Social Marketing

Content creation by teenagers continues to grow, with 64% of online teenagers ages 12 to 17 engaging in at least one type of content creation, up from 57% of online teens in 2004.

How much can social networks net?

Social networking is an Internet success story.

This year, 37% of the US adult Internet population used online social networking at least once a month. That figure will rise to 49% in 2011.

Web 2.0 and Social Media is all the rage but what does the Social Networker really look like? And how does visiting a social network really impact technology ownership, mobile phone features, digital media consumption, and online/mobile behavior both here in the US and around the globe?

Coremetrics announced the results of its Second Annual ‘Face of the New Marketer’ survey. This poll of marketing professionals, drawn from the country’s top eCommerce and online media/content companies, found that social media marketing is quickly gaining popularity as a way to gain competitive edge. However, the survey also revealed that time and budget allocations are not yet reflective of this trend.

Pull advertising is a necessity of distributed media advertising. As media have continued to fragment, I have seen arguments for Webs site publishers to play an active role in pulling the advertising content most appropriate for their site/audience. I have also seen arguments that the users viewing the advertisement are the most appropriate source of advertisement pull (after all, they are the end consumers). But, when the those publishing the content are also the target consumers for a given brand, such as is the case in social media, then the necessity of pull is enhanced exponentially.

JupiterResearch has found that despite the growth of social networks and online communities, they have little effect on influencing online retail sales. Outlined in a new report, “US Retail Consumer Survey, 2007,” social and community sites are only driving about 12 percent of online shoppers to buy more than planned.

‘I tried it and… ‘

More and more, consumers are relying on advice from friends, family and even strangers to make purchase decisions, select physicians, choose travel destinations and pick politicians to vote for.

Hoodiny Entertainment Group, the parent Company of elHood.com, announced that Billboard will be handling advertising sales for the website.

Brief post this week, as these days my day job is fast becoming a day/night job. After the dialogue following last week’s post, I wanted to expand on social media’s definition a bit this week, as well as look at some easy ways to get started in “digital social media advertising.”

It’s hard to hold conversations when everyone who’s talking has varying views on the definitions of key vocabulary. Yet our entire industry is talking about social media — and I defy you to find two people that define social media the same way. Determined to solve this problem for the industry single-handedly… I looked up the term on Wikipedia (which, incidentally, cites itself as an example of social media). What I found was not only woefully incomplete (first time this has happened to me on Wikipedia), but there are a couple of areas where I would differ with the entry entirely.

In the real world we turn to colleagues and friends for advice on what products and services to buy; generally trying to avoid the salesperson. Understandably this is why social media is so effective and can facilitate an increase in a marketer’s bottom line. No longer do we have to rely only on mass media for our information and advice. Social media (and Web 2.0 technologies) allow us to create innovative targeted campaigns to promote brand and product awareness and can provide us with valuable feedback.

During Mother’s Day, the kids all went into the family room. The PC was driven by two 17-year-old girls and overlooked by two 12-year-old boys. Of course the girls kept telling the boys to go outside and play. They wanted to be together and “check people out” on MySpace. Talk about social anthropology. They get together in person and talk and talk. Inevitably they end up sharing a chair in front of a computer with a broadband connection. The bulk of the conversation is showing each other their friend’s postings, musings, cynicism and wacky photos on MySpace.

Hello, hello, hello!

In the last 12 months, companies have latched with almost religious fervor onto the notion that consumers want to be socially connected online, whether on mass-appeal sites such as MySpace, on targeted niche sites and video sites, or even on mobile phones.