The Top 10 Marketing Sites for Social Media Marketing Trends
Great list from Brian Solis:
http://www.briansolis.com/2011/07/the-top-marketing-sites-for-social-media-ma...
apryl's posterous |
a trip into the preposterous |
...since I've posted here. I've been so caught up in keeping up an agency space that I've neglected my own. No more. Here's a great start. I found this article on Mashable yesterday:
Marketers do need to continue their education. I've been keeping mine up and I'll be sure to update my bookshelf here.
Check out the Mashable post I'm talking about: http://mashable.com/2012/01/18/marketing-lifelong-learning/
The recent tragedy in Japan reminds us once again of the importance of planning for disruption. Traditionally, crisis and disruption management has been centered, rightfully, on business continuity procedures and, to a lesser extent, communications.
Things change quickly in the U.S. smartphone market.
According to The Nielsen Company’s monthly surveys of U.S. mobile consumers from July-September 2010, consumers planning on getting a new smartphone had a very clear preference: A third (33%) wanted an Apple iPhone. Slightly more than a quarter (26%) said they desired a device with the Google Android operating system (OS). And 13 percent said they wanted a RIM Blackberry.
But consumer preferences can be fickle. Those same surveys for January 2011 – March 2011 show just how much things have changed: According to the latest figures, 31 percent of consumers who plan to get a new smartphone indicated Android was now their preferred OS. Apple’s iOS has slipped slightly in popularity to 30 percent and RIM Blackberry is down to 11 percent. Almost 20 percent of consumers are unsure of what to choose next.
Those dynamics are already translating into sales. Half of those surveyed in March 2011 who indicated they had purchased a smartphone in the past six months said they had chosen an Android device. A quarter of recent acquirers said they bought an iPhone and 15 percent said they had picked a Blackberry phone.
Which brings us to the installed base of smartphone consumers: As of March 2011, 37 percent of mobile consumers who owned a smartphone had a device with an Android OS. Apple’s iOS, claimed by 27 percent of consumers, is now outpacing Blackberry, which has 22 percent of the market.
Today at the AppNation conference in San Francisco, The Nielsen Company’s Jonathan Carson, CEO, Telecom, unveiled recent research on U.S. consumers who use mobile applications.
According to Nielsen’s latest survey of mobile app downloaders, that is, consumers who have downloaded an app in the past 30 days, if you want to understand the consumer landscape for mobile apps, you have to understand the Apple iOS and Google Android ecosystems.
That’s an oversimplification of the whole and varied reality of the web, but how we represent ourselves online generally boils down to a core belief in either transparency or anonymity. You either present your real self online and take credit for your actions, or you let your actions speak for themselves while maintaining your privacy.
And who’s to say which modus operandi is truly superior? Two champions of the web, 4chan founder Chris Pool and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, each fall neatly on either side of the debate.
As passionate as Zuckerberg is about people using the Internet to forge and maintain real connections with one another, Poole is equally adamant that many people need anonymity for creativity, activism and simple safety.
So here’s a handy infographic, courtesy of the fine folks at real-time conversation company Namesake, that delineates the advantages, pitfalls and rallying cries behind the anonymity and transparency philosophies.
Which side are you on?
Click image to see larger version.
[source: Namesake.com]
More About: anonymity, anonymous, infographic, transparency, transparent
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New to me is Number Picture:
Number Picture is a web application that enables you to come up with, easily create, and share fresh and interesting tools for visualizing data - that others can then use to visualize their own data.
These tools we call templates and they take in anybody else's data, shake it around a bit, add some sugar and spice, and then output it structured in a certain way in the form of a picture that hopefully is nice to look at, keeps the viewer engaged, and provides a refreshing change to all the millions and billions of bar graphs and pie charts that we see in our everyday lives.
We provide you with the tools to easily create your own templates and it is our wish to make it as easy as possible for you to do this. All templates that are created are free for anyone to use and all Number Pictures made are freely available for anybody to view. If privacy is an issue for you: you can also sign up for a premium membership and keep your Number Pictures private.
Take some time looking through their gallery.
Visibli analyzed more than 200 million Facebook users in February and March and tracked their engagement across various Fan Pages. Looking at the data, Audi was found to have the most-engaged fans out there — at least among pages with more than 100,000 “Likes.” For each status update, the automaker got more than 225 “Likes” per 100,000 fans, which bested even Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga.
It’s not clear why Audi’s Page scored so high although the brand is currently Like-gating a video and may have Like-gated other media to increase such engagement. Saif Ajani, CEO and co-founder of Visibli, says he doesn’t know why Audi came off so well. “We’re trying to find out ourselves,” he says. An Audi rep says he hasn’t seen the study and is declining comment for the moment. The only other brand on the list was American Airlines. (See chart below.)
The study also revealed that, for brands and media companies, more fans leads to less overall engagement, but for artists, the opposite is true. On average, artists get 92 “Likes” per post, which is almost twice what brands and media companies get. On the other hand, media organizations get more comments per post (43 is the average) than artists (17) or brands (9). Ajani speculates that fans of artists might be more likely to have friends who are into similar music. “If you like John Legend and I see that, I might jump on [to the conversation] as well,” Ajani says. “If you like a CNN article, I might be less inclined.”
Finally, the study found shelf-life of a status update seems to be about a day. Within the first seven hours, a Facebook post gets about 80% of all the “Likes” it’s going to get. By 22 hours, it’s gotten 95% of all its “Likes.” That, at least, is better than the lifespan of a tweet. According to a recent study by Sysomos, 96.9% of replies to a tweet happen in the first hour.
Visibili’s report comes after Buddy Media recently looked at best practices in Facebook staus updates and discovered that posts on Thursdays and Fridays performed best, and posts of 80 characters or less got 27% more engagement than those that were more than 80 characters.
Image courtesy of US Time News
More About: audi, facebook, trending, twitter, Visibli
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Whereas before, detailed analytical info had been available via raw data from downloadable spreadsheets, now there’s a lot more at-a-glance info. We spoke with the two YouTube product managers responsible for the launch to find out more.
“After talking and meeting with a lot of partners over the last few months, the primary need and use case we found was that, understandably, a lot of partners want to come in quickly within the browser interface to see how they’re doing, see how their videos are perfoming and get some feedback by which they can optimize their videos or their creative process,” explains Andy Stack, YouTube product manager for partner reporting and financial profitability.
“So this is really a goal of putting some industrial strength analytics into a nice web interface that anybody from a blossoming YouTube individual star to a marketing professional at a major record label will be able to quickly browse to see how their videos are doing.”
Familiar tools like Hot Spots and the engagement report will still be available, but we’ve taken a moment to highlight the new reports available to you in Partner Analytics that promise much improved data on many aspects of your YouTube content.
With an interface that’s familiar to anyone who has used Google Analytics, the first new report looks at views. You can specify a date range and see how the views trend over time, while the content box allows you to group content at the channel or video level. You can also look at views for any videos you’ve claimed as yours from user generated content.
Particularly useful, you’re now able to see unique viewers, which is something YouTube is introducing for partners with this preview launch. “This is actually a great key metric that our partners can now see to get a very good feel for their actual audience and reach,” says Stack.
“Clearly some users watch multiple videos, so it’s really important for our partners to know from an advertising standpoint, what’s my core audience? What’s my core active audience on a video, or on a channel? So now we’ve got a way for you to view your unique viewers against your views either on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.”
If the age range and gender of your viewers is useful data for you, then the demographics report will be of particular interest. It gives you a chance to break content down by channel level, video level or claimed content level at which point you can see the age groups and gender. A bar graph, pie chart and table will help you visualize the data.
As far as your YouTube earnings go, the new Partner Analytics offers a more up-to-date, and user-friendly format.
“In general there are two sources of revenue for YouTube Partners,” explains Stack. “Either sold directly by YouTube or sold through AdSense for Video. What we’re surfacing here is a way that’s much clearer to see and with very recent timing — we’re delivering this data with just a few days’ delay. Partners are able to see how much the channel is earning them, so this is what they are taking home in terms of money in their pocket.
“A great improvement of this interface, over what has been, is that you can view by video. So if you click on a specific video, you’ll get the earning information for that video. But you can also search on a particular video name, so this is something that is a lot easier to do now. A lot of partners want to know how a certain video is earning over time and now you’re easily able to do that with this interface.”
“This a really exciting feature for our users. We are now breaking out which videos drive the most subscriptions. Previously it was just ‘your channel got X subscriptions, gained X, lost Y and the net is X minus Y.’ Now you can actually see which videos are actually driving those subscriptions,” says Ted Hamilton, YouTube product manager of video analytics.
“This is very important to Partners … who want to be able to tell which of their videos is most successful at driving subscriptions. This helps show how they can repeat those successes or how can they promote those videos more. This is something our users have been really asking for.”
Equally valuable is the column of subscribers lost, which will show the same data, but for users who unsubscribed after watching certain videos.
The playback location report allows you to see where playback is taking place, whether that’s on your own website via embedded videos, on another site, on your channel page, on your YouTube watch page, or on a mobile device. You can also sort this data by geographic location, and by daily, weekly or monthly time lines. When combined with the traffic sources data (below) you’re being offered a very clear idea of how people are discovering your content and just how they are consuming it.
“The traffic sources report allows you to see where your traffic is coming from, which is helpful especially when you drive down to the individual video level. You can break it down to external websites to see what traffic is coming to you via other sites like Facebook or Twitter and a list of other sources,” says Hamilton.
“If you’re viewing the statistics for a particular video, you’ll be able to drill in and see the external website and how many views were from that external website.”
In addition to helping pinpoint those locations on the web where your viewers come in from, the traffic sources will also offer the valuable information about which Google search and YouTube search terms have directed viewers to your content.
These exciting new reports are just the start of what Stack, Hamilton and their respective teams have planned for the future of analytics and insights on YouTube.
An “ad type” report is currently a work-in-progress that will allow you to see how much you are earning per ad type per geographic area. Also in the pipeline is functionality that will allow you to compare various stats on two different videos.
And if you’re a consumer-level user of YouTube, you’ve not been forgotten. “The vast majority of these features will also be available to our consumer users later this year via Insights,” Hamilton told us. He wouldn’t be pressed on an exact timetable, but told us: “You should be seeing a lot of progress over the next three months.”
Which of these new reports will be the most useful to you? What other analysis tools would you like to see YouTube offer? Have your say in the comments below.
Interested in more Video resources? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover information on your favorite Mashable topics. More About: analytics, data, Google, google analytics, video, youtube
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A widely discussed article in Wired last summer posited the idea that the web is dead. The argument, which, on closer inspection appeared based on semantics, predicted that consumers would experience the web via peer-to-peer networks like Facebook and, increasingly, apps, in the future.
If that proves to be the case, a dead web may be good for advertising.
The reason? Aside from search, advertising on the web has been tricky. Consumers generally don’t click on banner ads — especially not on Facebook — and tend to view ads as an intrusion on their web-browsing experience. In contrast, a recent report by Appssavvy (admittedly not a disinterested observer) found that in-app ads perform 11.4 times better than standard banner ads, which means they are almost as effective as search.
That said, app publishers have been working on tweaking the “appvertising” model to make it more effective. Below is an overview of what seems to be working.
Advertising in games is nothing new, but the the old model revolved mostly around product placement. But, as is the case with the TV and movie version of product placement, advertisers learned that having a Coke can in the background of a scene isn’t likely to sell many Cokes, but having a character drink it in a key moment — especially when the character is really thirsty and that Coke looks so good — is another story. When it comes to in-app games, the thirst-quenching Coke’s equivalent is having a brand pop up in a way that enhances the game experience.
For instance, last year, Microsoft ran a program with Appssavvy for Windows 7 in nqmoco’s GodFinger All-Stars. In that game, players control their own planet. The aim is to expand the planet and earn money, among other things, to get to the next level. So, Appssavvy, working with Universal McCann, brought a Windows Cloud into the game. Players could visit the Cloud the same way they’d visit their friends’ planets and earn in-game currency for doing so. If they wanted to, they could also click through a mobile landing page and learn more about Windows 7. “It leveraged activity [users] were already doing,” says Michael Burke, co-founder of Appssavvy. “They don’t mind the advertising.” Well, at least an impressively large minority didn’t — during the six-week promotion, 10% of the game’s players visited the Windows Cloud for a total of 6.1 million visits.
Another approach is to forget about blending into the game and instead ask players to sit through an ad in exchange for virtual game currency. That’s the premise behind SocialVibe. In a recent campaign, for instance, SocialVibe gave away currency for Zynga’s various games if users visited The Big Game Tournament, which pitted characters from FarmVille, YoVille, FrontierVille and others in a football game sponsored by Kia. The effort had the highest time-spent-per-user of any SocialVibe game to date — 170 seconds.
Does bribing consumers to watch a commercial really work though? Clearly, some investors think so — SocialVibe just got a $20 million infusion of cash from Norwest Venture Partners last month. And a new company, Kiip, has a twist on this idea. Instead of virtual currency, they get real prizes. For example, if a player reaches a new height record in Doodle Jump, a Kiip notification will let the player know they’ve won a prize. Then a user can enter his email address to redeem the prize. Kiip has a roster of brand partners including Dr Pepper, Carl’s Jr., Popchips and GNC.
Not everyone thinks you have to twist consumers’ arms to get them to look at ads. Many believe that the rise of apps — especially among mobile users — will usher in a new era of more engaging advertising. Chief among the proponents of this belief is Apple’s Steve Jobs, who introduced Apple’s iAd platform in April 2010 as “mobile ads with emotion.” For Apple, though, the platform hasn’t been entirely successful. The company recently cut the entry price for an iAd in half to $500,000 and has reportedly had trouble selling the ads.
But Garrick Schmitt, managing director of experience and platform at Razorfish, says that rich media ads within apps perform much better than standard display ads — though he declines to get specific. Apple, he says, is just reacting to competition. Ads that Razorfish creates on behalf of clients like Best Buy and Westin Hotels are meant to offer more utility — you might say they’re more app-like — than the typical banner ad.
A rich media ad for Westin for instance, invites users to “tap here to warm up.” After that, virtual frost covers the iPhone screen and can be wiped away to reveal pictures of eight Westin Hotels & Resorts in warm climates. (See image above.) A Best Buy ad during the holidays made a game of buying gifts for family members. In another example, Razorfish created an iPhone-based ad for Dockers in 2009 that featured a man who would dance when the phone was shook. “Some ads are very game-like,” says Schmitt. “It’s a playful experience.”
As these examples show, there are a few different schools of thought as to what app-vertising should look like. But the industry has some time to figure things out — right now it isn’t a completely mass medium. Noah Elkin, principal analyst with eMarketer, says that if you’re releasing a mobile app designed to be used on a smartphone, you’re effectively writing off 70% of the market. Though some predict that the user base for smartphones will hit 50% of consumers by the end of this year, Elkin says that figure is too optimistic. It’s also worth noting that early adopters to smartphones may be more engageable than those who buy them a year or so from now.
On the other hand, the mindset of someone who downloads an app may turn out to be more hospitable to advertising than old forms of media –- including the web. “App users are a self-selecting group,” says Elkin. “They tend to be more engaged.”
The Mobile App Trends Series is sponsored by Sourcebits, a leading developer of applications and games for all major mobile platforms. Sourcebits has engineered over 200 apps to date, with plenty more to come. Sourcebits offers design and development services for iPhone, Android and more. Please feel free to get in touch with us to find out how we can help your app stand apart in a crowded marketplace. Follow Sourcebits on Twitter and Facebook for recent news and updates.
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More About: ads, advertising, apps, business, MARKETING, Mobile 2.0
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Surfing the web when I'm not hitting the surf. Read the whole story of my sports obsession here but stay on this page for everything that I find interesting from random lolcats to social media to nerdy metrics. I use this as my virtual filing cabinet for things that I want to refer back to or share later.
