Run into this survey at eMarketer.com in one of my Google Alerts the other day. With all the plethora of information sources, I find it more difficult to focus on topics and trends that interest me, as well as joining in on conversations, so it’s good to know GAlerts still has some benefits..
The survey in hand was conducted between some 1,800 social media marketers in the US, asking them about the effectiveness of their practices – meaning which tactics they used, how effective those tactics were and how accurately can they measure such tactics. The results are not that surprising, but I would like to focus on next steps – how can we make those practices more effective and measured more accurately.
The first issue we’re seeing is the negative correlation between a tactic’s effectiveness vs. our ability to measure it accurately (graph below). The 3 most effective tactics are User reviews or ratings (47%), Blogger or online journalist relations (46%) and Forums or discussion groups (42%). When looking at the ‘Very accurately measured’ column, those tactics are ranked 3rd, 4th and 5th, respectively. With the expansion of broadband and the coming of web 2.0, everyone is a publisher, and thus consumers are more suspicious and don’t believe everything they read online. In the US the FTC are targeting bloggers’ freebies (PDF guidelines), and in the meantime there are some un-official guidelines on how to disclose and authenticatea sponsored conversation. In Israel on the other hand, things are moving slower (article in Hebrew).
The second issue pertains to hooking financial success with social marketing (graph below). It’s pretty obvious that social marketing is most effective for Brand reputation (39%), Brand awareness (37%) and Search engine results (38%). I’d like to point your attention to the Sales aspects of social marketing, Generate leads and Increase online sales. The marketers who were surveyed said that social marketing is not effective at Generating leads (35%) and Increasing online sales (46%). For social marketing to become bigger and better, we have to add revenues to the game, and being able to measure it. Dell are already showing the added value of their social activity on twitter, a new study finds correlation between social media and financial success and George Colony urges CEO to understand that social marketing is here to stay.
If we want social marketing to rock, Sales indicators must be inherent to any social campaign. It’s OK to start small, but start somewhere. Move the conversation from brand (only) to revenues as well. And one last request – be honest to your readers.
Nokia Israel kicked off a unique campaign this week, dubbed The Nokia N97 Unboxing – Online as it happens. During the game, Nokia Israel reps are visiting prominent bloggers bearing a box, that might house the new powerhouse from Nokia. The initiative, in cooperation with Y&R, joins this list (also in Hebrew) of digital marketing campaigns, and is quite welcome I might add.
True to the theme of Online as it happens, each visit is broadcasted live and can be viewed at any time on the site, along with a Google Map widget to show you where the package was last. There are also photos from each visit shared on OVI, for your pleasure. If the N97 is not at the box, the blogger is then asked to pick a name from the list I mentioned earlier – the next candidate who’ll recieve a visit from Nokia Israel folks. Each visit is broadcasted, and publicized by both the blogger and Nokia Israel in the various social media sites. The social features could have been better, focusing on (and showing) more content published by those prominent bloggers, but I guess you can’t have all at once.
Although my name is on that list (it’s a short list.. I’m still waiting for my surprise visit, all dressed up and ready for my close-up.. In the meantime, check out Ilan Peer unboxing his Nokia N97 box:
The second issue pertains to hooking financial success with social marketing (graph below). It’s pretty obvious that social marketing is most effective for Brand reputation (39%), Brand awareness (37%) and Search engine results (38%). I’d like to point your attention to the Sales aspects of social marketing, Generate leads and Increase online sales. The marketers who were surveyed said that social marketing is not effective at Generating leads (35%) and Increasing online sales (46%). For social marketing to become bigger and better, we have to add revenues to the game, and being able to measure it. Dell are already showing the added value of their social activity on twitter, a new study finds correlation between social media and financial success and George Colony urges CEO to understand that social marketing is here to stay.
If we want social marketing to rock, Sales indicators must be inherent to any social campaign. It’s OK to start small, but start somewhere. Move the conversation from brand (only) to revenues as well. And one last request – be honest to your readers.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=6d48e774-1c3b-4ed3-b123-bafe94c2ef95)
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