News tagged social networking
You Have Fans, but Low RQS (Sadzies!)
January 10th, 2012Over the past few years, you have been in more than one meeting about how to drive more “likes” to your Facebook page. As we know, getting people to “like” your page/brand is one thing, but getting them to engage is yet a very different story. We consistently remind clients that one goal (and, from our POV),one of the most important goals) for increasing Facebook fans is finding both quantity and quality.
To aid our clients in understanding how their Facebook page (as well as other social efforts) are performing beyond just the number of fans, we use an SQS (Social Quality Score) – and yes… yet another term… (sigh).
There are four different metrics which are typically evaluated to determine your SQS:
- Number of Fans: Fairly straight-forward definition here; simply the number of fans on your Facebook page
- Growth: It is possible that your Facebook fan page sees spikes in new fans when you have a special promotion/marketing push. This should be expected. However, what type of growth do you have during non-promotional/marketing times? More importantly, when mapping out your fan growth month over month, is your percentage of fan growth increasing or decreasing? A consistent non-promotional/marketing fan growth is optimal in showing how consumers feel about your brand.
- Engagement: A basic measurement here is how many posts are made on average in response to your postings and how many posts do your fans make independently of your efforts
- Positive interaction: Of posts generated by your fans, what percentage are positive?
Now, how to calculate your RQS:
Well, we cannot give you the entire formula of course! However, by assigning weight and index against each of these metrics you will obtain your SQS score.
Tags: social media, social networking
Posted in Factōids | No Comments »
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words (On Facebook)
November 3rd, 2011A new study by social media marketing firm Vitrue found that image-based posts on Facebook brand pages in mobile drew the highest engagement levels:
- Image posts received 22% more engagement than video posts
- Image posts received 54% more engagements than text posts
- But, video posts received 27% more engagement than text posts
So, image and video are superior to text-only posts. That makes sense. A picture is, indeed, worth a thousand words. However, image posts proved more compelling than video. Why? Potentially, videos are more of a time commitment and users are often just skimming Facebook for content.
Good news for advertisers on the effectiveness front! Video is time-consuming for the marketer, and creating good quality video is challenging. Find compelling and relevant images to include as part of your social media strategy to engage consumers.
Tags: social media, social networking
Posted in Factōids | No Comments »
Old Peoples’…er..Adults’ Use of Social Networking Sites On The Rise
September 27th, 2011“For the times they are a-changin’.”
That’s a cultural reference for all the Boomers out there who are using social media sites more than ever. In fact, among the Boomer-aged segment of internet users age 50-64, social networking site usage on a typical day grew a significant 60% (from 20% to 32%).
The frequency of social networking site usage among young adult internet users under age 30 was stable over the last year – 61% of online Americans in that age segment now use social networking sites on a typical day, compared with 60% one year ago.
Overall, two-thirds of adult internet users (65%) say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago. That’s more than double the percentage that reported social networking site usage in 2008 (29%). For the first time in Pew Internet surveys it means that half of all adults (50%) use social networking sites. The pace at which new users have flocked to social networking sites has been staggering; when we first asked about social networking sites in February of 2005, just 8% of internet users – or 5% of all adults – said they used them.
What does this mean for marketers? The social media universe is getting a little gray, and you may want to investigate it as part of the mix if you are targeting Boomers.
Tags: Baby Boomers, social networking
Posted in Factōids | No Comments »
Social Networks – is 380% Growth a Good Thing?
July 8th, 2011As we continue looking at the optimal marketing mix for our clients, the new white paper from Borrell caught our eye. Combined advertising and promotional spending will hit $38 billion by 2015, roughly 440% more than the $7 billion projected for 2010-a massive increase to say the least.
SocNet Promo Spending to Grow 380%
Breaking the combined social network marketing spending stream into advertising and promotional streams, “The Social Networking Explosion: Ad Revenue Outlook” projects that $5 billion of total $7 billion (about 71%) social network marketing spending in 2010 will consist of promotional expenditures.
From 2010 to 2015, social network promotional spending will grow about 380%. In 2011, it will grow 40% to $7 billion, and then slow down to about 14% growth in 2012, totaling $8 billion, However, social network promotional spending will then double to $16 billion in 2013, and continue rapid growth the next year, increasing 31% to $21 billion before slowing again with 12.5% growth to $24 billion in 2015.
SocNet Ad Spending to Grow 600%
Although the data shows social network advertising spending will remain at lower levels than promotional spending through the next five years, the total growth rate will be an even higher 600%.
In 2011, social network ad spending will grow 200%, from $2 billion to $6 billion, putting it on close to an even keel with promotional spending. Ad spending will remain close to promotional spending in 2012, rising almost 17% to $7 billion.
However, in 2013, ad spending will once again lag behind promotional spending, growing a very healthy 43% to $10 billion. Growth will then continue at a still impressive 20% pace to $12 billion in 2014 and 17% pace to $14 billion in 2015.
Consumers Fuel SocNet Marketing Spending Growth
Consumer analysis indicates the rapidly growing marketing spend in social networking is fueled by wildly climbing consumer use of social networking services. For example, comScore indicates Facebook alone had more than 100 million unique visitors in the US last December, out of 400 million registered users worldwide.
The average Facebook visitor came to the site 27 times during that month, almost once a day. As of the end of 2009, one hour in every nine spent online was spent on a social network site. More than two-thirds of the nation’s largest businesses recruit new employees through social networks, and 13% more plan to start this year.
Tags: Consumer Insights, Media Trends, social networking
Posted in Factōids | No Comments »
So, at this party whom should we chat with?
September 2nd, 2010Nearly every day at Oōtem we discuss how to activate a brand’s most valuable consumers via social network activities. We have found that most consumers fit into one of nine different persona buckets. Knowing how to communicate to these personas will aid in fine-tuning your social networking campaigns. Over the next few weeks we will release each of these personas. Since we are Oōtem, we clearly had to start with one of our favorites:
Lovers
“Lovers” are motivated by their personal passions (both off and online). These passions range from the broad categories of entertainment (music, movies, books, ect.), sports, and pets to specific brands. And they tend to seek out others who share their passions. Therefore, you will find a “Lover” on several different social networking sites-each site supporting either a specific passion (dogster.com for the dog lover) and/or more global social networking sites offering niche platforms (one of hundreds of dog pages on Facebook).
“Lovers” respond well to promotions via email, blogs, and social networks if the promotions are on target and authentic. If a promotion is not tailored to their passion, they will not engage. In fact, they will most likely come away with a poor perception of the brand.
Tags: Marketing, social media, social networking
Posted in Factōids | No Comments »
Can You Ever Put a Price Tag on Friendship? Yes… and Apparently it’s $136.38
June 19th, 2010As more qualitative and quantitative studies are being released about the value of earned media, marketers are finally wrapping their heads around the true value of the social network “fan”.
We are so impressed with the latest study from Syncaspe that we wanted to share. The study focuses on the value a brand receives – on average – by each “Fan” on their brand’s Facebook page. Value was determined by five different (frankly, in our POV, well-chosen) factors, since we’ve been measuring the effectiveness of Facebook by the same standards.
1. Product spending- $71.84
2. Brand loyalty- $43.71
3. Propensity to recommend the brand to others- $13.67
4. Brand affinity- $6.79
5. Earned media value-$0.47
It is important to note, that $137 represents the average value. For some brands, Syncapse found a brand’s Facebook Fan to be worth as much as $316, and as little as $0. As we have coached our clients, just because you build a Facebook page and consumers come does not mean the social networking box can be checked. A brand must now engage with these MVBP (most valuable brand participants…yes, another Ootemism).
The study found the average brand’s Facebook fan engages 10x per year with the brand. More important, these MVBPs will recommended the brand at least once per year to someone in their trusted circle.
As we know, lifetime value of a consumer is key to brand health, financial success, and ability to evaluate marketing efforts. Facebook Fans are 28% more likely than non-fans to continue using a brand. Additionally, the power of MVBPs is quite clear when you consider they are 41% more likely than a non-fan to recommend a product to their social network circle.
The importance of inserting a brand in between trusted conversations is clearly demonstrated by the fact 38% of Facebook users are likely to become a fan of a brand after they see a family member or very close friend being a fan of a brand; and the metric only drops to 34% if the person known through Facebook is not a family member nor very close friend. More importantly, the likelihood to try a product if somebody else became a fan is 44% if it was a close family member or friend, and 36% for a Facebook friend.
From a brand health perspective, Facebook fans have “warm fuzzies” for their favorite brands. 81% of fans said they feel connection/empathy with the brand, compared to 39% of non-fans. Another 87% said they felt warmth, gratitude, happy or satisfied, compared to 49% of non-fans. For most marketers, especially those in the CPG space, brand recall and awareness are key in having productive conversations with consumers. From Nielsen they found that consumers had a +10% higher ad recall, +4% higher brand awareness and +2% increase in purchase intent than the non-exposed group. These metrics should be apart of any evaluation of Facebook/Social Networking efforts – DR, Brand or Brand-DR.
Tags: social networking
Posted in Factōids | No Comments »