Brand Adoption

It seems like every business wants you to “like” their Facebook page — but what exactly do they get out of a virtual thumbs-up?

According to Hitwise, which collects data from 8 million Internet users across the UK, these businesses stand to gain a lot of web hits. “Within retail each new fan acquired will drive an additional 20 visits to a retailer’s websites, which in turn will generate extra sales both online and offline,” said UK Research Director Robin Goad.

That figure comes from a methodology that combined Hitwise data with data from social media experts Techlightenment. (The two firms are partnering to launch a Facebook Fan Acquisition and Analysis service that helps brands collect and study Facebook fans.) The researchers took the top 100 retailers ranked in the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category and then benchmarked visits to their websites against the number of fans they have on Facebook.

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The Modern Media Agency Series is supported by IDG. IDG research shows that IT professionals are both early adopters of social media and many use it regularly. Ninety percent visit at least one social or business networking site each month. Find out more about the report here.

Those in the marketing and agency world are privy to the buzzwords “paid,” “earned” and owned.” Traditionally, they stand for the different types of media and can be easily broken down like this:

Paid: Buying a 30-second Super Bowl spot
Earned: Coverage on Mashable
Owned: Your company’s website

But social media has brought about a change. It not only affected how agencies themselves function on a day-to-day basis, but it also altered the definitions of paid, earned and owned media and blurred the lines between them. Now, the challenge that agencies face is figuring out how to integrate all three forms of media for maximum effect. What follows is a breakdown of what the terms mean, how different agencies interpret them, who is responsible for synthesizing the three channels and how the agencies measure success.

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What’s happening in the world of social media? That’s not a simple question to answer, as this space is quickly becoming one of the busiest, most interesting aspects of our digital lives.

However, if we had to choose the best way to present the wealth of recent information on social media — how companies are using it to improve their business, how individuals are interacting with its many facets and how it’s affecting our lives — the simplest way would probably be to showcase the best social media infographics from the last few months, and that’s exactly what we did.

We’ve gathered 10 amazing infographics, which are still quite fresh and contain very relevant info. We hope you enjoy them! Let us know which ones you find most insightful in the comments below.

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American John Isner and Frenchman Nicolas Mahut are set to play in the first round of Wimbledon on Tuesday. It’s a rematch of the silliest, longest, most record-breaking tennis games of all time.

Last year, Isner and Mahut played each other in the first round of Wimbledon. That match lasted 11 hours and five minutes with a total of 183 games. That’s a lot of time, considering even the most most grueling games barely break five hours.

In fact, it’s near impossible to play that many games in a single match. Most tournaments institute a tie-break when both players have each won six games in a set. However, Wimbledon foregoes this custom in the final set, requiring players to win by two games. This results in scores like 8 to 6, or 14 to 12. The final score was Isner 70, Mahut 68.

The marathon game, which lasted three days, didn’t just break tennis records (like most aces — 216 and longest set — 8 hours and 11 minutes), it also broke an Internet record. According to Akamai’s Net Usage Index, the match helped create the single highest news day based on total page views per minute.

At noon ET on June 24, 2010, Akamai registered 10,357,646 page views per minute. Some of that was due to a series of World Cup soccer games at the same time, according to Suzanne Johnson, Akamai’s director of marketing, media and entertainment. “I think it was a perfect storm, everything that’s ranking in the news index before this was a single event,” she says. Still, the day had nearly 4 million more views per minute than the second highest record day.

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The Facebook Marketing Series is supported by Buddy Media, Power Tools for Facebook. Fans see when you post content on your brand’s Facebook Page, right? Wrong. Cut through the mystery of Facebook’s Edgerank — download the white paper now.

Early on in Facebook marketing history, movies had a minimal presence on the platform. Usually, film pages listed rudimentary information. Sometimes a marketer would create pages for individual characters in a movie, but that’s about as innovative as it got.

Since then, however, the platform has grown into an important tool for connecting with movie fans before and after a premiere.

“Now when we market on Facebook, it’s a full relationship with the fan group,” says Relativity Media president of marketing Terry Curtin. “If you think about the way that movie marketing has worked, for years and years and years we’ve had an indirect relationship with our audience. We sell our tickets through a third party, we advertise through a third party. So this is the first time that we have a direct interface.”

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JUNE 20, 2011

Google also gains share

Facebook will grow its net US display revenues this year by another 80.9% to $2.19 billion, eMarketer estimates. This will push it past Yahoo! to become the No. 1 display ad-selling company in the country.

This near-doubling of display ad revenues is actually a slowdown in growth for the social networking giant, which posted triple-digit display ad revenue growth in 2009 and 2010 when its display revenues were at relatively low levels. Next year, growth will slow further to just 31.3%.

“Facebook’s supreme popularity—both in terms of numbers of people and amount of time they spend there—creates a plethora of display ad impressions, mainly for its unique form of banners,” said David Hallerman, eMarketer principal analyst. “And that popularity is also boosting what advertisers will pay for its display ads.”

Google is also posting solid growth this year after more than doubling display ad revenues in 2010. Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL will all make double-digit gains as the total display market rises 24.5%.

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Saudi women — and the men who support them — are tweeting updates as they drive cars through Saudi Arabia on Friday as part of an initiative that defies a ban on female drivers.

A large number of tweets can be viewed under the #Women2Drive hashtag. The majority of reports indicate that women have been able to drive freely without interference from police. As one Twitter user, @Maialshareef, said after posting a picture of herself ready to drive outside her house: “Ready to go, police car saw me and did nothing.”

Mohammad Al-Qahtani, co-founder and president of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association, tweeted: “My wife, Maha, and I have just come from a 45-minute drive, she was the driver through Riyadh streets.”

One email update from Change.org Human Rights Editor Benjamin Joffe-Walt does indicate that at least one woman was stopped by police, but accompanied home without being arrested.

In the meantime, the campaign has received a bit of high profile male support from Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed, who tweeted: “I support the movement and #freedom of choice for my sisters in Saudi.”

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Members of tech-savvy families are bridging the generation gap, according to joint research conducted by WPP’s Ogilvy Chicago and Omnicom’s recently acquired online community builder Communispace.

The study of “Tech Fast Forward” families — defined as those who use more sophisticated technology than average, and representing some 42% of all households with kids 3-12 — found that “Nobody really acts their age anymore.. .. Technology taps into adults’ desire to indulge in childlike play while it enables kids to feel more grown up.”

As a result: “Try marketing to kids as adults and adults as kids.” One example cited was B. Toys’ Alphaberry for children, modeled after their parents’ BlackBerrys.

The research also found that the Tech Fast Forward and their kids are more inclined to be on the same page on tastes, values and social issues, and purchase decisions.

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There aren’t too many businesses out there these days that complain about too many customers. There’s always room for more leads. So where are you getting yours?

A recent survey reported by Brafton revealed that nearly 75% of marketers who have been utilizing social media have been able to find more leads and close more deals through their social networks. In addition, another study reported by Brafton.com found the time spent on social media marketing has increased drastically and the percentage of business partnerships formed through social media has increased by about 50% as well.

These statistics shouldn’t be too surprising. The only way to make a business grow is to make it known to people who may not be aware of it yet. These days, everybody is using social media. Where else would you go to find more sales leads?

Here are 7 great methods to increase your business lead generation through social media:

Have a presence – Simply put, if your business does not have a presence on major social media channels, you are losing an opportunity to connect with your audience.
Monitor – By monitoring your brand, products and primary business keywords, you will be able to find and filter through thousands of online users and have the opportunity to reach out and engage with them.
Listen – Many companies are so corporate driven that they don’t stop to take the time and actually listen to their customers. You will be surprised on what they have to say, their questions, suggestions and feedback that can help build a better brand and product line.

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