Kansas City Social Media Marketing Company Shares Top Five Predictions for 2013 Including Pinterest, Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter and Google+
By: Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing
These are my top five social media marketing predictions for 2013. This list may not encompass the trends in the next months ahead, but it’s a fairly adequate outline of what the future looks like.
1) Pinterest continues to monetize social media. However, without an open API platform, it’s a little too soon to see its full potential. Overall, I don’t see any reason why all brands across all industries wouldn’t take advantage of this monetization platform. While social media isn’t just about sales, Pinterest offers brands real value via their pinners by building content that they love, feel inspired by and may feel inclined to purchase. It could be the next best e-commerce platform in the social media marketplace. It’s already one of the top social networks for referring website traffic. I would highly recommend it to all brands.
2) Foursquare will continue to offer monetization opportunities for brands via the check in feature. Foursquare’s recent modifications to allow franchise pages to have one brand a page is a nice addition to tracking data analysis, engagement and ROI. If Foursquare can monetize differently, other than rewards via their check in system, allowing for a more integrated social media campaign which effects all other social networks, it would open up the doors for a more targeted location based campaign. This would trigger insights in geographical markets where consumers engage more heavily via Foursquare. This would also allow the brand to have more confidence in a social media presence with a heavier emphasis on Foursquare where insights prove substantial engagement throughout a local zip code. While Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook synchronize, there is still room for improvement to determine a way in which the location-based model integrates more heavily with Twitter including viral tweets in targeted areas where Foursquare is performing very well for a brand. However, this could improve campaign functionality, engagement, monetization and ROI. Foursquare continues to be one of the best location-based tracking platforms in the social media industry for brands.
3) While Facebook continues to be the top social network for businesses, large and small, there are some challenges ahead for this platform. The first issue is that Facebook is trying to be all things to all people and brands, diluting its social network impact across engagement. This is attributed to the fact that the edge rank scoring model has been changed substantially, affecting a brand’s ability to engage with its fans. Even though brands have the option to engage more readily via the promoted posts, sponsored stories and ads, this is still a paid investment versus the natural model of displaying a brand post to those who have liked the page. Lately, we have noticed a distinct decline in the viral nature of organic posts without utilizing one of Facebook’s paid models across all pages, all industries and sizes from publicly traded to small businesses. If Facebook continues to push brands into the paid model to increase its edge rank score, then this is not a pure social channel. Facebook continues to impress my colleagues and myself, and we know that Facebook will evolve over time to improve its algorithm for brands to purely reach, engage and monetize with its user base. Social networks ads are one of the greatest opportunities to reach a new targeted influential and action-oriented audience. We utilize Facebook ads across all clients, industries and brands, both large and small. There is still great value in tapping into Facebook’s resources. We just hope that Facebook continues to recognize the importance of collaborating with its businesses.
4) Twitter will continue to improve its customer service support while maximizing its reach across industries and large and small brands. We see the best value coming from the customer service elements in which it is very easy to track and measure performance on Twitter while engaging with customers. Complaints on Twitter about brands continue to be the best opportunity for businesses to improve its customer relationship with its audience. While Twitter still doesn’t have the full functionality of Facebook for tracking, analysis, engagement and ROI, its short messages break through the clutter with custom hashtags, SMO and engaging with key online influencers. Key online influencers continue to drive engagement for brands, monetization and ROI. Twitter contests are still extremely valuable for large brands that need to improve engagement and rapport with consumers and influencers. However, smaller businesses are still suffering from too much fragmentation across social networks and will need to rely on Twitter for organic SEO, engagement with influencers and maximizing headline news. ROI is still important on Twitter, although it’s been transformed into more of an influencer metric versus an engagement monetization tool.
5) Google+ is here to stay. If we don’t engage on the platform in the near future, Google will probably erase us off the search map.
If you have any questions, concerns or comments about the 2013 predictions, please reach out to Valerie Jennings via email valerie@jenningsocialmedia.com or via Twitter @ValerieJennings. As always, feel free to leave a comment.
Jennings Social Media Marketing Examines Impact of Social Media on Presidential Debates 2012
Posted by: Chelsea Lewis, manager of Jennings Social Media Marketing
Jennings Social Media Marketing, JSMM, understands and embraces the power of social media. This week the political world did the same with the integration of social media during the first presidential debate.
Twitter revealed that the October 3 presidential debate between, former Massachusetts gov. Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama was the “most Tweeted” event in the social media company’s six year history. More than 10.3 million tweets were generated during the 90-minute debate. Twitter tracked the number of tweets referencing the debate, candidates and related terms each minute.
At one minute during the debate, almost 160,000 tweets were sent, breaking the old record of 52,756, which were recorded during Obama’s convention speech.
Read the article.
A chart released by Twitter Thursday morning revealed Wednesday night’s Presidential debate in Denver Colorado was the most Tweeted event in U.S. political history, generating 10.3 million tweets in 90 minutes, making it the latest on the ever-changing list of “most Tweeted” events in the company’s six year history.
And everyone, it seems, is really excited about it.
JSMM Launches Social Media Strategy, Content Development and SEO for Las Vegas Automotive Parts and Car Wrap Company
By: Chelsea Lewis, social media marketing manager at JSMM
Jennings Social Media Marketing (JSMM) has been managing the Motostew Plus social media strategy for several months including Twitter, Facebook, Marketwire press releases, SEO, social network ads and contests. To date, its Facebook page has grown exponentially, from zero to nearly 5,000 fans and has increased customer engagement on both Twitter and Facebook.
The biggest success was the launch of Motostew Plus’ first Facebook contest that ran from May through June. During that time, Motostew Plus’ Facebook page tripled its fan growth and the company acquired nearly 1,000 email addresses. The announcement of the press release was also picked up by a variety of major news outlets including Yahoo!Finance.com and MarketWatch.com
JSMM recently created and launched a new Facebook tab for Motostew Plus’ online storefront using Shopify. JSMM anticipates that customers will take advantage of the ability to purchase jeep accessories, off-roading and 4×4. JSMM also expects to use Viral Bolt Media to produce and viralize a number of “Do It Yourself” videos to show off Motostew Plus’ expertise.
JSMM wanted to provide Motostew Plus with a comprehensive marketing strategy that would increase SEO and SMO, boost customer engagement across social networks, drive traffic to its website and company events including Cars and Coffee and most importantly increase its overall sales growth.
Motostew Plus is located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Follow us on Twitter at @motostewplus and “Like” us on Facebook.
JSMM Teaches Social Media Marketers New Tactics at KC Summit
By: Tumara Rogers, Social Media Marketer, Jennings Social Media Marketing
Valerie Jennings - CEO and Founder, Tumara Rogers - Social Media Marketer
During Jennings Social Media Marketing’s opening day of the summit to educate the new team members, I am outnumber by the new interns . Thirteen years in corporate America with the self-coined nickname as corporate guru, the view from a new way of approaching business is exciting and a little frightening. JSMM is moving forward at lighting speeds to keep up with the ever-changing social media industry. The mentality of eat or be eaten creates a breathtaking view from here. As the information flows fluidly from the founder Valerie Jennings to our eager and hungry minds, I am reminded of the changing times.
Social media is a virtual world comprised of many new ways of approaching marketing within a company. The old way of traditional marketing thinking doesn’t fit the social media market. By getting a firsthand educational lesson from a veteran in the industry the reality of how quickly this industry pivots is apparent in the lesson activities of the day. Facebook posts are focused on visual content and happy go lucky daily posts, while Twitter focuses on articles and shout outs to great articles. The realization that every media platform has different needs and user desires is beyond apparent.
As corporate America strives to stay consistent and predictable, the social media world is changing the face of business. JSMM has continued the social media virtual world into the company culture. Embracing virtual life has a freedom every corporate cubical junkie desires. Congratulations Jennings Social Media Marketing for continually morphing and successfully leading the future of social media and business in America.
Social Media Marketing Firm Hosts Training Summit for Team Members
By: Alli Heitzenrater, Intern
Alli Heitzenrater, intern, and Valerie Jennings, CEO.
This past week, Jennings Social Media Marketing (JSMM) hosted its first internal social media summit in Kansas City to study the world of social media. Four participants met together while two were video called in because they couldn’t make it. The summit covered an in-depth look at social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook, search engine optimization, social media optimization and blogging. This is the first summit JSMM has hosted because the company is growing at a fast pace and has hired Tumara Rogers, social media marketer, and Alli Heitzenrater and Cassie Stubbs, summer interns.
JSMM Hosts Training Summit for Team in Kansas City
By: Cassie Stubbs, Intern
Alli Heitzenrater, Intern; Tumara Bosnell, Social Media Marketer; Chelsea Lee-Lewis, Social Media Marketing Manager ; Cassie Stubbs, Intern
This week in Kansas City, Jennings Social Media Marketing (JSMM) held a summit for training team members in the ever-changing social media world. As a business that lives and breathes social media, the team needs to stay up-to-date on all things social media. The summit went over Facebook marketing, Twitter features, the professional use of blogging and the importance of SEO. JSMM welcomed three new members to its team this week, eager to learn the trade. To enhance social media standards, JSMM Skype’d with two team members who could not make it to the summit.
How Can Non-Profits Take Advantage of Pinterest?
Posted by: Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing
I cannot believe how Pinterest has exploded. While it’s been around for a short-time, its user base has amassed quickly, making one wonder about why you should jump on Google+? They are different, but when Pinterest is said to refer more website traffic than Twitter, it’s sort of a no-brainer.
This article written by Mary Wider for Social Media Today: Pin It To Win It: How Non-Profits Can Tell Their Story on Pinterest, does a nice job highlighting how organizations can utilize this fabulous social networking for referring website traffic, momentum, fundraising and maybe recruitment.
Don’t forget to follow the new Jennings Social Media Marketing Pinterest boards.
YOUR MESSAGE
Use a board to explain your work. Put direct links to your website or to news outlets where your work was mentioned. This starts your non-profit story, who you are and what you do. It also gives you a chance to link photos and sites that fit with your message. In other words, you start to build a brand image and association. Building a story is incredibly important for non-profits. People want to know what you stand for and your motivation behind your cause.
EDUCATE
Set up a board that is solely for educating your followers. Resources, statistics and news articles that will let your followers discover more about you.
ACTION BOARD
Set up a separate board with call to action plans for your followers. Let them know how they can get involved with your organization. Spell it out via your pins and direct people directly to websites where they can take action.
COMMUNICATION BOARD – Show what you do.
Use this board to show the results of your work. Share stories from people directly affected by your work or showcase the projects you have worked on. If you can pin to a story in the word’s of people affected by your work, it’s an even better way to sum up your story.
Using these four board ideas creates a storyboard for your organization. Some more board ideas to add to your story include:
- Where We Work: show places in the world where your organization operates
- Faces: If you can share the faces and stories of people you work with, even better. When running a non-profit is it better to put faces and stories to your work. Hook followers in with an emotional connection.
- Donate or Purchase Board: If your organization focuses on donations or selling items that go towards monetary donations, use a separate board to set that up, sort of like the gift shop at the end of your story.
Above all, non-profits should start taking advantage of Pinterest and its ability to drive direct traffic to websites. Direct traffic drives up the search results for your site as well. It’s time non-profits started using all the social media tools at their disposal to spread their message and communicate with people globally. Pin it to win it.
Jennings Social Media Marketing Thanks Client Wyndham Vacation Ownership for 3 Amazing Years & Looks Forward To Future
By Valerie Jennings, CEO of JSMM
Wyndham Vacation Ownership and JSMM have been working together since 2009. We started on a small test project with Extra Holidays by Wyndham which grew into an amazing business relationship over the years. To date, Extra Holidays by Wyndham has increased its Facebook page “likes” from 0 to approximately 11,000 in a few months; grown the Twitter following to 842; and monetized all of the social media channels, contributing to revenue.
I think the new challenges with Facebook Timeline and the lack of attention to new monetization strategies by larger brands have held a lot of companies back, but Wyndham Vacation Ownership is going to excel in this space with its new pages coming soon. Thank you, WVO and Extra Holidays by Wyndham, for working with JSMM!
Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing, Presents at KARL Graduate Program Winter Summit 2012: Presentation Available via Download
Posted by: Megan Spreer, social media marketing manager at JSMM
Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing, addressed participants of the Kansas Agriculture and Leadership program this Tuesday during the KARL Graduate Program Winter Summit in Manhattan, Kan. Jennings spoke about the importance of social media, message boards and blogs to the Smartphone society, a society that is quickly including farm and agriculture leaders.
Her presentation covered numerous important key points such as:
- Stats about mobile usage: 91% of mobile Internet usage is to socialize
- Who uses this technology: The average American spends 2.7 hours a day socializes on their mobile device
- How to use it for their best results: The best mobile apps for the Agriculture industry
- Case studies: A farmer tweeted a photo of dying soy beans and soon has a response from a plant pathologist
- Why it’s important to them: Farmers and ranchers can connect to the community
Download a copy of the presentation now.
Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing, Provides 2012 Social Media Predictions
By: Valerie Jennings, CEO of JSMM
While these are not representative of all of the expectations for social media in 2012, these are the key takeaways that Jennings Social Media Marketing (JSMM) is expecting to impact the industry. To learn how JSMM can help your business best utilize these predictions and more call us at (816) 221-1040.
2012 Social Media Marketing Predictions
1. Google+ will evolve, expand and overcome its critics
2. Twitter will morph into a business tool which may increase its ROI
3. Facebook does the unthinkable and adds more features
4. Blogging becomes something of the past with the increased use of mobile devices
5. Facebook ads blow up and drive more ROI
6. Mobile ads enhance monetization to websites and QR codes enable the transition
7. SEO becomes something of the past. Thank you Google for introducing social media optimization (SMO)
8. Case studies die and YouTube videos with client testimonials move to center stage
9. Personalized messages become something we all yearn for, and mobile messages such as SMS increase
10. Connecting to strangers will become more acceptable, but we all know the dangers this can cause–boundaries will change, but companies will need to disclose who is behind their curtains
InformationWeek.com Reviews Tips for Business Facebook Pages During the Holidays: 51% of Consumers Are More Likely to Buy From a Company After Becoming Their Fan on Facebook
Posted by: Micah Pratt, director of social networking R&D
The holidays are just around the corner, and businesses are finalizing their marketing campaigns to optimize the shopping rush. Here is an article from InformationWeek.com, written by Kevin Casey, about how companies can prepare their social networking sites in time for the holidays.
4 Tips: Prep Your Facebook Page For Holidays
Will your company’s Facebook page help you take advantage of the holiday shopping rush? Consider these tips for SMBs and fine-tune your strategy.
Small and midsize businesses (SMBs), like Santa Claus, should be making a list and checking it twice. But rather than sorting out who’s naughty or nice, consumer-focused concerns should fine-tune their Facebook presence in advance of the holiday shopping rush.
Among the reasons: The bevy of market research showing shoppers increasingly turning to social sites before they make purchase decisions. Consider this recent study, which found 51% of consumers are more likely to buy something from a company after becoming their fan on Facebook. With the annual flurry of capitalism known as holiday shopping looming large, it’s time for retailers and other consumer-focused SMBs to make sure they’re ready to reap the rewards.
That means doing a bit more than putting up a page and hoping it connects with customers, according to Laura O’Shaughnessy, CEO of SocialCode, a social agency that emphasizes a quantitative approach to performance advertising, with a particular focus on Facebook. The firm recently added LinkedIn to its mix, and is considering the likes of Twitter and Google+.
Socialcode itself has an interesting SMB story. The 50-person agency was born as an internal department of The Washington Post Company, which owns–in addition to the flagship newspaper of the same name–a number of media, education, and other businesses. O’Shaughnessy said that the results of Facebook programs for the company’s various brands were so strong that it began shifting money away from its Google adverting and spending more on social. Later, Socialcode was spun out as an independent subsidiary and began signing on external customers.
In an interview, O’Shaughnessy shared these four tips for optimizing your Facebook activities in the coming weeks.
1. Set goals. The businesses that get the most out of their Facebook presence are the ones that have goals behind it. “Step one is deciding: Is my goal to drive people into my restaurant, is it to drive people into my store, is it to introduce a new product, is it to get people to buy my product?” O’Shaughnessy said. Without a clear sense of what they want to accomplish, SMBs, can’t make efficient use of their resources.
2. Design a campaign with a “viral accelerant.” O’Shaughnessy said the most powerful, effective Facebook campaigns place heavy emphasis on sharing. That often means developing an application, game, or a related microsite to encourage people to spread the word–no matter what the word is. “You want to make sure you’re taking advantage of the sharing activities that are going on,” O’Shaughnessy said.
While a development-intensive application might require a bigger budget, O’Shaughnessy noted that there are sharing-oriented things marketers can do on a smaller scale. She gave as an example a nonprofit client that found strong results simply using a light application aimed at sharing badges on Facebook walls.
“The most important thing about Facebook is really perpetuating that social sharing–getting one friend to spread, in this case, a badge to another friend,” O’Shaughnessy said. “Then all of that person’s friends see that action, so you get this immediate lift.”
The Future of Google+: Integrating Brand Pages with the Social Network’s 40 Million User Profiles
Posted by: Micah Pratt, director of social networking r&d
Last Wednesday at the Web 2.0 conference held in San Francisco, Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president in charge of Google+, discussed the possible changes coming to the social networking site. One of those changes included the idea of Google+ brand pages for companies anxiously waiting to reach out to the more than 40 million users. Here is an article from Mashable.com on what Google+ brand pages could look like when made available to companies.
What Google+ Brand Pages Could Look Like [PICS]
A few weeks ago, Mashable contacted some ad agencies and asked them to imagine how brand pages on could change in light of that platform’s planned redesign.
Just as Facebook was announcing its tweaks, though, Google was on track to add brand pages to Google Plus. Though it looks like that will happen any day now, the integration hasn’t been announced yet. Meanwhile, a handful of brands, including Ford, are already enjoying the possibilities.
There are several barriers to designing brand pages for Plus. For one thing, it’s hard to stand out the way Plus looks now. The somewhat rigid format has a leveling effect. But Colin Murphy, director of social for Skinny, one of the agencies that accepted our challenge, says there are potential advantages to Plus, too. “A primary gripe among Facebook and Twitter users is that brands bombard them with messages they don’t want or care to see,” said Murphy. “In its current form, Plus doesn’t solve that problem, but Plus Brand Pages might, if they implement Public Circles.”
Skinny outlined how this might work with a hypothetical example for Mini, the auto brand. In this case, a Mini Countryman fan could join the Countryman circle and see just Countryman updates in her feed. “This level of selectivity isn’t possible on Facebook or even Twitter, unless of course you are a fan or follow the specific product you’re interested in — but there’s a major drawback to that method because the user has to seek out content streams,” Murphy says. “With Google+ it’s all in one place, and the all the admin has to do is feed pertinent content to the appropriate circles.”
In addition to Skinny, Fantasy Interactive created some fictional Coca-Cola and Starbucks brand pages. Are these on the mark? We’ll know soon enough, but in the meantime, let us know what you think of these agencies’ vision of how Google+ can accommodate brands.
Social Networking “Friends” Politics: How to Make Facebook Ads Work to Political Candidates’ Favor
Posted by: Micah Pratt, Director of Social Networking R&D
The 2012 presidential election will be like one never experienced before. Social networking sites are playing a role in these elections that wasn’t imaginable four years ago by hosting debates, facilitating the political conversation and connecting candidates with voters in the digital world. Here is an article from CMO.com, written by Kim Soth, senior vice president of business development & marketing at Jennings Social Media Marketing, on how to get Facebook ads to work in your favor.
Five Ways to Make Facebook Ads Work For You
There is much talk in social-media circles about how to build your audience organically and that, for the most part, it is the best way to build an audience. It is certainly a good way, but it shouldn’t be your only strategy. We suggest that if you are a new company or are launching a product, you can do a great job of building fans with Facebook ads, which offer a great alternative to your marketing strategy. What’s more, Facebook ads are not nearly as complex as Google AdWords—but don’t let the simplicity fool you. For our campaigns we’ve found that Facebook ads, on average, deliver a higher click-through rate than Google AdWords.
For example, we were brought in to help promote a senatorial race. After a month of struggling to gain fans on Facebook, we eventually doubled the candidate’s fans in a week by running ads: We picked up 1,500 fans for a total cost of around $1,000.
So if you think this strategy might be for you, here are five tips that will help you make Facebook ads work for your campaigns.
1. It’s about testing. Always run multiple ads targeting the same “Likes and Interests,” and keep your Likes and Interests the same while testing different ad copy, headlines, or images. What needs to remain the same as your control for a general test is your Likes and Interests keywords. You can test many controls, but the simplest is Likes and Interests. Facebook targets audiences off of two variables: Users and Likes and Interests: If you change these in two different ads, then you don’t have an apples-to-apples test.
2. Likes and Interests matter. Likes and Interests are essentially keywords you are targeting for your campaign based on what shows up for a user. You don’t want to use random Likes and Interests keywords. To make Likes and Interests work for you, it’s important to target based on what is associated with that individual in some way—associations they belong to, things they like, where they work, what they are fans of, or what they’ve written on their walls.
It’s is important not to get carried away and add a hundred Likes and Interests keywords just because it’s cool to see the numbers of possible audience continue to rise. It would seem that big numbers of audience is a good idea, but it’s actually counterintuitive. You want to choose highly targeted Likes and Interests keywords that are tightly associated with your ad copy. Don’t choose a keyword just because of its audience reach. You want to make sure it matches everything you know about the ad copy. Just because someone rides a motorcycle doesn’t mean he is interested in a Harley. One person might buy sports bikes, another might buy BMW motorcycles, while another might be really into Harleys. So it does no good to blast all of them with a message about Harley gear.
A Huge Thanks to Mobile Commerce Daily for Featuring Jennings Social Media Marketing & Frank Ancona Honda: Car dealership boosts social media engagement with mobile bar codes, SMS
Posted by: Micah Pratt, director of social networking r&d
Thank you to Chantal Tode at Mobile Commerce Daily for interviewing Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing, and Jason Heard, Sales Manager at Frank Ancona Honda, about the launch of Frank Ancona Honda’s QR code and SMS campaign.
Car dealership boosts social media engagement with mobile bar codes, SMS
Car dealership Frank Ancona Honda is adding SMS and QR codes to its social media efforts to enhance customer engagement.
Frank Ancona Honda currently has a mobile site and is active in social media. It will expand these efforts going forward with QR codes and SMS as the traffic to its sites via mobile continues to grow.
“We need to expand into mobile to support our growing customer demand on smartphones,” said Jason Heard, sales manager of Frank Ancona Honda, Olathe, KS.
“We are utilizing mobile sites right now and this is the next step to not only expanding our mobile presence, but also adding more engaging to our social media practices,” he said.
Marketing Insight
Jennings Social Media Marketing is managing the dealership’s mobile marketing rollout.
Jennings Social Media Marketing has been working with Frank Ancona Honda for almost a year managing its social media.
The dealership is also working with KickANotch for mobile tracking.
QR codes and SMS will help Frank Ancona Honda engage with its customers via social media channels and mobile as part of its ongoing marketing activities around local events.
Mobile will also help the dealership track the effectiveness of its marketing.
“We are currently sponsoring several events in the local market and the QR codes will help us understand the impact of having our cars on display at these events,” Mr. Heard said.
Jennings Social Media Marketing Reviews Mobile Apps’ Usage: 50% of Mobile Consumers’ Prime Time Overlaps With TV
Posted by: Eric Johnson
As the popularity of smart phones continues to rise, it was only a matter of time before the mobile screen began to catch up to the big screen in terms of usage. A new study conducted by a mobile analytics firm, Flurry, points out that approximately 50 percent of mobile consumers are utilizing mobile apps during TV’s prime time.
Flurry also reports that mobile applications currently reach more than 20 million U.S. consumers per hour and the number of active iOS and Android devices in the U.S. is estimated at 110 million. These numbers reflect a significant impact to prime time viewing habits.
For TV broadcasters, prime time is 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. In radio, programming and advertising are all about morning “drive time.” On the Web, the popularity of social networks like Facebook, instant messaging like Skype and video-on-demand services like Hulu are pushing up usage in the evening.
So what time of day do mobile apps find their biggest audience? A new study by the mobile analytics firm Flurry shows the audience for iPhone and iOS apps rises steadily during the day and peaks at about 9 p.m. That’s when half the U.S. app audience is using apps. “Mobile consumers are using apps either instead of, or along-side prime-time television and the Internet,” stated a Flurry blog post on the study.
The finding contributes to a growing body of research suggesting that two-screen viewing is becoming increasingly common while people are watching TV. The relative size of the TV audience during prime time was larger than that for mobile apps, at more than 60%. But app usage remained higher than TV from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and higher than the Internet almost all day. The Internet’s reach peaked at 7 p.m., when 40% of the audience for that medium was on the Web.
Mark Zuckerberg Reveals Major Facebook Updates at F8
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
Over the years, Facebook has been known to make small changes to how users operate on the social networking site. With Google+ becoming a threatening competitor, Mark Zuckerberg made serious changes to Facebook. On September 22, Mark Zuckerberg explained exactly what the 800 million users could expect from the new and improved Facebook at its annual developer conference including:
•Timeline: a stream of information about you
•Facebook Gestures: turning any verb into a button, similar to the “like” button. Example: Reading a book.
•Open Graph: third-party companies can connect their apps and services to Facebook using a one-time permission from the user to share stuff on Facebook
•Subscribe: subscribing to strangers or celebrities to receive posts from them without being Facebook friends
•Ticker: a real-time list of what your friends are posting
•Media: watching TV and movies, listening to music and reading news all within Facebook
How Social Media Has Changed the Game for Search Engine’s: 1/4 of Twitter’s 5 Billion Tweets a Month Contains Links to Content
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
Sharing and finding content over the Internet has become easier then ever, and now social media is changing the ways search engines track quality content. This article from Mashable.com takes a look at how social networks have impacted search engines.
How Social Media Affects Content Relevance in Search
Old school SEO pros cover your ears, or be prepared to adapt your craft: Search engines are changing, and social media is a huge part of that change.
Bing, Google, and an increasing swath of nimble little search engines like Blekko and DuckDuckGo are incorporating social data into their results. This is potentially great news for new businesses trying to achieve visibility in search. It’s less great news for sites that rely heavily on link buying (illegal, but hard to catch), producing huge volumes of borderline-useless content (long-tail, content farm approach), or just really old domains (previously an SEO trump card).
Both Bing and Google admitted in interviews that their search results are positively affected by social signals, such as tweets, Facebook Likes, and +1s.
“As ideas, thoughts, questions and answers are shared more freely and easily than ever, the increased amount of information from social sources provides great benefits to users,” says a Microsoft spokesperson for Bing (who asked to remain anonymous).
“The links that you build through social media, the references, the authority — all can have an impact in various ways on how you are ranked and listed even in ‘regular’ search results,” says Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, in an email interview. “Social media allows for people to provide more trusted signals.”
Search Engines Adapt to SurviveSince the early Internet days of Excite and Webcrawler, the principal goal of search engines has been to help people find what they’re looking for. Google rose to dominate the industry by tracking better indicators of content quality than anyone else. It developed a complex algorithm that measured which websites were “voting” for others by linking to them.
Essentially, it was social media, but for websites rather than people. If your site had lots of links from relevant sites, your Google rank climbed. Plenty of other factors, like putting keywords into headlines and titles, remained in play (and continually evolved), but the game changer of the last decade was links.
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry emerged to help webmasters play the “me rank higher” game with Google. On the one hand, website owners attempt to adhere to Google’s standards and prove they are high quality (creating relevant, high quality content and formatting it to Google’s taste). On the other hand, shadier sites try to trick Google’s secret formula, “pretending” to be good content without having to bother with creating useful stuff.
Location-Based Mobile Services Becoming Increasingly Popular: Over 25% of Americans Have Used Location-Based Services for Recommendations
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
Using location-based services to find the closest restaurant or to get directions is becoming the newest trend in mobile technology. Here is an article from The Washington Post on how Americans are using location-based services.
Over a quarter of American adults use mobile location-based services
Not many people are “checking in” using services such as Foursquare and Gowalla, but over a quarter of Americans are checking out their surroundings using location-based services.
The latest research from Pew’s Internet and American Life Project found that 28 percent of American adults have used mobile or social location-based services to get recommendations such as the best-rated nearby cafe or directions from their current location.
Only about 5 percent of those surveyed used services that post their current locations, though smartphone users were more than twice as likely to signal their location to their friends. In a similar vein, about 9 percent of all users used the location-tagging options on social media.
As once might expect, younger smartphone users are more likely overall to use check-in services, but there was no clear divide on age when it came to hitching a location-tag to a Facebook or Twitter message.
CNN: Smartphones Make Up 35% of U.S. Mobile Market
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
According to a recent story on CNN.com, smartphones still do not make up the majority of the U.S. market. However, we cannot ignore the value, power and influence of these mobile devices that are about to change the way we conduct business, review products, make buying decisions, and most importantly, interact with our friends.
Why smartphones still haven’t taken over the U.S. market
Smartphones may attract nearly all of the marketing hype and news coverage, but comScore’s latest statistics show that smartphones still comprise only a minority of the U.S. mobile market — about 35%, as of July 2011.
The other 65% of U.S. mobile handsets in use are “feature phones” — which tend to be much less expensive to buy and own. Often, these phones do not require a pricey two-year wireless service contract with hefty early termination fees.
Even though smartphones cost much more, these devices have been getting popular with U.S. consumers, even in light of the country’s economic recession. After all, a 35% market share is nothing to sneeze at — especially considering that smartphones have only been widely available in the U.S. for about five years.
At some point, a majority of U.S. mobile users will indeed own smartphones. But that shift won’t happen as quickly as early forecasts anticipated.
Back in March 2010, the Nielsen Company proclaimed that smartphones would overtake feature phones by 2011. Specifically, they predicted that by the end of Q3 2011 (about a month from now), most U.S. mobile users would own smartphones.
That ambitious prediction doesn’t seem to be panning out.
For over a year, comScore has been publishing monthly mobile-market-share statistics that show the percentage of U.S. smartphones. I’ve been tracking these figures. Based on this data, it looks like it’ll be roughly October 2012 before smartphones actually take over as a majority of U.S. handsets.
Social Media and Mobile Applications: 8 Best Practices for Deploying a Top-Ranked Mobile App
Posted by Micah Pratt: social networking research and development
The convergence of social media with mobile applications has led to cross promotional marketing, and if done correctly, can lead to major success. Here is an article by Krishna Subramanian from Mashable.com about eight ways to make sure your mobile application gets noticed.
8 Best Practices for Deploying a Top-Ranked Mobile App
Developing a mobile app is the easy part. Getting that app noticed is difficult. And getting the app to go viral is like winning the lottery. Yet many developers get millions of downloads time after time. How?
It’s all about app store SEO, and some developers have mastered it. Here are a few tips and tricks of the trade to help get your app to the top of heap.
Time Is of The Essence
The first two weeks of an app’s life are critical and will likely determine its future visibility in the app store. Top applications develop popularity within two weeks of release, and most applications have a tendency to drop in chart position over time. Remember, whatever you do — marketing campaigns, cross distribution and so on — the quicker you do it, the bigger the impact.
Jennings Social Media Marketing’s Press Release Picked Up on Major News Sites Including Businessweek.com, Yahoo!Finance.com & Reuters.com: Veterans Funeral Care Triples ROI With Jennings Social Media Marketing
Veterans Funeral Care tripled its Facebook “Likes,” organic SEO, engagement and exposure via Jennings Social Media Marketing during a promotional campaign (www.jenningssocialmedia.com).
Jim Rudolph, president and CEO of Veterans Funeral Care, said they hired Jennings Social Media Marketing for social media promotion of their company and for a specific event. “It should be said: I waited until the last minute. Team Jennings jumped in and in 24-hours was working magic. We had around 200 people who ‘liked’ us on Facebook in two weeks and there were more than 800 ‘likes’ shortly after that. Valerie (CEO & founder) got our Marketwire press release on MSNBC. You can put me down in the ‘very happy’ category. This is my second project with them, and I’m a believer,” said Rudolph.
The goal of the Veterans Funeral Care social media project was to create brand awareness by getting new Facebook users to “Like” the page (http://www.facebook.com/Veteransfuneralcare), generate search engine optimization (SEO) and engagement. A targeted Facebook ad ran, focusing on veterans, veterans groups and Flag Day which resulted in the Veterans Funeral Care page tripling its Facebook “Likes” in a few weeks to 815. For organic SEO, a targeted Marketwire press release was written and distributed to generate traffic, millions of impressions and get picked-up by major news websites including, but not limited to, MSNBC, Reuters and Yahoo. The Twitter strategy focused on re-tweeting, sending @mentions, tweets and following veterans’ organizations.
Jennings Social Media Marketing is a full service company that utilizes the art of online storytelling with the science of measuring quantifiable results. Jennings creates comprehensive social media marketing and Web advertising strategies from website design and development to viral videos. The company represents publicly traded to medium-sized businesses across the U.S. and overseas including technology, sports, sustainability, entertainment, travel, financial, health care and real estate (www.jenningssocialmedia.com).
Thank You to Thinking Bigger Business Media & David Conrads for Interviewing Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing, On How to Handle Employees’ Online Social Media Activity
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing, was recently interviewed on how to handle employees’ social media activity. The emergence of social media has given many employees the same capabilities and tools as their employers which can be both beneficial and risky. Business leaders are wondering how to control the social media activities of its employers and to what extent. Here is an article from www.ithinkbigger.com, by David Conrads, on how to handle social media in conjunction with employees.
Social Media: Handle With Care
Do you need a policy to guide employees’ online activities?
While the benefits of social media are great, there also are risks—particularly as employees have access to the same tools and audience as the company.
As with so many things having to do with technology, social media is evolving so fast that businesses are scrambling to not only grasp its full potential, but also understand the risks and to come up with a consensus on best practices for its use.
The casual way in which many employees share their personal lives online can give a business owner nightmares. After all, TMI—“Too Much Information”—is one thing when it comes to an employee’s social life, it’s quite another when it involves company business. Leaders can’t afford to ignore the potential problems.
More Questions Than Answers
What are appropriate guidelines for what company information employees can share online? What liability is the company exposed to from employee posts that flow through the company’s server? How does a company protect its reputation from offensive postings by an employee on a personal account? Even large corporations are just now exploring answers to these questions.
“It’s an ongoing management problem,” said Valerie Jennings, CEO and founder of Jennings Social Media Marketing in Kansas City. “Social media has really cost a lot of organizations time, energy and money on so many different levels. It’s a blessing to have these resources, but the risks have to be managed or they can really hurt the brand.”
Valuable Data: More than a billion opinions posted online about products & services last year
Posted by: Micah Pratt, social networking research & development
Today, more and more marketers are turning to online marketing programs because of the noticeable role that peers play in consumers’ purchasing desicions. What many of these interactive marketers are failing to realize is the volume of social data created by the influence of peers in purchase decisions. Here is an article by Nate Elliott, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, about how to effective utilize social data.
HOW TO: Utilize Social Data More Effectively
Last year, American consumers posted more than a billion opinions about products and services online, according to data collected by my company. With peer influence playing such a prominent role in consumers’ purchase decisions, it’s no surprise many interactive marketers are tapping into that influence via viral marketing programs and influencer outreach.
However, the vast majority of marketers ignore the staggering volume of social data all this influence creates. And those who do study social data typically use it for the wrong reason: to measure the brand impact of their marketing campaigns.
Social Data Is Often Based On Small Sample Sizes
With so many opinions posted online, you might assume it would be easy to find a reliable sample of data to analyze for brand impact. But even popular consumer brands often find it difficult to collect usable social data.
For instance, I recently reviewed a listening report for a global sporting goods brand — one that sponsors leading teams and athletes around the world and has strong brand awareness. I was surprised to see that the brand was mentioned in social media only a few hundred times each week in the U.S., and less than 100 times each week in other key markets around the world.
To make matters worse, the low quality of many social sentiment analysis tools reduces sample sizes further. When listening tools can’t decide whether comments are positive or negative, they’re usually labeled as having “no sentiment.” Three-quarters of the mentions for this brand were tagged as such, leaving less than two-dozen weekly usable posts in some markets.
If you asked your market insights team or your survey provider to analyze 25 consumer survey responses, they’d tell you it’s impossible to find statistical significance in such a small sample. The same standards must be applied to social data as well.
ecommerce-guide.com Announces The 2011 Social Shopping Study
Posted by Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media Marketing
Social media has changed the way consumers shop. Now, approximately 40 percent of shoppers follow social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook for special offers. Here is a recent study regarding social media and shopping that may make an impact on your next strategic roll-out.
Here is the study by ecommerce-guide.com. Thank you for the outstanding review!
3 Consumer Shopping Trends Online Retailers Need to Know
By Vangie Beal
July 14, 2011
The world of online shopping is a never-ending barrage of fads, trends and change. Just when you think you have a handle on what’s new, along comes a new (or revived) trend to negotiate.
New research published earlier this month by PowerReviews in conjunction with the E-tailing Group gives online retailers unique insight as to how consumers research, select and purchase goods online and helps to identify the best strategies for connecting with consumers.
The 2011 Social Shopping Study
The study, The 2011 Social Shopping Study, is based on a survey of more than 1,000 consumers about their online shopping habits, as well as their level of engagement with brands and retailers across various online channels.
In the survey introduction, Lauren Freedman, president, the E-tailing Group said that 2011 has been a volatile year for ecommerce with a multitude of dynamics in play from social media and community to mobile.
“This year’s survey explored consumer utilization of social media across a range of merchants and channels to understand perception, interest, and propensity to buy based on that engagement,” she wrote. “We wanted to know the implications for researching and shopping behavior, particularly as it relates to Facebook, which is the beneficiary of much of the community attention.”
Trend #1: Product Research Remains Top Purchasing Decision Tool
One consumer shopping trend the survey set out to determine was if user-generated content (UGC) continued to play a role in consumer shopping choices.
Findings suggest that consumers do invest greater time in online research before making a purchase, as 15 percent of respondents said that 90 percent or more of all online shopping time was spent researching products (compared to just 21 percent in 2010).
Respondents confirmed that search engines, like Google, are still the main starting point for research by 44 percent, followed by gathering information from retailer and manufacturer websites. To that end it is apparent that search engine optimization (SEO) is still a crucial task for online retailers.
The important take away for merchants is knowledge of where consumers start their product research. Nadim Hossain, VP of marketing at PowerReviews, said that the first step in the research process for consumers is Google.
“Google is where people start, so SEO is really important to online retailers. Our research found that product reviews are the number one factor impacting the buying decision,” explained Hossain. ”
Trend #2: Social Shopping and Customer Reviews as an Influencer
Another big question playing on the minds of many retailers is just how much influence social media has on the customer’s purchase decision.
Social shopping and social media has been a huge topic for online retailers this year, but only 2 percent of respondents used Facebook or other social recommendations as their main research starting point. Forty-nine percent of those surveyed said they have never researched products on social sites.
Where social media does shine is in Facebook Business Pages and Facebook newsfeeds, with 13 percent of respondents saying those social tools impacted their buying behavior.
“Merchants are testing social media by trying to integrate it and understand how to monetize it,” said Lauren Freedman. “Retailers typically evaluate then go first for the promotions to increase their fan base, in a way that is similar to email list building.”
When it comes to user-generated content, a number of community and social tools impact buying behavior, customer reviews (user-generated product reviews) influence purchasing the most with 59 percent of survey respondents, followed by customer Q&As (42 percent) and community forums (26 percent).
Consumers still favor writing product reviews as an activity. The survey indicated that 70 percent of respondents participated in “rate a product purchased” compared to 49 percent who engage in using the “Like” button for a retailer or manufacturer.
Trend #3: Mobile Phones Empower Consumers In-Store
Mobile phones are also a popular influence in customer purchase decisions. Usage in the retail store is also increasing as mobile phones give consumers immediate access to research, price shopping and promotional coupons for immediate redemption.
Merchants are interested in the mobile phone and the tablet audience because these are the consumers who are going to shop and consume. Lauren Freedman said that retailers see the traffic penetration coming from this demographic and online retailers view mobile shoppers as an audience ripe for business.
What’s most interesting about the mobile portion of the study is seeing the break-down of how consumers use mobile phones. In response to the question “How likely are you to do each of the following using your mobile phone when researching a product while in a physical store?” the top three answers were:
Access promotional coupons for redemption at the store (38 percent)
Look for competitive pricing at Amazon (36 percent)
Look for competitive prices on products at retailers online other than Amazon (36 percent)
Other activities shoppers use their mobile phone for include scanning bar codes, scanning QR Codes (quick response codes) or use mobile apps to receive points, rewards or badges.
“Mobile phones are the merging of the offline experience in-store, and it all goes back to pricing,” said Freedman. “Consumers use a mobile phone to check sales and specials, to look up store information pre-visit and to scan reviews for product information while in-store.”
Predictions for Mobile and Social
In the coming year both Hossain and Freedman predict that mobile phones and social tools will grow in importance as more consumers use these mediums for product research and shopping.
“The mobile piece will continue to accelerate fast but the social will be more challenging for the retailers to understand, explore and monetize,” said Freedman. “Retailers will continue investment in both areas and see continued sales growth in mobile versus exploration in social.” See Article
Valerie Jennings 
Cassie Stubs
Katie Stumpf
