New Features from Facebook (Yep, Again!)

by: iCopywriter Senior Blogger, Gaia Veenis

Social networking has continued to become a bigger and bigger player in the online marketing world in the past few years, though Internet experts weren’t exactly sure how to harness its power for marketing purposes at first. Right now, Facebook is one of the heaviest hitters - if not the heaviest - in the social media marketplace. It is a hugely popular tool for businesses, advertisers and individual users alike. So far this year, the social networking giant has seen several big changes.   

The New King of Display Ads

One big milestone for Facebook came in May, when comScore released its quarterly report. The big news for Mark Zuckerberg and company was the announcement that Facebook accounted for 346 billion display ads out of the nearly 1.11 trillion display ads that were delivered to Internet users in the first quarter of 2011. This made Facebook the most popular spot for display ads - accounting for approximately one third of the market - and a very wise place for online marketers to spend their ads budgets. 

New Features: Timeline and More

Several new Facebook features have been introduced to the public in September. 

• Timeline: Mr. Zuckerberg announced the new Facebook Timeline feature this month, which will open up all sorts of new possibilities for brands as well as individual users. Basically, Facebook users will now be able to look back at a chronological history of their lives in the online space. The Timeline feature may prove to be especially advantageous to brands that want to create a compelling company narrative as a new, more personalized way to reach out to their audiences. 
• “Like Button” is going to see some changes, too, which Zuckerberg announced at the Sept. 22 f8 conference. Research has shown that people are often hesitant to use the “like” button because they don’t want to blindly endorse certain content, even if they do like it or find it interesting. Now, with Facebook Gestures, users are able to say more specific things, like tell people they just read an article, listened to a song or watched a video, rather than just claiming they “liked” it. There is still no “dislike” button, but for online marketers, this is probably a good thing.

There’s sure to be more news from Facebook in 2012; there’s no way of knowing what’s up the social media behemoth’s sleeve. For now, it’s safe to say Facebook isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Have you checked out iCopywriter.com lately?

Tumblr - The Up-And-Comer on the Social Media Landscape

by: iCopywriter Senior Editor, Heather Price-Wright

For all the talk of tumbling being heard lately, you’d think Cirque du Soleil was in town!

Okay, so that was lame - but what’s not lame is the explosive growth up-and-coming social media site Tumblr has seen in the last year. According to the May 2011 Nielsen report “State of the Media: The Social Media Report,” Tumblr has seen a staggering 183% growth in the last year. That growth has been especially pronounced among younger demographics; Nielsen also found Internet users ages 18-34 were 75% more likely to visit the site than the average of all users.

One key aspect to Tumblr’s growing popularity could be its unique mix of content - it is partly a blog-hosting site - and social networking capabilities. The Nielsen report pointed out that much of Tumblr’s popularity comes from the fact that it’s a hot topic of conversation outside of the actual site. In May 2011, a daily average of 21,280 messages and links relating to the site were shared per day off of Tumblr itself. And even within the site, sharing is a major part of the way users interact. Those with Tumblr accounts can “reblog” posts from other users, thereby allowing individual blog posts to “go viral” much more easily.

Tumblr’s popularity, as well as its expert use of social and sharing capabilities, can teach other sites, even those of small businesses, lessons about how to gain traction in the online space. Basically, Tumblr and its impressive growth show us that people want to access, interact with and, especially, share content. Other sites would do well to think like Tumblr and build sharing, linking, socializing and interacting into their online strategy.

How can the average business achieve that level of online social interaction? For one thing, it’s important to have a strong content-creating team (iCopywriter.com to the rescue...) to write search engine optimized content that third-party sites will want to pick up, and users will want to share. After all, you’ll never go viral, or even close, without first creating something that will get people talking and sharing.

Overall, as Tumblr shows with its rapid growth, quality content and social media are a potent combination. By taking advantage of these two aspects of a strong online marketing push, businesses may be able to get a taste of Tumblr’s success.

Have you checked out iCopywriter.com lately? 

What Nobody Thought Would Happen: Social Media Beats Out Search for Top Web Activity

by: iCopywriter Senior Editor, Heather Price-Wright

To almost no one’s surprise, social media has become the undisputed belle of the online ball. According to a May 2011 Nielsen report, social media has beat out search, as well as all other categories, as the activity Web users spend the most time participating in. Nielsen reports that one in every four online minutes is spent using social media.

Also to no one’s surprise, Facebook is the ruling force in social media. In May, Americans spent a staggering 53.5 billion minutes on the site from work and personal computers. And in all likelihood, that number is much smaller than the actual time spent on Facebook - Nielsen also found that almost 40% of users access social media sites by way of their smart phones. Compared to those numbers, the time spent on sites primarily devoted to searching was paltry. Even fellow giant Google saw just 17.2 million minutes in May - still a substantial number, but nowhere near Facebook’s dominating performance.

Of course, it’s only logical that users would spend more time on social media than search sites. After all, the whole point of searching is to be led elsewhere on the Web, whereas social media sites are designed so that users stick around for at least a few minutes. And that, experts argue, might be the model to follow for all websites, from search engines to social media to business and personal sites.

#1 TIP TO PROMOTING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE??

Rhadha Subramanyam, senior VP of media and advertising insight and analytics at Nielsen, notes that one of the biggest mistakes companies can make is separating their search, social and other media departments when it comes to marketing and advertising. She adds that when social media is made its own department, “it tends to get buried.”

So instead of having different teams managing and overseeing different aspects of your overall marketing push, the Nielsen results point to a better way: integrating social media, search engine marketing, content creation and other online marketing strategies into a cohesive campaign that catches users’ eyes on a variety of platforms, bringing them to your company’s site.

What are YOUR social media strategies?

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