6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
AUGUST 2012 1
6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers Introduction
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STAT #1
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STAT #2
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STAT #3
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STAT #4
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STAT #5
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STAT #6
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Conclusion
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Additional Resources
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Additional Awareness Resources
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About Awareness Inc.
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6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers INTRODUCTION
A key benefit of social marketing is the ability to measure everything that goes on, and you don’t have to dig very deep to find some truly astounding stats on the industry. But it’s not just that these stats are interesting; they also provide valuable information that can help shape your marketing strategy. Did you know one social network will account for 40% of all social media-driven purchases? What about the leading reason that users follow brands? We scoured the Internet to bring you some of the most jaw-dropping metrics and their practical implications. We want you to do more than impress your friends and co-workers with the stats; we bring them to you as an opportunity to augment your current marketing strategy. Each stat will have corresponding implications for marketers and lessons on how to use the information. Implement the lessons learned from these stats and you’ll have a leg-up on the competitors. After reading this paper, marketers should be equipped with six additional tips to add to your marketing arsenal.
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6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #1: TWEET IT!
95% of all Facebook wall posts are NOT answered by brands. Source: All Facebook.
Implications for Marketers:
That’s an overwhelming amount of brands who aren’t responding to Facebook posts. This easily solved problem provides an opportunity to create meaningful relationships with customers and prospects. Imagine yours is the only brand in a category who engages with customers - that’s a strong differentiator. For example, American Airlines quickly jumps in to solve a customer issue, while one of their competitors fails to solve similar issues posted on their wall. American Airlines is displaying a much stronger commitment to customer service.
Make It Work for You:
1. Designate a response team — Empower those in your organization to take the lead on customer responses. 2. Provide adequate training — As you would for a call center, develop approved responses to common customer inquiries. Train the response team on what they can handle, and which issues need to be escalated. 3. Set goals — It may not be feasible to go from non-responsive to fully responsive overnight. Develop a staggered rollout plan and measure response rate improvement.
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6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #2: TWEET IT!
Pinterest is projected to account for 40% of social media driven purchases by Q2 2012. Source: The Social Skinny.
Implications for Marketers:
If social commerce is a goal for your company in 2012, make sure you have an active Pinterest presence. Partly due to its status as a ‘peer recommendation’ platform (and we know 90% of consumers trust those) and partly due to its reliance on imagery over pushy sales messages, Pinterest has consistently driven strong referral traffic for brands that leads to sales. British clothing and accessory store Bottica has seen sales jump 10% since integrating Pinterest across their website. Even more exciting, Pinterest users are spending more than double than those who are referred from Facebook, to the tune of $105 more per average sale.
STAT 2.1:
Buyers referred from Pinterest are 10% more likely to buy something and spend an average of 10% more than visitors from other social networks. Source: The Social Skinny.
STAT 2.2:
Online stores built on the Shopify web-based e-commerce platform see an average order of $80 from Pinterest referrals, which is double the overall order average from social channels. Source: Shopify.
Make It Work for You:
1. Secure a Pinterest Presence — Create a channel and build boards featuring your products. 2. Include the Price — Studies show pins with prices are 36% more likely to outperform than pins without. Display an item’s price, though we would caution you to use this feature sparingly to avoid looking spammy. 3. Integrate Pinterest on your Website — Encourage site visitors to pin your products from your site and follow you on Pinterest.
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6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #3: TWEET IT!
The average user spends 20 minutes per visit on Facebook. Source: PRdaily.com.
Implications for Marketers:
Twenty minutes is a substantial amount of time – and if you multiply that by five, it gets exponentially more appealing! As a comparison, Google Ad Planner, which publishes approximate statistics documenting the quantity and quality of the traffic of popular websites, shows the average visit length of comparable sites as much lower. Twitter clocks in at 13 minutes, CNN seven and a half minutes, Wikipedia 7:20, Pinterest 14:30, and LinkedIn with 8:00 per average session.
Stat 3.1:
23% of Facebook’s users check their account five or more times every day.
Source: Convince and Convert.
For marketers, that length represents a prime opportunity to share your message with visitors. There is an opportunity to share your message with more people per day than visit your own site. To properly capitalize on this opportunity, brands need to have a high EdgeRank, coupled with high quality content. For more on EdgeRank, check out our paper EdgeRank: Stop Worrying About It and Love Your Content.
Make It Work for You: 1. Post One to Two Times Per Day — The half-life of a Facebook post is 18 hours, so limit your posting to one to two times per day. More than that may actually decrease engagement. 2. Include Media — Adding a photo and video to posts increases the life of content by 16% and 9% respectively. Make it a goal to always support posts with a photo (or a video, if possible). 3. Encourage Sharing — Provide clear calls-to-action on your posts. If you want to expand your social reach, invite your followers to share the content with their friends.
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6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #4: TWEET IT!
13% of consumers follow a brand on social channels because of their content. Source: Ragan.
Content marketing is the development of non-promotional materials that support your company’s strategic messages and provide your prospects and customers with sticky resources. For instance, leading B2B marketing automation software provider Marketo develops highly useful content for marketers, focusing on the themes of content marketing, lead generation and analytics. Marketo groups the content together by topic, allowing a reader to quickly jump from novice to well-read in a particular area.
STAT 3.1:
Content marketing is just just 4% behind the leading reason for consumers to follow brands – learning about a sale, coupon, or discount. Source: Ragan.
Implications for Marketers:
Mix it up. Consumers are interested in both your content and special offers. Create a content strategy that fulfills both expectations. Develop interesting and valuable content that serves as a resource to your audience, but don’t be afraid to throw in a promotional offer.
Make It Work for You:
1. Understand your Content Marketing Needs — Start by assessing your current assets. Chances are your internal expertise can be translated into highly valuable content assets with relative ease. 2. Spread your Wings — Seek out relevant places to share these newly developed assets. Find targeted verticals to place educational content that cater to your specific audience. 3. Capture Leads— Consider a mix of freely available and those that are gated to capture lead information. Prospects who download your content should be nurtured and moved down the sales funnel.
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6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #5: TWEET IT!
Twitter handles more search queries per month than Bing and Yahoo combined - 32 billion. Source: com.Score
Implications for Marketers:
Millions of potential consumers are searching on Twitter. In today’s world, it’s as important to be on social channels as it is to have a website, in most cases. Millions of searches are occurring each month – and they are likely your prospects, current customers or unhappy customers of your competitors.
Make It Work for You:
1. Analyze Trending Topics: Review trending topics to capitalize on what’s popular and participate in ongoing conversations.
3. Participate in Conversations that Align with your Brand: It doesn’t have to be all sales all the time. One Chicago-based company Foiled Cupcakes has developed 94% of her clientele through social media. Her strategy? Join conversations that the target market is having, specifically around shoes and chocolates and then convert those prospects into sales.
Microsoft Sites ranked second with 2.7 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.2 billion.
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BILLION
2. Practice Targeted Listening: Create monitoring streams for your strategic keywords. Look for sales signals like ‘want’, ‘need’, ‘love’ and strategically reach out when it’s appropriate.
STAT 5.1:
2.7 2 2.7 2..2 2.2 .2
Source: Wikipedia.
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6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
STAT #6: TWEET IT!
20% of Google searches each day have never been searched for before. Source: HubSpot.
Implications for Marketers: Gone are the days when your content strategy was as simple as ‘set it and forget it’. Your content strategy needs to be much more dynamic, reflecting what searches are driving visitors to your site. Develop content that answers their questions and positions you as a resource.
Make It Work for You: 1. Explore Analytics for Content Ideas — Dig into an analytics tool, like Google Analytics, regularly to determine what new keywords and key phrases are driving visitors to your site. 2. Keep it fresh — Stay in-line with industry trends. As your industry evolves, consider writing response pieces to trending topics. 3. Find your sweet spot — Identify the overlap between the content your prospects want and what best serves your companies’ interests. Develop content that achieves both.
Content Strategy What Target Prospects Want
What You Need To Deliver
What Serves Your Interest Source: Holland Mark.
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6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers Conclusion
The social landscape is constantly evolving and the rate of change is always accelerating. In order to survive, marketers must embrace this dynamic world of social business, and find opportunities hidden behind each new statistic. We encourage you to pull out the best practices from this whitepaper and put them to use. The content and the resources highlighted below are meant to serve as a guide on this (ever-changing) social journey.
Additional Resources All Facebook Business2Community com.Score Convince and Convert Holland Mark HubSpot
Jeff Bullas MediaPost Nielsen PRdaily.com Ragan The Social Skinny
Additional Awareness Resources EdgeRank: Stop Worrying About It and Love Your Content This free ebook will teach you how Facebook’s EdgeRank works and provides tips for brands to increase their score Five Killer Strategies to Dominate Social Media’s Big 3: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube Even with the increasing number of social networks, most experts still recognize that successful social marketing revolves around the Big 3: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. How to Audit Your Social Marketing Efforts Learn how to evaluate the effectiveness of your current social marketing strategy. Identify new ways to improve the return on your social marketing investment. Social Commerce Lessons: The 6 Social Principles that Increase Sales Learn more about content strategies and driving sales. Actionable Social Analytics A detailed guide on how to approach your social analytics process. The Social Funnel: Driving Business Value with Social Marketing For a detailed discussion on how to effectively measure your social marketing initiatives, download our free e-book. The State of Social Media Marketing: Top Areas For Social Marketing Investment and Biggest Social Marketing Challenges in 2012 Learn how leaders allocate resources, discover the top social platforms and social media management tools they use, social marketing investment priorities, and the practices companies will adopt in 2012.
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6 Mind-Blowing Social Media Stats
And What They Mean for Marketers
About Awareness
Awareness Inc. is the leading provider of enterprise-class, on-demand social marketing management software (SMMS) for marketers to publish and manage social content, engage with their audience and measure the effectiveness of their social media activities across multiple social media channels. The Awareness Social Marketing Hub is built upon Awareness’ expertise with some of the world’s leading brands and marketing agencies including MLB, Sony Pictures, Comcast, Likeable Media, Associated Press, Cox Communications, Mindjumpers and American Cancer Society. The Awareness Social Marketing Hub is built to address the challenges marketers face managing multiple social channels. The Social Marketing Hub is the first enterprise-class application for serious marketers who want to plan, implement and measure meaningful social media strategies across the organization. Get Connected: Follow us on Twitter @awarenessinc Join us on Facebook • Social Media Marketing Best Practices • Social Media Marketing Mavens Join our LinkedIn Group Social Media Marketing Mavens Group Check out our Blog Follow us on Pinterest
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