Social Media Marketing Industry Report
Are you wondering how your peers are using social media? Wondering if you should focus on Google+ or Pinterest?
Are you wondering how your peers are using social media? Wondering if you should focus on Google+ or Pinterest?
The explosion of social networking sites over the past decade has facilitated a transformation in the way we communicate with each other. Here we look at some of these communities with over 1 million users, both active and defunct:

Facebook is the most dominant brand in the world of social media. Ever wonder how? Click the image below to view a comprehensive infographic:

Age Distribution on Social Networking Sites
Here’s some interesting statistics regarding the age distribution across many of the popular social networking websites:

A HubSpotter’s Guide to the (Social Media) Galaxy
Learn how marketers should explore new frontiers of social media, the blogoshere and more:

Digg vs. Reddit — The Infographic
There has always been a form of healthy rivalry between Reddit and Digg, and its respective user bases. Click to find out more:

Average Age of a Facebook User? 38
The demographics of most of the social networking sites change quite frequently. Flowtown has compiled the latest statistics about general usage of social networking sites especially Facebook. The statistics show that the average age of a Facebook user is 38 and more interestingly about 61% of the Facebook users are above 38 in age:

How are Mobile Phones Changing Social Media?
Have you ever wondered about the relationship between mobile phones and social media? The mobile web is growing at an exponential rate, and this trend shows no signs of slowing down:

Social Media Demographics: Who’s Using Which Sites?
Have you ever wondered which sites attract the most educated of social media users, or those that pull in the highest income? Below we map the demographics of the world’s most popular social media sites:

How Executives are Using Social Media
The infographics mentioned below show how executives and professionals are using social media to promote their business or goods and services. According to the infographic: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are the most popular social media sites used by the executives:

Facebook vs. Twitter — A Breakdown of 2010 Social Demographics
Let us take a look at a breakdown of 2010 social demographics between Facebook and Twitter:

The following is a graphic that takes a look at what sites women are using, as well as how much and why women are participating in social media:

Facebook was once the “contender” against MySpace. That didn’t last too long, but soon Twitter emerged as a pseudo-social-network-competitor-thingy to Facebook and the competition heated up again:

Are you new to social media? Are you unsure about how to engage your audience via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the rest? Here’s a handy infographic that doubles as a roadmap of the social Web:

Facebook: Facts You Probably Didn’t Know
If you ever want to impress anyone with your knowledge of Facebook miscellanea, below is the ultimate cheat sheet in the form of a very large infographic. Enjoy!

This Infographics is intended to show you how different components of social media are integrated with one another:

What happens when communities don’t exactly behave the way we intended them to? Fighting and bickering is normal and actually healthy for communities. Click to find out more:

Google’s Social Media Timeline
Google hasn’t had the best track record when it comes to social media attempts. Long story:

The prism shows the landscape of social media in Germany with all the relevant conversation channels:

So much discussion in the SEO community today centers around social media because of its potential to drive traffic, increase awareness, and build links. Here we explore some ways that a business can leverage specific social sites to achieve departmental goals:

The major players in the U.S. social media world can be counted on one hand: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn. Not so in China, where the country’s 300 million online users have a panoply of popular social networks to choose from — and Facebook doesn’t even crack the top 10!

Twitter Perceptions of Google Buzz Over Time
Social media monitoring and analytics company Viralheat put together this graphic that shows the initial positive response to Google Buzz on Twitter, followed by shifts in opinion based on events in the developing privacy story:

The State of B2B Social Media Marketing
For a deeper look at the current state of B2B social media marketing, check out the infographic below:

Are We Too Obsessed With Facebook?
Is Facebook an amazing connective medium? A plague that preys on the easily addicted? A little bit of both, or something else entirely?

Twitter is one of among those brands and companies which have experienced such a fast growth. Click the image below to view the infographic:

Facebook Privacy: 6 Years of Controversy
Here is a short history of the controversies and missteps that have tarnished the social network’s otherwise meteoric success:

The Biggest Brands on Facebook
In this infographic, we explore the timeline of brand-friendly updates to Facebook itself, as well as the brands that dominate in Facebook marketing today:

With over millions of users, Digg has become one of the most reputable force in the social media world that allows you to share your favorite stories online with your friends, co-workers and relatives:

There are some interesting hidden truths about Twitter and its users. The following graphic takes a look at Twitter’s path to 10 billion tweets, what we have learned about its users and what they’ve been talking about along the way:

This infographic contains additional interesting facts about Twitter based on some numbers that co-founder Ev Williams announced at the Chirp conference:

Every day, thousands of stories are passed around the internet on blogs and via Twitter. Click here to find out more:

How are Companies Leveraging Social Media?
Ever wonder how big businesses are leveraging social media? Here is a graphic illustrating the most interesting of their findings:

Facebook is the number one app across most mobile operating systems. Flowtown.com took a look at the rise of Facebook mobile, and compiled a number of the most interesting facts and figures in the above graphic:

44% of Online Sharing Occurs Through Facebook
Impressively, 44% of shares occurred through Facebook in 2010, up 33% from last year. That number does not include shares done via Facebook’s “Like” button, which means the actual, universal percentage of shares through Facebook is likely higher:

Inside the Political Twittersphere
Ever wondered how politicians use Twitter? Who are the most active politicians on Twitter? Who do they follow, and who follows them? Who are the political strategists and media personalities that politicians follow? And within the political Twittersphere, who follows the most people, and who follows them?

Twitter Users Profile Infographic
Satire and the Internet make great friends. And the newest Internet sensation to be targeted is Twitter. While many blogs make fun of twitter you must admit Twitter does have a larger group of followers. Of course, how many are actually paying attention remains to be seen:

History of Social Media — History of Social Media Bookmarking
Social media has become an integral part of modern society. There are general social networks with user bases larger than the population of most countries:

A compass is a device for orientating oneself and guiding physical direction. The social marketing compass points a brand in a physical and experimental direction, allowing them to connect with their customers, peers, and influencers, where those users already interact and seek guidance online:

This map demonstrates the social web involvement of the users worldwide. It provides you a clear picture that every month hundreds of millions of web users create and share their content with one another. This map shows the active bloggers, social networkers, video sharers, photo up-loaders and micro-bloggers:

The Biggest Shift tells the significance and extent of social media network. If you are keen to utilize word of mouth advertising, social media is there to assist to place heighten your works at all. With focusing your marketing interest to the top social networking websites, you will see the instant results of your efforts:

How People Share Content On The Web
This infographic will show that how people share pieces of contents on the web and how facebook dominates social media:

1. Identify Your Purpose – Your social media strategy should be a stand-alone plan which requires nothing else to sustain it. Your plan should not aspire to improve your search engine rankings, as there aren’t usually many backlinks that come from it. Approach your social media strategy as if there were no such thing as search engines. Some things you may want to consider in identifying your purpose include:
2. Fresh, Consistent, Relevant Content – Make sure there is a high level of consistency in the content you share on social media sites. Consistency is important regarding frequent updates (fresh content), as well as in keeping with the purpose of your social media strategy. Consistency in your message and your branding also establishes relevance for SEO purposes.
For instance, if you are a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Consultant, provide quality tips on SEM and internet marketing, as well as useful articles, resources, and links. Try to link to (connect/contact/friend/follow) other members in your industry or similar industries, like search engine optimization (SEO) or network marketing.
This can assist you in achieving your branding ambitions and enable you to engineer your own company’s brand recognition. This offers you some control over how you and your company are perceived. Your social media presence can help strengthen your company’s webutation (web reputation). Your online friends, business contacts, and “followers” should be able to give a brief description of what your company does. If they cannot, you may want to reevaluate #1 and reexamine the content you’re sharing.
3. Concentrate on Content, Not Marketing – All too often, people go about this the other way around. Allow your content to do the marketing for you by focusing on valuable, consistent, relevant content.
Digging, liking, bookmarking, etc. your own content can actually damage your credibility. It is better to write compelling content that your readers will give an unsolicited digg, like, or bookmark. When people like what you’re saying, they will share it! When they do, search engines will notice, so write something noteworthy and let the rest happen organically!
4. Be a Valuable Asset – When you think of social media, place the emphasis on “social”. It is not called self-promotional media for a reason. Always keep that in mind when considering what to share on your social media sites.
Posting nothing but self-promotional links, information, and requests will inevitably make you a part of the social media noise, and you will eventually be filtered out. Worse yet, you could be regarded as a “spammer”, which is the fastest way for your webutation to take a downward turn. You may not lose friends, contacts, or “followers’ over it, however, they will begin to skim your posts without even realizing it, or they may ignore you altogether.
You can avoid this by becoming a valuable asset in your niche. One example of how to do this is by posting links to resources and domains that are not your own. This does not mean to post links to your social media profiles, your own squidoo lenses, etc. This means do not post any domains with which you are associated. You can; however, occasionally post links to your own site. Just be sure that you don’t do it so often that it becomes noise or spam.
Believe it or not, you should attempt to befriend your competitors and even promote them. I know this seems counter-intuitive, but interlinking and networking are very powerful tools!
5. The Client Always Comes First – Now that you’ve identified your purpose, contemplate what your client (or ideal visitor) is searching for. (Write for the audience you want.) Imagine your ideal, potential client distinctly in your mind, and consider what they may be perceiving through the information that you share. You want to make a good first impression on them, as they are the ones you want to attract to your site.
6. Get Involved and Build a Rapport – Participating in discussions, replying to forums and blogs, and asking for feedback (and responding to it) are all exceptional ways to get involved in the community and build a rapport with other members. This allows people to view you as a real person, instead of a robot that does nothing but post links repeatedly. (If you’re going to post links, ensure their relevance.) Other people will warm up to you and be more likely to become a friend or contact if you humanize yourself. Social media sites provide you the opportunity to show your personality, so use them in order to truly connect with your target market.
7. Warning! Do Not Over Optimize – Of course you desire top search engine rankings for your specific keywords, but tread lightly here. It is possible to over optimize. If you use the same anchor text on every site you link to, your site will leave what is referred to as a “digital footprint”, which can be a sign that you may be trying to exploit or manipulate search engine results.
In order to refrain from this, use natural alterations in your anchor text for the links which point to your original site. A certain amount of “click here” (or similar links) are necessary to balance your optimization strategy.
8. Start Linking to Your “Deep Links” – Everyone wants to link their public profiles to their (main) homepage, but deep links (or links that point to internal pages on your site or blog) provide depth and authority. Let’s assume that there are two identical websites. The one that has accumulated more deep links will always outrank the other. This method will also gain more exposure for your site in search engine results because your internal pages will begin to rank for relevant keywords and key-phrases.
Deep Links Tip: You may not want to share the link to your homepage with someone you meet on a business network or social media site. Think about linking to your “About Me” page (if applicable) in order to give a more personal introduction to your site, or try linking to your “Company” or “Services” page (if applicable) to give your visitor an overview of what your company does.
9. Link Deliberately with No Apologies – When someone “friends” you, follows you, or subscribes to your blog and/or updates on social sites, it is because they are interested in your most recent information, news, tips, resources, etc. If they should discover that they are not interested, they will simply stop following you, which is not a big deal. This is not a “popularity” contest (regardless of what some people may think), as the “quality” of your “followers” is what matters, not the quantity of them! This is a way to syndicate and socialize with like-minded individuals in a professional and personable setting.
As with anything else, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about hyperlinking to content and resources on social media websites. Here is the wrong way: “Read my blog!” or “Check out my site!” The correct way is achieved by sharing a helpful link (it can be your own, or something else of interest to your audience) and encourage a discussion about it. For example, if you are a SEO specialist, you could share a link to a Google article about their latest SEO standards and ask for your readers’ opinions on it. Since most of them will be in your field or a related field, the article should be of interest to them which should inspire some discussion.
10. Utilize Social Networking – In order to genuinely accomplish a successful social media strategy, you should engage in social networking, as well. Replace the word “competitor” with “colleague” in your social media vocabulary. Other webmasters, companies, consultants, and individuals in your niche are your allies in the brave new world of social media!
Make it a goal to locate as many of your competitors (who are on your level or within an acceptable range) and develop a cadre or key group of professionals, friends, and/or business contacts. These are people you can share with, exchange links with, and even embark on joint ventures with. Don’t view them as your competition anymore. Start exploring ways to leverage one another’s positions in the marketplace!
Geo-Marketing (or Geographic Marketing) is a new method of marketing a business and its website through web searches, mobile searches and social media. As you can see, the geo-marketing tools being used are digital and through the Internet or Mobile devices.
While geo-marketing’s definition is the association of data and maps in the traditional sense, the added convergence of local business listings, mobile marketing, and social media makes this method of marketing more powerful than ever before. This marketing tool is no longer just a large business marketing tool, but is available to small and medium size businesses too.
We should define what we mean by local business. A local business is any sized business dependent on the local consumer for its revenue. This means you could be a national company like Home Depot, U-Haul, or Best Buy or you could be a local florist or independent store only known to your local geography.
From a technical standpoint an Internet user’s IP address is tied to GPS data, like longitudes and latitudes, which are mapped with technology to geographies around the world down to the city and street level. While all this data may seem overwhelming, the good news is that most businesses do not need to concern themselves with this part of geo-marketing. Many of the tools already have all of this information built into their software or hardware technology so we can stay focused on how we will use geo-marketing tools.
The difficulty with any new marketing tool is a business’s inability to adopt the methodology early. When it comes to technologies and the Internet, in the past, by the time most businesses are ready to adopt a marketing tool, the industry has already moved on to something new. Being an early or at least an earlier adopter of marketing methods on the Internet and through digital devices can only benefit the business.
We have seen many signs over the past two years regarding the evolution of geographic marketing. When companies like Google, Apple, and the investment community of Wall Street start to put $100+ million and more behind a technology it will become part of our daily lives whether a business wants it or not. Consumers have and will be using more of these geo-marketing tools to find businesses, services or products near them.
Let’s take a look at the three main tools that consumers are using to find businesses, products or services close to their geography.
1. Web searches are the first and most obvious, however, these are web searches in which a map displays with targets the businesses that match the search criteria. Unlike the traditional yellow pages, these geo-listings (a.k.a. Local Business Listings) can be claimed and updated with your business marketing information in order to meet these search criteria.
While this may sound relatively easy, geo-listings also include: consumer reviews that need to be managed; the clean-up of duplicate listings; coupons; offers; discounts; videos; photos; citations; QR bar codes; and, hyper local websites. Understanding what to start with and how to strategically use these components can be done by a professional marketing firm that specializes in this area. You can read more about these components in one of our previous articles here.
2. Mobile Marketing is the next most significant geo-marketing tool in which SMS Texting, Mobile Applications, Mobile version of your website, and Mobile advertising are your key components. The starting point in this process will be with SMS Texting to get your alerts out to customers that subscribe to your short bursts of information. The reason why this is your starting point is that it will take time to build your list of subscribers.
3. Social Media Marketing continues to evolve and is, also, geographic in its targeting ability. Consumers are using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Wiki sites, Four Square, Instant Messaging and other social community tools on their mobile devices. While they use it mostly to find businesses, products and services, in the social communities they are seeking recommendations from their friends (near and far). They are, also, using these social communities to post their experiences with a business, product or service. For this reason you have to monitor the social communities in order to embrace any potential problem situations and work with them.
These three geo-marketing components are important to any business size – large or small – and each have their own sub-components that need to be well understood in order to succeed. Understanding the strategy amongst them; the acceptance and embracing them early; and, finally planning on a 3-year return will put you on the right path of geo-marketing.
Certainly your time resources are limited and Geo-Marketing Services are provided bySmartFinds Internet Marketing. You will find this to be of great benefit to your time resources and the low cost service may eliminate your yellow page ad costs. Let the experts of over 16 years Internet marketing experience help you use this local business marketing tool properly and prevent brand security issues from occurring.
To build a social media strategy around specific goals instead of simply launching a presence because “everyone else is doing it.” Today, I’m going to map out the three primary goals most social media outreach campaigns fall into. If you’re still trying to figure out how and why to get involved in social media outreach, consider these three categories and ask yourself how they might apply to your business.
Three Primary Social Media Goals
When we look at online marketing, there are three broad categories into which nearly all social media related goals can fall. They are usually either aimed at:
Starting at this broad level and thinking about the goals you have for your business can help you begin to write up a list of realistic ways in which social media might help you reach those goals.
Let’s take a closer look at these three areas and how they might apply to your social media efforts.
Goal #1: Build the Brand
When it comes to building and reinforcing your brand, social media is one of the most powerful marketing tools available. It gives you the strongest and broadest opportunity to both find your target audience and to engage in conversation with them.
These days, you have no choice but to differentiate yourself from your competitors unless you have an exclusive product. Otherwise, you’re forced into the unwinnable battle of competing for the lowest prices and the fastest shipping.
Think about the things that make your company different from your competitors; your Unique Value Propostion. This is the thing you want to use social media to built awareness of.
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If you’re a service professional, target a specific niche and build a blogging and Twitter strategy around that. Demonstrate your expertise in working with a certain type of client and then seek out those types of clients to have conversation with. Look for new ways to connect with them and encourage your current clients to socially share your articles with their networks.
Goal #2: Drive Conversions
One of smartest reasons to use social media is for the potential boost it can have to your conversion efforts. Whether you’re looking to drive sales, increase leads or simply drive people to action, conversions are an easily trackable goal in the realm of social media. ![]()
Sit down and write out a list of all the potential actions someone might take while engaging with your company’s web site or while interacting online.
Obvious options like buying your products or becoming a lead spring to mind, but don’t forget about other valuable actions like subscribing to your newsletter, retweeting a blog post or downloading a white paper.
Read over your list and think about the different ways you might be able to use social media to increase conversions for each item. Often times, this is the best way to start planning your social media efforts.
Goal #3: Increase Presence
Finally, we come to the goal most often associated with social media outreach efforts; increasing the conversation about your brand. After all, social media is all about the conversation. It’s about the only space in the world where consumers talk to each other and to companies in an environment that can be tracked, sorted and followed-up with. This makes social media a prime outlet for PR driven companies who want to know what customers are saying about them.
Setting up even a baseline of social media monitoring can go a long way toward helping you follow these conversations. Whether you’re
launching new product and aiming to get people buzzing about it or trying to reach out to a new target audience to share information about one of your best selling services, it’s all trackable.
When it comes to the conversation people might be having about you online, ask yourself a few questions.
These are your starting points for setting up key goals within the realm of increasing your presence.
You’ve Set the Stage, Now Start Building a Plan
Looking at your business with each of the above goals in mind helps you set the stage for your social media efforts. This post isn’t aimed at telling you what to do, I’m simply trying to get you to figure out why you want (and need) to do it.
If you’re small business looking to take your social media efforts up a notch (or maybe even just get started,) take the time to define at least two goals from the categories above. Once you’ve identified your desired outcome, you’ll be a lot more ready to start mapping out the path to get there.
Social Media Marketing sure isn’t easy. It takes time to get to know the space you’re in, to network with like minded users, and to develop a strong content strategy that works within your niche and target social channels.
But to make matters worse, there are users who can (and will) make your road to success even more difficult. So in order to prepare you for your journey, here are 8 of the most common villains you’ll encounter on your path, and how to defend against their attacks:
Appearance:
An offensive or childish image
Favorite Social Setting:
Video sites, Anywhere comments aren’t actively moderated
Method of Attack:
The Troll comments exclusively with the intent of offending other users in hopes that someone will write a retaliatory comment. The use of profanity, racism & sexism, wild accusations, and direct attacks are all a part of their arsenal. It’s sometimes difficult to spot a troll as they can sometimes appear to be a Skeptic or Know-it-all.
Weakness:
The only way to deal with Trolls is to ignore them. They rarely comment in places that are moderated; and while burying the comment may seem to work, it simply becomes a metric for how well their comment achieved its intended goal. Ignoring them takes their power away.
Appearance:
Default avatar/no avatar
Favorite Social Setting:
Blogs
Method of Attack:
The Disrupter makes comments that add nothing to a conversation because they didn’t take the time to read or watch the entire article/video/etc. They also have a tendency to repeat an earlier comment because they were too lazy to read them as well. These types of comments can be fairly disruptive to a good social conversation, and are quite annoying on blogs. The Disrupter can sometimes be associated with the Shameless Link Dropper.
Weakness:
Pointedly ignoring them by only responding to other (good) comments is your only defense. Responding to a Disrupter will only further interrupt the conversation, not to mention: they’re unlikely to see it anyways. Other users will notice that a well thought out comment that adds to the conversation is rewarded with a response, while these are not. In rare (extreme) cases, the comment can be removed by the moderator.
Appearance:
Vectorized image of their favorite science fiction character
Favorite Social Setting:
Social Bookmarking sites like Digg & Reddit
Method of Attack:
The Skeptic is usually the first to claim that something isn’t real. To them, everything on the internet is fake. All images are photoshopped, all videos are scripted, and all statistics, facts, and reports are made up by the people who have most to gain by them. Also, all supporting evidence that the item in question is, in fact, real: is made up as well. Not to be confused with the Know-it-all.
Weakness:
None. Ignore them and they become right, provide evidence and they’ll continue to blindly claim you’re spreading the conspiracy (regardless how trustworthy the source). Your best bet is to bury their comment and hope others will see them for what they really are.
Appearance:
No avatar, A Company logo
Favorite Social Setting:
Blogs, Forums, & Viral Content
Method of Attack:
The Shameless Link Dropper comments only to insert a link for the potential traffic and/or SEO value. You can generally spot these from the short (usually complimentary) comments (e.g. “Nice post!”), the keyword rich user name (e.g. buy_viagra), second grade grammer skills (e.g. “This is good points”), and the general spamminess of the destination URL.
Weakness:
Strong comment moderation. It’s also wise to have a comment policy that clearly states that link dropping is not tolerated unless it’s relevant to the conversation.
Appearance:
Can be anyone
Favorite Social Setting:
Social Bookmarking sites like Digg & Reddit
Method of Attack:
Their sole purpose for signing in to Digg or Reddit is to bury submissions that don’t meet their standards of what should be on the front page. In rare occasions these users group together to target power users who are “too good” at getting submissions to go popular. They also have a tendency to fill out spam reports and report users & sites to moderators.
Weakness:
Power users. Nothing frustrates the Bury Brigade like social bookmarking success. And if one of these users dislikes one of your submissions, unless you’re a power user, you could be dead in the water.
Appearance:
Smug photos of themselves
Favorite Social Setting:
Social Bookmarking sites like Digg & Reddit
Method of Attack:
Calling content producers out for anything they suspect is done for profit, for example: splash advertising, article pagination, SEO link bait, “blog spam”, promotional content, etc.
Weakness:
Extraordinary content. Despite all of the above things being somewhat annoying to most users, you can get away with some of it if the content is remarkable enough. The Whistle Blower will still probably call you out for it, but it will fall on deaf ears as (to others) the quality of the content overshadows the minor pet-peeve.
Appearance:
A slightly altered photo of Einstein or a mash-up of mathematical equations.
Favorite Social Setting:
Forums, EVERYWHERE
Method of Attack:
The Know-it-all rarely comments unless it’s to disagree with or correct the content producer or another user’s comment. They’re generally great fact checkers and revel in correcting a specific fact, but would rather argue about opinions. They also love to point out grammatical errors.
Weakness:
Strong (yet modest) arguments. It’s nearly impossible to change the mind of the Know-it-all. Your best bet is to respond to them with rational arguments that present a strong case in a modest tone. Let their arrogance and opinionated argument work against them making you look like the rational, impartial one to everyone else.
Appearance:
Anyone
Favorite Social Setting:
Anywhere
Method of Attack:
The Emo only attacks when disturbed, usually when taking a comment or criticism too personally. An attack can come in any form or level of extremes depending on the individual & emotional reaction. A conversation between an Emo and a Troll or Know-it-all can be volatile.
Weakness:
Time. Tread carefully when you upset an Emo. You may think a quick response to defend yourself or perhaps even explain your comments is a good idea, but most of the time it only makes matters worse. Depending on how upset they are, time may be required for them to calm down before you’re able to start up a rational conversation about whatever upset them. And sometimes, it’s wise to just let it go…