How fast the leading social networks are growing…

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It is one of these questions, we always get asked in meetings and seminars. How much is social media growing, or is growth already declining? Search Engine Journal provides some good overview on the topic of growth and use in an infographic just recently released.

The most popular sites -in terms of how they are used by marketers- are still Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Same as in the study from Global Web Index in 2013, Twitter still shows the fastest growth in social networks from an active user perspective, especially in the 55-64 age group.

In the time period from June 2012 to March 2013, Google+ increased their active user base by 33%. The age group of 45-54 years showed the fastest adaption growth in Google+ with a 56% increase.

And Facebook? Although they showed a 23% increase, especially the age group of 45-54 years is adapting the fast moving “Likes and Hypes” network.

SEJ-Social-Media-Growth

Tips & tricks on handling blogger advocates (Infographic)

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Many marketers ask themselves (and often us) how to work with social influencers or blogger advocates. How can you get them to the some word-of-mouth promotion for your brand, how to spread the word about the company, or just to help on doing some nice networking. The team from SocialChorus gives some advice with their latest infographic on blogger advocates.

According to their opinion and advice, companies and brands should watch out that the blogger advocate of interest has got at least a social reach of 2,500-25,000 contacts on Twitter and a highly engaged audience. Furthermore, they should be “interested in brands that reflect his or her audience’s interests”. From a verticals point of view, the most popular verticals for blogger advocates come from parenting, women’s lifestyle and food. To be fairly honest,

I was a bit surprised that the tech industry was just getting some 4,8% of mentions as most of these people are in the social media platforms for quite a while, and usually these people are quite engaged. Seems this is not a big vertical when it comes to spreading the message about brands.

However, each vertical can also have some subcategories which means that it could be covered but under a different vertical like i.e. consumer interest. Not surprisingly, the typical women’s lifestyle blog is around beauty, fashion, and design/DIY, while the males’ one will focus more on auto, sports, tech or entertainment.

Spot On!
To be fair, I have to say that I doubt that the number of 2.500+ contacts qualifies for some great advocate impact (maybe more for an influencer), or whether it is not more the people behind those contacts that count. Marketers should also be careful with the “engaged audience” as sometimes people get followed as of their unique content. They get high figures in “automated response” but they might not be the most conversational, still fully respected people.

Hey, who said blogger advocacy was easy? Any further ideas on the topic, feel free to share…

Credits: SocialChorus

Credits: SocialChorus

Best and worst times to post social media updates (Infographic)

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The questions we get asked by management team all over Europe are quite similar whenever it comes to best possible conversion times, or perfect hours and days to posting on social networks, to send out updates and to generate engagement. Although this might be an option to boost your social and web activities, it should be clear to everyone that if we all obey these options, we are challenging our clients more and more in generating engagement.

Above all, not all social media platforms are alike. The user types of social networks are different, depending on whether these are coming with a purchase intent, the idea to keep their friends up to date about their latest spare time activities, or whether they are looking for new job opportunities in career networks. Sentiment, time and openness for your updates might vary from minute to minute.

Mitt Ray summarizes some advice on when could be the best and worst time to publish your updates on Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest and Tumblr. Take it for whatever it is worth to you…

Best-Times-and-Days-to-Post-Your-Social-Media-Updates-Infographic

Ratings, Retweets, Repins & Likes: Automated response creators = killers of insight creation?

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twitterview-2Some years ago, I have written about the Retweet button being the “killer of positive blog comments”. Over the years in many seminars and speeches, I have stressed the point that the ROI of the social web is not about generating high quantity in “thumbs up” on Facebook or Retweets on Twitter, or anything automated that comes along with similar meaning.

Retweets, Repins & Co. are only of value for your business, if…
– you accept those automated response generators as the pillars of your ROI system.
– you are a marketer who builds their business on proving the capability of accelerating reach rather than relevance.
– you are a brand that struggles to understood the value of building a community-centric business.
Still: Are ratings as insightful as a written comment – be it on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other community platform out there in the social web?

Yesterday, it became public through a post on TechCrunch that Facebook is testing out a system of openly displaying star-ratings on Pages. Will this be another killer of value creation?

I definitely agree that the Facebook “Like” has become confusing, and in some way worthless. Many users just click on the Like button out of a pure and immediate emotion, nothing sustainable, lasting or resilient. Some are expressing their solidarity with it. Some are missing the dislike button, and click the Like button.

Do those automated responses tell us what they really feel? Do they tell us what people really think? Do they help us to evaluate our position? Fair enough, these automated response creators are some word-of-mouth catalysts. Well, I admit by adding these five star ratings, there is at least some specification in the differentiation of generating feedback.

Obviously, the new rating system puts Facebook in a different position and moves it more to the likes of Foursquare, Yelp and traditional trend shop systems. Furthermore, it allows users to be more concrete in defining their opinions. Users might get better orientation in why a coffee shop or a business or restaurant deserves to be tested.

Spotted by TechCrunch

Spotted by TechCrunch

But does it really help us? What is a 4.2 with twelve votes compared to a 4.9 what two people have build up? Do we know who gave the votings, and if these people have the same interest and preferences that we have got? Doesn’t orientation get even more confusing? What will we book on travel websites when there are less and less reviews and recommendations?

Spot On!
The 3 Rs of the social customer (ratings, reviews and recommendations) might make our lives interesting and exciting for new stuff. But maybe there is too much new trends and products out there to get our heads around. Maybe a real review or recommendation will sometimes help (one positive and one negative like Amazon does it already). Still, automated feedbacks -be it stars, RTs, Likes, etc.- are the least valuable insight creation generators on a relevance scale that helps defining internal and external social web ROI.

PS: If your managers are still happy when your numbers of Likes go up, be happy and tell them nothing about this post. If not, let’s discuss further how social networks should constitute in order to deliver deeper insights in the mindset of our customers.

Study: Online forums still popular and leading community option (Infographic)

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According to a recent “2013 Social Media Survey” by Proboards the interactive communication preferences across platforms are still heading towards forums. Although you might think that they asked their own users (which is probably right), the survey still shows the importance of forums and communities. For their results the company promoted the research toover 150 respondents via Facebook, Twitter, and the ProBoards customer support forum.

The study claims that online forums are still popular. What was interesting for me to see is that they were even preferred compared to social media platform for interactive communication. Two out of three respondents (67%) stated that forums were the social media tool they found most valuable. Obviously, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and Google+ follow but the question here could be asked whether most people realize that all these platforms are also forums if used in the right way. That LinkedIn did not figure in as a significant social media tool is in my eyes not correct as the forums there within, are very powerful and interactive, plus they generate very valueable input for managers.

“The survey results do not surprise us since platforms such as Facebook and Twitter do not give you the level of control that forums do,” said Patrick Clinger, founder and CEO of ProBoards. “Forums provide greater customization and more options…”

Forums -although we would define them as communities according to our Community Centric Strategy– offer a great way of engaged communication, and probably with better and deeper quality than any other social network. There is more information in the infographic attached…

ProBoards-Social-Media-Study-Forums

Rise of Social Media as a Profession (Infographic)

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When I started my blog some years ago, people in my industry were shaking their heads and wondered what the benefit was to be a “social media professional”. Some asked why I was wasting time on social networks like Twitter, Facebook & Co., and what the ROI is in writing blog posts and then sharing them. Some wondered how I managed to stay on top of the main trends and developments in the “social web” world. Well, time is passing by and people start to be getting answers.

In the last years, many companies have thought about hiring a social media specialist, or have even given it a proper job description. Still last year, we went into companies and found some young interim or part-time freelancer being responsible for the feedback on the 3R’s (ratings, reviews and recommendations!) of their own social customer. Often these people earned nothing but a smile from their colleagues.

These days seem to change. Can it be that companies understand the value of engaging with their customers on the social web – the place where they not only spend a lot of their spare time? They actually do marketing, sales, customer service, employer branding and much more for companies and brands. Some companies still have not understood though…

Now, the social marketing platform Offerpop has created a nice infographic based on data from LinkedIn that shows a staggering 1,357% increase in social media jobs posted on LinkedIn in the last three years.

Rise-of-Social-Media-Profession

What customers hate about brands on social media (Infographic)

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In many seminars I have been asked this question and hey, the guys from ExactTarget CoTweet have given an answer some months ago: What annoys people when they follow brands on the social web, and what makes them like brands? Discounts we knew it. Well, if you still think it is the frequency and too many updates on promotions, you might be right but it is coming worse.

Just imagine you publish a status update that carries some wording in poor typo or, even worse, a grammar mistake. If you read this infographic, you might get the impression that sending out hundreds of status updates asking people to go in shops, to buy tech gadgets, or tell them to buy those online, makes people not turn away from loving your brand. It is actually not that bad, it seems…

However, if you loose the appropriate tonality in your social accounts and a certain kind of quality control gets lost like poor spelling mistakes, then your brand might face a challenge in terms of reputation and followership.

“A lot of people talk about the need for brands to be less formal when they communicate through social media, but this survey shows that there is a danger in letting standards slip too far.” Lance Concannon, Director of Disruptive Communications.

“The findings also illustrate that you can’t take a one-size fits all approach in social media. Younger consumers clearly have different expectations and priorities – overall people said that not posting updates frequently enough wasn’t a major concern for them, but the 18- to 24-year-olds listed it as their most important issue”, says Concannon whose company put together the infographic.

How about you? What do you think annoys people when brands are on social media. Maybe it still is your hundreds of status updates on a day?

What-customers-hate-about-your-brand-on-social-media

Spot On – How to write the perfect post (Infographic)

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It is something we keep being asked seminar after seminar. What is the perfect status update looking like on Google+, Facebook or Twitter? Well, the answer is there is no secret sauce. Or maybe there is now? The guys from Mycleveragency have at least try to define it and put in as much knowledge as possible. If it helps when all tweet and chat on social platforms at the same times, I might doubt here but still…

PerfectPost

Study: How Companies Structure Social Media Teams (Infographic)

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In a recent Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions survey, PR Daily wanted to know from over 2,700 communication specialists in which way how their businesses use social media. Now, Go-Gulf.com took some of the data and created an infographic that ilustrates the main findings. Interestingly enough, and that is also what we are experiencing these days in our workshops and consultancy business, many of the compnaies have not found a proper way how to generate leads through social media although the capabilities on measuring data seems to be there. 



Find the main findings as follows…
86% companies just look at main data metrics like fans and followers.
80%+ companies only have 3 people maximum managing social media.
65% companies see time as the main challenge using social media.
40% companies wish to increase sales: main goal of social media efforts.
31% companies are capable to track the customer journey from social media to sales.

How-Organizations-Structure-Social-Media-Teams

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

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

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

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

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

The_New_Don_Infographic_Sales