A new study from comScore shows that heavy users of social networking sites favor leisure-related retail sites. Heavy users of social networking sites are significantly more likely than average to visit leisure-oriented retail site categories, such as music, jewelry/luxury goods/accessories and consumer electronics than the average Internet user.
According to data from Internet Retailer, heavy social networkers accounted for 28.5% of visitors to music sites and 26.5% of visitors to jewelry/luxury goods/accessories sites. In addition, they represented nearly one-quarter of visitors to apparel sites (24.8%), tickets sites (24.5%), consumer electronics sites (23.9%), sports/outdoor sites (23.8%), computer software sites (23.7%), book sites (23.6%), movie sites (23.4%) and computer hardware sites (22.7%).
Social media optimization has really grown in the last 12 months and there are now a lot really talented people writing about this topic. It is impossible to read everyone, but these are the social media sites that I read and why:
- Pronet Avertising: Has become one the biggest authorities on social media in about 12 month
- Rohit Bhargava: Not purely SMO, but Rohit is the person who first defined social media optimization
- Neil Patel: Personal site for SMM Guru Neil Patel. Full of great tips and ideas.
- Tom Hayes: A combination of SMM and online marketing.
You would have thought that after the public relations disasters that companies like KFC have had that most companies would have a reputation management plan in place, ready to get implemented at the first hint of negative news coverage. Well a new study by BtoB and Eric Mower and Associates shows that that is not quite the case. Fully 57% of companies surveyed said that they do not have any type of plan in place.
Of the 43% of companies that do have a crisis plan in place, over 10% worry about their ability to implement it, and only half have trained spokespersons.
As I was reading through the interview answers recently from Dan and Jennifer I was struck by one of their comments in the response to this question:
Tell me about your most successful social media campaign?
Thankfully we’ve had many successful social media campaigns, so it’s hard to isolate just one. We believe very strongly in developing and fine tuning a REPEATABLE process, regardless of what you’re doing.
Following up on yesterdays post about how Customer Reviews Becoming More Important, it appears that consumer product reviews are also credible, at least according to a Deloitte Consumer Product Group-sponsored study.
“Some online retailers are reporting higher sales conversion rates as a result of allowing customers to post product reviews on their Web sites,” said Jeffrey Grau, senior analyst at eMarketer.
Emarketer had some interesting data recently about how online shoppers in the US are turning to user reviews more than expert reviews when researching products. In an Avenue A | Razorfish study, they found that over 50% of online shoppers doing research said they consulted user reviews most often.
“It’s clear that new Web technologies have put consumers in control,” said Garrick Schmitt, vice president of user experience at Avenue A | Razorfish.
Last month I blogged how Orbitz had joined the social networking bandwagon with the launch of the Traveler Update section to its web site. Not satisfied with simply adding social networking features to its website, Orbitz now wants people to use them!!
The Traveler Update is a service that allows travelers to share real-time information regarding what’s happening in and around the nation’s top airports and to encourage participation Orbitz is running a contest where from now through October 28, 2007 where the “Top 100” contributors to Traveler Update will be eligible to win two free first class airline vouchers.
Interesting data on Advertising Age on what brands resonate with college age students. The study was conducted by Anderson Analytics and clearly shows the difference between college age men and women online.
Did you know that social networking is twice as popular with 18-24 year old women as with men? And that MySpace which was the most popular social networking site last year is now #2 with women and not in the top 5 for men? That means if you are using MySpace to target the college crowd that you are reaching a lot more females than males. So make sure that the ad campaign is female focused or it will not be that successful.
Yesterday I wrote about Target and how they were able to successfully launch a marketing campaign on Facebook. While the Target campaign was running, Wal-Mart also tested the social networking waters again with its own social marketing efforts. Unfortunately, the results were not a good as Target’s.
Target was successful on Facebook for a couple of reasons. One was that the ad agency spent time on Facebook and understood how Facebook users were interacting with each other. They changed their marketing message to fit the Facebook audience, and they turned down the volume of their marketing message.
Facebook is the hot story in social media circles, so I went looking for a company that has successfully used Facebook to market its products or services. Thanx to an Adweek article I was able to find a successful Facebook marketer (Target) and an unsuccessful Facebook marketer (Wal-Mart). I will cover the problems that Wal-Mart faced in their campaign tomorrow.
Target took its first steps in social networking by sponsoring a page on Facebook as part of its back to school campaign. The Target social media campaign was run by AKQA and they made some very smart decisions throughout the campaign
