How Consumers Interact with Brands on Social Networks

Consumers do want relationships

The social networking audience in the US has reached critical mass. eMarketer estimates that 57.5% of all US Internet users, or 127 million people, will use a social network at least once a month in 2010. By 2014, nearly two-thirds of Internet users will be on board.

Marketers have been chasing this audience for several years, but the question remains: Do consumers notice, or care?

“Those who still think that social network users are too busy engaging with friends to notice marketers must change their viewpoint,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report “Brand Interactions on Social Networks.” “Brand interactions are real, valuable and growing. “

According to a February 2010 survey by Chadwick Martin Bailey, a market research firm, 33% of Facebook users have become fans of brands on the network.

Another survey, by Edison Research, found that 16% of social network users had friended brands there. And half (51%) had done so on Twitter.

Coupons remain a leading driver of brand interactions in social networks. Learning about sales and new products is also a strong motivator for people to interact with companies in social media. Beyond the tangibles, such as coupons, consumers do gain positive feelings about a brand as a result of their interactions.

Still, social networks are not seen as primary research sources when consumers are looking to buy. Although people are very inclined to take advice from friends and family about products they are interested in, they are not nearly as likely to seek out their social network friends when they are researching online.

According to a study by PowerReviews and the e-tailing group, only 3% of online buyers said they sought recommendations from social network friends first, compared with 57% who started with search engines.

“More than half of all Internet users now use social networks, and the percentage of social network users who talk about companies, either in organic conversations or on branded company pages, is growing,” said Ms. Williamson. “Consumers do pay attention and they do value positive interactions with companies.

“But while people trust their friends for advice and use social networks as part of their research process, social networks are long way from replacing search, if they ever will, as a source of information leading to a purchase.”

Among Teens, Texting Tops E-Mail, Facebook

Four times as many teens choose SMS over Facebook

While some e-mail marketers fear losing the attention of their audience to social media, research suggests that the strengths of both media can be combined, and that the bigger threat may be text messaging.

An ExactTarget survey of adults and teens on their favorite communication methods showed that was also true among the younger set. Asked to choose between e-mail and Facebook—their preferred social network—33% of respondents ages 15 to 17 picked e-mail and 31% Facebook. About one-quarter liked both equally.

When Facebook went head-to-head with text messaging, it performed even worse: 48% of teens would rather communicate via SMS, compared with just 12% who chose Facebook.

Texting also won out over e-mail. Among adults, however, a preference for e-mail was still strong.

Texting was the communication activity teens were most likely to report having increased over the past six months, according to the ExactTarget survey. There were also significant numbers of teens using Facebook, meeting in person and communicating via e-mail more, but most respondents held those activities steady.

Adults are doing more texting too: One-quarter of respondents ages 18 and up told ExactTarget they were upping their usage. Still, nearly one-third said they never texted, a far cry from the 13% of teens who said the same.

Enter the Owner of Copyright Material – The Princess’s of Social Media

I’ve been working in social media for a long time now and I write for about 10 different blogs every day and some times I republish articles that I believe will be of benefit or interest to those that read my blogs, just like lots of blog writers do every day, after all, isn’t social media built on the principle of sharing? I thought so until today.

I always adhere to the principles of acknowledging the writer or publisher and I always leave the links intact so as to give the original blog owner the backlink as well as the kudos of having their material syndicated. I am always flattered when a blog owner takes one of my articles and adds it to their blog, as long as they give me credit as the author and include a link back to my site.

Well that is what I did today, published an article with credit and links intact and low and behold I get an email telling me to remove the article as it is copyright material and I don’t have permission to post the article or any other on my site. By the way the “remove” was in the largest font possible, any bigger and would not have needed my glasses to see it.

My mistake here it seems was leaving the box marked pingback ticked.

The site in question, or maybe I shouldn’t tell you who it is for fear they may be a bit precious, is a site all about social media.

The point of this post is basically to advise you that if you are taking other bloggers material to check first to see if the story is copyright, I wonder if they participate in article marketing, mm, anyway make sure you have permission before you publish content.

I mean silly as it sounds, I should just take the post, rewrite it and republish it and we’d be fine, after all, it is a post that offers information that has been around for years.

Maybe that’s what I’ll do, rewrite the post, and call it “6 ways to constantly produce quality blog content” or maybe that is copyright to, I know, I’ll go one better, I’ll change it to “7 ways to constantly produce quality blog content”.

There you go Mike, I’ve just found ways to produce better blog content, and your site will be a constant fountain of ideas.

Mobile Shopping Doubles in 2010

Shopping, yes. Buying? Maybe

Mobile commerce has been slow to catch on. According to Multichannel Merchant, four in five multichannel retailers have no m-commerce presence. But while consumer usage of mobile shopping is still relatively low, it is increasing, prompting firms such as Coda Research Consultancy to predict a doubling of m-commerce revenues in the US this year, to $2.4 billion.

There has also been a doubling in usage of mobile shopping, according to PriceGrabber.com’s “Smartphone Shopping Behavior” survey. In April 2010, 35% of US Web-enabled mobile phone owners said they had participated in some form of mobile shopping in the past year, such as browsing or researching but not necessarily purchasing products. That was up from 17% who said the same in 2009. Still, only 13% actually made purchases via mobile, up from 10% last year.

Among all mobile users, there was a marked willingness to adopt more mobile shopping behaviors over the next two years, though a significant portion of the population indicated they would never be interested in such activities.

Consumers’ greater willingness to shop on the mobile channel rather than buy is supported by other research. Retrevo found in February 2010 that across all age groups Internet users were at least three times as likely to research or compare prices on their phones as they were to make a purchase.

In Q9 2009, four times as many Internet users surveyed by ATG said they researched or browsed via mobile at least weekly than bought.

Among the mobile buyers surveyed by PriceGrabber.com, the top purchases were of digital content for their phones and consumer electronics, with both categories increasing over last year.

PriceGrabber found some of the barriers to further mobile buying were inherent to the medium, with respondents complaining that mobile screens were too small and saying that they simply preferred using a PC because it was easier. About one-third of respondents also said the mobile buying process takes too long, and one-quarter indicated transactions were too difficult to complete.

Social Networking Ranks as Fastest-Growing Mobile Content Category

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a report on the fastest-growing mobile application and browser content categories based on data from its MobiLens service. The report found that social networking led as the top-gaining category for both application and browser access, confirming the surging popularity of this service on mobile devices. The study also found that accessing Bank Accounts was one of the fastest-gaining categories via both app and browser, as the convenience of mobile banking continues to appeal to a growing number of consumers.

“With mobile media consumption on the rise, the discussion of how consumers are accessing content -- whether it is via application, browser or both -- continues to be an important factor for companies looking to invest further in their mobile brands,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “Although application access is clearly on the rise, with several categories more than doubling their audience via this method, content consumption via browser continues to be the most popular method for Americans to access mobile media.”

Smartphone Users Post Triple-Digit Growth in App and Browser Access

In terms of penetration, 78 percent of smartphone users accessed their browser in April 2010, while 80 percent of smartphone users accessed applications. In comparison, just 19 percent of feature phone users accessed their browser, with 17 percent accessing applications. Although smartphone users are driving growth in browser (up 111 percent in the past year) and application (up 112 percent) access, feature phone users still make up nearly half of all users accessing mobile browsers and apps.

“Although growth in application usage on smartphones continues to grab the spotlight in the mobile market, the audience using their mobile browser remains larger and is growing just as quickly,” added Donovan. “Brands need to remember to take into consideration the user experience across both channels when building their mobile strategies.”

Social Networking App Audience More Than Triples in Past Year

In April 2010, 69.6 million mobile users accessed an application on their phone, an increase of 28 percent from the previous year. Several application categories experienced triple-digit growth in the past year, emphasizing the increasing popularity of this method as a form of mobile content access. Social Networking experienced the strongest growth in app access, increasing 240 percent to 14.5 million users. Accessing News apps followed, growing 124 percent to 9.3 million users, while Sports Information apps experienced a 113-percent surge to nearly 7.7 million users. Bank Accounts apps also more than doubled their audience, growing to nearly 5 million users in April.

More Americans Still Use their Browser versus Applications

Nearly 73 million mobile users accessed their browser in April, an increase of 31 percent from the previous year. Mirroring application category growth, Social Networking ranked as the fastest-growing category accessed via browser, growing 90 percent from the previous year to reach almost 30 million users, followed by Bank Accounts (69 percent to 13.2 million users). Online Retail sites also experienced a significant increase in audience usage via browser, increasing 47 percent to 7.3 million users, as Americans continued to show adoption of the mobile retail channel.

Donovan continued, “Social networking is by far the fastest-growing mobile activity right now. With 20 percent of mobile users now accessing social networking sites via their phone, we expect to see both application and browser usage continuing to drive future consumption of social media.”

B2B Spending on Social Media to Explode

Despite social media marketing’s sizable popularity, business-to-business (B2B) companies are still fairly new to the discipline. According to a November 2009 survey from Business.com, 73% of B2B respondents who were using social media had less than two years of social media marketing experience.

But now that social media has caught on in the sector, spending forecasts suggest that big increases are coming.

“B2B participation in social media marketing is steadily increasing, and marketers are beginning to see opportunities to generate quality leads and position themselves as thought leaders in their industries,” said eMarketer’s Evelyn Jung, author of the new report “B2B Social Media Marketing Heats Up.”

Outsell estimates that marketing on social networks will grow 43.3% in 2010. Forrester Research predicts that B2B firms will spend $54 million on social media marketing in 2014, up from just $11 million in 2009.

Paid advertising on social networks—banners, text ads and search advertising, as well as the more targeted advertising being deployed by Facebook and MySpace—is a small portion of B2B marketers’ social spending.

When companies budget for social media marketing in 2010 and beyond, a substantial portion of their expenses will go toward other initiatives, such as creating and maintaining a branded profile page, managing promotions or public relations outreach within a social network, and measuring the effect of a social network presence on brand health and sales.

In 2009, B2B marketers spent the largest portion of their social media budgets on customer communities, followed by podcasts and blogs. These tactics allow B2B marketers to share more relevant product or service information with their customers than they could with other social tools.

“B2B companies tend to have longer and more complicated messages to convey, and these longer-form tactics enable them to position themselves as thought leaders with their customers,” Ms. Jung said.

Does Social Media Make Taking Time Off Harder?

Summer is almost here, and that means vacation time for many employees. Or does it?

The US has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce, according to February 2010 data from IDC, with 75.5% of the workforce, or 119.7 million people, expected to be mobile by 2013. And 79% of them plan on taking their work-related devices with them on vacation, according to the second annual “Mobile Messaging Study” from Osterman Research, commissioned by software maker Neverfail.

A growing number of employees are not leaving work behind, even on weekends, breaks and holidays, because of the struggling economy. Three in 10 workers polled by TNS for InterCall said they needed to stay connected to their work 24/7. Men were more likely to feel compelled to check in, as were employees in their 30s.

Summer is almost here, and that means vacation time for many US employees. Or does it?

The US has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce, according to February 2010 data from IDC, with 75.5% of the workforce, or 119.7 million people, expected to be mobile by 2013. And 79% of them plan on taking their work-related devices with them on vacation, according to the second annual “Mobile Messaging Study” from Osterman Research, commissioned by software maker Neverfail.

A growing number of employees are not leaving work behind, even on weekends, breaks and holidays, because of the struggling economy. Three in 10 workers polled by TNS for InterCall said they needed to stay connected to their work 24/7. Men were more likely to feel compelled to check in, as were employees in their 30s.

But workers are still divided over the benefits social media adds to their productivity. Slightly more than half (52.3%) the employees surveyed by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) agreed that social media helped them learn more in less time, to some extent. But only 37% said they got more work done.

No wonder so many employees feel the need to work on weekends.

Social media presents great opportunities for marketers trying to reach workers. However, it might be a good idea to vary marketing messages sent during the workweek and those presented to workers checking in on weekends.