Month: February 2010

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• Procter and Gamble embraces Facebook – When the world’s biggest marketing firm, Procter & Gamble, says it’s making a huge marketing move with a massive online presence, you really need to sit and up and pay close attention.
• Major brands sceptical of social media – Just 22% of those surveyed said that social media forms a major part of their promotional strategies. Meanwhile, many marketers are confused about the role the channel should play in their company’s plans.
• 2010 Nonprofit Social Media Benchmarks Study – An analysis of growth and social engagement metrics for nonprofit organizations.
• Context is King: How Videos Are Found And Consumed Online – An incredibly detailed post by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan.
• Rethinking the Value of Social Media to Online Shopping – This research implies that the promise of Social Media for eRetailers should be carefully balanced by logistics and understanding of what customers actually want, otherwise mutual disappointment is sure to follow.
• Active Business Blogs Draw 6.9 Times More Organic Search Traffic Than Non-Bloggers – Blogging, which is equivalent to content building, helps attract more site visitors. The rationale is similar: more blog articles mean more chances to create something that grabs readers’ attention and indirectly build up a company’s reputation.
• Harvard on foursquare – Harvard is the first university to use foursquare to help students explore their campus and surrounding places of interest. “…this represents a smart use of FourSquare — which still has plenty of doubters — by an organization. I’m certain organizations of different natures will find a way to leverage the service to achieve their own business goals.”
• Social Media Marketing: How Pepsi Got It Right – Social media marketing campaigns are proving to be goldmines rich with customer engagement and insight that companies wouldn’t likely have otherwise. Companies like PepsiCo are going to extensive lengths to foster this type of collaboration with fans, and the payoff has been big.
• National Lady Gaga Day Draws 100,000+ on Facebook – How social networks can unleash community power. Still wondering if there’s any return on social media investment? Get your “social media embassies”, now.
• Themeleon – Twitter Profile Designer – Nice tool to easily customize the way Twitter looks for you and how your profile looks to others.
• Baby Boomers Get Connected with Social Media – Stats: 77% of millenials, 61% of gen X, 46% of Baby boomers maintain a social network profile.
• Engagement on Social Networks Top Priority for Marketers – The “2010 Digital Marketing Outlook” report found that 81% of the brand executives surveyed expected an increase in digital projects in 2010, and one-half will be moving dollars from traditional to digital budgets. Further, more than three-quarters think the current economy will push more allocations to digital.
• Ikea’s Easy to Assemble video series breaks new ground in branded entertainment – “Easy to Assemble is a wacky online video series created and written by Illeana Douglas and sponsored by Ikea. According to Advertising Age, Easy to Assemble has racked in 5.1 million views since first going online last year and the numbers are still growing. Ikea had the vision to give Douglas the creative freedom to place entertainment ahead of marketing”.
• Digital Marketing: Facebook Ads Not So Annoying – It turns out users find ads on social networks no more annoying than any other ads on the web.
• Google – Search is getting more social – Google is pushing the feature to beta status and turning it on for all signed-in English Googlers. Google Social Search is a standard search results page add-on that displays socially relevant content from people in your online social circle, as determined by your Google Profile.
• Content Curation: Why Is The Content Curator The Key Emerging Online Editorial Role Of The Future? – What is content curation and why is it so important for the future of web content publishers…the next emerging disruptive role in the content creation and distribution chain.
• 20 Most Important Social Media Buzzwords for 2010 – The most appropriate buzzwords to describe our curious stampede to the social media and mobile future.