According to a study presented at a Pivot Conference (in partnership with Extra Mile Research) entitled “Marketers’ Current and Future Use of Social Media,” 63% of marketers are already investing in social media marketing, and of the 37% that are not currently investing in social media marketing, 62% are planning to invest, including 46% who plan to do so within one year.

Other key findings include:

• 57% welcome social media users involvement and participation with their brands
• Of those already investing in social media marketing, 87% plan to increase their expenditures in the next 12 months, including 56% who plan significant increases in spending.
• Only 30% of marketers who conduct social media marketing have measurement and analysis strategy fully implemented.
• 43% of marketers who conduct social media marketing have not begun implementing any measurement or analysis programs
• 30% consider their social media marketing efforts “very successful.” 59% rate their efforts as “somewhat successful.”ie 89% consider their efforts a success
• 75% of marketers consider the “always-on” 18-34 year old consumers as a primary or secondary target.
• Marketers feel that the “always-on” 18-34 year old consumers have unique characteristics:
• 70% of marketers consider them to have a shorter attention span
• 67% consider them to have different motivations than previous generations
• 59% consider them to be less accepting and more questioning of marketing messages in general

The scale of social media, and the involvement of its users, make social media a compelling platform for marketers, concludes the study, with hundreds of millions of users creating profiles and engaging in online dialogues. The study was designed to explore marketers use of social media, motivation for usage, and plans for future use as well as marketers measurement and analysis of social media programs.

The primary motivation for using social media as a marketing vehicle, says the report, is to follow customers and prospects to the sites where they are active, generating a growing understanding of the unique two-way nature of this marketing environment. Motivations to begin social media marketing  include:

• 70% say that social media marketing is a powerful tool for brands or products
• 62% feel that their prospective audience is on social media sites
• 47% note that social media users/always-on consumers gather information differently
• 40% plan to use social media as part of customer support and relationship management

To what degree are marketers embracing the “user involvement and participation” culture of social media? The study indicates user involvement with marketing campaigns and brands is welcomed by most marketers. 57% welcome user involvement enthusiastically, while another 13% seek customer involvement, but are cautious about the process and outcomes.

This week, instead of reporting from the red comfy chair in the living room, I’m reporting from sunny – if cold, Lake Tahoe – where MediaPost is hosting its first-ever Social Media Insider Summit. By day, we’ve been attending panels and keynotes about where, when, how and if employees should tweet; by night we’ve been using Google Sky Maps to figure out what the constellations are above our heads. Yes, it’s a geek-a-thon!

But since I’m not just a geek but an alleged wordsmith, one of the things that struck me is how important language is to at least some in this crowd, even if it is often communicated in 140-character bursts that often resort to abbreviations. Here’s when it struck me: when Forrester Research senior analyst Augie Ray, during a panel on privacy, walked the assembled multitudes through some language that is being used by Amazon to tell people how it would use profile data for those who connect their Amazon accounts to Facebook.

We all know what this normally looks like — it involves some form of legalese that makes leveraging one’s Facebook friends for any purpose seem to be troublesome, invasive and worth having second thoughts about.

But Amazon, by actually thinking of this language in a marketing context, managed to make the idea of linking one’s Amazon and Facebook accounts together sound useful and appealing – like you might actually want to do it. Here are some excerpts of how it explained the deal. Connecting Facebook and Amazon together would let the user:

·       “Discover Amazon recommendations for movies, music and more based on your Facebook profile.”

·       “See upcoming birthdays and find your Facebook friends’ Amazon Wish Lists more easily.”

·       “Get gift suggestions for your friends based on their Facebook profiles.”

·       “Explore your friends’ profiles and see who has similar interests.”

“Now, that’s something I could use,” a potential user might say. It also uses clear language to make clear all of the potentially troubling ways personal data will not be used.

So why I am so focused on a few sentences? Though I hadn’t really spent a lot of time thinking about it previously, much of the language used to describe privacy policy is off-putting, when it should really be part of the marketing program – telling you why you might want to do something instead of making you feel you might not.

It’s something marketers need to think about more. Amazon could have used more strictly legal language; it also could have done what most companies do when they launch a Facebook app: default to intimidating, boilerplate Facebook-ese. That’s not just lazy; it’s a bit self-defeating. While most of us in the business gleefully skim past the verbiage about what personal information an app we’re downloading has access to, many people find that verbiage to be a deterrent. Why not, as Amazon has, explain precisely what the benefits of using the app might be?

Maybe this is a topic only a linguist could love, but I think it’s about more than that. It’s part of building trust, and that’s central to what good marketing is about.

Author: Catharine P. Taylor
Via [Mediapost]

US adults 50 and older have increased their social networking use from 22% to 42% in the past year, according to data from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Half of Adults 50-64 Use SocNets
Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one in four (26%) users age 65 and older now use social networking sites.

Young adult internet users ages 18-29 continue to be the heaviest users of social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, with 86% saying they use the sites.

Adults 65 and Up Double SocNet Adoption
During the past year, the growth of social networking adoption among internet users ages 18-29 paled in comparison with the gains made by older users. Between April 2009 and May 2010, internet users ages 50-64 who said they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn grew 88%, and those ages 65 and older grew 100% in their adoption of the sites; compared with a growth rate of 13% for those ages 18-29.

Older Adults Increasingly Share Daily Updates
The use of Twitter and other services to share status updates has also grown among older users, most notably among those ages 50-64. While just 5% of users ages 50-64 had used Twitter or another status update service in 2009, 11% now say they use these tools. On a typical day, 6% of online adults ages 50-64 make Twitter a part of their routine, up from the 1% who did so in 2009.

One in five (20%) adults ages 50-64 say they use social networking sites on a typical day, up from 10% one year ago. Likewise, 13% of online adults ages 65 and older log on to social networking sites, compared with just 4% who did so in 2009.

Older Adults Maintain Interest in Email, Online News
Overall, 92% of those ages 50-64 and 89% of those ages 65 and older send or read email and more than half of each group exchanges email messages on a typical day. Online news gathering also ranks highly in the daily media habits of older adults; 76% of internet users ages 50-64 get news online, and 42% do so on a typical day. Among internet users ages 65 and older, 62% look for news online and 34% do so on a typical day.

Americans Get News on Multiple Platforms
The overwhelming majority of Americans (92%) use multiple platforms to get news on a typical day, according to other recent findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Americans get their news from a combination of on- and offline sources, including national TV, local TV, the internet, local newspapers, radio, and national newspapers. Six in ten Americans (59%) get news from a combination of online and offline sources on a typical day, and the internet is now the third most popular news platform, behind local television news and national television news.

Via [Marketing Charts]

Vocanic was appointed by Tourism Australia to increase the presence of the Aussie Specialist Program beyond the travel industry through social media and word of mouth. Using Facebook as a platform, we created the “Aussie Specialist of the Year 2010” campaign to give the public topics for conversation and raise awareness of the benefits of working with an agent.

The tongue-in-cheek competition pits 6 selected Aussie Specialists from 3 participating agencies to vie for a ‘coveted’ title. Through interactions with Facebook applications developed to showcase the agents’ expertise in Aussie travel, the winner will be selected by their activity and participation level on fan pages created to rally support for them.

Fans are given the opportunity to show their support in various ways. In ‘Battle of the Best Tips’, fans can vote on their favorite travel tips submitted by the Aussie Specialists in a categories like Family or Couples travel. The ‘Ask a Specialist’ application allows fans to submit questions about travelling in Australia. Fans can also send in their holiday photos in our ‘Postcards’ application.

Any interaction with the applications requiring data capture enters the participant into a lucky draw of a 4D/3N trip to Perth.

A database acquisition program was also created through Fan Offers, which are exclusive travel deals for fans of the page. Fans who are interested in the deal will need to fill in a web form with their details which will generate as leads for the agents to follow up with.

Although assisted by Vocanic in community managing the pages, the agents are also trained and given social media kits to give them tips on how to get started with responding and engaging to the public on the Wall.

This campaign is currently on-going.

www.facebook.com/qantasholidayssg

www.facebook.com/chanbrotherstravel

www.facebook.com/ctctravel

Rivaling the ubiquity of Google’s search bar, Facebook on Tuesday firmly lodged itself on the front page of NYTimes.com. “The functionality appears to be similar to Facebook’s recommended articles social plugin, with users being required to opt-in to the service,” notes All Facebook.

“The most notable aspect of this new service however is that the typically design-conscious company, has a plugin which doesn’t align with the rest of the site.”

According to The New York Times, the only information that will be displayed on one’s Facebook profile is recommendations that they chose to share on Facebook. What’s more, all information being used by NYTimes.com will be explicitly stated.

What the partnership does not do is integrate Facebook with the New York Times’ existing TimesPeople social news network. Rather, as All Facebook reports, “The company has chosen to use a number of separated social tools for providing more interaction among its users.”

via [Mediapost]

If you’re an early-stage consumer internet company looking for funding from angels, seed funds or an early-stage venture capital fund, (Read VC Fred Wilson’s July post for a look at what entrepreneurs can gain from each type of funding), consider two new rules of thumb when you pitch potential investors, courtesy of Howard Morgan, a self-proclaimed super angel at First Round Capital.

Every consumer internet company needs:

#1 A Mobile Strategy — Explain clearly how your product will work on Apple’s Iphone or the Google Android.

#2 Social Media Marketing Strategy — Search Engine Optimization is passe. You need to understand and clearly articulate how you’ll leverage your brand through the social media marketing channels, i.e. Twitter, Facebook and the rapidly proliferating companion sites.

Simple rules. But important ones to remember when you’re hunting for funding from any early-stage investor.

Via [Forbes]

WarnerTV wanted to raise awareness for their TV series amongst StarHub TV customers and engaged Vocanic to run a social media campaign delivered via the Facebook platform.

We built a trivia contest application aimed at getting fans to answer simple questions twice weekly about WarnerTV.  Over the course of 5 weeks, selected participants who answered the trivia questions correctly stood a chance to win exclusive WarnerTV premiums.

U.S. adults ages 50 and up who use the Internet are flocking to social networks, according to the results of a survey of 2,252 adults ages 18+ by Princeton Survey Research Associates on behalf of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The survey provides more evidence suggesting social media could become an effective advertising and marketing platform for reaching older Internet users (chronic offense-takers, please note that I did not write “old people”).

The Pew findings are pretty dramatic: Among Internet users ages 50+ overall, social network use increased from 22% in April 2009 to 42% in May 2010. To boot, 10% of the 50+ cohort uses Twitter or a similar “status update” service, either to post updates or check other people’s updates.

Looking at specific age cohorts, social network use among Internet users ages 50-64 surged from 25% to 47%, with 20% of this group saying they check into social networks on a daily basis — up from 10% last year. Meanwhile the proportion of Internet users ages 65+ using social networks doubled from 13% to 26% over this period, with the number checking in daily jumping from 4% to 13%.

By contrast, social network use among Internet users ages 18-29 appears to be reaching saturation, growing from 76% in April 2009 to 86% in May 2010.

These findings seem to jibe with some other figures Erik wrote about recently, suggesting that the overall rate of growth in social networks is slowing, but that growth could continue if social networks penetrate certain under-utilizing parts of the population — especially older adults. The pool of potential users is growing rapidly: a separate study from Pew found that the proportion of Americans ages 70-75 who were online increased from 26% in 2005 to 45% in 2009.

via [Mediapost]

StarHub tasked Vocanic to come up with a social media activation that would help spread the word about their Broadband and compliment their ATL campaign.

This campaign centred upon 8 key reasons why StarHub Broadband is the leading Broadband service in Singapore and why it should be the choice of every consumer.

We created an engagement that would be accessed on Facebook via the StarHub Facebook Fanpage that would at the same time entertain and remind people of the 8 key reasons to use MaxOnline.

The activation was a “memory matching” game that would be simple but effective.

The game would require users to match 8 pairs of tiles, each designed with one of the 8 reasons and icons on them.

Each attempt would be timed and the top 20 competitors with the fastest timings would be pooled into a draw where 1 lucky winner would walk away with a Limited Edition HP Mini by Studio Tord Boontje.

A leaderboard was made for competitors to keep tabs on their positions in the top 20.

After completing their matching attempt, competitors are given the option to either submit their timing, or play again to better their previous score.

Each submission is accompanied with a Post to Wall function that would showcase the game to all their contacts, and a Challenge Your Friends option.

Both these were added to give the game more online visiblity and support StarHub’s 8 Reasons MaxOnline campaign.

As the main broadcast sponsor for the inaugural Youth Olympic Games held in Singapore, StarHub asked Vocanic to create an activation that would be engaging to youth and promote attendance at YOG events.

Using a combination of Facebook and FourSquare as the primary platforms, we developed an activation that would reward people for attending YOG events whilst at the same time, promote the contest and YOG on their social networks.

After registering  on a Facebook application on StarHub’s fan page, participants would check-in to specific YOG stadiums and sports halls when they were attending a YOG event. Each check-in would have to be accompanied by a Shout Out saying “I’m supporting YOG with StarHub!”

At the end of the Youth Olympic Games, from the list of Top 20 Check-ins, 6 winners would be selected to win a Samsung Galaxy Beam, 2 Samsung Waves and a set of Limited Edition Youth Olympic Games Memorabilia.

With this activation, StarHub has become the first Telco in Singapore and joins the increasing number of brands to use FourSquare to engage their customers.