Posts Tagged ‘Facebook
Numbers behind Facebook
Some calls marketing an art. However, if you’re in the business of marketing. You’re very much into the science of marketing. At the end of the day, your accountant only cares about your numbers. Social media is no exception. As the industry matures, more numbers are becoming available. Today, we’ll look at some from the newly released report Strategies for Effective Facebook Wall Posts: A Statistical Review by Buddy Media. In this report, Buddy Media analyzed “Likes” and comment data from over 200 clients for a period of two weeks. Here are some numbers you may find interesting:
- Posts 80 characters or less in length have 27% higher engagement rates
- Engagement rates are 3 times higher for posts that used a full-length URL
- Brands that post outside of business hours had 20% higher engagement rates
- While industry plays a role, overall, engagement rates on Thursday and Friday are 18% higher than other days of the week
- Posts that end with a question have a 15% higher engagement rate
This report reinforced some of the data we looked at from Dan Zarrella earlier this week. Post when your audience have time to engage will likely increase the success of your post.
Another interesting data from this report was around what to post to increase engagement. Questions are always good conversation starters. However, many brands also leverage Facebook to promote their offers. In these cases, this report suggests that soft sell is the way to go. Words like “event” and “winner” are well received by fans. On the other hand, words like “coupon”, “exclusive”, even “free” are not the best words to use on Facebook.
Social media marketing and Facebook marketing remains to be a world of growth and opportunities. As more marketers are becoming active in this space, we will sure gain more insights into how to best leverage these new tools.
Facebook remains king of social media
Social media marketing, like all other form of marketing, is a blend of art and science. Throughout this week, we’ll be examining a few recently released report to look at the science side of this particular discipline. Today, we’re looking at Social Media Examiner’s 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. This is their third annual report of this kind. This year, they surveyed 3300 marketers. Of those surveyed, an overwhelming 93% indicated that they were employing social media for marketing purposes. This shows that without a doubt, social media is part of mainstream marketing.
Despite that, not everyone has the same level of experience in social media marketing. Of those surveyed, half had less than 1 year of experience. Keeping that in mind, the data not only shows the state of the industry, but it also shows where the opportunities lie.
Social media is still in its infancy in being part of the marketing mix. Currently, social media is largely leveraged to gain general exposure and increase new users. The opportunity here is that social media has the potential to be an on-going engagement with existing users. As we all know, it’s far cheaper to keep a consumer than to try to gain a new one. So, social media still has a lot of room to grow.
Facebook by far is the most popular social media tool right now. It’s also interesting to note that there is a difference between B2B and B2C marketing. LinkedIn is far more popular with the B2B marketers. This makes sense because every marketing tactic is about targeting. LinkedIn is a forum where business professionals are already at, thus making it a perfect forum for B2B marketers.
Of all the different tactics, YouTube / Video was the top area of focus, with 77% surveyed indicated that they intend to increase their efforts. This likely highlights the growth in adjacent technologies, namely smartphones.
This was followed by Facebook, blogs, and Twitter, not so surprisingly. Nevertheless, traditional digital marketing remains to be an important tool. SEO and email marketing are both areas marketers intend to continue to increase focus on. This is natural if you think about it because people are searching online for information and it takes email addresses to sign up for social media tools!
However, traditional paper marketing is likely to continue to fall out of favor with marketers. Direct mail and print ads both are areas where over 10% of those surveyed intend to lower their investment…
Using social media to announce bankruptcy
Social media has became a company’s best tool in disaster management. Borders advised their loyal customers via Facebook and Twitter regarding their reorganization the same day it was filed.
Wall Street Journal reported on this pending bankruptcy last week. So, it isn’t new news to the inside circle. However, to many Borders consumers, the social media postings are likely to represent breaking news. Social media is also allowing Borders to continue to communicate with their core consumers as the proceedings evolves. It also gave Borders an avenue to communicate important information such as store closing. During such a difficult time, it also gave Borders a way to continue to build good will and retain loyal consumers to the best of its abilities. A quick glance on Borders twitter stream shows numerous personal replies. Social media gave Borders the opportunity to continuously engage, and to address (or potentially discover) any consumer concerns.
Social media is now an essential tool for any public relations effort. It’s particularly helpful in incidents where events are continuously changing, and you need a way to communicate with your most loyal consumers with the latest and greatest. Traditional media cannot be compared with social media in its ability to respond quickly. News is on TV three times a day. Newspaper comes out once a day. Tweets can be posted continuously.
Click here to view a few screenshots of Borders effort.
Jeannie Chan is a Brand Manager for a Fortune 500 consumer goods company. She considers herself a marketer, a traveler, and a foodie. Jeanne lives in NYC. 
