Posts Tagged ‘social media’
Friday, May 17th, 2013
 With any luck, we won’t have to buy another car for a while, but when we do, we’ll definitely do online research before heading out to dealer lots. We have lots of company doing that.
Online dealership reviews on social media networks are now playing the most important role in the dealership selection process, according to the Spring 2013 Automotive Social Media and Reputation Trend Study released by Digital Air Strike, the nation’s leading automotive social media, online reputation and digital response company.
The bi-annual study included an in-depth analysis of how 650 U.S. dealers use social media and an online survey of 2,000 consumers who purchased a vehicle in the last 6 months.
The majority of car buyers said they consider review sites as “helpful” in their decision as to where to purchase a vehicle. The study found that 24% of consumers consider online review sites to be the “most helpful” factor, exceeding all other factors including the 15%of car buyers who consider dealership websites “most helpful”.
The study also showed that review sites are becoming increasingly important in organic search. 81% of car buyers who use review sites said they look at review scores in search results.
The dealer component of the study revealed that, on average, five review sites show up in search results. Car buyers use the top five sites 13% more than just 6 months ago.
Most popular review sites
The most popular review sites are Cars.com (61%, previously 55%), Edmunds.com (54%, previously 50%),), Google+ Local (37%, previously 44%), Yelp (14%, no change), and Yahoo (11%, no change) – the same rank order as the October 2012 study.
The study went on to reveal that there is a 43% probability that a consumer will search for a local dealer on Facebook using Facebook’s new Graph Search. The study revealed 67% of car buyers search for local business using mobile devices with 41% having “checked-in” to a local business using their mobile device.
Additional Facebook findings include:
- There is a 59% probability that a consumer will trust a review from a Facebook friend more than reviews on other sites.
- 27% of car buyers click on mobile ads on Facebook.
- There is a 45% probability that a consumer will view the dedicated feed for brands in the forthcoming Facebook News Feed.
- Clicks on automotive dealership Facebook ads more than doubled from October 2012 to April 2013 – from 16% up to 39%
Tags: car buyers, dealer review sites, Digital Air Strike, facebook, social media
Posted in Facebook, Internet/New Media, social media, Tech life/Culture | No Comments »
Thursday, May 16th, 2013
 Over the next three years, global organizations will make understanding and interacting with the customer their top priority. So says a new study from The Economist Intelligence Unit Voice of the customer: Whose job is it, anyway?
Yet only 56 percent of respondents to the survey, sponsored by SAS, believe their companies clearly understand the customer today.
Worryingly, many companies find it challenging to restructure their businesses around the customer, having been organized traditionally around products or geographies. Only six in ten viewed their companies as customer-centric and just over half report a clear understanding of customers’ tastes and needs.
So whose responsibility will it be?
So whose responsibility will it be to champion the voice of the customer within the organization? And what new skills and capabilities will they need in order to restructure around the customer instead of products?
The report reveals a disconnect amongst executives on these questions. Nearly one-quarter of CMOs surveyed want a Chief Customer Officer to take responsibility; another quarter see the onus on themselves. Currently, the CMO is considered the voice of the customer at just 18 percent of organizations, trailing the head of sales (31 percent).
Obstacles for the CMO include the diversity of the CMOs’ current obligations, few of which are currently customer-facing functions. Regardless, whoever aspires to serve as the voice of the customer must draw on customer insights to create an exceptional customer experience that spans all physical and digital channels.
The key to the CMO delivering on an organizations’ evolving customer-centric mandate may lie in the rise of web, social and mobile channels that are poised to take on greater significance in customer engagement.
Social and mobile to eclipse email?
 In the next three years, social and mobile will eclipse e-mail and the corporate website for customer engagement. Few organizations, however, are currently leveraging emerging social and mobile media channels effectively to reach customers.
Just an editorial aside from the TechJournal, but up to now, predictions that email would become less important have tended to be way off base. And people do use mobile to check and even reply to email, especially those who travel for business.
While social media is predicted to become the second most important channel for customer communication, face-to-face interactions will remain the most important customer engagement channel.
“A growing shift to digital marketing also provides a rich foundation for data-driven customer insight,” says Wilson Raj, Global Customer Intelligence Director for SAS. “CMOs are in a prime position to be champions for the voice of the customer—if they shore up digital and customer analytics skills across the marketing organization.”
Tags: business, customer engagement, digital marketing, global companies, mobile marketing, SAS, social media, top priority
Posted in Digital Devices, Internet/New Media, Marketing, social media, Studies, surveys, reports, Tech life/Culture | No Comments »
Thursday, May 16th, 2013
Marketers need to adopt more sophisticate social advertising and marketing tactics if they want to improve their ability to hit objectives.
So says, Kenshoo Social, a global social marketing platform, which has published a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting, “The Key to Successful Social Advertising,” that evaluates how marketers are using social advertising. The goal: educating marketers on how to develop social media strategy and activate the most effective tactics. Findings will also be presented by Kenshoo Social and guest from Forrester in a May 29 webinar.
Based on a survey of large social advertisers (i.e., social media and advertising professionals whose companies spend more than$100,000 per year on social media ads), Forrester found that, while social advertisers use a wide range of organic and paid strategies across a variety of social sites, more than one in three are not satisfied with their efforts.
The findings emphasized the increasing needs for more sophisticated social advertising tactics and methods to better match tactics to objectives.
“Generally, social advertisers get what they pay for,” according to the study. “They are more satisfied with the results they achieve from paid advertising than the results they achieve with less costly organic tactics like branded pages, groups or accounts alone.”
Notable findings from the study include:
Organic posting is the most popular social media tactic, but paid advertising is the most successful. Social advertisers use a wide range of social sites and strategies. The most popular tactic is maintaining branded pages on general social networks, business networks and microblogs. Branded pages alone, however, do not make an effective social marketing strategy.
Social advertisers still are not using advanced optimization tactics. More than half of large social advertisers use ad rotation, but only one-third use granular targeting to reach the right audiences. Most of those who do target primarily use basic criteria like demographic targeting.
Social marketers should pay for promoted content to drive awareness and buy ads to drive sales. The survey measured the tactics of satisfied social advertisers and found that different paid social strategies drove different kinds of success. Social advertisers who paid to promote their branded content were most satisfied with the awareness they created; while those who bought standard social ad units were happiest with their ability to drive purchases. Brand-focused social advertisers and response-focused social advertisers must deploy the tactics proven best for meeting their specific objectives.
“With billions of people around the world actively connecting on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, marketers have eagerly turned to social media to engage their target audiences,” said Aaron Goldman , chief marketing officer of Kenshoo. “Today, most marketers include some type of social advertising in their programs, but the options available to them have increased exponentially, as has the ability to measure the effectiveness of their outreach.
“This research study demonstrates the importance of using advanced technology platforms to create highly-targeted campaigns at scale, leveraging a portfolio approach across promoted content and standard ad units to achieve overall business goals,” Goldman continued.
“Furthermore, marketers must connect the dots across paid, owned and earned media placements to understand the impact of each touchpoint along the path to conversion.”
The Forrester study concludes with four initial steps marketers can use to immediately improve results:
- Start with clear marketing objectives.
- Promote your brand and your content.
- Take advantage of robust targeting.
- Develop a holistic approach for greater success.
Visit KenshooSocial.com/ForresterStudy to download the full complimentary study or KenshooSocial.com/ForresterSocialResearchto sign up for the May 29 Webinar.
Tags: advertising, Best Practices, Marketing, organic, paid, social media, success
Posted in Best Practices, Internet/New Media, Marketing, Studies, surveys, reports | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) may not be defining guidelines in the use of social media in healthcare communications, but the professionals within the space are rapidly shaping best practices for marketing communications.
The current issue of the Journal of Communication in Healthcare is showcasing a research study that measured the attitude of healthcare, pharmaceutical and life sciences executives on the use of social media. Survey respondents hold positions from CEO to CIO, from Marketing Director to Brand Manager, are active in their positions and serve primarily the United States. The results are surprising, especially given the historically conservative nature of the healthcare marketing community.
The survey focused on those who are tasked with the development, creation and delivery of brand and product information to target audiences. When asked about whether or not marketers should be permitted to use social media to promote their products and services to the public, most were positive. The mix of media (i.e. YouTube, Flickr, Twitter etc.) appears to be as important as the message.
The data indicates healthcare communications professionals are most reticent to adopt Twitter, a mainstream corporate communications tool. YouTube’s acceptability was pervasive, in fact twice that of Flickr or Twitter. The study also flushed out a number of perceived risks of embracing social media marketing in healthcare communications.
Intuitively, Twitter would have seemed to be the most likely adopted marketing tool based on its 140-character limit: no photos, few words, simple messages and clean delivery. But this is not the case for surveyed healthcare communications professionals.
Social media has long been a resource for industries such as financial services lifestyle products and retailers, but healthcare has been slow to adopt.
Kevin Popovic, Founder & CEO of Ideahaus, conducted much of the research from the company studios in Pittsburgh and San Diego. Popovic, the co-author of the paper, explains, “We’ve worked with every type of business for more than twenty years. As new types of communications have evolved, most industries have kept pace – except healthcare – and the hesitancy stems from a lack of guidelines from the FDA.”
“There is no question that the FDA’s lack of leadership in providing guidelines has limited the broad adoption of social media,”Chauncey Smith, MarketSMITH Services, LLC headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA and paper co-author, added. “Can these media be abused as a promotional communication channel by not being fair and balanced? Absolutely. But could social media become a force for positive change in healthcare? We think so, which is why we will continue exploring this topic.”
This research project is a follow-up to the Popovic and Smith 2010 publication in the Journal of Communication in Healthcare(Vol. 3, No. 2) ‘Tweeting @DoctorWelby: Practical Examples of Social Media in Healthcare.’
Popovic and Smith continue to believe that social media should be embraced as an integral part of any healthcare communication plan, and see signs that this is occurring with greater scale and frequency.
Read the full version of ‘Attitudes on the Use of Social Media in Healthcare Communications’ in the Ideahaus Professional Community, or download the article at the Journal of Communications in Healthcare website.
Tags: Best Practices, healtcare, Marketing, social media
Posted in Best Practices, social media, Studies, surveys, reports | No Comments »
Monday, May 13th, 2013
Different media channels drive different social media behaviors.
The findings were revealed today from the TVB (www.tvb.org), the not-for-profit trade association of America’s commercial broadcast television industry, in the organization’s 2013 Cultural Currency study.
In conjunction with Colligent, a social affinity mapping company, TVB married Nielsen Media Research and Kantar Media data with social media behaviors (not conversation) across Twitter and Facebook to identify the quantity and intensity of behavior for broadcast and cable TV, radio and newspapers at the national and local level.
The study has important implications for how TV programmers and marketers can effectively synchronize social media with their traditional media investments.
The Cultural Currency research analyzed social media behaviors among 167 million Facebook and Twitter users across 4400 primetime television programs, 540 consumer brands, 570 TV stations, 1823 radio stations and 358 local and national newspapers.
Roadmap to social media experiences
As more content producers and advertisers turn to social media to build and engage program and brand fans, this study provides a roadmap on how to build social media experiences that will maximize consumer engagement and help programmers and advertisers set the right action standards for success.
The findings showed that fan behaviors that drive Cultural Currency activate a different set of personal interactions and necessitate different strategies for brand engagement. Local broadcast TV viewers are 85% more likely to post photos and videos than users of all media (radio, newspapers, broadcast and cable television), primarily because of their strong connection to community.
 A Samsung Smart TV. Local newspapers outperform all other media in generating retweets (54% more likely), while radio and cable TV users are avid content likers (each 46% more likely).
Across all media channels, broadcast television offered the most balanced set of social media behaviors to activate across content offerings.
Brian Wieser, a leading media industry analyst at equity research firm Pivotal Research Group, highlighted the study’s importance. “This important research from the TVB highlights the growing inter-relationships between television, social media and second-screen content more generally.”
The study unearthed critical insights for programmers and advertisers who build complementary social media experiences to enhance their media investments, including:
- Broadcast TV Builds Brand Fans With its Combination of Big Audiences and Deep Engagement.
Broadcast TV at the national and local level is still the dominant brand-builder in the media landscape, generating as much as192X more brand fans within social media than advertisers in the same category who only purchased cable. The use of social media to prove the correlation of actual media investment with brand affinity is a game-changing insight that provides marketers with the ability to target their most engaged brand fans using the efficiencies of mass reach media.
- Social Media Platforms Are Not Equal Across the Television Landscape.
There is a polarization of platform preference depending on the programming genre. Viewers of mainstream primetime genres, driven by big hit programs, exhibited more active behaviors on Twitter than on Facebook, suggesting that Twitter has established itself as the “in-the-moment,” simultaneous platform for cultural currency traders and that “appointment viewing” is now an interactive “appointment experience” that offers advertisers more opportunities to engage in real-time.
“Mass culture that is accessible to many and used in social exchanges both online and off, provides the Cultural Currency needed to attract, maintain, and grow our relationships with others as well as with brands,” explained Stacey Lynn Schulman (formerly Koerner), Chief Research Officer at TVB.
“In our eagerness to embrace technologies that enhance personalization and customization, our society has become more isolated, and mainstream media products, particularly broadcast TV, provides the glue that connects our virtual and physical lives. Just like monetary currencies, different cultural products provide different value in this new eco-system, and it’s not surprising that Broadcast Television – from local stations to national networks – excels in this regard.”
Tags: facebook, Marketing, newspapers, social media, TV viewers, twitter
Posted in Internet/New Media, Marketing, social media | No Comments »
Wednesday, May 8th, 2013
 For those wondering if small business owners are actually using mobile technology for their business, the answer is a definitive “yes,” according to new survey data from Constant Contact®, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTCT).
Of those surveyed in March 2013, 66 percent report currently using a mobile device, including smart phones and tablets, or a solution, like mobile-optimized websites and text message marketing.
While this majority adoption is promising, it’s important to note that, of the 34 percent not using any mobile device or solution for their business, a resounding 65 percent have no plans to do so in the future, mainly citing a lack of customer demand.
Email and Social Media Marketing Paving the Way
How are small businesses using mobile technology? The top two ways are email and social media marketing, and they have a considerable lead over other uses:
- 73 percent conduct social media marketing.
- 71 percent conduct email marketing.
- 44 percent advertise through social platforms.
- 34 percent have a mobile-optimized website.
- 18 percent run a mobile tablet-based payment point-of-sale.
- 18 percent use mobile apps to manage operations, like accounting.
“It’s encouraging that a majority of small businesses recognize that their customers are relying more than ever on their mobile devices to find information, look for deals, and even to make purchases,” said Joel Hughes, senior vice president of strategy and corporate development.
“That said, small business owners are still getting their sea legs, so it’s not surprising that they’re leading with two areas where they have a solid track record of success with customer engagement: social media and email.”
 When asked what types of mobile/social advertising they currently employ, 97 percent of respondents said social media like YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Location-based promotions (Foursquare® check-in, etc.) came in a distant second at 17 percent, and text message came in third at 15 percent.
A deeper look into mobile-optimized websites of small businesses reveals that 70 percent are social-media optimized. Other findings:
- 44 percent contain a menu.
- 40 percent contain individual product listings.
- 39 percent contain videos.
Apple & Android– The New POS?
In the battle of iOS vs. Android, iOS is the clear winner.
 The iPhone 5 Among small business owners, iPhone users trump Android users 66 percent to 39 percent, while iPad users trump Android tablet users 49 percent to 15 percent. iOS popularity among small business owners is not reflected among the general public where, according to a recent comScore MobiLens study that measures the smartphone platforms used by everyone in the U.S., Android subscribers account for 52.3 percent of all subscribers, while iOS subscribers account for 37.8 percent.
Small businesses are using these devices for point-of-sale functions. Seventy-one percent of small businesses using mobile technology accept mobile payments and 52 percent utilize a mobile-/tablet-based point-of-sale system.
Mobile Apps for Managing Operations
Mobile apps are playing a growing role in how small businesses manage operations.
- 82 percent use a calendar/time management app.
- 74 percent use a customer communications app.
- 52 percent use a GPS and mapping app.
- 44 percent use an accounting/invoicing app.
- 44 percent use an app for industry news/information consumption.
- 29 percent use a travel planning app.
Why Aren’t All Small Businesses Mobilizing Behind Mobile?
 When Constant Contact asked small business owners not using mobile the all-important question of why, here’s how they responded:
- 56 percent said their customers haven’t expressed demand for mobile communications.
- 47 percent said their customers haven’t expressed demand for mobile payment solutions.
- 36 percent said they are interested in mobile solutions but don’t know enough about how to best use them.
- 33 percent said they’re interested in mobile solutions but haven’t had time to implement any yet.
- 31 percent said they don’t have a work-/business-related smartphone.
- 28 percent said mobile is not relevant to their industry/business.
“Generally speaking, small business owners have very little spare time on their hands, so learning how to use mobile technology for their business is not necessarily tops on their ‘to do’ list,” said Hughes.
“We received some anecdotal survey responses that said ‘It costs too much’ and ‘I have no idea how this stuff works,’ representing the subset of small businesses that will forgo mobile opportunities until their customers start demanding mobile communications or payment solutions.”
Tags: advertising, Android, Apple iOS, Devices, email, Marketing, mobile technologies, small business, social media
Posted in Digital Devices, Internet/New Media, Marketing, Mobile | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 7th, 2013
 Are you using Dropbox, Evernote, Skype or other public cloud services at work? Many are and it worries some firms.
There is growing concern among Enterprise IT leaders over the unauthorized use of the public cloud by business units within the enterprise according to the 2013 PMG Cloud Sprawl Survey of 234 North American corporate IT professionals.
Unauthorized cloud services of most concern to business IT processionals include the use of public cloud storage (70 percent), cloud synchronization (68 percent) and cloud-based collaboration applications (53 percent).
The pattern of unauthorized usage of cloud services seems to be on the rise despite the fact that IT says the vast majority (89 percent) of employees understand the need for data security.
Many have a policy
Today, 54 percent of corporate IT professionals surveyed say their organizations have a policy in place regarding the use of public cloud storage services.
However, the plurality (43 percent) admit to being only “somewhat effective” in educating business users on the pitfalls of the public cloud. Twenty-eight percent of IT pros say they are not effective in educating business users on the downside of using public cloud solutions, 20 percent say they are effective and 10 percent are not sure how effective they are.
Complete findings from the 2013 PMG Cloud Sprawl Survey, a blind survey of 234 North American corporate IT professionals conducted in March of 2013, are available at www.pmg.net/cloud2013.
Cloud sprawl
The ever-growing use of public cloud services and apps by individuals or business units within a company, often without permission from IT, also known as cloud sprawl, is a trend most tech professionals see as negative.
A majority of IT pros (52 percent) say cloud sprawl will have a significant or somewhat negative impact on operations and resources, and 34 percent say they don’t yet know how it will impact IT.
“Cloud services will continue to expand within companies, in fact this study found 38 percent of IT respondents turn to the cloud because it offers faster deployment,” said Joe LeCompte , principal at PMG. “Savvy IT departments are focusing on finding better ways to offer enterprise-grade cloud services to internal users as a way to stem cloud sprawl and safeguard corporate information.”
Top Cloud Concerns
Security tops the list of the biggest issues associated with unauthorized cloud sprawl. When asked, here is how corporate IT ranks the following concerns:
- 79 percent data security,
- 57 percent compliance,
- 55 percent network security,
- 51 percent loss of control,
- 48 percent unmanaged application.
 Specific cloud services or applications IT has prevented or limited enterprise access to include social media sites (66 percent), Skype (61 percent), Dropbox (59 percent) and Google Drive (40 percent). Sixty-four percent of those surveyed say much of the increased usage of cloud solutions has been driven by the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend in today’s workplace.
Efforts To Make Cloud Procurement a Positive
When IT uncovers the deployment of public cloud solutions without IT’s assistance or knowledge, 65 percent say they evaluate the service and act accordingly (either approving or denying usage), only 15 percent immediately pull the plug and 11 percent say they don’t get involved in the deployment of department-level cloud solutions.
The strategies IT is using to better manage cloud sprawl within corporations are varied but include the following:
- 48 percent assign an IT resource to work with business units/departments seeking cloud solutions,
- 39 percent have developed internal cloud solutions for business units/departments to use,
- 33 percent have developed and enforce a corporate-wide cloud services IT policy.
The silver lining in the cloud sprawl conundrum is that 72 percent of IT leaders say employees are willing to use corporate installed cloud solutions. This is good because 82 percent of IT respondents are predicting the volume of cloud service procurement by business users over the next 24 months to be greater than it is today.
 Credit: http://www.linuxforu.com With 60 percent of those surveyed reporting big data is or will become vital in future enterprise cloud deployment, the ability to integrate data between cloud applications or cloud application and on-premise application is key.
To date, 46 percent have had incompatibility issues when trying to integrate data between cloud and on-premise applications. Forty-six percent surveyed say this is because of the use of unsanctioned cloud applications.
“At the end of the day, IT is not going to paint all public cloud solutions as ‘bad’,” said LeCompte. “In fact, 69 percent of IT executives say a hybrid cloud strategy using both private and public cloud offerings is the wave of the future inside the enterprise.
Containing cloud sprawl to protect corporate information and ensure security can be done by providing cloud services in a structured manner with a proper governance framework.”
Getting Personal with IT Professionals
On the strictly personal side, the survey found that most technology professionals had a split personality – when it comes to operating systems.
The vast majority (72 percent) prefer the Windows OS for personal computing (outside the work environment) compared to 25 percent that answered Apple and four percent that opt for Google.
On the mobile side of things, a majority (53 percent) prefer the Apple mobile OS, 34 percent Android, 9 percent Windows and 4 percent BlackBerry.
 The Big Bang Theory pokes fun at super smart “geeks” who love science, comic books and the girl next door. When asked what fictional TV character most represents today’s IT professionals, the “wicked smart” Dr. Gregory House from House M.D. got 27 percent of the vote, followed by the “lovable geek” Sheldon Cooper , Ph. D. from The Big Bang Theory with 21 percent of the vote, and Sherlock Holmes from Elementary cited by 19 percent.
We’re not sure about those choices. While Cooper is certainly a geek, his TV friend Wollowitz is really the computer nerd.
The bottom of the list included Tony Soprano (8 percent), Homer Simpson (6 percent) and Elmo from Sesame Street (1 percent).
For in-depth survey findings from the 2013 PMG Cloud Sprawl Survey visit www.pmg.net/cloud2013.
Tags: cloud sprawl, Dropbox, IT leaders, Security, Skype, social media
Posted in Cloud, Internet/New Media, IT, Security, Studies, surveys, reports | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
 Do you play online games? If you do, beware. Cyber criminals are trying to steal your personal information.
The APWG reports in its Q4 2012 Phishing Activity Trends Report this week that phishing attacks against online game players saw a massive increase, climbing from 2.7 percent of all phishing attacks in Q3 to 14.7 percent in Q4.
“The success of the sector and the richness of in-game commerce options available in online game systems has attracted the attention of phishers who’ve had a decade to hone their skills against online banking and commerce systems. Playing safe is an important today as playing fair,” said APWG Secretary General Peter Cassidy.
Attacks doubled
Attacks against social media sites doubled to 6 percent, up from 3 percent in Q3. Financial services continued to be the most-targeted industry sector in the fourth quarter, with payment services close behind, the report found.
Online gaming credentials are valuable to certain criminals, who sell them on the black market. In-game items held in those accounts can also be sold by phishers for real-world cash. Depending upon how much information is revealed, the victims can even have their real-life identities stolen.
Increased emphasis on malware
Overall the APWG’s statistics show that the number of phishing sites declined every month from April 2012 through December 2012. In Q4, the APWG received reports of 51,232 unique phishing sites in October, falling to 28,195 in December.
This and other statistics reveal that criminals are relying less on pure social engineering scams such as classic phishing based on social engineering schemes. Instead, there is increased emphasis on deploying crimeware – malware designed to steal the user’s credentials automatically and placing them in the phisher’s control.
Trojans continue to account for about three-quarters of all newly detected crimeware threats.
Penetration of malware is high
The penetration of malware payloads is also high. According to APWG contributor Luis Corrons of PandaLabs, during Q4 about 30 percent of personal computers worldwide were infected with malware. More than 57 percent of PCs in China may have been infected, while PCs in European nations were infected least-often.
“These shifts are due to fraudsters using more advanced phishing techniques, such as geo-IP blocking and malware,” said Ihab Shraim, Chief Information Security Officer and VP, Anti-Fraud Engineering & Operations at MarkMonitor.
“Phishers are also taking advantage of the availability of non-traditional platforms such as social media and mobile to launch newer types of targeted phishing attacks.”
The full text of the report is available here: http://docs.apwg.org/reports/apwg_trends_report_Q4_2012.pd
Tags: cyber crime, financial services, malware, online gaming, phishers, social media
Posted in games, Internet/New Media, Studies, surveys, reports | No Comments »
Monday, April 22nd, 2013
By Allan Maurer
 Erica McClenny, SVP, Expion, is participating in the upcoming Atlanta Digital Summit. What’s the biggest change in digital marketing since the beginning of the year? “Social media has gone far beyond just being a marketing source,” says Erica McClenny, vice president of client services with Expion.
“That’s a huge shift since the beginning of the year,” McClenny says. “A lot of companies are breaking down walls to integrate and overlay what social is doing on the whole picture rather than looking at it on its own as a social bubble.”
What companies want now, she says, is to know what its social media users are saying on a real time basis. They say, “Give me something I can do something about and take action on.”
Expion is a social software company. Its centralized platform empowers global brands, agencies, and retailers to localize and manage their social marketing efforts to listen, content plan, publish, moderate, analyze, govern and share content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and other social channels across thousands of users.
It has 20,000 pages managed by its software, including those of many high profile brands that have mounted hugely successful digital marketing campaigns via the platform (Expion does not do the creative end, it’s platform executes the campaigns).
The system produces real-time community intelligence giving brands and retailers the power to optimize consumer engagement, service, and ad performance. Its Marketing Insights Technology allows companies to integrate multiple social activity streams in real-time creating highly visual analytics to discover patterns, breakouts and trends.
Participating in the Atlanta Digital Summit
McClenny’s input into the development of a simple local interface for the local user has been a crucial piece to Expion’s success. She is a firm believer in collaboration between the agency of record, corporate marketing teams, and the integration local employees to gain valuable insight and best practices for a successful local expansion.
McClenny is one of dozens of digital thought-leaders, top brand executives from Google, Twitter, AOL, AT&T, The Wall Street Journal, Adobe, Apple, MailOnline and others participating in the Atlanta Digital Summit May 14-15.
 Oreo created this Mars Rover cookie, complete with Rover tracks, for one of its digital marketing campaigns that inspired much social media sharing. McClenny says another major shift she sees this year is a greater emphasis on “contextual listening.” One of Expion’s clients is Oreo, which has had enviable success with several social media and digital marketing campaigns. So, a brand such as Oreo might start listening not just for mention of its own cookie, but for conversations about cookies.
Smart companies do this
“Smart companies are becoming category aware, not just brand aware,” McClenny says. They listen for words associated with their product. “Then they can jump into the conversation in a matter of seconds when it makes sense, not days later when it’s irrelevant.”
She notes that more social channels are rising to the top with Vine the current “hot one.” But she also sees a “huge advantage” possible in using Google+. “Google dominates search and Google+ is a way to make search richer,” she points out. “It can show you everything you and your friends touch. I think it will be amazing. The business part needs some backend tools but it will be a huge powerhouse.”
She likes a new feature called Google Ripples that allows you to track the sharing and impact of a link you post on the Google+ site. “You can drill all the way down to how many plus 1s – it’s really rich,” she says.
Pinterest needs an API
 Pinterest, on the other hand, still has limitations. “It’s too broad. It doesn’t have any geographic capabilities and brands using software to help with all their data don’t want to go to a native channel for one thing when they’re aggregating everything else. I think Pinterest will have a lot more legs in the business world when they have an API. (the interface that lets programmers create applications to make it more useful).
As something of a rule of thumb for social media marketing, McClenny says to focus on what you want to happen, avoiding fluffy terms such as “engagement.” “Be focused,” she says. “We want X number of things to happen: drive people to my website, increase the number of shares. You don’t just want lots of activity. You need to know what kind of activity you want and what result you want from that.”
Don’t overthink the process
It’s not just sales that produces ROI. You might instead increase product awareness by 25 percent over a quarter. “You can’t focus just on the bottom line first or you’ll never get there,” she says.
She warns, as many experts in social media marketing do, that brands can’t be overly promotional, using a “radio voice” with no interaction or reason for it.
She also suggests that some companies “overthink” the whole process, taking days to approve a social media post. Also, every post does not have to be professionally slick with high resolution images.
“Sometimes a behind the scenes, outtake type of thing can have more reach than a commercial you spend a lot of money on,” she suggests.
Tags: Atlanta, Best Practices, contexual listening, digital marketing, Digital Summit, Erica McClenny, Expion, Google+ ripples, Oreo, Pinterest, Raleigh, social media, Vine
Posted in Events, Google, Internet/New Media, Marketing | No Comments »
Friday, April 19th, 2013
The four most valuable social media brands in 2012 were able to defend their leading positions and increase their brand values, with Google+ rising fast.
The rankings are from the Department of Social Media Management of HWZ University of Applied Sciences in Business Administration Zurich, in cooperation with BV4 Certified Brand Valuation Experts.
Facebook takes the top of the current ranking with an estimated brand value of $ 34.320 billion, followed by YouTube with a brand value of $ 26.824 billion, and Twitter with $ 23.656 billion.
Less well known in the Western world is the Chinese network Qzone which, with a brand value of $ 16.336 billionn, is in fourth position.
 Top winner of this year’s ranking is Google+, which gained 14 ranks ($ 5.878 billionn).
Together, the thirty most valuable brands have a monetary value of nearly $ 200 bn
Trends positively influenced brand value growth
Actual social media trends had a positive influence on the strength and value development of the analyzed brands, fueling a growth of 59% compared to the top 30 brands in 2012: on one hand, the most successful social media brands such as Facebook and Twitter were able to further develop their dominance with regard to their financial brand values.
On the other hand, Chinese social media brands expanded their strength and value thanks to the impressive Chinese Internet usage statistics that are characterized by a rapidly increasing number of Internet users and an intensive daily use of social media networks.
Furthermore, the new brand arrivals Instagram ($ 2.101 bn, position 22) and Pinterest ($ 1.987 bn, position 24) clearly benefitted from users’ augmenting need to share pictures among their digital peers.
Finally, the trend of increasingly using mobile devices rather than PCs to access social media platforms is an additional factor that positively influenced the strength and value development of the most valuable social media brands in 2013.
The growing importance of social media brands
Brands are important intangible value drivers for consumer goods and service companies. Compared to corporate values, intangible values like brands are continually increasing.
This is also true for social network brands, which have spread rapidly throughout the world and were able to continue on this path to success. Some of the important value drivers of social media brands are global awareness, growing user numbers, omnipresence in the day-to-day life of consumers, as well as facilitation of simple and efficient communication.
The detailed report ”The Most Valuable Social Media Brands 2013″ can be obtained free of charge at http://www.fh-hwz.ch/fsmmand http://www.bv4.ch . Follow the hashtag #socialbrands13
Tags: brand value, facebook, Google, rankings, social media, twitter, YouTube
Posted in Facebook, Google, Internet/New Media, Twitter | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 10th, 2013
 The 2012 global spend for public relations information (including regulatory disclosure) & software was up 4.41% versus 2011, to reach $1.99 billion. If you’re looking for a product opportunity, though, you might look into the need for better tools to track key influencers, journalists, and social media.
The UBM PR Newswire unit and Cision were the overall market share leaders with 14.32% and 7.33% respectively, in what is generally a fragmented industry.
The report also shows that Social Media is the fastest-growing area of spending for PR professionals. Almost 60% of respondents to an exclusive Burton-Taylor survey expect their spending on social media tools to grow in the coming year.
“Since the economic meltdown in 2008, there has been much greater emphasis on transparency and tighter controls on information distribution, which positively impacted the Press Release Distribution space,” says Douglas B. Taylor , Managing Partner of Burton-Taylor.
Desire for online visibility boosts growth
“Client Interest in online visibility, especially via social media, is also boosting growth.”
The B-T survey results show HootSuite and Radian6 currently top the list when PR practitioners are asked to name their primary social media provider.
“Contact management tools for PR professionals are another consistently strong area,” says report contributor Chris Porter , Director at Porter Walford Consulting.
“There’s a real unmet demand for better tools to pinpoint key influencers, whether journalists or social media commentators, to track their coverage across all channels and to maintain strong relationships with them.”
Tags: 2012, PR opportunity, social media, spend, tools, unmet demand
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Thursday, March 28th, 2013
New research shows that the multitude of digital devices and social media actually help people work rather than hinder them.
The advent of Facebook, Linked In, Twitter and smartphones means people are connected in a multitude of ways leading some critics to believe it is affecting workers’ concentration span and ability to analyse in detail, with some firms even banning the use of social media.
But a study of leading technology companies in the UK, Finland and Germany by Professor Joe Nandhakumar has found that the myriad ways of communicating allows people to be more flexible about when and where they work and more effective.
The Warwick Business School Professor said: “We found that the ubiquitous digital connectivity altered workers’ sense of ‘presence’ and helped rather than hindered the effective completion of collective tasks.
Flexibility fits in with the modern world
“This study also indicates that such digital connectivity afforded workers much greater latitude and control over their timing and location of their work.”
In a paper entitled Exploring social network interactions in enterprise systems: the role of virtual co-presence set to be published in the Information Systems Journal Professor Nandhakumar, Joao Baptista, and Niran Subramaniam, of Warwick Business School, and found that the flexibility social media gave at the workplace fitted in with the demands of the modern world where, frequently, jobs are no longer a straight forward nine-to-five affair.
The Professor of Information Systems also found that the global nature of modern business also means working ‘out of hours’ as workers converse with colleagues around the world.
Information empowers workers
Professor Nandhakumar dded: “The amount of information now at the fingertips of the modern office worker should not mean they are overloaded, but empowered.
“In academic settings, digital connectivity and interactions are often seen as a positive aspect of our work and an essential part of how we keep up to speed with new knowledge and developments within our field.
“Ubiquitous digital connectivity should be seen not as an unwelcome interruption but as part of the changing nature of knowledge work itself that needs to become part of normal, everyday practices of contemporary organisations.
Time-shifting tasks
“The popular view that workers are passive in responding to their digital communication alerts and notifications, fails to recognize the extent of their ability to exercise choice in their interaction with digital media.
“Even in the case of constant connectivity afforded by mobile digital media, studies suggest that workers are able to respond to communications in their own time, enabling time shifting of tasks by the participants.
“Evidence from our research suggests that knowledge workers who were able to successfully deal with the timing and sequence of their ‘presence’ and responses in a digitally mediated workplace were better able to organise the flow of work through digital media.”
Make sure workers have control
Companies and organisations should make sure their workers can control the flow of information, turning it on and off when needed.
“There is a growing body of evidence which suggests that instead of adopting uncritically popular views of digital connectivity as something disruptive, organisations should instead investigate further,” said Professor Nandhakumar, who has worked with Ford and Nestle.
“They should explore how employees can be better equipped and empowered to manage their time and productivity in this environment.”
Tags: Best Practices, digital, Information Systems Journal, social media, Warwick University, worker productivity
Posted in Digital Devices, Internet/New Media, social media, Studies, surveys, reports | No Comments »
Wednesday, March 27th, 2013
 It is becoming more and more apparent to agencies that they need a separate department to handle their digital business, according to Second Wind’s 2012 Annual Agency Survey.
Among responding agencies, more than half (63%) have dedicated digital groups; 32 percent of agencies separate their digital group from the rest of the agency, a 3 percent increase from last year’s survey.
“Digital and interactive services are now an essential part of smaller agencies’ service menus,” said Tony Mikes , founder and Managing Director of Second Wind.
Cross over critical
“The complexity of these services requires specific skill sets not innate to traditional agencies. These older agencies have partnered with, bought and merged with interactive specialists; and interactive firms have merged with traditional firms to better supply the marketing experience and creative insights the interactive firms often lack.”
“But while digital services may require dedicated personnel, it’s critical for the creative and strategic aspects of agency services to ‘cross over.’ Agencies must fully integrate digital with traditional in planning and creative execution. All tactics need to serve the brand and the ‘big idea’.”
More from the Survey Report
The percentage of agency revenue deriving from digital projects is projected to increase from 12 percent in 2011 to 13 percent in 2012.
Despite the growing need for digital services, smaller agencies are slow to hire digital staff, with 51 percent having 1-2 employees, 32 percent having 3-4 employees and just 17 percent having 5-10 employees.
These digital departments encompass services from website development (96%) to email marketing (92%), social media (90%) and banner ad creation (89%).
Most use Google Analytics
Ninety-four percent of agencies use Google analytics for digital media tracking and analysis, with the other 6 percent using DoubleClick, MediaPlex, Omniture or another resource.
Social media has become an important tactic in digital marketing. Agencies are managing and creating their clients’ Facebook pages (86%), Twitter accounts (66%), blogs (66%) and LinkedIn presences (48%).
A growing number of agencies (56%) also monitor and report on client social media activity, with 43 percent relying on HootSuitePro, 20 percent using Radian6, and all respondents using a mix of other social media monitoring packages.
The Second Wind Annual Agency Survey allows Second Wind members to compare their data with average data from other member agencies. It is the most complete survey of smaller to midsize agencies that exists today.
Tags: Annual Angency Survey, digital group, google analytics, marketing agencies, Second Wind, social media
Posted in Internet/New Media, Marketing, social media, Studies, surveys, reports | No Comments »
Monday, March 25th, 2013
Now there is proof that customers who engage with a business through social media contribute more to the bottom line than customers who do not, said Ashish Kumar, assistant professor of marketing at Aalto University.
“Our study showed that social media activities help strengthen the bond between the customer and the firm. Participating customers on a firm’s social media site contribute 5.6% more revenue and visit the business about 5% more than non-participating customers,” he explains.
In the past there was no individual-level data that connected a customer’s participation in a firm-hosted social media site and their actual purchase behaviors.
Overall sales promoted
Companies questioned whether there was any return on their investment of resources to operate their social media site.
This study proves that building online communities, personalizing messages and encouraging contributions from online members enhances the customer experience as well as increases the frequency of social media visits and promotes sales overall. Such data is important to confirm the pay-offs of social media efforts by firms.
The research showed that the keys to success include maintaining a user-friendly site, sending regular updates about events, personalizing key messages to customers and encouraging interaction from them.
Not all customers respond equally
By fostering an online relationship, customers can be segmented depending upon their purchase history and prior interactions to determine which customers would be best to target with this marketing effort. It is important to note that not all customers respond to social media efforts equally. This makes market segmentation essential.
As a result of this study, business managers now have a better understanding of the return on their investment in social media.
They also now know there is a direct correlation between social media participation and the number of items a customer puts in their shopping basket and subsequently purchases.
By capitalizing on this knowledge, marketing can be focused on creating and nurturing the social media communities that generate the most profits.
This study has been published in a special issue of the journal Information Systems Research on ‘Social Media and Business Transformation’. This study was conducted by Ashish Kumar from Aalto University in collaboration with Rishika Rishika and Ramkumar Janakiraman from Texas A&M University, and Ram Bezawada from the University at Buffalo, New York.
Tags: Buffalo University, Marketing, online communities, social media, Social network ROI, Texas A&M
Posted in Marketing, social media, Studies, surveys, reports | No Comments »
Thursday, March 14th, 2013
 Google has awarded a multi-year grant to Polytechnic Institute of New York University’s (NYU-Poly) Oded Nov to further his study of the role of design in shaping online behavior.
Nov, an assistant professor in the Department of Technology Management and Innovation, has long focused on social media, and the behavioral aspects of information systems. Working with Mor Naaman of the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, he will embark on an ambitious new two-year project to examine the factors that impact users’ interactions with and contributions to social media.
“In particular, we will focus on the impact of social traces created by users’ feedback and inputs – the social cues about the attributes of the users, their opinions and the community they form,” Nov said. “As in the physical world, your behavior online changes depending on the others around you.”
While in no way connected, this comes on the heels of Facebook reporting that your “likes” on the site reveal much about you – possibly your I.Q., sexual and political persuasion, and even drug use. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that social media’s interactive nature affects much as other communities we may belong to in the real world.
We’ll be interested to see if this study addresses how the apparently never-ending design changes on Facebook, Google+ and other social networks affects their use (other than sparking cries of protest).
Google bestows the Focused Research Award, as the unrestricted grant is known, upon scientists working in areas of key interest to the company as well as to the broader research community.
Tags: design, facebook, Google, NYU-Poly, Rutgers, social media, social traces
Posted in Facebook, Google, Internet/New Media, social media, University Tech | No Comments »
Thursday, March 14th, 2013
 Digital marketing spending averages 2.5 percent of company revenue, and these budgets are expected to increase 9 percent in 2013, according to a survey of U.S. marketing executives by Gartner Inc. The survey found that, on average, companies spent 10.4 percent of their annual 2012 revenue on overall marketing activities; these expenses include salaries, advertising research, agencies and software as a service.
These findings are included in Gartner’s U.S. Digital Marketing Spending report that is based on a survey of more than 250 marketers from U.S.-based companies with more than $500 million in annual revenue, across six industries (financial services and insurance, high-tech, manufacturing, media, retail and healthcare).
The survey was conducted in November and December of 2012. The report examines how marketers are allocating their budgets, what activities are contributing to marketing success and other factors.
Scope of digital marketing on the upswing
“While digital marketing has been a growing area of investment in many organizations for a decade, the scope is increasing and the techniques are maturing,” said Yvonne Genovese, managing vice president of Gartner for Marketing Leaders. “However, increased funding is a double-edged sword as it brings new opportunities, but it also puts more pressure on marketers to measure and attribute investments to revenue and profit growth.”
The majority of survey respondents are spending between 10 percent and 50 percent of their marketing budget on digital marketing activities, with the average at 25 percent.
“Digital advertising accounts for the largest share of digital marketing budgets at 12.5 percent, while content creation and management account for the second-largest share,” said Laura McLellan, research vice president at Gartner.
Content marketing emphasized
 “Marketers today are emphasizing the use of content marketing as part of a shift to drive more inbound marketing. While outbound marketing emphasizes finding audiences and delivering messages to them (for example, digital advertising and email marketing), inbound marketing focuses on techniques to get found by potential customers and create an ongoing dialogue with them (for example, social marketing and communities).”
Improving commerce experiences is the activity that will get the largest budget increase in 2013. The focus on commerce experiences will be in improving the ability to find the commerce site and the shopping experience.
It will also include strategies to embed commerce in digital marketing channels such as search, social and mobile.
Reinvesting savings
When asked to identify how they are funding their digital marketing activities, two in five marketers said they realized savings from digital marketing compared with traditional techniques, and they are taking that money and reinvesting it into their programs. On average, 28 percent of marketers say they have reduced their traditional advertising budget to fund digital marketing activities.
The corporate website and digital advertising were both ranked as the top digital marketing activities for marketing’s success, while social marketing emerged as the next most important activity.
“The survey results suggest that the corporate website will not be displaced anytime soon by a brand’s social media presence,” said Bill Gassman, research director at Gartner. “That’s all the more reason for marketing leaders to continuously invest in measuring and optimizing their websites through Web analytics and testing, paying attention to all aspects — from customized landing pages to compelling content that encourages visitors to be engaged with your brand.”
Additional information is available in the report “Key Findings from U.S. Digital Marketing Spending Survey, 2013.” The report is available on Gartner’s website athttp://www.gartner.com/digitalmarketing.
Tags: advertising, budgets, Corporate website, digital marketing, ROI, social media
Posted in Internet/New Media, Marketing, social media | No Comments »
Thursday, March 7th, 2013
By Russell Trahan, President, PR/PR
Janet is a savvy small business owner. She successfully navigated her way through the recession and is enjoying steady growth. She’s well-versed on her clientele and knows their individual likes and dislikes. She knows who her competition is and what they’re up to.
She keeps up with trends, so she has a Facebook profile and a Twitter handle. So, why has she seen a marked increase in the growth of her competitors’ business and not her own? When she hears people speak of her product, why do they associate it with her competition? What can Janet do to make sure her company is foremost in her customer’s minds?
Regardless of the size of your company, or your position within its ranks, you know how important it is these days to be established on social media, spending ample time actively engaging your client-base.
When it comes to social media, most companies are online networking when they need to be social media marketing. The same principles apply to marketing your company on the Web as they do in print – frequency and repetition are imperative. You need to be in front of your target audience again and again on multiple platforms to build top of mind awareness.
Here are some areas to concentrate on while building your social media marketing strategy:
Avoid the ‘Field of Dreams Fallacy’
You have a firm presence on a variety of social media platforms and have carved out a stout digital footprint? Terrific – now, are you taking time out regularly to engage your client-base? Despite the optimistic ‘if you build it, they will come’ mentality, creating social media outlets without frequent, active participation is like fashioning a clipper ship without a mast or sails.
In order for your efforts to produce a spike in business or revenue, you need to get into the trenches with your clients. Use ‘@’ replies on Twitter to demonstrate light-speed customer service; post valuable, thought-provoking status updates on Facebook and participate in the conversations that unfold.
Never underestimate the value your customers place on actively engaging their questions, concerns and compliments.
Market, Don’t Network
A critical misstep many business owners make when launching a social media campaign is immediately adding or following everyone they know. While inflated friend statistics may serve to massage your ego, they do little to promote your business or cause.
Instead, you should be participating in social media marketing. Priority one should be positioning yourself in front of your customers to generate online traction and expand your reach. Social networking should be confined to your personal profiles, where you’re free to follow your neighbors, and their Great Dane named Pickles, should you choose.
Limit your interactions on your company profiles to providing useful content and information to those who frequent your establishment, and restrict any exchanges with colleagues, friends and family to your personal profile.
ROR Trumps ROI
Make no mistake – the endgame in a social media marketing campaign is to turn a profit; but many new adopters often fail to utilize the interactive aspect of their online presence.
The immediate value of websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the relationships you build along the way, and an appropriate measure for this is ROR, or Return on Relationships. Any owner of a Mom and Pop corner store that has enjoyed decades of success can tell you that the reason they have remained in business is because of the friendships and rapport they’ve developed with their clientele.
Product loyalty stems from strong relationships, and this is the inherent payoff that social media marketing provides. Stop framing your online success in an immediate monetary return, and instead, view your success in a long-term mindset, where you’re crafting long-standing, profitable connections.
On the Run? Go Mobile!
Businessmen and women are highly aware of the hectic travel schedules and deadlines that accompany their chosen profession.
The bad news: in a society that increasingly revolves around the Internet, being ‘too busy’ for social media is no longer an excuse to let your platforms lay dormant. Thankfully, software developers recognize the needs of an ‘on the go’ culture, and have created apps that allow users to access and update their social media cache while heading to a meeting or waiting for a flight.
Utilize “check-ins” on Facebook when entering an annual conference or leadership seminar to let your followers know what you’re up to. Snap a few pictures and upload them to your Instagram feed – just ensure there is no lull in your Internet activity when things get busy.
Now armed with a practical and effective understanding of social media marketing, Janet is well-equipped to best her competition online and ensure that her product is associated with her business.
By streamlining her digital footprint to only encompass her customers and potential clients, and dedicating a bit of her daily activities to interacting with her followers, she has realized the full-potential of social media and will enjoy the return on relationships that her web-presence provides. Follow Janet’s example and become engaged with your customers online.
Russell Trahan is President of PR/PR, a boutique public relations agency specializing in positioning clients in front of their target audience in print and online. PR/PR represent experts of all kinds who are seeking national exposure for their business or organization.
Tags: Best Practices, maximize benefits, online marketing, social media, tips
Posted in Best Practices, Internet/New Media, Marketing, Viewpoint | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
 Websites are second only to word-of-mouth in bolstering or eroding brand affinity, but social media appear to have only a minimal effect, according to Kentico Software’s Customer Experience Survey.
Not surprisingly, word of mouth (28%), company websites (25%) and in-store experience (18%) weighed most heavily on strengthening or eroding brand affinity.
But given the growing reliance on digital communications, it was notable that only 7% of respondents felt their brand experience was affected via such social networks as Facebook or Twitter.
Social Media: All Bark and No Bite?
The smaller than expected role of social media was consistent across other aspects of brand interaction, including communications, where an overwhelming 48% of those surveyed prefer email over any other form of communication, including phone (19%), website (18%), in-person (13%), chat (2%), texting (0%), and social networking sites (0%).
However, customer comfort levels with the digital experience overall is high, with 56% most likely to be at their computer and 10% on a mobile device when communicating with or buying from a company. Only 24% are more likely to interact in person with businesses in stores or via the phone (10%).
Personalized Experiences vs. Privacy
Striking a new chord on the issue of privacy in the digital era, 69% of those surveyed expressed an overwhelming eagerness in allowing the collection of their personal data in exchange for more customized service.
This includes the ability and willingness of a company to own up to and right a mistake, with 97% ready to forgive poor service as long as the company quickly corrects the problem with an explanation, apology, credit or other response.
In terms of preventing mistakes in the first place, businesses are advised not to keep the customer waiting, with 45% naming wait times in the store, on the phone or online as their biggest customer complaint. 32% said they were most put off by unhelpful company reps.
 Other recipes for bad experiences include: inferior websites (9%), too much email (9%), untargeted promotions (4%), and unresponsiveness on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks (1%).
Optimize the digital experience
“Our new Kentico Customer Experience Survey shows businesses need to use the tools that are available to them in order to optimize the digital experience for customers, including the delivery of helpful websites, responsive service, and personalized interactions,” said Kentico CEO and Founder Petr Palas .
“While seemingly small in comparison to other modes of interaction, from what we’re seeing, I believe social media’s role in helping to shape brand affinity will grow dramatically as more businesses and customers embrace social platforms to create and maintain long-lasting relationships.”
The Kentico Customer Experience Survey was conducted online with participants from the US and UK.
Tags: Kentico, Marketing, social media, websites
Posted in Internet/New Media, Marketing, social media, Studies, surveys, reports | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 25th, 2013
 Which CEO wields the most social media influence? It’s not Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, investor Warren Buffett, or any of a number of other names you might think of. Mark Zuckerberg isn’t even one of the top 50 most influential CEOs on social media, according to the Reuters & Klout 50.
How about Warren Buffett, the third wealthiest person in the world? Well, he’s sent only one tweet, so his social media impact is, well, lacking. The person leading the Reuters & Klout 50 is the former queen of daytime TV, Oprah Winfrey.
A number of tech honchos do appear high on the list, though, including, Mark Cuban, Jack Dorsey, Steve Case, all in the top ten.
Here’s an infographic from www.topmanagementdegrees.com showing who really dominates social media:
Source: TopManagementDegrees.com
Tags: CEOs, Dennis Crowley, Dick Costolo, Esther Dyson, influence, Jack Dorsey, Jonah Peretti, Kevin Rose, Mark Benioff, Mark Cuban, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, Rubert Murdoch, social media, Steve Case, Steve Forbes, Tim O'Reilly
Posted in infographic, Internet/New Media, social media, Studies, surveys, reports, Twitter | No Comments »
Friday, February 22nd, 2013
 Can social media predict the Oscar winners? RadiumOne, a programmatic advertising firm, disclosed its predictions for the 85th Academy Awards, based on social sharing data, posing the question, “Who would take home an Oscar if it was determined by social media?”
While this is primarily for fun, it points out the increasing use of social media to predict the outcome of events, evaluate mass opinion, provide crucial marketing data, and even make social research more scientific.
It also shows the growing impact of mobile devices on consumer behavior.
Although some nominees won’t take home an Oscar at this year’s event, a record amount of consumers weighed in on their favorite films via their desktop, and more frequently, their mobile device.
Shift taking place in entertainment
Overall, RadiumOne’s Infographic reveals a shift taking place in the entertainment industry as an increasing number of consumers flock to their mobile devices to share content about this year’s biggest events.
This year’s Super Bowl topped the charts as the most social televised event in history with 52.5 million social shares, up from 17.5 million shares in 2012.
More importantly, only 41 percent of consumers sharing content about the Super Bowl last year were doing so from a mobile device, but this year that number jumped to 88 percent. In conclusion, this data points to a constantly growing impact that mobile has in consumer social behavior.
Tags: Dark Night Rises, Hugh Jackman, Jennifer Lawrence, Les Miserables, Oscar predictions, Silver Linings Playbook, social media, TED, The Avengers, The Hunger Games, Twilight Saga
Posted in infographic, Internet/New Media | No Comments »
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