These stats prove it!
This video (only a few minutes long) is worth a watch, some great insight into Facebook usage.
You can see the clip on Facebook here.
Here are 10 things that I learnt
1. Two thirds of Brits use Facebook
2. It's popular with 1 in 5 of online minutes being spent on the site
3. We average 130 friends, with 30% of all users being over 50
4. 71% of users connect daily - with 67% of 18-34 year olds connecting several times per day
5. 62% of users watch TV whilst on Facebook
6. More 18-34 users can be reached through Facebook than through TV
7. 19 million people use the mobile app, that's 62%
8. 37% ask for brand recommendation via Facebook
9. Where most active midday but tablet usage is higher in the evening
10. 60% of users are…
Google+ communities and 24 other minor new features
Value/Importance: [rating=2]
Recommended link: Google+ Communities Announcement
Google+ is certainly continuing to grow. In the announcement of this launch, Google reminds us about the adoption rate with these new figures:
“Today Google+ is the fastest-growing network thingy ever. More than 500 million people have upgraded, 235 million are active across Google (+1’ing apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search…), and 135 million are active in just the stream”.
So we have to be aware of new features and question their value for marketing. How relevant do you think the new Communities feature is?
Google+ Communities
Remember Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups? Well, although these quietly continue to exist, the latest version of these is Google+ Communities. As with the equivalents on Facebook and LinkedIn there are public and private groups. Differences are that you can offer hangouts and Events to group members…
... advice on developing a social business strategy
If your work involves planning how social media and social business can support your business I recommend following the Ogilvy Slideshare channel.
Current trends in social media marketing
A recent share from the sister Social @ Ogilvy channel caught my eye recently. It's short, sweet and impactful with each current trend in social media supported by a visual.
Social Business Strategy
Also recently posted by John Bell, Global Managing Director of Social@Ogilvy, this outlines a "plan describing a simple and practical way for business leaders to think about gaining the benefits of social behaviors (and the technologies supporting those behaviors)".
Social media for financial services
Only relevant if you work in this challenging sector, but…
Social media campaign tools can save you from developing and maintaining bespoke social apps
Popular social media management tools such as HootSuite are great for posting simple social media updates, interacting with your followers and tracking responses. But their capabilities can be lacking when you want to use more interactive tools like surveys or contests to engage your audience on Facebook and other social networks.
I've recently written a report for Smart Insights members where I compare social media campaign and community-building tools which reviews the options in detail. In this post I give a flavour of what some of these tools offer. In the guide we review the alternatives and give examples of campaigns created with each tool to inspire campaigns.
The benefits of using social media campaign management tools
The main purpose of the tools featured is to help marketers and agencies go beyond basic status updates to launch promotions…
Using Google+ Ripples and other free tools to connect with influencers
Influencer outreach should be a core approach in today's marketing. Google+ gives great new options for identifying and interacting with opinion leaders and industry experts who have the ability to influence others to take positive action. Those interactions may include sharing content, links or even signing up to newsletters or product demos.
Google+ is a very powerful 'information network', a place where many people (100 million active according to the latest estimates) go to connect with others around their interests and passions. Whilst Google+ may not have the sheer size in numbers of Facebook (with over one billion users), those active on Google+ are enthusiastic and highly engaged.
One of the benefits of seeking out influencers on Google+ is the impact Google+ content is having on natural search results. Unlike Facebook or Twitter, where search engines are…
Although interacting through social media can be time-consuming, stressful even, many aspects can be automated or you can rely on organic sharing. In other words, with just a little bit of setup work and steady management from a company you can reap the rewards without so much effort. Businesses often get caught up in the hype of scheduling tools, analytics, and the numbers game, and while this is important, there are other techniques.
Now don’t get me wrong—scheduling tools and careful Social Media analysis is great, and in many cases necessary. You want to make things easier, and these tools really are helpful. However, there are also ways that you can get your friends and followers to do a little bit of promotion and work for you. All it takes it a little bit of preparation.
How to make sure you’re using the built-in advantages of Social Media?
If you want to stop…
Social Business Index 2012 shows Top 20 Social Businesses worldwide
Through 2012 there has been a shift from discussing narrow social media tactics such as engaging audiences through social networks to broader strategies of integrating social interactions between customers, employees and partners across business processes as social business. At the start of the year, as one example of a social business leader, we shared this video from Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts where she explains her vision of how Social Business will transform her brand.
This new infographic shared by Forbes shows the World’s Top 20 social brands as rated by the Dachis Group Social Business Index. Most of the organisations are US-based, but there are some European and Asian businesses further down the list.
To find out more about the scope of social business see this post from Jim Hamill, where…
New techniques to assess the impact of Facebook ads on conversions
Value (larger businesses): [rating=4] (smaller companies): [rating=1]
Recommended link: Techcrunch summary
With recent research being used to assert by Forrester and Business Insider that Facebook and Twitter Do Almost Nothing for Sales, this is an interesting measurement initiative by Facebook that urgently needs to prove to advertisers and shareholders alike that Facebook does influence sales.
The measurement approaches applies to Facebook advertising rather than wider Facebook marketing using company pages. There is certainly a need to prove the value of Facebook advertising with high profile advertisers like GM terminating a $10 million investment in Facebook advertising earlier in the year.
The new ad tracking options in Facebook
1. View tags give a method of placing cookies on users’ devices where they view a Facebook ad. View Tags are supported for Marketplace ads and Premium ads in Self Serve. I’ve marked this feature as…
... and who isn't?
Google+ can no longer really be called "new" since it was launched over 18 months ago and is now estimated to have 400 million users of which 100 million are active.
To mark the launch of the new guide to Smarter Marketing using Google+, which I have written with Liz Edwards, the end of this post shows 10 examples of brands who are active on Google+ and using it to sell through daily promotions mixed with other interactive content. But this isn't the whole story of Google+, some brands don't seem convinced or perhaps they or their agencies aren't organised enough to communicate regularly. So we thought we'd start with these...
Examples of brands who AREN'T using Google+ actively
As we were preparing the guide we noticed that many companies have been unable to sustain their commitment to Google+. Surprising when you think of their scale and the…
5 Reasons why Facebook Edgerank shouldn't be taken for granted and how to improve it
Each time you check your Facebook account, it’s a given that you’re going
to check your News Feed. Why? Because you want to know what's going on with
your friends, what new things they’re checking out, and how you can be a part of it.
But Facebook doesn’t let you see everything each of your 500 friends is doing. It would end up being such a huge, fast-moving mess on your feed that reading an update would tire you out. This is why Facebook introduced Edgerank.
What is Facebook Edgerank?
Edgerank is an algorithm Facebook uses in order to determine what should appear on a user’s News Feed by looking at your interactions and your interests so that it can show you what you most…
