Social Marketing

There were a lot of fits and starts, and mistakes were made in every era, leaving me to wonder, will the players leveraging YouTube learn from the mistakes of yesteryear to deliver value and reach an audience that has been traditionally nearly impossible to market to directly?

In a new survey conducted in September 2014, the Pew Research Center finds that Facebook remains by far the most popular social media site. While its growth has slowed, the level of user engagement with the platform has increased. Other platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn saw significant increases over the past year in the proportion of online adults who now use their sites.

If social media is the new water cooler, U.S. viewers certainly had their share of “let’s discuss” moments in 2014. From someone kind of getting devoured by an anaconda to the U.S. Men’s World Cup soccer squad trying to make a go of it to, well, zombies, there’s no shortage of Twitter activity during programs—and even in the days after.

In today’s world, social media usage appears to run rampant at times. Aside from just keeping in touch with friends and family, social media has a plethora of other uses; but while more Americans are seeing benefits from their social media usage, they are also encountering some negative experiences.

Nearly nine in 10 US companies with at least 100 employees will use social media for marketing purposes this year, eMarketer estimates, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. December 2014 polling by Ascend2 found that marketing professionals worldwide still faced many obstacles to achieving social media marketing success.

The terms of citizenship and social life are rapidly changing in the digital age. No issue highlights this any better than privacy, always a fluid and context-situated concept and more so now as the boundary between being private and being public is shifting.

Toyota has teamed up with actor William Levy to create the first-of-its-kind, choose-your-own adventure video on Instagram with the bold new 2015 Toyota Camry.

There’s been plenty of chatter over the past few years about the effects of social sharing, and as the social audience continues to grow, this won’t stop any time soon. eMarketer expects the number of social users worldwide to rise 12.5% this year, reaching 1.8 billion, or 63.4% of internet users and 25.0% of the global population.

Internet users say digital tech makes them better informed than 5 years ago.  Rather than crushing them with too much information and making it hard to find useful material, most Americans say the internet and cell phones have brought benefits in learning, sharing and diversifying the flow of information into their lives.

This study offers a comprehensive look at adoption, tactics, and benchmarks from the top brands in the world.

The research, conducted by intelligence market researcher Tpoll, revealed that 59% of all online sharing activity in the US takes place via ‘Dark Social’ channels, compared to just 31% via Facebook and 10% on all other social channels combined. Additionally, 36% of ‘Dark Social’ sharing globally occurs via mobile devices illustrating their increasingly pivotal role in consumers’ daily shopping and sharing habits.

República has been named Best Agency Using Social Media to Reach Latinos by LATISM (Latinos in Tech Innovation and Social Media), the national organization for Hispanic professionals in technology and social media.

More than 60% of nonprofit professionals in North America polled in August 2014 by Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and Blackbaud said their organizations used content marketing. And they’re not doing it to raise money.

As part of LATISM’s The Best of the Best in Cyberlandia 2014 annual conference in Los Angeles, AARP scored an award as Best Health Partner reaching Latino(a)s through Social Media.

Mothers are a highly digital cohort by multiple measures—internet penetration, smartphone ownership, social network usage, etc. It helps them accomplish the multitudinous tasks of motherhood while also giving them some escape from those demands. But all this digital usage (and the multitasking it often entails) can sometimes aggravate as well as reduce the pressures of their day, according to a new eMarketer report, “Mothers and Digital Media: Useful, Yes; a Panacea, No.”

The US social networking market is becoming more competitive, with smaller, newer players catering to an increasingly diverse set of users.  But according to a new online survey from Cowen and Company of internet users 18 and older, Facebook still leads the market by wide margin. Its share of monthly users is double that of LinkedIn, the social network with the second-highest audience penetration.

Nearly nine in 10 US companies with at least 100 employees will use social media for marketing purposes this year, eMarketer estimates. And the professionals who do social media marketing believe it is important: 88% of them agreed with that statement when surveyed in October by Harris Poll for social media management platform Hootsuite.

This time of year is particularly exciting for me as I get to work on my true passion: developing Hispanic digital strategies for our clients. As we wrap up 2015 planning, five key themes have emerged that I expect to come to life in the Hispanic online market next year.  by Lee Vann / Captura Group

A “like” can go a long way, according to the newly released 2014 Cone Communications Digital Activism Study. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Americans say they are more inclined to support social and environmental issues in a variety of ways, including volunteering, donating and sharing information, after first “liking” or “following” an organization online. Moreover, Americans see their online activities as a positive way to make an impact on the issues they care about, as six-in-10 believe tweeting or posting information online is an effective form of advocacy or support.