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Friday, February 24th, 2012
A recent study has found that just under half of consumers dislike the idea of advertising featured on social networking sites that uses information from their profiles, according to an article published by Marketing Week.
Conducted by YouGov, the study saw the participation of 1,275 online consumers from the United Kingdom.
The findings displayed that 47 per cent objected to seeing adverts aimed at them based on the activities listed on their profiles – on sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
Around 44 per cent also stated that they wouldn’t be any more likely to make a purchase from a brand based on the social media recommendations of their friends.
This has led YouGov to claim that social media marketing might not be as beneficial as brands would assume and more specifically “social is not always the advertiser’s friend.”
Commenting on the results, Dan Brilot, YouGov’s media consulting director stated: “It appears that whilst social media can be a key tool in the brand marketer’s armoury, in particular to maximise commitment amongst those already highly engaged with the brand, it has not quite reached the effectiveness necessary to be considered a truly mass media marketing tool.
“With the ability to share, tweet and interact on any kind of site, is almost a given, social media services increasingly need to have an extra raison d’etre beyond merely ‘social’ to make an impact in today’s crowded market.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Tags: facebook, Google, Marketing Week, research, Social Media, twitter, yougov
Posted in Social Media Marketing
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Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
Social media marketing initiatives implemented via Facebook fan pages don’t really work as effectively as your fans are “unfollowing”.
An article citing recent research published by Search Engine Watch has gone some way to explaining why fans may be “unfollowing” your brand on the social networking site, and more importantly what you can do to prevent them from doing so.
Research compiled jointly by DDB Paris and OpinionWay found why fans were reaching for the “unfollow” option. Meanwhile a study carried out by KN Dimestore and SocialVibe looked at what effects incentivised advertising had on people’s perception of a brands and their subsequent purchasing behaviour.
Using a combination of the findings found by both studies, here is a summarised version of the reasons and solutions displayed in SEW’s article:
- Your page just doesn’t have a spark anymore: Ranking as the top reason to unlike a fan page is, “The brand was no longer of interest to me”. This could be purely down to the fact that your page just doesn’t resonate with some users anymore.
In order to combat this, try to encourage fans to stick around with incentives – such as competitions, giveaways, discounts vouchers, etc. The KN Dimestore/SocialVibe findings display that over 90 per cent of people will pay attention to a brand’s overall message if interacting when an incentive is involved.
- Spamming your fans? : A number of fans – 36 per cent according to the DBB/OpinionWay research – will unfollow a brand purely because they are tired of frequent updates. Simplistically, the solution would be to update less frequently. However, preference varies depending on country – with some followers expecting more communication and some wanting considerably less.
The happy medium is to remain consistent. Stick to your brand message, if your post isn’t going to provide anything of significant value to your audience, steer clear. SEW argues that while: “EdgeRank is important, (but) you have to find balance between posting to rank and posting engage readers.”
- Your page is just plain boring: Reason number two in the list for fans to stop following your brand is that the information you provide just isn’t interesting – a total of 46 per cent of respondents felt this way.
Therefore it is vitally important to understand the type of content that will interest – without necessarily needing to captivate on a regular basis – your audience. What will they share with others? Using analytics for Facebook’s Share button should go someway in determining this.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
Tags: facebook, research
Posted in Social Media Marketing
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Monday, December 29th, 2008
Two worthwhile reads for the day. Firstly, some sound business advice from the BBC, and secondly, some research from Pew about the importance of the internet for news items.
The first piece highlights the importance of the 360 degree view of your business and the opportunities right now to re-structure for the long term. The second highlights the need to include your business in the news.
Tags: advice, business, News, pew, research
Posted in Blog, Content, Small Business Resources
