INSIGHT blog

Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

« Older Entries

The Obligatory Year End Review

8
December
2009

Santa’s not the only one making lists.

Stefanie Berliant
Client Services Manager

It’s the end of the year and you know what that means: Top ten lists and year in reviews!  What’s more is that we have survived the first decade of Y2K!  Most of the top 10 lists include new developments in technologies, and the people that created them, including Twitter, Google, Facebook, DVR, and Wii.  Whether you love or hate these advances, they have made a significant impact in our lives in 2009. Categories got as specific as top 10 YouTube videos and best Tweets of 2009.  Our nation has clearly accepted social networking and microblogging as part of mainstream life. Additionally all the major search engines have released their top 10 searches for 2009.  The topics that had people talking (and searching) include Michael Jackson, swine flu, Twilight, Lady Gaga, and cash for clunkers.  As I scroll through these lists and reflect on this year, I find myself intrigued on what the nation has picked as significant events/people/technologies and can’t wait to see how thoughts change next year.

Check out the lists below to see what made the cut!

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

New Partnerships, New Insights

23
September
2009

Nielsen conducting surveys for Facebook to measure online advertising.

Stefanie Berliant
Media Coordinator

Nielsen BrandLift and Facebook have teamed up to measure the effectiveness of ads shown on Facebook. This campaign will be using opt-in polls on Facebook Hompages to measure consumer attitudes and purchase intent on the ads that appear within Facebook.  Facebook’s global reach is the perfect platform to gather data for Nielsen to analyze and provide marketers with best practices on how to improve ad campaigns within Facebook. Nielsen BrandLift will be measuring the effectiveness of aided awareness, ad recall, message association, brand favorability and purchase consideration

Facebook generates its revenue mostly from the ads shown within the social network. This is a great way for Facebook to gain more insight as to what significantly impacts these audiences. As a marketer, I appreciate the extra mile Facebook and Nielsen are going to gather this data. Facebook ads can already be targeted by age, geography, education level, gender, organizations, relationship status, languages, and keywords. These ads can be shown on a CPC or CPM model and budgeted on a daily spend. By conducting this research, Facebook is continuing to prove its effectiveness of its ad serving technology.  Couple the findings from this research with the new version of Ads Manager Facebook has pushed into beta over the past week, and I expect to see a lot of changes within Facebook’s ad serving platform in the near future.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Retailers Trying To Use Word of Mouth Marketing

25
August
2009

Retailers are hoping to utilize the power of viral marketing to help them reach new potential customers.

Ryan Moss
Media Coordinator

Retailers have been using email marketing for quite some time now to keep their existing customers informed and hopefully attract new customers. Now more and more retailers are adding "share" or "forward to a friend" options to their emails, hoping that their existing subscribers will help them bring in new ones.

Retailers have been using to two different techniques to encourage word of mouth marketing. The first is adding a "forward to a friend" (FTAF) button, which according to data from Smith Harmon, has been adopted by 41% of retailers surveyed. The other option, which is less popular right now, is adding a "share with your social network" (SWYN) option. Of those surveyed, only 6% said they provide this option. The study also showed that 7% of retailers offered both options while 46% offered neither option.

FTAF is clearly the more popular option right now, but many people believe that SWYN is on the rise. Within SWYN there are several different social networks that retailers make available. As seen in the chart below, the most popular one by far is Facebook.

Adding these functions to your emails is a tremendous idea and is something that should be done by all companies and organizations, not just retailers. When finding either a forward to a friend or a share with your social network tool to incorporate with your email newsletters, there are several different options out there including our own tool, JumpReach. Our solution provides robust analytics that allow you to see the detailed results of your sharing campaign and it also makes it easy for your existing subscribers to forward your message by allowing them to access their address book for Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Outlook and LinkedIn to select which contacts they want to share with. In conjunction with our JumpReach solution, we offer a FREE Assessment in which one of our Product Specialists will discuss how your business can enjoy the benefits of viral marketing.

106065 Retailers Trying To Use Word of Mouth Marketing

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Facebook, Back in the Game

18
August
2009

In an effort to better compete with Google and Twitter, Facebook purchases FriendFeed

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

Social media, social media, social media.  Everyone’s talking about it in some way or another and there is no doubt this conversation will continue to evolve for quite some time.  In the meantime, the major players in the online space are working eagerly to sprint ahead of the dialogue and predict the new “must sign-up tool.”  Last week, Facebook released that it had bought FriendFeed, a service that allows users to share updates with friends as well as aggregate the updates from other social sites such as Twitter, Gmail or Facebook. 

I finally had the opportunity to play around a bit more today with it and saw that this may just be the tool that social networking fans cannot do without.  When I first started becoming familiar with Twitter, I thought “who has the time to make these updates, while still checking Facebook, connecting with others on LinkedIn, blogging, G-chatting and all the other factors of everyday-life?”  With the functionality on FriendFeed, it appears to be easier to do so with less clicks and time, as all these outside feeds can be streamed together to be used on one platform.  In real-time, updates can be made on the site, which looks ironically like Facebook; built with the same options to “comments, share or like.”

Facebook has done very well over the last few years capitalizing on their earning potential.  With all the personal information they have access to as well as their massive 250 million user base, advertisers that can afford it are flocking to get in front of the audience they can so accurately target.  Now with FriendFeed, they have even more site ad inventory where they can mirror their model.  Some have said that Facebook is aspiring to be the next Google.  I’m not convinced yet but the idea is possible.  Google has a way of diving its hands in anything it can, being an innovator and setting the bar for others in the online industry.  But maybe, Facebook is ready to set the bar just a smidge higher in the realm of social. Nevertheless, it’s a constant race and it’s clear Google is taking close watch. 

Tags: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Our Online Marketing for .ORGs Series Comes to a Close

29
May
2009

Wednesday’s webinar on Social Media for .ORGs was our biggest success yet, closing out the end of the series on a high note.

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

Back in December, 2008 we hosted our first seminar at the Melrose Hotel in Washington, D.C. on Online Marketing for .ORGs.  That day over a continental breakfast, we welcomed an audience of ready-to-learn members from various local associations and organizations.  Due to the positive feedback of that event, we decided to begin a webinar series tailored exclusively to this .ORG audience and presented every month since January.  After five webinars covering topics such as search engine marketing, email marketing, social media and viral marketing, we’ll be taking a few months off to regroup and plan for a new webinar series at the end of the summer.  We want to thank everyone who has attended our webinars and hope we can continue the dialogue in the future.  We have greatly appreciated all the feedback you have submitted and are eager to apply these suggestions in order to make our next series even more successful.

This past Wednesday, we presented on our final topic of the series: Social Media for .ORGs.  With over 80 people in attendance, we introduced some very important content including:

  • How to communicate through social networks
  • The various types of social media and how they can be applied to your organization
  • How to measure social media for success

For attendees that would like a copy of the presentation or for those who were unable to attend, the deck can be downloaded on our Facebook Fan page.  We encourage anyone to contact us for more clarification on this topic or any others from the series.  Thank you again to all those who have helped make these webinars a success!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Social Networks And The Workplace

27
May
2009

Social networks are becoming increasingly popular among businesses and executives, but employees still have concerns about their personal privacy.

Ryan Moss
Media Coordinator

More and more companies and their executives are embracing social networks and becoming actively involved in networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIN. In fact, according to Deloitte, 30% of business executives in the United States said that their company has incorporated social networks into their business and operations strategy.

While executives are excited about the use of social networks, many of their employees are not. Employees have several concerns including the belief that using social media can damage a company’s reputation. The other main issue among employees is the lack of privacy, as 53% of employees surveyed by Deloitte think that their online profiles are none of their employers’ business. With that being said, nearly 61% of employees did admit to making significant changes to their social network pages since company executives can now view these pages.

Some industry experts advise for employees to simply set their profiles on private so only the people they choose can view their personal profiles. But, that could lead to interesting situations such as how do you respond when your boss asks why he or she can view your personal pictures.

Personally, I think every situation is different and you should adjust your personal pages based on the atmosphere of your company. Some smaller and more relaxed companies, might be ok with pictures of you from a party last weekend, but others may not. In the end use your best judgment and be careful of what you and others post that can be linked to you.

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Twitter Becomes the Fastest Growing Member Community Site This Month

25
March
2009

Year-over-year growth in February 2009 hits 1,382% for Twitter.com

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

Although Facebook has over 20 million members, it has not experienced nearly the same amount of year-over-year growth as Twitter.  Last month, there were seven million unique visitors to the site, a remarkable 1,382% increase from 475,000 in February 2008, according to Nielsen Online. 

As Twitter continues to grow in popularity, its impact will be tremendous for both the consumer and for organizations hoping to promote their brands on a large scale.  The most popular Tweeting age group are adults ages 35-49, who primarily access the site from their workplace.  The nearly three million people that make up this age group account for 42% of the site’s audience.

As we begin to recognize the mobile marketing opportunity that Twitter presents, the issue over how we may track tweets becomes important.  If Twitter does become a mobile phenomenon, many more users will flood the site to tweet due to this added on-the-go convenience.  Already, various firms have anticipated this growing success by addressing how to make Twittering more convenient.  Not only will consumers enjoy the added accessibility to their extended communities, but marketers receive the bonus of more content to identify how people are viewing their brands.

Last week, Tweetdeck, the desktop client used by about 13% of Twitter members, has launched an update that has integrated two social networks together.  With this application, users can now incorporate their Facebook status updates into their Tweets.  In addition, users can even initiate a chat through Tweetdeck.  By integrating with Twitter, Facebook now takes on a more real-time live feel.

The missing link in identifying the true viability for Twitter is the ability to track its value.  Omniture has already begun tackling that challenge through a SiteCatalyst API, which it will soon be releasing.  This feature will enable firms to measure how their brand is being spoken about on Twitter.  Data such as the number of times a particular term is being mentioned will be collected.  Marketers can also elect to receive tweet alerts when a post about a specific brand name has been mentioned repeatedly.  For a more granular assessment, brand names can also be paired with other keywords or phrases.

We’ll stay tuned to see when Twitter finds a viable business model to capitalize on its growing success.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Mom…Please Don’t Ask Me To Become Facebook Friends!

23
March
2009

On behalf of a world fearful that baby-boomers are becoming social network savvy, I kindly request that moms and dads do one thing: STAY OUT OF MY FACEBOOK!

George Assimakopoulos
Principal Manager

MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com

Tags: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Social Networking Surpasses Email

10
March
2009

Social networking now accounts for almost 10% of all internet time according to the latest Nielsen report, surpassing email in internet activity popularity.

Keith Vera
Account Manager

Social networking now accounts for almost 10% of all internet time according to the latest Nielsen report, surpassing email in internet activity popularity. The report “Global Faces and Networked Places” looks at data from December 2007 through December 2008, and finds that not only do “member communities” exceed email in participation; the sector is experiencing twice as much growth than any of the 5 most popular online spaces.

“Global Faces and Networked Places”

Much of this growth can be attributed to the increasing popularity of social networks among an older demographic. As reported by Christine Pepin in February, females over the age of 55 are one of the fastest-growing Facebook user segments, growing by 175% over the last quarter alone, with males over 55 growing over 137%. This new growth helps put over 45% of all Facebook users over the age of 26.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Facebook’s Audience Demographic Continues to Evolve

12
February
2009

Older users now account for the fastest growing age group on Facebook

Christine Pepin
Media Coordinator

Five years ago on February 3, Facebook was founded.  Last week, they celebrated their birthday with the over 150 million world-wide subscribers. Those that remember the early days of Facebook will recall the overly simple homepage layout and compare that to the sleek, user friendly appearance of today’s pages.

Not only has the layout of the site been completely transformed, but the demographics of the subscribers has as well.  This communication-sharing portal was once exclusively for university students in the U.S., then welcomed high-schoolers, and now urges anyone from anywhere to join. 

Despite the younger audience at its founding, females over the age of 55 are now among the fastest growing demographic groups on the Facebook network.  Since September 2008, this female age group grew by 175.3%, and the number of men over 55 grew 137.8% during this same period. In every age group, the usage among women far surpasses that of men as well.  Also surprisingly, 45% of Facebook’s active users in the U.S. are now over the age of 26, and nearly a quarter are over the age of 35.

U.S. Facebook Users By Age Group

It is puzzling to think of how much Facebook’s audience demographic has evolved over the years. Will Facebook become the next MySpace?

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

« Older Entries