Tag Archive for: Media

The Social Google: Google Search and Google+ unite

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Google revolutionized the internet, the way we interact, we use our brains and thus, somehow it changed the world. And now they will do it for the second time… with “Search, plus Your World”. This new search engine technology does not only bring us information from across the web. It proclaims to make search even better better by including photos, posts, and “more from you and your friends”.

With an all new algorithm for their search they have changed their search strategy. Today, people are searching not only for content. Today people also want to find personal and private information and touchpoints. The normal result is one which we have all expected for a long time since Google+ launched: Google+ will be integrated in Google search which will definitely affect the power of Google against their hardest social competitor Facebook.

Google’s new “Search, plus Your World” integrates also personal data like personal content, pictures or videos from Google+. Here is their new promotion video…

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On the official Google blog Amit Singhal explains how the new Google search works with an experience of his past.

“As a child, my favorite fruit was Chikoo, which is exceptionally sweet and tasty. A few years back when getting a family dog, we decided to name our sweet little puppy after my favorite fruit. Over the years we have privately shared many pictures of Chikoo (our dog) with our family. To me, the query [chikoo] means two very sweet and different things, and today’s improvements give me the magical experience of finding both the Chikoos I love, right in the results page.”

Google’s first step to integrate Social Search results gets now followed by the integration of Google+ which becomes a massive hub to “socially unite” all of their own products and services. The new search offers three main benefits…

1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

Spot On!
However, this might sound as if Google makes us more transparent, users have the opportunity to select whether they want the new Google search algorith, or not. This gives users the ability to see either the good old search results or the brand new private search results. People just need to use the little buttons…

…or they will simply change it in the account settings. And Google extends the Google+ circles idea to their search: Every single result in the private search mode gets marked whether it is private, public or limited entry. Somehow a clever filter, don’t you think…?

Sales and Social Media? Feedback is the key!

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We have heard that 1 in 3 of the younger generation will their online shopping via their mobile phones. Now, another study shows the power of recommendations around the holiday season. Mr. Youth did some research among 4.500 shoppers and found how Social Media could become the game changer in Christmas shopping in 2011.

Some key findings… and marketers better listen up now!

– 80% of Social Media users who received feedback did a purchase afterwards
– 66% of Black Friday sales were a result of Social Media interactions
– 52% of Social Media users are willing to pay more for brands they trust
– 36% of Social Media users trust brands that have a Social Media presence

How about you? Are you relying on your friends, fans and followers recommendations this holiday season?

Study shows: Customers are social, Brands not…!

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The IT company IBM were the first to make brands aware of the perception gap between what customers want from brands on Social Media, and what companies see as necessary. Some new studies from the Chief Marketing Officer Council and Lithium make clear that this perception gap widens.

What customers want…
The CMO Council asked 1,300 customers from around the world in a multiple-choice study. They discovered that 67% followed or liked brands to receive discounts and special offers. 65% replied that they connected with brands in order to get access to games or competitions while 60% want to connect with other customers.

What brands see…
The astonishing fact is that when the same survey was held with 120 CMOs (chief marketing officer), the results showed similar figures with the IBM study: Only 33% of the CMOs believed that their Social Media fans and followers were engaging with the brand for some kind of incentive or reward. Even more, just 27% understood that their customers were after exclusivity in terms of experience and savings.

Spot On!
Social Media is not a top three priority for one in ten CMOs. The reason is not changing for years probably. 67% said a lack of time and resources makes up for their poor efforts. This is even more amazing when we consider that 72% of the customers use Social Media to connect with brands. AND: 80% are more likely to try a product based on a friend’s recommendation on Social Media, which probably means a Social Network. There is no explanation that could make sense for this Social Media ROI (=Risk of Ignorance).

PS: This little infographic illustrates the digital divide between customers and brands.

The CEO of the future is social

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This new infographic from CEO.com illustrates that more and more CEOs are figuring out social media and finding great benefits as a result. Some weeks ago, we could see in a study that European business chiefs understand the power of Twitter and support its use these days. It seems Social Media is making its way to the C-levels.

Will the CEO of the future really be more social…? Let’s see…

Pay a Blogger Day – How to reward a blogger's work?

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Have you ever paid a blogger? Paid for your content love? I mean not for writing some good PR for your business. Just for them being bloggers, sharing valueble content, thoughts, ideas, and providing new food for thought. In some days you can do that. The “Pay a Blogger Day” is here to come. Some thoughts that came to my mind with it…

Some months ago, Flattr started their outreach program to bloggers. And some months ago, they were on their way to revolutionize the monetization of blogs. Those days, the Flattr button went live on my blog, and in every post. I rewarded blog posts, and got some rewards. Just the way Flattr works. They had the idea for the “Pay a Blogger Day”.

On Flattr Cents pass from bloggers to bloggers to… Well. Companies never paid anything. They have the biggest budget pockets though. And I asked myself if bloggers want companies to engage in the monetization process, or if reputation is of higher value for them. And why should companies pay a blogger for something they produce for free. Still trying to figure that out…

Some blog posts generated some Cents immediately through Flattr, never enough for some nice ice-cream in a week though. Somehow the activity to “donate” for a well-written piece of thought or idea felt like an act of charity. Some Cents felt like a pat on the shoulder. Sometimes, I discussed with bloggers if that is encouraging, or frustrating? Every blogger argued differently about this gesture. Many were not convinced. I have seen not many buttons on blogs since.

And often when I wanted to spend some Cents, those bloggers did not use Flattr. So, my reward for them often ended in a Retweet. Maybe Retweets are the killer of positive blog comments…

The main problem many bloggers saw in Flattr was that it will be challenging to get attention for this payment theory outside the bloggosphere. Sounded like: “Bloggers will pay themselves and thus reward their work within an inner circle of the blogging community.” One of the reasons why I finally decided to remove the button from my blog.

Now, Flattr starts -in cooperation with Bambuser, Twingly and Posterous– the “Pay a Blogger Day!” on November, 29th. They intend to start a movement with the mission “Give something back to bloggers!” A good idea…

How to reward a blogger’s work?
If I may inspire you -companies, marketers and managers- with reward opportunities for bloggers, then maybe you want to read this…

a) Companies that have used shared knowledge to improve their business could write a reference quote for the blogger why and how they benefit from reading a blog. It could be a comment, tweet or a blog post on their blog. Just be creative…!

b) Managers that have used shared knowledge for their career purposes could send a present when they think the blogger has deserved it (does not need to be on the “Pay a blogger day!”). A flower (digital or real), a freebie of your products or an invite to a paid for workshop about corporate blogging. And hey, chances are high, bloggers might write about it. Just be clever…!

c) Marketers that have used shared knowledge for their campaign ideas could start thinking about whether they shovel money into a print grave, rely on TV reach or hope for radio commercial payback. Maybe they want to start sponsor a blogger who is worth it as they act like brandvangelist, testimonial or brand advocate for a brand or company. And why are not many marketers trying to make use of bloggers in the offline world? Just be curious…!

d) Followers, fans, “plusers” and bloggers that have used shared knowledge could start discussing the monetization of their work in an authentic collaborative manner. Do you want banners ads, text links, affiliate programs, brand advocate prgrams, or…? What is authentic blog monetization? Or is it reputation only? In short: money, products or reputation currency like Floout.me?

Here is how Flattr wants to inspire you to reward a blogger…

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Think about the thoughts and then start acting! I am sure, bloggers know how to say “Thank you” and all bloggers would love to see some of these rewarding opportunities. Right…?

Active or passive? Don't forget the "Social" in Social Media!

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The last two weeks I have been on the road in Germany, Austria and Italy, and it was great being in the offline world. Speaking engagements and panel moderations with real people, virtuals aside most of the time. Sometimes I went online in the breaks but did not know what to post or what value I could share with my social graph. Sometimes as there just was nothing exciting. Sometimes as time did not allow it. And to be honest, I did not even have the creative spirit between webinars and seminars for my quality standards. Productivity had to come to a rest.

I just preferred being quiet. And guess what: It does not hurt! Probably nobody missed me. My messages. My input. My sharing.

Often I just reacted. Saying “Happy One!” to my friends or business partners. Giving quick feedback on questions I was not even personally addressed. People liked it though. And I realized how great it is to work with teams that appreciate the ideas and thoughts you give just them without sharing every joke or funny story straight away. I found that approach of doing conversation and being productive quite “social” last week.

Stimulation instead of penetration.

At some stage I wanted to participate and be more active in the conversations with my social graph again. So I checked Twitter what’s up. In the first five tweets I found the video below which was a perfect kick-off for the training I had the pleasure to do. A big insurance company had offered me the chance to train their coaches and internal personal (executive) consultants on Social Media strategy.

I started off with the video below and I can assure you: We came back to the message of the video, the tactical ingredients and the strategy topics at least 25 times in two days. And I told them again and again… “Don’t forget the “Social” in Social Media! Let’s be honest: How often do we forget it?

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Study: Users „like“ brands for deals, discounts and coupons

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Harald Wanetschka / pixelio.de

While Vitrue just found out how to get more “Likes” and engagement on mobiles, another new study by Nielsen/McKinsey’s NM Incite shows what the real value of “Likes” is. Although many brand marketers are working on the ROI, most companies still try to find some more value in the social engagement of consumers.

The Nielsen/McKinsey’s NM Incite global online consumers’ research states that the main reason for following or liking a brand or company on social networks is to receive discounts and special offers.
“While some may argue that consumers’ interest in discounts has faded, Nielsen data shows the desire for deals is still strong worldwide,” concluded NM Incite.

The results correspond with the study by ExactTarget and CoTweet from last year. The former study made clear that 40% of brand fans like a page predominantly for their doscounts and promotions.

The new NM Incite finds even higher figures. Almost 60% of US social media users visit social networks to receive coupons or promotions. And even more, 23% do this on a weekly basis. 45% of North American consumers had the strongest interest in using social media for deals, followed by consumers in Asia-Pacific (34%) and Latin America (33%).

Social deals hunters “Like” at home and at workplace
For most people it does not matter whether they are at home or at their workplace when using the benefits of the Social Web. A sample of ten major markets shows that nearly 40% of active Web users check coupons and rewards sites such as Groupon, Coupons.com and Living Social from home and work computers in September. However, there are respondents -under the age of 20 and 55- to-59-year-olds- who were less likely to follow brands for discounts. Here friends’ recommendations are the drivers for social engagement.

Spot On!
“Social deal hunters” are obviously also visitors of social networks and blogs. NM Incite found a strong overlap. In their test phase in September, 43% of visitors to social networks and blogs also visited a coupons or rewards site. And, 44% of Facebook’s audience and 63% of Twitter’s audience visited these deal sites. The study concludes that Facebook becomes a key source of traffic to Groupon and Living Social. Groupon’s and Living Social’s visitors came directly from Facebook. This also shows the link between deals and social networking sites, and how companies can motivate consumers to deals.

Study: Text and image-based posts are best performers for Facebook mobile pages

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With over 350 million active mobile users across 475 wireless operators worldwide on Facebook’s mobile sites, marketers wonder which tactics they should be using to generate higher engagement levels. But also Facebook’s new iPad app and their mobile site shows that also Facebook knows about the value mobile offers to their business.

A new study by Vitrue shows how people are using Facebook on their mobile devices. It also explains how they are interacting with brand. The study finds that text and image-based posts on Facebook brand pages in mobile generate the highest engagement levels (21.5% and 20.4% of “Likes”).

Video, applications and Flash animation are following the leading types of posts in performance. The traditional site tend to generate higher interaction rates for video, apps and Flash. The reason might be the larger screen and better bandwidth.

The study concludes that shorter posts are better for mobile Facebook pages. Short posts of not more than 70 characters received more Likes and comments than longer ones. Likes increased 4.3% on shorter posts, and comments even jumped up to 31%.

Commenting and liking on Facebook seems to be growing these days. In general, mobile Likes as a proportion of all Facebook Likes increased from 18% to 24% during the three-month period while mobile comments rose from 9% to 20% of all comments.

Thursday through Sunday were best times for Facebook marketers in mobile. The later part of the week and the weekend were the best times for brands to increase Likes on mobile Facebook pages. Thursday and Saturday peaked on „Likes“ and Tuesday reached a low. Friday achieved highest rate of comments.

Liking in hourly mobile spikes between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. EST was the best time, and then the afternoon hours. Comments were quite similar with peak activity at three specific times: 1 a.m., 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., and 9 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Spot on!
Mobile keeps us up to date on and with Social Media. And the buzz effect seems to be working on mobile alongside the growth of your audience. Vitrue separated brand pages in two groups: Those with more than 100,000 fans and those with more than 1 million fans. The group with 1 million fans was driving higher engagement rates. Large fan pages saw a higher percentage of comments from mobile than less popular ones (4.51% vs. 3.23%).