Most Marketers Use Social Media, But are New to It

A majority of marketers are using social media in their marketing efforts, but most have only been using it for a few months or less, according to a new survey from SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Nine in 10 Marketers Use Social Media Findings of the “2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report” indicate that nine in 10 marketers (91%) are currently using social media as part of their marketing efforts. Small businesses were slightly more likely to be using social media.

Experience Growing, But Still Low A significant combined 65% of marketers have either just started using social media (22%) or only been using it for a few months (43%). Another 31% have been using social media for a few years, up from 23% in 2009. Tellingly, only 3% of marketers have no experience with social media but plan to use it, while 0% of marketers have no experience with social media and no plans to use it. More B2B companies have been using social media longer (79.5% reported months or more) than their B2C counterparts (68.7% indicated months or longer).

Most Marketers Use Social Media at Least Six Hours Weekly A combined 56% of marketers use social media for six hours or more a week, and 30% use it for 11 hours or more on a weekly basis. It’s interesting to note that a combined 12.5% of marketers spend more than 20 hours each week on social media. The largest group used social media one to 5 hours per week (about 38%). Forty-three percent of people in this group are spending four to five hours per week on social media activities. Three quarters (76%) of marketers are spending at least four hours each week on their social media marketing efforts. More Experience Equals More Usage There is a direct relationship between how long marketers have been using social media and their weekly time commitment.

For people just beginning with social media, the median weekly time commitment was one hour per week. However, for marketers who have been doing this for a few months or longer, the median jumps to 10 hours per week.

Almost Half of Global Marketers Use SocNets Close to half of global marketers currently use social media in their marketing efforts, according to a recent study from marketing technology provider Unica. Reflecting the rapid explosion in the popularity of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter among consumers, a combined 80% of marketers currently use social media or plan to in the future. Forty-seven percent of marketers currently use social media. Another 23% plan to use it in the next 12 months, and 10% plan to use it in more than 12 months. Only 11% have no plans to use social media, and 9% are not sure.

In addition, comparing US and Canadian marketers with their European counterparts, the study reveals that a much higher percentage of marketers in North America (58%) currently use social media than marketers in Europe (34%).

About the Survey: SocialMediaExaminer.com surveyed 1,898 respondents, of which 98% were business owners or employees, 1% were students and 1% unemployed, via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and email during a five-day period in January 2010.

Inside Pixar’s Leadership

Un video que vale la pena ver

How To Be Relevant

It's important for a brand to understand their new role as a Publisher. It's important for a brand to understand that nothing happens unless they are interesting. It's also important for a brand to understand that none of that matters unless they are relevant.

A lot of people confuse "being relevant" with simply following a "trend" or "fad." You can quibble over the semantics of that last sentence, but think about American Idol and what Simon Cowell constantly attempts to reinforce to the young, aspiring singers in the early days of the competition (and no, I too can't believe that I'm using an American Idol reference here). Cowell constantly lets these artists know when they are (and when they're not) being relevant in terms of their age, their song selection and the general zeitgeist of the world. It's a great question for a brand to constantly question and prod...

Are we, truly, relevant to our consumers and the industry we serve?

When you think about some of the best Creative Directors in advertising, you can see one common thread amongst their varying looks, style and approaches. For the most part, the creative folks who are at the top of their game are either culturally relevant or are directly tied in to the many various components of our society that inspire them to be relevant. Relevancy is such a complex concept for most brands because they do tend to confuse what it means to be relevant versus getting caught up in trends and fads.

Being relevant is (and can be) many different things to many different people and industries.

We are at a unique moment in time when Social Media enables and empowers everyone to publish their thoughts to the world. What makes it even more unique is that a lot of the focus (for many people and brands) is in using these channels to help them reach a bigger and broader audience. Prior to all of this, we had traditional media and a very fixed/finite amount of companies publishing content for the masses. Now, we have this conundrum where we have to become better human editors to sift through the masses of content (for more on this, please read: Mass Media Or Mass Content - What's Worse?). Who comes out on top? Which type of content wins?

It's not those that are publishers, and it's not those that are interesting. The ones that come out on top are the ones that are relevant.

How does one become relevant? Ahhh... that is the secret sauce (the mystery... the little black box). It's some parts imagination, some parts curiosity, some parts hubris, some parts creativity, some parts execution, and some parts insights. Those that are able to find some magical (and personal) concoction of those parts are, typically, those who do become relevant. Awesome timing doesn't hurt either.

Think about Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogs, etc... Who do you follow? Who can't you live without? It's always those who are relevant

Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media

Un poco largo pero bastante bueno, sobre todo para las Agencias de Publicidad. Aunque nos enseña mucho a todos los demás.

Ad Agency New Business Through Social Media

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Build Your Brand a Social Content Ladder in 5 Steps

April 6th, 2010
Written By: Jay Baer

Sure, social media takes a lot of time, but probably not as much time as you think.

Too many companies and organizations are reinventing the content wheel for every social outpost they maintain. A better approach is to create a content ecosystem that allows you to repurpose and cascade your best information.

Instead of a series of self-contained initiatives, build yourself a content ladder.

Here are 5 steps to get there:

1. Understand Taxonomy

If you want a new pair of glasses, the Yellow Pages is a frustrating neighborhood. Look under “G” for “glasses.” Not found. Look under “E” for “eye glasses.” Nope. Only when you look under “O” for “optometrists” do you find what you need. It’s an example of an industry with poor understanding of taxonomy – the words and phrases used to describe products and services.

Taxonomy is incredibly important in social media because it’s the most direct link between the worlds of social and search marketing. Remember, your most important customer is Google, and your content ladder needs to maximize your chances for search success.

When creating and promoting social content, include specific, relevant keywords and search phrases wherever possible. (This is especially important now that Google and Bing are incorporating social content into real-time search results).

Find keywords and search phrases to include in these four places:

Google Analytics (or whatever Web site analytics program you’re using)

Look at your keywords report to find phrases that are driving traffic to your site. I recommend using a mixture of your Top 25 phrases and some that are highly relevant to your business, but perhaps aren’t sending as much traffic as you’d like at present.

Social Mention (or a paid social media listening package like Radian6, if you have one)

Go to www.socialmention.com and search for your company or product name (in quotes), and set the pull-down to “all.” You’ll then see a search results page that shows a comprehensive list of places you’ve been mentioned on the social Web.

On the left hand side, you’ll see a keywords chart that lists common terms associated with your name in social media. Consider adding some of these to your list if they differ from your analytics results.

Twitter Lists

How your company or product are referred to in consumer-created Twitter lists can yield important taxonomy insights.

Go to your Twitter account, and click on “listed” next to your followers count, and see how the lists that include your Twitter account are named. Consider including some of these phrases to your master keyword list.

Incorporate your phrases into your social content wherever possible, but only when relevant. Nobody appreciates keyword spam on the social Web.

2. Seek Content Inspiration

Creating successful social media content isn’t just status updates. Take your top keywords (including your company name, product name, etc.) and search for them on Google, Bing, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and SocialMention.

What shows up in these search results? How much photo and video content appears? Content from your competitors? From fans? You’ll be amazed at how many content-creation ideas this simple exercise can generate.

3. Understand Your Frequency Schema

The key to a content ladder is organizing your rungs. Your scenario may of course vary, but for illustration purposes let’s assume you have a Twitter account, Facebook fan page, blog, and email newsletter.

To create an efficient ladder, you must understand the comparative publishing schedules that you typically employ for each of these outposts. Ordered from most frequent publication to least, let’s assume that your program looks like this:

• Twitter (5x/day)
• Facebook (2x/day)
• Blog (3x/week)
• Email (1x/week)

Create your own integrated frequency schedule to better understand how your outposts interrelate.

4. Test & Track
Create a piece of content (remember to include your key phrases), and post it to the first rung in the ladder (Twitter, in this case) Use a tracking system (I prefer bit.ly) to determine how popular that specific piece of content was with your audience.

Remember however, that many factors influence popularity at the individual content piece level. Don’t make assumptions – test them. Vary time of day, day of week, phrasing, link placement, and other options, and thoroughly document your results.

Social media scientist Dan Zarrella has some excellent research on social content best practices.

5. Tweak and Repurpose
The content pieces that are most successful on the first rung of your ladder should be appropriately tweaked and redeployed on the second rung of your ladder (Facebook).

Test and track content success on Facebook using bit.ly (or number of likes and comments), and add the most effective content pieces to the next rung on the ladder (blog). Note that as you move down the ladder, your repurposing will be more complex – a blog post requires substantially more content than a Facebook update in most cases.

If a piece of content is successful on your blog (measured by visits as determined by Google Analytics, perhaps), add it to the next rung – your email newsletter.

By understanding how your various social outposts can work together at the content level, you can develop meaningful efficiencies. Also, because a sprinkling of the content included in the lower rungs of your ladder has already proven successful on higher rungs, the relevancy and popularity of your content should increase for most fans/readers/subscribers.

Of course, this content ladder approach assumes that you do not have the exact same audience for each of your social outlets, and I believe that to be an entirely realistic assumption. You may have some overlap (especially with Facebook and Twitter), but consumption of status updates and consumption of blog posts and email newsletters are meaningfully different activities, and attract different groups of fans.

What do you think? Worth a try?

Medios y turismo, lejos de las noticias y las tendencias

viajes Abril 5th, 2010
http://www.blogdeviajes.com.ar/articulos/medios-y-turismo-lejos-de-las-noticias-y-las-tendencias
 
Allá por julio de 2004, escribía en este blog que las secciones periodísticas históricamente más recientes, entre las que encuadro al turismo, “no tienen, al menos en el sentido tradicional del término, noticias; más bien lo que vemos son eventos -algo en lo que se especializan los agentes de prensa-, tendencias, consejos y recorridos”. Se puede matizar un poco la afirmación; se podrían encontrar noticias en el mercado de viajes, ligadas a la aparición inesperada de sucesos como desastres naturales, conflictos políticos o decisiones de gobierno. Pero, cuando revisamos los medios especializados, efectivamente vamos a encontrar coberturas ligadas a eventos, recorridos y viajes puntuales. También algo de tendencias, pero no mucho.


Si alguna vez los medios compitieron por la primicia, o la capacidad de construir rápidamente la mejor cobertura de un tema, los medios especializados en turismo nunca trabajaron en ese espacio. Si bien hay secciones diarias en algunos medios gráficos o de Internet, la mayor parte de las publicaciones especializadas suelen ser semanales, como los suplementos de los diarios, o mensuales, como las revistas especializadas para el sector.

Entonces: se puede entender que no compitan por las noticias. Incluso, se puede asumir como razonable que se concentren en destinos, recorridos y eventos, en tanto el material que se extrae de allí puede ser relevante. Lo que me cuesta un poco más es dar cuenta de porqué no hay más trabajo sobre las tendencias. En particular, en muchos medios especializados veo una llamativa ausencia de análisis sobre el futuro del turismo en relación con temas de políticas públicas, problemas energéticos, calentamiento global, etc. Muchas de estas tendencias pueden aparecer como “malas noticias”, pero es bastante sabido que las oportunidades de negocios aparecen en ocasiones de la percepción de un riesgo futuro, o del interés de evitar algún tipo de problemas específicos. Y también se puede buscar contraponer esto con datos positivos; hay una buena cantidad de trabajos que analizan como en los próximos años el turismo contribuirá de manera positiva en los productos brutos internos de muchas naciones, y en sus mercados de trabajo.

Que no compitan por la noticia es algo que damos por sentado. Pero que los medios especializados en turismo no dediquen esfuerzos relevantes a dar cuenta de las tendencias esenciales del mercado turístico es un tema que no se puede dejar pasar. A veces, hay que salir del presente, del evento, del viaje puntual, para mirar un poco más allá. Al fin y al cabo, en algún momento sus lectores van a necesitar mirar más allá del día a día del negocio.

How Safe is Mexico? - AOL Travel News

How Safe is Mexico? - AOL Travel News Importante de leer y difundir. México es seguro!!

Gestiona tu Reputación Online: Monitoriza (Principales herramientas de monitorización)

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Gestiona tu Reputación Online: Monitoriza (Principales herramientas de monitorización)

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