• 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.

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…

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.

The sporting event of the year is now the advertising event of the year.  It’s an exciting time for advertising, even for the general public, not just marketers.  In fact, 18% will look up Super Bowl commercials online or on smart phones on Super Bowl Sunday.  So, the internet is definitely playing a role in Super Bowl XLV.

So now, it’s time to turn the discussion from viewers to advertisers.  The most anticipated commercials will be those from Anheuser-Busch.  In a recent survey, 29% of the respondents is looking forward to Anheuser-Busch commercials.  This is because they have debuted crowd favorites year after year.  Such consistency builds trust.  Such consistency builds expectations.  Such consistency builds brands.

But even advertising giants have to adapt to the changing world of marketing.

This year, Bud Light has launched a Facebook effort ahead of the Super Bowl.  Tactics included Facebook ads, Facebook apps, and Facebook wall posts with video teaser.  It’s a well designed campaign centered around the highly anticipated commercials.  Fans are asked to comment on the plot of the commercials based on stills.  If the fans guess the plots correctly, Bud Light will release another commercial online.

I think this is a smart strategy to engage Bud Light fans, and build up top-of-mind awareness for Super Bowl Sunday.  After all, you need to stock up on beer for the game!

One of the obvious key performance indicator is how many new “Likes” Bud Light accumulates over the course of the campaign.  You have to “Like” Bud Light before you can participant in the game.  We see this in many Facebook campaigns.  Accumulating “Likes” holds obvious appeal to marketers.  We get to feed you content to your Facebook stream.  For a brand like Bud Light, engagement these final days ahead of game day could make a huge difference in sales (assuming people are not snowed in).  So, this is a good strategy for Bud Light.

However, it remains to be seen how advertisers are going to move beyond accumulating “Likes” and pushing contents.  How would we eventually move beyond the framework of push marketing?  Maybe one day, big advertisers will be ready to be social in social media.  It’s a real forum to dialogue with fans.  But for many of us, we are still quite a ways off from figuring out just exactly how do we want to do that…

Email Subscribers: Link to Screenshots of the Bud Light campaign

Related articles

• Bud Light Challenges Facebook Fans To Guess Its Super Bowl Ads (mashable.com)
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: Bud Light, Dentyne and New Belgium Brewing (e1evation.com)

• Facebook To Launch Social Group-Buying Feature
• Facebook Zeroes In On Mobile Advertising, Buys Seattle Startup Rel8tion
• US Twitter Users Spending More Time Than Ever On Twitter.com, Report Says

But one headline in particular jumped out:  LinkedIn Pushes Ad Tools appeared in today’s Wall Street Journal.

LinkedIN is a professional social network.  For me, it has essentially replaced my rolodex.  Contacts I make in business, I invite them in my network on LinkedIn.  With special interests groups on LinkedIN, it’s also a great way to connect with others in the industry.  From a personal branding perspective, a LinkedIN profile is a must have, so the world (or future employers) can appreciate your professional journey, experience, and network.  With the professional bend, LinkedIN users tend to be older than your typical social network crowd.  They also tend to be more established in their industries.  They are also likely very career driven, and some have found career successes.  All in all, this can be a very attractive group to advertisers.

Following other social networks’ footsteps, LinkedIN is going to further develop its advertising offering.  The latest include more specific targeting.  Now, advertisers can target company, levels, company size, etc.  The latest also appears to be incorporating some social context.  Of course, if Facebook serves as any type of example, it would suggest that it’d be only a matter of time before more interactive and more intrusive ads will begin to appear on LinkedIN.

The advantage for LinkedIN is that it’s a professional network.  As oppose to Facebook where users are looking to relax and connect with friends, LinkedIN users are actively seeking out other professional for business advice or actual services.  Therefore, they are more likely to be more open to advertisements.

However, that doesn’t mean everyone should start advertising on LinkedIN.  Business Insider has reported in the past how ineffectively LinkedIN advertising has been traditionally.  It has been reported that LinkedIN ads cost upward of $30 per click.  That’s quite a price premium over a $1 per click cost on paid search.  As illustrated by the lack of response to the many discussions on LinkedIN that have been started by “consultants” who are trying to push their services onto the community with little disguise, relevance is still vital.  Ads still need to be targeted.

The Wall Street Journal article cited a failed ad campaign by an art gallery.  The gallery owner probably correctly identified the demographic target for her ad campaign.  Successful business professionals with high discretionary budgets are probably going to be art patrons.  However, perhaps she didn’t correctly identify the engagement vehicle.  When professionals are browsing on LinkedIN, they have their business hat on.  They’re not necessarily thinking about redecorating their homes.

Wall Street Journal reports that American Express and Hewlett-Packard have both signed on as advertisers for the latest ad tools.  Both of these advertisers would likely enjoy a good ROI on the LinkedIN campaign as they are business-focused.  American Express has been a long time supporter of small business owners with OPEN.  It’d be interesting to see how advertising on LinkedIN will continue to evolve and what type of advertisers will succeed on LinkedIN.

Photo credit: via Wall Street Journal

Related articles

• LinkedIn Now Allows Advertisers to Target Users by Job Title & More (mashable.com)
• LinkedIn Tries To Juice Up Its Ad Efforts (businessinsider.com)
• LinkedIn Adds Granular Ad Targeting (clickz.com)
• LinkedIn Pushes Ad Tools (voices.allthingsd.com)
• LinkedIn Pushes Ad Targeting (online.wsj.com)

Dabbling into social media has always been scary for big brands.  Because we lose control of it all.  Because we allow the voice of a few to be heard, and we can’t just use TV advertising to drown them out.  It’s like you have handed over a microphone to everyone, including your haters, and to let them broadcast to the world whatever they want.  However, it is still generally advocated that big brand should participate in the social media discussion, good or bad.  Why?  Well, the discussion is happening anyway, so you may as well be a part of it.  It’s the only way you can learn and improve.  If someone at your office is circulating rumors about you, wouldn’t you like to know what exactly is being circulated?

Sue is always eating at meeting.  What’s worse, she leaves all her napkins and breadcrumbs and stuffs behind in meeting rooms.  I hate going into a conference room afterwards.  She’s such a mess.

There’s no reason to go talk to John.  Just go talk to his boss.  I sent him three emails this week, and he didn’t reply to a single one.

Well, turns out John’s grandma passed, and yes, that’s making him a little less responsive.  If you were John, you’d want to set the record straight.

Turns out Sue really is a mess.  If you were Sue, and you didn’t bother to pay attention to these stories, you may never realize what you were doing is unappealing to people.

So, yes, it’s important to participate in the social space.  It’s just part of good customer service – paying attention to your customers.

However, allowing negative comments to happen organically is one thing.  I wouldn’t want to pay for negative comments to be broadcasted.  Am I really that old-school?

The latest in Facebook’s ad offering is “Sponsored Stories”.  This means when a Facebook user interacts with your brand via, Likes, Check-ins or page posts, it gets broadcasted to a much wider Facebook community like an ad would on the sidebar.  For example, if a user check-in to your venue, you can paid to have that broadcasted.  Now, that’s no so bad when the check in is positive.  For example, Megan may check-in at bar X (bar X being the advertiser) and with the comment of “having a great time at happy hour with friend Jane.”  Now, all (if the advertiser pays for it all) of Megan’s friends will see on the sidebar that Megan has checked in to venue x and is “having a great time…”  This is very on-strategy with a recent Nielsen study that found ads to have social context to be more successful.  In this case, Megan is serving to be an endorser of bar x to her friends, without her realizing it.

It wouldn’t be horrible either if the check in turned out to be Jason checking in Starbucks with a comment “still waiting for my date to show up… hope she’s not a no show”.

But what if someone check in to restaurant Z with a comment “just got served raw chicken…”  That isn’t so good.

Or someone may just post a negative post on your fan page and says “your place sucks!”  And that became the copy that shows up as a “Sponsored Stories”.

Now advertisers do have some control.  Advertisers could limit this to just “Likes”.  “Likes” are by definition positive.  Generally speaking, I don’t have any problems with the existence of the negatives either.  I’m believe in negative comments.  Because in general, every brand stands for something, which automatically means they are not going to stand for something else.  Every brand is supposed to have their pagans.  These are people who doesn’t believe what your brand is selling.  These are the people who never got it.  These are the exactly the opposite of your core consumers.  For example, these are the tree huggers and you are a fur coat maker.  (I’m using this as an example and using labels to simplify the example.  I am not making a political statement here.)  But that’s okay.  These two can co-exist.  Fur coat makers are not trying to sell fur coats to tree huggers.  Tree huggers are not their demographic.  Fur coat buyers also know that they are not tree huggers, and they’re okay with that.  They are okay with tree huggers saying fur coats are bad, and they’ve reconciled themselves with that opinion.

Negative comments are there.  They exist regardless of whether social media is around.  PETA existed long before Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook promotes this new tactics as being more effective to buy word of mouth.

However, as open minded I’m about negative comments, I’m not sure about this.  For some brands, this may not be a concerned at all.  For others that have put a hard line in the sand on what they are selling and what they’re not, this is not just embracing the existing of negative comment.  This is paying to have them broadcasted.  Am I too old-school to think that’s not necessarily a good advertising model?

Photo Credit: Microphone by Daehyun Park.  Facebook image via AdAge.com

Related articles

• Facebook Turns Friend Activity Into New Ad Format (mashable.com)
• Facebook Turns the ‘Like’ Into Its Newest Ad (AdAge.com)
• Facebook Adds ‘Sponsored Stories’ to Ad Arsenal (AdWeek.com)

It’s January.  How do you know?  Go to a gym.  It’s pack with people who have made this year the year to lose those extra pounds.  Where were they last month?

This happens every year.  Everyone is enthusiastic in January.  People join aerobic classes.  People sign up for gym memberships.  People commit themselves to showing up at the gym every night.  A month goes by, that long wait for a treadmill disappears.  Another month goes by, the classes become less crammed.  By March, well, no one keeps resolutions anyway!

It’s easy to make resolutions, but it takes dedication and commitment to keep them.

It’s easy to make a jump into the social media bandwagon.  It takes dedication and commitment to maintain them and make social media work.

This was the thesis of Tom Fishburn’s cartoon this week.  He highlighted a particular example where his local diner still calls attention to a Facebook page that hasn’t been updated for months.  A Facebook page doesn’t run itself.  Online dialogues with your fans won’t magically happen.  Just like those extra pounds won’t magically disappear.  You have to commit to make it happen.

Coincidentally (or perhaps timed purposely), Tom launched his Facebook page today.  Go friend him!

Photo Credit:  Tricia Wang

I’ve been reading a lot of Al Ries recently, and I have learned a lot from his books. If I have to pick one lesson to highlight, it’d be focus, focus on being the best you.

Today, Facebook bought FriendFeed.

Big news for the social web.

The objective for Facebook purchase is assumed to gain FriendFeed’s search capabilities to better compete with Twitter. *This is simply a speculation. Maybe Facebook would not utilize this acquisition to make itself more like Twitter, via new search functions. But then, why buy FriendFeed?

However, why can’t Facebook define a separate but distinct niche from Twitter altogether? Why can’t the two be complimentary to each other and in fact grow the usage of social web in general? It is the whole growing the pie versus growing your own slide of the pie story.

(Hmm… pie…)

In fact, Facebook and Twitter probably already occupy different spaces in users’ minds. This article on Mashable highlights a great discussion on this topic. Facebook is for people to connect with friends. Twitter is for people to follow complete strangers. So, what purpose does it serve to make them look more alike? Shouldn’t they instead play to their differences and to their respective brand equities?

So, Facebook, instead of striving to be the best Facebook, it is trying to be the best Twitter. Hmm…

Why are branding basics so counterintuitive to us marketers / business owners, in our constant quest for the more, more, more?

Photo Credit: Pie chart, originally uploaded by net_efekt.