Are you wondering what other businesses are spending on their social media activities? Would you be surprised to learn that social media spending habits are on the rise? Well you shouldn’t be – nearly all marketers are increasing their lead generation budgets for social media and blogs! The average company actually increased their spending from 9% to 18% on social media from 2009 to 2011. In fact, small businesses, like many of the ones we work with here at Tarte are spending THREE times more on social media than larger businesses! (via HubSpot) I found it interesting that 75% of social media advertising is used for acquisition and 65% for retention, versus 85% of email marketers use email for acquisition and 90% for retention. Take a look at a few of these charts to see if your business is on track with the social media trend!
What about you, how does your social media spending compare to these figures?
As a self-proclaimed “user” (and obsess-er) of all things social media— an over-sharer of sorts — I am constantly in search of new ways to feed this growing addiction and to interact/ share with others online. Whether it’s social or professional networking (via Facebook and LinkedIn), enjoying the daily musings of my Twitterfeed and favorite blogs, even adding to my Pinterest boards (often on an hourly basis)—see “Obsessed with Pinterest” by Audrey Keyes— I’ve certainly found myself a series of delicious time-occupiers.
(Uh, you’re reading this… Don’t judge me.)
Still, it’s not enough to say that my time online is spent solely for personal pleasure. In my career thus far— even as a young twenty-something— I have in one way or another utilized the aforementioned networks (and others) to advertise, promote, recruit, launch different campaigns, and elicit feedback from other users. And I am not the only one. In a digital age where technology reins supreme, adolescents, adults, and companies (young and old) are following suit and getting online often for many reasons.
These tools allow us to socialize ourselves as individuals (our online identities), to develop ourselves as professionals, to entertain, to share with one another, and — for those in relevant industries — to create meaningful experiences between our audiences and our brands. From a marketing standpoint, an individual’s willingness to share is absolutely crucial to gain insights necessary to grow a business. Why else do we consult Google analytics? Facebook Insights? Seek other measurable results? Why else do people choose to share with one another, even complete strangers, if not to have their voice heard?
Thankfully, these savvy social media users can really be put to use.
Among my many favorites, Crowdtap, is one social network nothing short of genius as it is both fun and rewarding for the individual (consumer), while also having produced favorable results for a number of leading brands. Social media and marketing enthusiasts enjoy as you embark on a sharing frenzy!
What IS Crowdtap you may ask?
Crowdtap is an online platform geared towards social marketing and research originally created by Mr Youth, a social media-marketing agency based in New York City. Crowdtap works with other agencies— marketing/ advertising, PR, social media— to engage brands with their consumers by identifying/ understanding their target demographic through polling and discussion boards. Prior to its official commercial release at SXSW 2011, Crowdtap has seen a tremendous amount of success through a period of beta testing with over 25 Fortune 500 brands (i.e. msn, Old Navy, Playtex, etc.) and partnerships with top agencies such as MR Youth, Golin Harris, Weber Shandwick, Translation, kbs+p, and more!
What does this mean for the marketer?
By enabling marketers to easily target their specific crowd of consumers, Crowdtap also facilitates collaboration between the two groups (where all the magic happens!) via polling, discussion boards, product testing, additional marketing programs, and more! With this pay-as-you-go (self-service) business model, marketers have the option to participate in a number of ways without the added concern of set-up costs or monthly fees by: pursuing real-time market research, mobilizing online advocates, or driving word-of-mouth-marketing efforts. They may take advantage of what is known as “insight actions” (i.e. polls, open-ended polls, discussions) to allow their consumer to actually (oh, I don’t know…) share their opinions openly and honestly and without consequence. The marketer may also tap into the minds of those more involved, influential consumers via “influence actions” (i.e. web share, sample & share, or sponsored parties) that allow Crowdtappers to participate directly with your brand(s) by sharing, trialing, and educating others in a fun casual setting.
The ultimate goal here is to understand a consumer’s perceptions and to unveil trends necessary for branding and/or rebranding your products/ services.
What about the Crowdtapper?
Make no mistake that the average person marketed to today is savvy, and while they are highly skilled at tuning out traditional marketing tactics, they welcome brands that actually invite them into the process. Crowdtap does just that. With Crowdtap, individuals are able to collaborate on brands and marketing campaigns, rather than rely on the assumptions of an unknowing team of execs. Here you can take part in polls/ product trials, actively participate in discussion boards, and promote for leading brands while earning money in form the of gift cards/ product giveaways for yourself, not to mention that 5% of all that you earn goes towards select charities… AND Crowdtap matches it at 5%! It’s innovative and easy to learn.
Once on the Crowdtap website there are just four easy steps you need to know (Please note that the following may be viewed at the bottom of the Crowdtap homepage.):
Connect with Facebook — Just 30 seconds and you’re a Crowdtapper
**Once you log in via Facebook some demographic info is relayed to Crowdtap, however you’re given the option to continue updating your Profile. The more info you share about yourself, the more chances to participate in opportunities and earn more**
Educate us about you — Answer polls to help brands target you by your interests
**The more you log in, the more “quick hits” (polls) you’re able to respond to**
View Opportunities — Participate with the brands and offers that interest you
**The more meaningful and well-thought a discussion board post is, the more opportunities you are offered to take part in future ones AND the more likely you’re selected to earn additional points/ giveaways**
Earn Status, Rewards, and Charity — The more you do, the more you get and the more you give
**Please note there is a select group of charities you may choose to contribute to with your 5% earnings, yet it is a diverse group**
As they say, the more you play the more chances you have to win… and by win, I mean have the chance to up your status, earn some points, gain some ‘cred (and some money!)— AND give back to a great cause! Um, hello… Sign me up!
In a time where we communicate with others in new ways, share about ourselves (our thoughts, our opinions) more openly than ever, and where brands/ trends engage with us deeper than we ever thought possible— posting, pinning, tweeting, and tapping have become (quite literally) the virtual social norm. A concept that seems to further fuel my addictions, or as I like to think of it: justification!
I don’t get obsessed about too many things, but I have definitely found my new obsession – along with everyone else in this office – Pinterest. Have you heard of it yet? If not, I am sure it is going to come up in conversation soon. We cannot stop talking about it around here – from a personal perspective AND from a business & client perspective. If you have a few hours on your hands, just start looking through the site. Trust me – if you have even one creative bone in your body – you will need the hours to start sifting through all the fabulousness that is Pinterest! If you thought Facebook and Twitter were time-sucks, be prepared to have those thoughts trumped.
Pinterest is basically a site where you get to create your own pinboards (or mood boards/inspiration boards, as I like to refer to them) with images from basically anywhere on the internet. You can make as many or as few mood boards as you would like and you can name and categorize them however you want. When you register your free account on Pinterest, you get a bookmarklet to drag in to your bookmark bar of your web browser. What this allows you to do is “pin” any image on any website that you see and want to add to one of your mood boards.
Over the years, being in this business and constantly researching and searching the internet, I have accumulated so many bookmarks in my browsers, that most of them don’t even make sense for me to have anymore. And many, many of these bookmarks were there because I saw a fabulous image and wanted to save it. Instead of dragging it to my desktop and taking up room on my hard drive, I would just bookmark it – and never go back and look at it again. NOW, with Pinterest, that method of collecting and organizing images is getting thrown out the back door! NOW, no matter where I am searching on the internet, if I see something I like, I just click my PIN bookmarklet and POOF it is saved to my mood boards. It is awesome – and it get’s even better…
On top of just being able to see what I am pinning, I can see what other people have found interesting while scouring the web and I can REPIN what they already pinned! Yes! It is another form of the social media world that we are completely engrossed in. I can “follow” mood boards of other people too and they can follow me back. Brilliant!
One of the really unique things, in my opinion, that Pinterest did a great job of incorporating in to their site, is what one journalist called the innovative use of “beyond the domain” user experience. What this refers to are these two experiences:
Experience One
I see an image on Pinterest that I love, that someone else has already pinned. I click on it and it takes me to it’s own page. (This is similar to if you were on an e-commerce site and saw a product you liked. When you click on it, it takes you to an individual product page.) When I get to the image’s “product” page, if I click on the image again, it takes me directly to the original source of the image. Yep – it does.
Here is an example for you: You are on Pinterest and find an image of a pair of shoes that you love. You click on it and it takes you to the website where the image was pinned from – and then you purchase them – because it was so simple and you don’t even have to search for them. Impulsive buying/shopping at its finest. Genius.
Experience Two
I am doing my daily rounds of the blogs that I try and keep up with. On one of the blogs, I find a picture of some amazing typography work that I want to remember for inspiration. All I have to do is click my PIN IT bookmarklet and a window will pop up. It will then allow me to choose which mood board I want the image pinned to and I can leave a comment about it as well.
Do you see how these two experiences are taking you “beyond the domain”? Pinterest is saying “we want you to add content to our site from wherever is convenient for you.” Nothing is on Pinterest – yet everything is. It is taking things to a totally new level in the social online world.
Currently, I have 24 mood boards and over 300 individual pins to those boards. I have a board called “Louboutins” that is being filled up with amazing photos of some of my dream shoes. I have another board I call “Face Forward”. This board has various images of faces that have been made up with amazing makeup that I want to keep for personal inspiration. Another one I have termed “You Could Find Me Here” and the images are a collection of various places I envision finding myself when I have nothing else to do but sit and think or read or relax. There is one called “Design To Die For” that holds some brilliant designs from others around the world and even one I call “Girls Rule Boys Drool” (click through to see what it all about).
So the big question now for me and my team is how can we make this work for some of the brands we manage? How can we use this amazing site and turn it into another tool for us and our clients to increase brand recognition, increase brand awareness and increase sales? Trust me – we are thinking about it. Thinking really hard. What do you think? Is there something here for a business? What about for you personally? Will you use something like this to collect your interests and share them with the world?
(Note: You have to receive an invite to be a part of Pinterest right now, but it doesn’t seem like that is holding too many people at bay. Plus, I think the invites are going to disappear soon and it will be open to anyone who wants to join. They just launched a free iPhone app this week to go along with the website.)
A week or two ago, I was reading the newspaper and came across an article on a ‘facial recognition app‘ being developed by Google. Reading this article made me think about what this would and could really mean. Could this be a bad idea or a really good one? Should I be excited about something like this or a little nervous? What kind of privacy laws will protect us from the weirdo’s using this app?
Hartmut Neven, the Google engineering director for image-recognition development said, “In particular, women say, ‘Oh my God. Imagine this guy takes a picture of me in a bar, and then he knows my address just because somewhere on the Web there is an association of my address with my photo.’ That’s is a scary thought. So I think there is merit in finding a good route that makes the power of this technology available in a good way.”
Google has said that people will have to “opt-in” to the service for others to have access to them through this app, and Google thinks there will be plenty of people who want to opt-in. “If you’re an actor in L.A., you want to have everyone recognizing you,” Neven said.
Another example of how this app could be used is for people looking to connect online. They could use their phones to snap each other’s pictures and instantly navigate to that person’s profile, rather than having to exchange business cards or remember a user name. Hmmm…maybe that would even save a tree or two from being cut down for printing.
It may surprise you to know that most of the top, in demand jobs for 2011 didn’t even exist in 2004. Are we talking about Social Media here? Well of course we are! Is your company getting left behind in the social media odyssey? Let’s hope not! By now I would safely assume that the majority of companies have realized the importance of social media, not only for advertising purposes, but also as a means of keeping in touch with it’s customers. I came across an interesting article recently on Bootcamp Digital, and some of the facts blew me away. I thought I might share some of these stats with you – not only because they are interesting, but they’re also a good ‘checklist’ (shall we say) for your company. Are you headed in the right direction? Let’s see…
1. For 2011, social media job outlooks are faster growing than average but with competition at entry level careers. Public Relations Specialists
2. The number of social media jobs has gone up by 600% in the last five years. Social Media Influence
3. In 2011, the number of social media jobs is expected to rise 12.9% compared to 2010. CMO Survey
4. In the next six months, hires should increase 8.2%. Econsultancy
5. By 2012, the percentage of social media jobs compared to 2010 is expected to rise to 24.1%. Social Media Intellegence
6. Employers expect that 46% of their new social media hires will be from an open market. CMO Survey
7. 24% of new social media hires in 2011 are intended to be employees lured from business competitors. CMO Survey
8. Only 27% of employers looking for new social media jobs plan on hiring straight from universities. CMO Survey
9. Internet skills are now the most sought after skill in social media and marketing hires. CMO Survey
10. Entrepreneurs and developers from more than 190 countries build with Facebook Platform. Facebook
11. 70% of bloggers use social media to organically mention their product or brand. Econsultancy
How many of you reading this are employed in social media? How do you continually educate and train yourselves? Do you think our area of expertise is here to stay, or is it a passing fling? Let me know your thoughts, I’d love to hear them!
