Overview of what went down in SMO this week from news, thought leaders, companies and more.
New Social Media Data & Marketer Focus
As the technology keeps changing and marketers keep trying to figure out the best ways to target social audiences and demonstrate ROI, we continue to grow our list of valuable data. Here are some articles this week that had some very useful new stats you can apply to your social media strategies and thinking:
- Brian Solis points out that women are leading the way in social media and mobile application usage, read “In Mobile, Women Rule Social Networking” or just check out the critical stats below. How does this help you? Think about who your social audience is. You social audience is critical to the success of your SMO strategy. The data here and in the article linked gives you insight into how to approach them.
- Emarketer explains that a year ago marketers were focused on best social media tactics, now the focus is ROI. As SMO becomes more evolved, what tools and networks are the top social media marketers using for business? You can read about it in, “For Veteran Social Marketers, Twitter is Tops” but the critical stats you can use are below. How does this help? It answers the question: what is everyone else using? Perhaps there is a niche? Is there a gap that most marketers are not targeting in which you target social audience frequents?
- Conversation Agent, Valeria Maltoni, points out that people on Twitter are very receptive to information on products and services (see chart below) but microblogging has still not achieved saturation for professional uses. Maltoni goes on to list some changes she would like to see with the Twitter platform.
Digital News
FLASH or No Flash? Which Mobile Devices will be Friends with Flash?
- This week Steve Jobs confirms that Apple’s mobile devices such as the iPad, iPhone, and iTouch will not support Flash and he doesn’t plan to support it ever. Steve Jobs released a statement this week in “Thoughts on Flash” basically giving a set of reasons why he has chosen to support flash. On the other hand, this week Google confirmed that Android 2.2 will support Flash. The phones are obviously very different in their approaches to openness.
Facebook News
- Facebook CPM advertisers will soon receive less clicks. Why? New system changes, again. Here is the letter Facebook sent out to CPM advertisers earlier today:
Upcoming system change:
As you know, we continuously work to make our ads system more accurate in order to further improve the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. Among other ongoing improvements, we are refining our ads delivery system to better reflect the goals of our advertisers. This change will take place over the next few weeks and, assuming current bids remain unchanged, will mean that:
- CPC advertisers (advertisers who have chosen to bid “cost-per-click”) may receive more clicks.
- CPM advertisers (advertisers who have chosen to bid “cost per thousand impressions”) will continue to receive impressions but may receive less clicks.
Do I need to do anything?
As a CPM advertiser, you are indicating to our system that it’s more important that your ad is seen by your audience rather than clicked i.e. you have chosen to pay for impressions, not clicks. If your main objective is to increase awareness of your business with an ad impression, there is no need for action. However, if your most important objective is to drive clicks on your ads, you should change your bids from CPM to CPC.
- Is Facebook Liking the New Linking? Since the debut of the universal like button one week ago, over 50,000 sites and growing have incorporated the like button into their corporate sites. Pete Cashmore of Mashable wrote an article for CNN tech explaining that this could be a huge issue for Google. Facebook explains this like button as “social linking. ” Essentially, Facebook is leveraging this like button to make its users index the web for them where Google once did the work for us. What is the difference? Facebook searches will essentially be personalized for that user and their networks and traditional search will just be based on links. So, is liking the new linking? Is SMO (social media optimization) becoming the SEO? Something to watch out for marketers so stay tuned.
- Levi’s Takes Advantage of Facebook’s new functionality by allowing consumers to “auto-populate” their shopping carts on Facebook with the help of Social Recommendations. Jeremiah Owyang of the infamous Altimer Group discusses how Levi’s is leading the way in social commerce using social integration strategies. The truth be told, as Owyang says, most companies and brands are only at level 1 of “social integration” while Levi’s has jumped to level 6 and 7.
Video
- Online video marketing gaining traction as users adopt: eMarketer says that fully 77 percent of internet users will also be online video viewers by the year 2014.
Internet Wars? Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook
- Groundswell is calling it the Splinternet as the three internet giants battle it out for the title of King of the Internet Experience. It looks as though Apple dominates design, Google dominates information, and Facebook dominates the social exchange. Why can’t we all just be friend? My theory, it goes beyond wanting to win, it is about belief system. What is the best way to do x or y and what direction do we believe the web and information exchange should be going?
What else went on this week that’s newsworthy and useful in new media? Please comment and share.
The Social Capitalist is the Art of Social Media Optimization. The focus is on SMO strategies, tactics, and planning processes to help people focus where it counts and get results in social media. Strategies and information applied comes from personal experiences of what works and what does not for social media optimization.
