 favors Twitter over blogging by iMedia Connection

Among the world’s largest 500 companies, 35% had Twitter accounts in 2009, but only 22% maintained company blogs. Less than half effectively used SEO.

Twitter Moves Ahead of Blogs in Fortune 500 by Social Media Today

Among Fortune 500 companies, 108 (22%) have an active, public-facing corporate blog. 93 (86%) of those blogs are linked directly to a corporate Twitter account. 173 (35%) of the Fortune 500 firms maintain an active Twitter account, including 47 of the top 100 companies on the list.

How Fortune 100 Companies Leverage Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC] by Penn Olson

Social media use by the Fortune 100 in visual Infographic form: the average Fortune 100 company follows 731 people on Twitter and is followed by about 1,500 (seems like small numbers for big companies). However, the average socially active Fortune 100 company has almost 41,000 Facebook fans and 39,000 YouTube channel subscribers.

Social Media in Business: Fortune 100 Statistics by iStrategy

According to a Burson-Marsteller study, 79% of the Fortune 100 are “present and listening” on at least one social networking platform. 20% of these corporate giants are using all four of the main social technologies (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Blogs), and 82% of the Fortune 100 companies on Twitter actively engage with customers there at least once per week.

The State of Social Media Jobs 2010 – A Special Report by Social Media Influence

Although “the importance of social media certainly is resonating through many big companies,” just 59 of the Fortune Global 100 firms have hired staff specifically to perform core social media tasks such as customer outreach, PR, marketing and internal communications. The most social media “active” industry sectors include healthcare, telecom, retail and automotive, while companies in heavily regulated industries such as financial services, insurance, energy and utilities are among the social media laggards.

Social Media Use in Small to Midsized Businesses (SMBs)

Small Businesses That Blog Have 102% More Twitter Followers by HubSpot Blog

Still wondering if your business should have a blog? A HubSpot study of more than 2,000 companies showed that, for businesses of all sizes, companies that have blogs have 79% more Twitter followers than those that don’t. Blogging “increases Twitter reach by 113% for B2B companies and 30% for B2C companies.”

Where SMB Spend their Marketing and Advert Money? [Infograph] by Thoughtpick

At the other end of the scale, for small to midsized businesses, marketing budget allocations are changing. Traditionally, small business marketers have favored email and search, and spent the majority of their marketing dollars offline. In 2009, only one-third of SMB marketers viewed Faebook as “very” or “somewhat” beneficial. But for 2010, 74% planned to increase their use of email marketing and 68% planned larger expenditures for social media. Over the next five years, social media budgets are expected to grow at a 34% annual rate — twice as fast as all other forms of online marketing. By 2014, Forrester predicts that social media spending will be higher than that for both email and mobile, though still much smaller than search and online display advertising.

Small Biz Lead Gen Surges with Social by eMarketer

According to a HubSpot study, “not only can inbound marketing bring leads for less money but it can also double average monthly leads for small and medium-sized businesses.” Twitter reach is critical for increased lead generation: “Companies with 100 to 500 followers generated 146% more median monthly leads than those with 21 to 100 followers. Beyond the 500-follower mark, though, there was no further gain,” as is blogging — but the study noted that “Businesses must produce enough content for their blog to kick off growth in leads, which starts with about 24 to 51 posts…more indexed pages on Google also translates to more leads. Every 50 to 100 incremental indexed pages can mean double-digit lead growth.”

Social Media in Small Business is Anything But Small by Social Media Today

The prolific Brian Solis reports on recent research showing that social media adoption by small business doubled from 2009 to 2010. 61% of small business owners now use social media to help identify and attract new customers, 75% have a company page on a social networking site, and 45% expect their social media activities to be profitable within the next 12 months. 58% say that social media has met their expectations to date, and only 9% expect to lose money on social media efforts for the next year.

B2B Social Media Marketing Statistics

B2B Marketers Severely Lag B2C Players in Social Media by My Venture Pad

Andy Beal reminds us that “It’s a pretty well known fact that B2B marketers have been slower on the adoption curve of social media (than B2C marketers.” But why? One reason is executive buy-in (or lack thereof); in a recent study, one-third of claimed low executive level acceptance of social media was holding back efforts, while only 9% of B2C marketers said the same thing. Another is that 45% of B2B marketers said their company had a basic social media presence but didn’t use it as an active marketing tool; only 26% of B2B marketers concurred. Finally, “46% of B2B respondents said social media was perceived as irrelevant to their company, while only 12% of consumer-oriented marketers had the same problem.” If you’re one of those 46%, hopefully you’ll find facts and statistics in the following posts to help build a business case for social media in your company.

The Business of Social Media: B2B and B2C Engagement by the Numbers by Social Media Today

***** 5 stars
Brian Solis breaks down B2B vs. B2C use of social media marketing. B2B companies are more likely to maintain a company blog (74% to 55%), participate on Twitter (75% to 49%) and monitor brand mentions (73% to 55%) while B2C firms more often advertise on social networks (54% to 42%) and use Facebook (83% to 77%) and MySpace (23% to 14%) as part of their social media strategy than their B2B counterparts.

Will B2B Companies Embrace Social Media in 2010? by MediaPost Online Media Daily

B2C companies led their B2B counterparts in adoption of social media marketing because more people are active in social networks for personal use than business, making it easier to target someone who is interested in golf than, say, machine tools. However, B2B use of social media is on the rise, with 6 of 10 companies planning to increase their spending on social media initiatives in 2010.

Creating Engagement in B2B Marketing by Buzz Marketing for Technology

93 percent of participants in a social media in business study believe that all companies should have a presence in social media. And 85 percent believe “companies should not just present information via social media, but use it to interact and become more engaged with them,” according to Paul Dunay.

Vital statistics for every B2B marketer by Earnest about B2B

75% of B2B marketers use microblogging tools such as Twitter vs. 49% of B2C marketers. The biggest barrier to adoption may be CIOs; 54% of CIOs block social networking sites, such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, in the work environment. 93% of B2B buyers “use search to begin the buying process,” and 9 out of 10 say that when they are ready to buy, they will find vendors. Plus much more.

B2B Spending on Social Media to Explode by eMarketer

B2B marketing on social networks is expected to grow 43.3% this year, and Forrester Research B2B spending on social media marketing to reach $54 million in 2014, up from only $11 million in 2009. Paid advertising is expected to account for only a small portion of spending, but “when companies budget for social media marketing in 2010 and beyond, a substantial portion of their expenses will go toward other initiatives, such as creating and maintaining a branded profile page, managing promotions or public relations outreach within a social network, and measuring the effect of a social network presence on brand health and sales.”

Vital statistics for B2B Marketers by EarnestAgency’s Channel (YouTube)

An entertaining and creative presentation which makes the case that B2B actually leads B2C in social media marketing — because that’s where their buyers are. 37% of b2b buyers have posted questions on social networking sites, 48% follow industry conversations on key topics of interest, and 59% “engage with buyers who have done it before.” 53% of C-level executives prefer to find information themselves rather than tasking subordinates with this, and 63% turn to search engines for their research. Many of the statistics used in this video can be found elsewhere, but not in such an engaging fashion.

What B2B Marketing Tactics Are Up, Down, Flat? (Survey Sneak Peek) by Everything Technology Marketing

Holger Schulze shares results from a study showing how b2b use of various marketing tactics have changed over the past three years. Social media saw the biggest jump in activity, with 81% of respondents doing more of it (as Holger points out, “not surprising considering social media use in B2B was still nascent 3 years ago”). Content creation (68%) and website marketing (56%) are also increasing, while direct mail and print advertising saw the biggest drops.

SEO Statistics

First Page Or Bust: 95% of Non-Branded Natural Clicks Come From Page One by MediaPost Search Insider

***** 5 stars
In SEO, how important is a page one ranking? This post tells you: according to a recent study from iCrossing, across the three major search engines, 95% of the clicks came from page one. While Rob Garner notes that this figure is higher than in other studies, the clear implication is that doing some extra optimization to move your site to page one from page two or three can pay off in dramatic traffic gains.

Organic Search Still Reigns by eMarketer

Diving deeper into the iCrossing study referenced above, Google accounts for 74% of non-branded search traffic, with Bing and Yahoo tied at 13%.

Small businesses spending more on search by iMedia Connection

The average small business spent $2,149 on search engine advertising in the fourth quarter of 2009, up 30% from 3Q09 and 111% from the final quarter of 2008. Also, video is taking off in this segment: at the end of last year, 19% of small businesses were using video on their websites, up from just 5% the previous quarter.

Content Marketing

Most Valuable Content and Offers for IT Buyers by High-Tech Communicator

***** 5 stars
If you’re trying to sell to technology buyers, note that a recent study shows the types of content they are most likely to click on are “news and articles (84%), competitive comparisons and buying guides (73%), and promotional content (70%).” These decision makers are about equally to click on offers for promotional content, online tutorials and demonstrations, competitive comparisons and buying guides, free research, and educational content.

Search Engine Marketing

SEMPO Report Suggests Measuring ROI Still Challenging by MediaPost Online Media Daily

The share of North American companies using paid-search marketing increased from 70% in 2008 to 78% in 2009 and 81% in 2010. 97% of these companies use Google AdWords; 56% advertise on Google’s content network. 59% of firms anticipate spending more on search marketing in 2010; 37% say budget3 will remain the same, while just 4% planned to cut spending in this area.

Study: Three-Word Queries Drive Most SEO Traffic by Search Engine Land

Three-word search queries are the most common, at 26% of all searches; 19% are two-word queries, and 17% use four words. Yet for paid clicks, keywords of 4-6 words in length drive the highest average CTR at 1.1-1.2%. The overall average CTR for paid search ads was 0.91%.

Other Online Marketing Statistics

What’s Changed This Decade (1999-2009) by Virtual Video Map

An enlightening, graphic guide to many of the changes seen over the past 10 years, from the growth of the U.S. economy and national debt to the incredible expansion of Internet use. Examples: The number of Internet users worldwide grew from 350 million a decade ago to 1.7 million today. One out of five (actually now almost one of three) of those users has a Facebook account. Cell phone use increased from one of out of 10 people in 1999 to two out of three in 2009.

Did You Know? (video) by EducoPark

The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004. Half of all workers have been with their current employer for less than five years. There are roughly one billion searches performed on Google every day — more than ten times the number just four years ago. It took radio 38 years to reach a total audience of 50 million people; it took the Internet just four years to reach that number, the iPod three years, and Facebook only two years. There will be more pages of unique information published this year than in the last 5,000 years combined.

SuperPower: Visualising the internet by BBC News

This slick tool visually illustrates the growth of Internet penetration, by country, from 1998 through 2008.

Small-Biz Success from Deeper Online Interaction by eMarketer

Ye shall reap what ye sow online, apparently: a study by American City Business Journals concluded that small businesses who were most active online achieved higher sales than those who made less use of the Internet. The study concluded that “‘Interactors,’ the most active participants online in almost all respects, accounted for only 15% of businesses but 24% of sales. ‘Transactors,’ somewhat less active online but the group most involved in online selling, also overindexed in sales. The least involved groups, ‘viewers’ and ‘commentators,’ also exhibited the worst business performance.”

Here’s What’s Really Going On In Online Media Consumption by Business Insider

Of the four largest daily print newspaper websites (the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and USA Today), only the New York Times has gained visitors in the past 12 months — and that growth has been modest. Among weekly news magazine websites, The Week (focused on multi-source aggregation) has shown dramatic 170% growth in the last 12 months as Newsweek.com, once the leader in this segment, has seen a 17.5% decrease in traffic. Visits to the Huffington Compost are up 86% in the past year.

And Finally…

The Ultimate List: 300+ Social Media Statistics by HubSpot Blog

If this post hasn’t satisfied your data fix, knock yourself out with this extensive collection of videos, infographics and presentations compiled by HubSpot with still more social media stats and figures like: Twitter has 50% more activity on weekdays than on weekend days. Facebook is the most popular way to share information, followed by email, then Twitter. More than twice the amount of information is shared on Twitter as on Digg. 48% of bloggers are US-based, 2/3 are male, and 75% are college graduates. 35% of traditional journalists also blog. Social networks Bebo, MySpace and Xanga attract the youngest audience; Delicious, LinkedIn and Classmates.com have, on average, the oldest demographics. More than 210 billion emails are sent daily, which exceeds the number of “snail mail” letters sent each year. Etc.

Tags: Andy Beal, b2b social media, Brian Solis, Chitika, Cision, Danny Brown, Earnest Agency, Erik Qualman, Facebook statistics, Fortune 100 social media, Holger Schulze, HubSpot, Jennifer Mattern, Lady Gaga, Pam Dyer, Pamorama, Rob Garner, SEO statistics, social media research, social media statisitics, social media studies, social networking, Xanga
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