Whitepaper: 91% of moms use social media regularly
From Scoring Points With Moms - The Secret to Engaging Moms to Try, Buy and Share @ punchtab.com:
Nearly 91% of Moms use social media regularly and spend 2x more time online than the rest of the general population. Moms rely significantly on the online recommendations of other Moms with well over half indicating their purchases were influenced by information on social media sites.
From the accompanying infograph:
Benchmark: best days to post on Facebook, segmented by industry
Buddy Media analysed user engagement from more than 1.800 Facebook Pages from the world's largest brands. Data was collected for two months after all brands were moved tom timeline (April 1 - May 31, 2012).
Facts:
- Posts published 8 PM - 7 AM receive 14% higher interaction than posts between 8 AM - 7 PM
- Brands that post one of two times per day see 19% higher interaction rates
- Pages that post more than seven times per week see a 25% decrease in interaction rates.
- Interaction rate for weekend posts is 14,5% higher than weekday posts, yet only 14% of posts are published on weekends.
Here's the breakdown for publishing industry:
Sundays provide a great opportunity for Facebook fans to catch up on the news of the week, and as a result, interaction rates are 5% higher than average on these days. Mondays see interaction rates 7% below average, so it's best to let people get settled into the workweek before posting Facebook content.
Study: Fab.com best example of social commerce
Social commerce firm 8thBridge announced the results of its second annual Social Commerce IQ report, and Fab.com tops its Social Commerce IQ 25 list, which measures the social commerce strategies of retailers.
From INFOGRAPHIC: Facebook Favorite Fab.com Tops 8thBridge Social Commerce IQ 25 List @ allfacebook.com:
A survey of 1,819 U.S. residents found that 70 percent would rather hear about new products from Facebook friends than from brands; 57 percent have asked Facebook friends for advice before purchasing products; 63 percent share products via Facebook (compared with 25 percent on Twitter and 22 percent on Pinterest), and 54 percent said the total number of likes has no effect on the likelihood of them purchasing products.
And what about Pinterest?
If the adoption rate of Pinterest is any indication of consumer driven change, we expect high growth in these social shopping features in 2013.
Nielsen: the hyper-informed consumer uses social media to drive purchase decisions
Nielsen's 2012 Social Media Report provides some insight into what is driving our collective, global obsession with social media.
One of the trends from the report is the hyper-informed consumer.
Social media is transforming the way that consumers across the globe make purchase decisions. They are using social media to learn about other consumers' experiences, find more information about brands, products and services, and to find deals and purchase incentives.
A marketer’s guide to paying attention to the social web
From How to Effectively Listen on the Social Web [Infographic] @ socialnomics.com:
Targeted social listening helps marketers identify new prospects through monitoring the actions and conversations of potential customers. This monitoring also brings an augmented level of understanding of existing customers based on their behaviors and motivations.
2 step guide:
- Identify relevant data and behaviors: develop a path to purchase by identifying actions that lead to sales.
- Invest in infrastructure: integrate your systems to maximize efficiency.
Lewis' infographic illustrates these 2 steps with the example of marathon runners looking to purchase new shoes.
Which infrastracture investments?
- Monitoring platforms: identify keywords and influential people to find conversations about your topics.
- Marketing automation: capture social profile for lead nurturing; send prompts to opt in for your newsletter, send coupons for purchase
- SMMS (Social Media Management System): schedule and syndicate posts
- CRM (Customer Relationship Management): record sale, continue to track social, sales and customer service activity.
Altimeter report: The Six Ingredients to Measuring the Revenue Impact of Social Media
Altimeter Group identified six primary ways that organizations currently measure the revenue impact of social media, which should be used as a guideline to determine the most effective measurement mix for your business
- Anecdote: Specific examples where social media was known to influence a sale or sales.
- Correlation: Comparing two data sets (for example, number of likes vs. revenue) to determine whether there may be a relationship. Note that most correlations are quite simple, although companies such as MarketShare are working on far more advanced social econometric models.
- Multivariate Testing: Comparing one group exposed to social media content with another that was exposed to different or no content.
- Links and Tagging: Links refer to short links, such as bit.ly, goo.gl, or custom links embedded into content. Tags (and cookies) refer to a piece of code that is embedded into links or URLs for the purpose of conversion attribution.
- Integrated: Integrated refers to apps or Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings with integrated analytics, such as those offered by Buddy Media, Wildfire, or Facebook apps for Timeline.
- Direct Commerce: Addition of an ecommerce storefront to a social platform such as Facebook; frequently referred to as “fcommerce.”
More where this came from:
Customer service on social media platforms: a UK benchmark study
A recent study conducted at New York University for Conversocial, revealed that nearly 90% of consumers, if confronted with unanswered customer complaints on a company’s social media site, would be either somewhat less likely or far less likely to do business with that company in the future.
More in the slide deck below:
Social media KPIs: NPS, ARPU, CPA and the others
Do not arbitrarily jump into the social marketing space without first setting measurable kpis (Key Performance Indicators). Define how you will measure success by selecting one primary and one secondary kpi. According to Jim Sterne in ‘Social Media Metrics’: ‘Social media kpis are, by necessity, a little fuzzier’. But even if you first have to work with a ‘best of breed’ home recipe of mainly free, publicly available and often imperfect sources, it is definitely worth the effort in the long run. Sterne continues: ‘You can’t control the conversation but you can guide the conversation. You can influence the conversation. You can have an impact on the conversation. That’s the whole reason for tracking and measuring it.’
For your reference: Deloitte takes it up a notch by connecting social media efforts to known business KPIs like NPS, PR Value, ARPU, Media Reach/Impact, Media Spend, CPA and Churn. Click to enlarge.
The new digital divide: consumer expectations vs brands activities in social media
A study (.pdf) from the CMO Council of 1,300 consumers and 132 senior marketers revealed a profound difference between what consumers want from brands in social media, and what marketers think they want.
The bottom line?
[...] consumers want more — more experiences, more engagement, more rewards, and more reasons to connect with each other and brands through social media. And brands are missing the boat. They see the benefits of reaching out to customers through social channels, but they aren’t yet fully invested.
The report sees 4 ways to narrow that gap:
- Enable peer-to-peer interactions. 9% of brands think their Facebook fans want to connect with each other. 60% of consumers say they like brands on Facebook in order to connect with other brands. Your consumers want to talk to each other. Make it easy for them - open a forum, put Q&A on your Facebook page, launch a customer community.
- Get serious about social support. 63% of consumers search online for others with similar problems when they need help - 19% of brands think that's the case. 47% of consumers expect a response to an online service request in 1 hr - 30% of brands use social media to improve service and responsiveness. 50% of consumers expect to find service and support on Facebook - 10% of brands provide it. Consumers want to help and get help from other customers and they do a bang up job of it. It costs between $6 and $75 to resolve customer issues over the phone. It costs as as little as $.05 to help customers find answers online. Social support is a no-brainer for 2012.
- Ideate with social customers. 41% of social customers expect to share product ideas on Facebook. 9% of brands ask customers to help them innovate on Facebook. With few brands actively asking fans for feedback and ideas, smart marketers can leap ahead in 2012 by running idea exchanges - and you'll get a real-time, always on focus group that will drive better, faster innovation for the brand.
- Gamify the social experience. 67% of consumers expect special treatment when they like a brand on Facebook. 7% of brands reward their most active contributors. 46% of consumers expect incentives and rewards when they connect with brands online. 7% of brands offer social customer incentives and rewards. Give social customers something to work for, a reason to level up. Reward them for their contributions, give them rank and reputation, let them take it with them as the move about the social web.
Listening and monitoring: what is the business benefit?
In the age of Facebook and cloud computing, listening to customers is more important than ever. It sounds simple enough, but there are tweets, online comments, and various other channels of digital communication to pay attention to.
According to a 2011 Dell-commissioned Forrester Consulting survey of 200 US-based companies, 63% of surveyed companies believe that listening and digital engagement has helped them see positive results in brand awareness.
But what areas of their business will benefit most from listening and digital engagement?
More in this Infographic: How Brands Listen in the Digital Age @ getsatisfaction.com