Using Social Media To Promote Start-Up Businesses

If you are planning to launch a start- up business or have recently started one, you probably have encountered a wealth of information on using social media to promote a business. Though there are millions of social media users across the world, around 900 million of them, it is easy to get carried away by the numbers. Finding the right social sites to promote your business to maximise its potential is essential for business success, and this is where you should concentrate your efforts.

What Social Media Engagement Achieves For Business

Social media in essence is about engagement through sharing, which for business means targeting your product range, your articles, or your services at engaging a potential customer or client base. Collectively, products, services and articles are known as content, and it is through offering quality content that success through your channels can be achieved. Social media has around 900 million users globally, and covers every topic range you can think of. As well as engaging a potential customer and client base or readership, social media is also relevant to search engine optimization. Social media is a unique format as it helps you promote your content directly to your audience, and in turn it generates traffic via people sharing your content with others, and through SEO. Perhaps more importantly than this, however, social media with its online reviews helps a business build trust, and nearly every brand you can think of uses social media for this reason. Consider this: you come across two companies offering the same services; one has 250 Facebook likes, the other 43 - which one would you opt for? So regardless of whether you're an online retailer, an affiliate marketer, offer a service such as tuition, or run a news site, social media can help you build your business online. Google estimates that by 2015, UK consumers will have purchased £40bn of products and services online.

Popular Social Media Sites And Their Uses

Getting to get grips with the nuances of social media's role in promoting your business can cause more than its fair share of headaches. Here is a list of the most popular social media sites and their uses:

• Facebook is predominately for sharing. This can be products, articles, or services. In a nutshell, it's for sharing your content with as many people as possible.


• Twitter is about sharing news on any subject. Don't let the word news make you feel it does not apply for products. New product launches, new stock ready to be sold - Twitter is good for all of this.


• Google+ is in part a combination of the two and has become important for search engine optimization if nothing else.


• Blogging is a great way to impart news and expertise to your readership, customer and client base, or followers. It offers a good way to attract visitors on your site via search engines.


• YouTube is about showcasing videos to a wide audience. It is being utilised by businesses all the time to sell products and services. As YouTube is owned by Google, videos tend to feature prominently on search engine results. You can also utilise the YouTube ads to make a secondary income stream.


• Pinterest and other bookmarking sites are very good at showcasing visual products. If your business is selling something online, albeit a product or service, ensure you are posting on Pinterest and as many bookmarking sites you can find.

Social Media And Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Good positioning on search engines is about unique quality content that is well shared and well linked to from other websites. By sharing your content on social sites, the more chance there is of people liking it on Facebook, retweeting on Twitter, or sharing the pin on Pinterest. Links are important for good SEO and posting your content on social sites provides a link from the social site to yours, and in every case this can be targeted to a specific web page. By web page I mean a specific product, service, or article. This also ensures Google indexes the web page. That is to say, it adds it to its database, ensuring it can be found on search engines.

Finding The Best Social Media Sites For Your Business

To find the best social sites suited to your business, think about what your business is trying to do. If your business sells products or services, then use social sites that showcase pictures and videos to sell the product. YouTube, Pinterest, Delicious and Instagram are all really good for showcasing products. If you're in the selling game, make videos of your products, take good professional photos and get them on these sites, and ensure you link the pictures and videos directly to the content on your site. If you sell on eBay or an affiliate seller, try to link directly to the product page where a potential customer can buy it. Also, put the products on your Facebook page, Google+ page, and Twitter. For service providers, a slightly different spin on social media promotion is needed as, more often than not, a service provider will sit in the middle of visual social media, and text-based social sites. This also applies to affiliate marketers. If you can, represent your services with a picture or icon, and publish the picture or icon on the visual sites. Use videos to showcase your services - if you can get testimonials from clients, well, that's gold dust. Publish regularly on your blog and tweet the articles, together with insights into the industry. This engagement will help build trust with your existing clients, showcase your skills, and help you to be found by people wishing to become new clients.

Social Media Advertising

If you have the budget for it, Facebook offers advertising on a click-through basis like Google AdSense, or it can be used to earn likes. It is often a case of experimentation. For affiliate marketing revenue streams, click-throughs will expose the user to your revenue stream, while a like will ensure every time an article or new product is published they'll be informed. It's trial and error and seems to work well for some businesses, but others have lost faith in it.

Saving Time

By now, you have probably guessed that updating social sites, especially if you publish a lot of daily content, is hard work. Larger businesses employ people to keep on top of it, something many start-up business don't have the budget or the time for. It is possible to automate your social accounts updating using automatic syndication sites.

A Social Media Strategy

Step 1: Create a Facebook Page, Twitter account and Google+ Page For Business

These have their uses regardless of the type of business, and all help considerably with SEO. Ensure you create business pages on Facebook and Google+. This keeps your personal details and indeed social media life hidden from your customers or clients, and it offers better options to promote a business.

Step 2: Identify Social Media Sites That Are The Most Important To Your Business

If your site sells products, make a list of all the online bookmarking and video sites you can find and create accounts. Ensure you use Pinterest and YouTube. If your business is for services, information, or is for an affiliate marketing revenue stream, you want to spread the word in as many ways as possible. Use blogging sites such as Tumblr, Blogger and WordPress.org to syndicate your blog posts and services, and try to create news content if you provide services to show your expertise in your field.

Step 3: Use Social Media Tools Such As 'If This Then That'

'If this then that' or ifttt.com automatically updates your social accounts. This is easy to establish and works by syndicating the information across a host of social sites automatically as soon as one site is updated. This, as you can imagine, saves a lot of time. Be cautions, however, and ensure social sites suited to the business, such as bookmarking sites for online retailers, appear just as you want them to be found. Automatic syndication has limitations and often links and pictures do not appear as you would like them to. Nonetheless, and especially for syndicating blog posts via an RSS feed, it is a very good time-saver for promoting your business via social media. Not all social media can be syndicated in this way, but the sites that ifttt.com syndicates to are well worth creating accounts on to promote your business. The more social media sites you post on, the better.

Step 4: Use #hashtags

Whenever you post your content, ensure you use accurate #hashtags. This will help users find your content when they search for it. So if I'm selling tyres on ebay, #tyres, #cartyres, #car, #tyres is good, and for sports news, #sportsnews, #football #cricket, and so on is good.

Step 5: Once It Starts

Once your content starts hitting the social media world, monitor your accounts for feedback. Concentrate on the sites you've identified as important to your business and respond to questions and comments. When responding, try to be helpful and non-abusive, even if the commentator is not pleasant. Professionalism goes along way.

Step 6: Participation

Twitter and Google+ show trending topics and these are popular subjects people are discussing. It is worth performing the odd Twitter search to see what people are talking about in relation to your business, and making a contribution to the discussion. This is a good way to make connections and hopefully achieve more success.

Step 7: Monitoring Success

Monitoring success has proven to be quite difficult for social media. Unlike SEO results, which can be measured on click-throughs and content engagement, it is not so simple on social sites for a variety of reasons. You may feel if you provide news that 10 comments on one story is a good sign of success, while 100 likes of a product video on YouTube with no obvious link to sales may not be immediately obvious as positive. It is worth remembering, however, that though people may not directly access your main site via social sites, it may prompt them to return later. Always keep in mind that social media is for sharing content, so any like, comment or retweet is positive.

Visit HomeforBusiness for more online marketing tips.

Daughter, Sister, Wife, Mother of three, PR Consultant and Entrepreneur

Like many women on most days I seem to have to juggle all my roles. On other days just three or four. This is why I founded Homeforbusiness. I recognise what it takes to be a working Mum and how to set up an online business from home with all 'pulls' of everyday family life and work.

I have always been entrepreneurial and set up by first corporate communications company, EMA Productions, in my 30s working with big corporate clients such as Texaco, Rank and Boots. Whilst it was challenging and hard work, it was quickly successful. I could focus solely on winning contracts and meeting the clients needs without family distractions and with the support of a fantastic team and office.

I feel very passionate about HomeforBusiness as I believe that lots of people want to create a better work/life balance and work from home, either setting up a new business or working as a freelancer. There are hundreds of genuine opportunities for people but often people do not know how to start. I want HomeforBusiness to empower anyone who wants to work from home profitably. With a panel of guest experts I will share share genuine business opportunities, business ideas, advice on running a business, online marketing, and health and wellbeing tips. I have also put together my favourite free online resources.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Elizabeth_W_Conley

The Modern Hobo's Lament

Just a quick blog entry to share with you readers what in the hell my business is morphing into. Well, just as my personal life has been in major upheaval and constant state of flux for about the past year and a half so has my business. I don't know how many of you out there have noticed but I suspect those who have were shaking their heads at many junctures. It actually started just after the death of my father last April 14th. This inevitable event is a significant point in any man's life. Freeing in some ways and confusing in many others. On one hand I was free to do anything I wished without that voice on my right shoulder saying "What would Dad say?" to anything I did. No more would I have to register Republican yet vote Democrat or agree that Roy Clark was a better guitar player than Clapton or have to try to explain Mick's gyrations onstage or agree that we didn't need our own swimming pool because they have a perfectly good one down at the Rec Center. I could put my cart before my horse any damned time I wanted to damn it!

Then again, there were many other things that I must then send up a posthumous "you were right" to like wishing I had finished college and at a minimum gotten my bachelors degree, even if it was in interpretive modern dance, it didn't matter as long as I had the sacred sheepskin. There I was at 52 years old, a ten year gap of employment history due to caring for Dad full time in his last years and going forth attempting to reenter the job market with only a Community College Associates Degree and my horse tripped over the cart and fell down and bumped it's head. All of a sudden CEO's and billionaires were 25 years old and post IPO retirement age was no greater than 35 and gone was the "pension" and "home appreciation" and secure blue chip investments. Score one big one for Dad! So after sending out over 1,500 resumes in the past year with not one single call for an interview it doesn't look like I'm a very desirable commodity. I was a decade ago what changed? Well crossing the big 5-0 line is about akin to job hunting suicide. Then there's a spotty credit history and sub 600 FICO score and a rather lengthy history of brushes with Johnny Law and now this glaring ten year gap and the lack of a 4 year degree. Never mind that I have been building social networks and managing social media campaigns back since Web 1.0 and I finally was ahead of the learning curve of the masses for once in my life on a very hot subject. The kids with 4 years dance degrees had developed automation apps that could do what I did on auto pilot PLUS spit out great analytics and statistics better and faster than I could so I caught a good breeze as that train blew by me and I was back sitting by a rail yard campfire toasting a hot dog on a stick with a bunch of fellow hobos of this century's depression even though we keep our blinders on and don't call it such. Humph! What to do? What to do? Was the hobo's lament. Somewhere tonight there's a portable 8 track playing Framton Comes Alive as the the hobos pass a doob around the campfire.

More in Part II

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Salesforce Launches World’s Most Comprehensive Suite for Social Marketing

Salesforce announced today the launch of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, the first suite that unifies social listening, content, engagement, advertising, workflow, automation and measurement.

This suite offers CMO’s the possibility to leverage social media insights and to manage all social marketing activities in one place. The suite includes:

• Social Listening – companies using this tool have the possibility to listen to data from more than 400+ million social sources, including big social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs, etc.
• Social Content – using over 50 social applications available, marketers can create and deploy all sort of content, adapted to company’s communicational needs and social networks used.
• Social Engagement – it is very important to be able to connect with customers, in fact this is vital to success in social media. Using this suite companies can respond and connect with customers on their channel of choice, build a community of advocates.
• Social Advertising – companies have the possibility to create and manage advertising campaigns, including sponsored stories and mobile newsfeed ads, on different social media channels.
•  Social Workflow and Automation – applying analysis and rules, users can organize conversations online by routing relevant social content for quick engagement and response.
• Social Measurement – campaigns’ results are included in one dashboard, thus enabling companies to know exactly how engagement is driving revenue or other conversions.

“Marketing is undergoing its biggest shift in decades, as brands move from traditional strategies to connecting with customers and fans globally through social media,” declared Michael Lazerow, CMO of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, salesforce.com. “Salesforce Marketing Cloud empowers brands to take advantage of this shift, turning insight into action and connections into customers for life.”

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is now available for purchase at fees starting at $5,000 per month.

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The Complete Novice's Guide to Social Media

Introduction

This article is intended to be a very straightforward guide to Social Media and everything that Social Media encompasses including blogs, social networks and forums etc. It is intended to introduce both newcomers and perhaps even some more experienced people to the world of social media.

So, what is Social Media?

So, what is this social media that has the Internet buzzing with excitement? Well, Wikipedia (an interesting form of social media in itself) describes it as:

"information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies that is intended to facilitate communications, influence and interaction with peers and with public audiences, typically via the Internet and mobile communications networks."

This can encompass not just text and information based services like blogs etc, it can also contain image and video based services such as Flickr and YouTube for example.

Social media instigates a sense of community, making users feel connected with each other through participation and communication via many forms of media. Technorati, a blog submission service, has over 133 million blogs indexed, displaying the staggering rise in popularity of people wanting to be heard and connect to each other.

Social Media and your Business

Social media can benefit any type of business and if approached correctly, can help build relationships with consumers and other companies through networking and raised awareness of your service.

With social media you can easily speak directly to your customers, using Twitter to gather feedback on customer satisfaction, raising awareness of a recently launched product through Digg or using YouTube to promote your move into a new office location for example.

An example of a company using social media in a great way is Starbucks. Starbucks created a whole new website and blog centred around customer suggestions for their service. A user would go onto the website and suggest a way Starbucks could improve, everyone registered on the website would then vote their favorite ideas and then Starbucks would post on their blog regarding which ideas they liked and how they would be actually implemented into the Starbucks service.

Companies are always thinking of better ways to run there service, social media gave Starbucks a way to connect with millions of existing customers and gave those customers an opportunity to build on the Starbucks service in a way only they could know how.

Burger King launched a Facebook application which encouraged users to 'sacrifice' 10 of their facebook friends in return for a free Whopper burger. It was taken down by Facebook not long after launch citing privacy concerns, however in the relatively short space of time the application was live, it gathered over 20,000 users and consequently over 200,000 friends were sacrificed in the name of free burgers. This social media example was well built, was easy to share and gave the user the incentive to network with friends which made it very popular in the short space of time it was available.

These are only two examples of successful social media solutions by companies on the Internet, companies like Sun, Ford, Dell and IBM are all currently reaping the benefits of using blogs, twitter accounts, Facebook pages and other social media tools to connect with customers and make there companies more transparent to consumers. Social media, blogs especially, aren't going to disappear overnight. They now act as invaluable customer service methods with the ability to conduct informal discussion with your customers and let them get to know more about you and your company in an inexpensive way.

Establishing a social media presence for your company gives you the ability to reach potentially millions of new customers through Facebook, Twitter, Digg etc, many of which may have been unreachable without a presence on these networks. Having profiles on the various social networks gives you the maximum potential to raise awareness of your brand, gain more visitors to your website and the capacity to convert those targeted visitors to customers.

Social Media in Numbers

2,000,000,000

searches through the Google search engine every day

1,360,652,987

tweets on Twitter as of March 2009

700,000,000

photos added to Facebook every month

900,000

blog posts every 24 hours

38,040

diggs the most popular bookmark on Digg has received in the last 12 months

412.3

years it would take to watch all of YouTube's content as of March 2008

13

hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute

Social Media Forms

Although social media can come in many forms, it has its main ones:

Blogs

The most well known of 'obvious' social media forms. Blogs act as a frequently updated hub of contextual information where users can get involved and give their input through comments.

Forums

The oldest form of social media, in use before the term 'social media' was made popular. Internet forums act as areas for online discussion, usually centered around certain topics.

Content Communities

Content communities differ from usual forms of social media in that they allow people to share and use particular kinds of content that blogs and forums don't fully concentrate upon such as images (see Flickr), interesting bookmarks (see Digg and del.icio.us) and of course video (see YouTube).

Micro-blogging

A relevant newcomer in the social media world. Micro-blogging combines blogging and social networking in that it allows people to update small amounts of content online through web-based, desktop and also mobile clients (see Twitter).

Social Networks

Social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo etc allow the easy creation of personalised web page accounts that facilitates communication between users.

The Distribution of Social Media

People only have a certain amount of time to check their favorite websites, this mightn't even include blogs or social networks. Couple this with the fact that people seem to be working longer hours than ever these days and also using blackberrys and iPhones to work away from the office, and you're faced with a daunting task of attracting people to your blog or website.

One remedy to this has been the introduction of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. RSS feeds allow a user to effectively 'subscribe' to a website or blog, meaning they are notified through a newsreader when new content is available.

RSS saves people a lot of time when reading blogs and website updates, meaning communities can grow and become more valuable to both the user and author saving both parties time and money.

Social Networks

Joining a social network usually involves creating your own web page with information about yourself, be it personal, professional or otherwise and you then connect with other people on that network.

Although most of these networks are relatively young in their age, a selection of them are very popular and have changed the shape of the Internet for the near future at the very least.

MySpace

After launching in August 2003, MySpace became the most popular social networking website in the United States in mid 2006, attracting well over 100million account holders.

MySpace has largely built it's popularity based upon its comprehensive music service where bands can upload tracks directly to their profile for fans to listen to, even launching it's own record label to release music from MySpace upon.

Bebo

Bebo is a popular social networking tool with more emphasis on the younger user than its competitors. It is also geared towards colleges, schools and other educational institutes which is where Bebo has found it's niche. It was purchased by AOL in early 2008 for over £400million.

Facebook

First available to University students, facebook was opened up to the public (people over the age of 13) in 2006 and it's userbase has skyrocketed ever since.

The service allows you to join networks and groups of organisations, sports teams, location specific groups etc and also offers developers the chance to write applications for the service at no charge

Facbook currently has over 235million account users.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has it's own niche in the social networking world in that it is targeted solely toward the working professional.

LinkedIn allows you to create your own career profile and network with past and present workmates and is mainly used for career-orientated networking and job / project searches.

LinkedIn has approximately 40million users.

Friends Reunited

Friends reunited is a social network based upon the theme of reuniting and connecting with former (and current) classmates. It is identified as the first social network to achieve prominence in Britain, surviving the dotcom bust.

Blogs

A blog (standing for web-log) is a type of website maintained by an individual or company that is commonly updated with news on latest events, opinions, reviews and any other material the author deems worth of publishing.

With recent developments in blog hosting technology, it's possible for anyone with a basic knowledge of the internet to create and run their own blog using platforms such as WordPress and blogger.

Topics

The reason blogs are so popular on the Internet is because they act as a hub of information for any given topic. This can include website design articles (see a list apart), celebrity news (see TMZ), politics (see Huffington Post) and technology news (see techcrunch).

Although some blogs contain posts around a number of topics, the most popular ones have a defined theme and user base.

Comments

Almost all blogs have a comments structure in place allowing readers to submit their views on that blog or article. Comments act as a networking tool in itself, with many people growing the reader-base of their own blog or website through the clicks they receive from commenting on other peoples blogs.

Forums

The Internet forum is the relative grandparent of the social media family, evolving from the bulletin board style of networking which was popular in the early years of the Internet.

Like blogs, forums can be about any number of topics and attract people mainly looking for information and discussion around a particular theme or subject. Where the two mediums differ are that whereas blogs are usually the views / news from one individual or company, forums act as a discussion venue where many discussions are ongoing at once in different locations called 'threads'. Also, a blog has a clear owner, again that may be an individual or company depending on the blog itself but a forum is effectively ran by its members.

Many forums have been running from the early days of the Internet and have thus gathered a huge amount of members, Gaia Online has over 16million registered members and is one of the most popular on the Internet.

Content Communities

Content communities don't particularly adhere to typical social network frameworks, as they aren't particularly intended for networking between people using the usual means. Two examples of this are Flickr and YouTube.

Flickr

Flickr is an image and video hosting website where people can create a personal account and upload photos they have taken. It's also used by bloggers and webmasters as an online photo storage system, where they can host all of their images in a searchable database. As of late 2008, it is claimed that Flickr holds more than 3billion images.

The social aspect of Flickr comes into play through the creation of various subject-orientated groups where users can comment on relevant images that have been uploaded.

YouTube

Youtube is the largest video hosting website on the Internet with well over 120million videos currently hosted through its service. Youtube members can upload their own footage, create channels / playlists of their favourite videos and share them with friends.

Youtube has quickly become one of the largest websites in the history of the Internet with more than 6billion videos viewed on the service in January 2009 alone. Before the public launch of YouTube in 2005, there were very few methods of video-orientated social networking available via the Internet, YouTube changed this with the ability for its users to dictate its content through the uploading of personal video.

Microblogging

Microblogging is the latest in the way of social networking, combining blogging, instant messaging and the popular status updates of the Facebook service into one neat package.

Popular microblogging services such as Twitter allow a small (in Twitters case, no more than140 characters) text based 'update' to be published on your twitter page and to those who are 'following' you.

Although it is a web based format, over 90% of 'tweet's published via twitter are by mobile, desktop or instant messaging applications. Twitter is largely used by the web industry as a way of passing useful links to one another, as well as a very quick and easy networking tool between account followers.

It has recently began to attract a lot of press attention due to the amount of well known people using the service. President Obama used Twitter in the run up to the election to keep voters informed of his campaign, connecting to a completely new audience to previous candidates.

Conclusion

Although Social Media is a relatively new factor on the Internet, the advances we have seen in a short space of time have been staggering. Two to three years ago MySpace was the service everyone was using to connect with each other, who would have predicted that within 24 months there would have been a service in Facebook that overtook it as the Internets leading social networking tool.

The future of social media is an exciting one, and we could see some interesting developments even in the short term such as the adoption of the mobile social network. Although a lot of people are using Social Media on mobile phones already, this number is expected to increase significantly in the near future with the development of more and more clients for social networks on mobile phones.

Social media is expected to evolve and grow into exciting new services and shows no signs of dissapearing any time soon. The potential for growth and monetary gain for businesses is too great for them to ignore social media, helping spread news of services and offers to hundreds, if not thousands, of friends in an instant. Some companies aim for that kind of promotion and never reach it, some pay millions to get it, with social media, it is in everyones grasp.

A company that neglects both social media and the benefits of search engine optimisation is shielding its services away from millions of potential customers.

Opening your company up to social media services allows you to connect instantly with new people, couple this with a comprehensive search engine optimisation plan and you are in a perfect position to attract new customers and network inexpensively.

Well that's it for our guide to Social Media, grab yourself a cup of tea (or coffee if you're that way inclined) and relax.

web design newcastle

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jordan_Anthony_Hall

Research Brief on Digital Marketing Planning

Thursday, May 12, 2011 Digital Marketing Planning According to a new study from Adobe Systems, almost three-quarters of businesses plan imminent investments in website redesigns or significant site enhancements to improve ROI. The study, "Digital Marketing in the Next Decade," found the most-deployed tactic to date, used by 55% of respondents, was analytics tools for measuring and optimizing website experiences. 82% say they plan to adopt the enhancements this year, up 8% from a year ago. Time Frame Planned To Deploy Additional Features To Enhance Customer Experience Time to Deploy % of Respondents 3 months 10% 6 months 22 9 months 13 12 months 37 Other 18  Source: Adobe Digital Markting Trends Survey, May 2011 Mobile also is coming into its own as a marketing device, based on future plans. This year, iPhone apps are the most-planned deployment, cited by 27% of respondents, sharing the top spot with interactive catalogs. Just behind are iPad apps, advertising on social networking sites and branded social community pages, each cited by 25% of respondents. 1,941 participants in this year's survey represent businesses across diverse industries including  advertising and interactive agencies, media and publishing computer hardware, software and services and retail, headquartered primarily in North America, Western Europe and Japan. 73% of the businesses surveyed say they plan to invest in site redesigns or would otherwise make significant enhancements to improve their site's ROI. 82% say they plan to deploy those enhancements within the year, up 8% from a year ago. Analytics tools for measuring and optimizing website experiences represent the most deployed tactic globally, used by 55% of the respondents. Social media and rich media tactics also rank among the most adopted. At least a quarter of all respondents have applied some executions in analytics, social media and rich media. Mobile cracks the top planned deployments for the first time since the survey first began measuring its executions in 2009. iPhone apps are the most planned deployment, cited by 27% of the respondents. It shares the top spot with interactive catalogs, which leads planned deployments for the second year in a row. Most Deployed And Planned Executions Globally (% of Respondents) Top deployed executions Top planned executions Website analytics: 55% Interactive catalogs & brochures 27% Branded social community pages (e.g.,Facebook, Twitter) 40% App-iPhone 27% Blogs or micro-blogs 34% Advertising on social networking sites 25% Dynamic displays (banner, carousel, tabbed, grid views) 27% App-iPad:  25% Campaign analytics: 26% Branded social community pages: 25% Animation: 26% Blogs or micro blogs 24% Source: Adobe Systems, May 2011 Rich media and merchandising tactics maintain their top effectiveness rankings by the highest number of people rating them "very effective." The features rated "very effective" by the most respondents belong to the rich media category, with multimedia product viewing (integrating images, video, Flash, audio, spin, etc.) taking the top spot, followed by videos and mobile product information. The features that drew the most "very effective" ratings (actual or expected) by respondents who have deployed or plan to deploy them are: Multi-media product viewing (integrated images, video, Flash, audio, spin, etc.): 39% Videos for merchandising, advertising and demonstration: 36% Product information on mobile devices: 36% Product tours (combinations guided spin, zoom imagery, videos or animations with copy): 34% Check inventory status, in-store or Web, on mobile devices: 34% Visual filtering & advanced search on product features: 34% Interactive catalogs & brochures: 34% Personalization features continue to be among the least deployed tactics, yet collect some of the highest "very effective" ratings from people who have deployed them or are planning to deploy them. The personalization tactic with the highest planned rate is geo-targeted site content at 21%, with 30% of respondents rating it "very effective." In the digital advertising category, serving impressions in social networking sites ranked first as the top planned execution at 25%, while in the analytics category, tools for measuring social ROI is the top planned at 21%. The top investment priorities focused on mobile applications and branded social community presence: Android phone apps (23%) Apps for iPads and iPhones (21%) Branded social community pages (18%) While the no. 1 planned execution in North America is advertising on social sites (29%) and EMEA's is iPhone app (34%), the rest of the top planned deployments are more biased towards rich media. Interactive catalogs represent the second most planned execution in both regions. Among EMEA's top five planned deployments are 3-D visualization and multi-media product viewing; in North America, quick looks and rollover views also made the top cut. Top Deployed Executions in North America (Executions With Deployed Rates Of 20% Or Higher) Execution % of Respondents Website analytics 51% Branded social community pages (e.g., Facebook, MySpace, Twi­er) 44 Blogs or micro-blogs 34 Social sharing (post to social networking and bookmarking sites, e.g., Facebook, MySpace, etc.) 29 Facebook Like 26 Display ads 26 Advertising on social networking sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn) 25 Multi-media product viewing (integrated images, video, Flash, audio, spin, etc.) 25 Email Friend 25 Dynamic displays (banner, carousel, tabbed, grid views) 24 Campaign analytics 24 Animation 23 Audio 23 User comments and reviews 23 Image ads 23 Mobile keyword search 22 Search landing pages 21 Content distribution (publish video & assets to social portals, e.g., YouTube, Facebook Wall) 21 Interactive catalogs & brochures 20 Social media analytics 20 Alternative images 20 Source: Adobe Systems, May 2011 For additional information and access to the complete PDF survey file please visit here.

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iMedia Connection Weekly Update

May 12, 2011 issue

Surprising insights into online shopping patterns By Lori Luechtefeld Online holiday shoppers are timing their purchases to capitalize on retailers' deepest discounts. Learn more about how consumers choose what, where, and how to buy. The science behind premium media buys By Ronnie Lavi When it comes to premium buys, critical decisions are still often made based on intuition. Read on to find out what you need to make data-driven decisions. Facebook codes of conduct for your brand By Calum Brannan It's essential for brands to have a clear and effective internal strategy for employees on social media. Read ahead to find out what your rules should be. LATEST BLOG POSTS More posts  The Web's Brand Crisis By Doug Weaver One of the best definitions Ive heard for the term brand is the premium a customer will pay for a product over its generic alternative. Simple, straightforward, measurable. If we apply this standard to our world where theproduct is online... Using Context for Social Buyer Persona Strategy By Tony Zambito Image via WikipediaWithout context in strategy planning for the new social buyer persona, we are left with a factual approach to identifying target social buyers. We will attain indications on what social buyers are doing. Good evidence of this is... Holiday planning: Yep, it's already time By Lori Luechtefeld My father called me last week to discuss my plans for the holidays. I pretty much immediately dismissed the conversation. I find it challenging to plan what I'm going to have for dinner more than an hour in advance. I sure as hell can't tell you what...  blog More posts  Start-Up Watch COD: Atmio makes developing mobile landing pages good/fast/cheap By Jim Nichols Weve all heard the expressionGood, fast, cheap. Pick two. The idea of course is that it is impossible to purchase a service that is simultaneously high quality, inexpensive, and ready to go now.Well,... Learn more about ad:tech » Register for the next event » LATEST COMMENT Thank you for your post, Mike. I think its great that Chrysler prohibits employees from texting while driving. I also appreciate the clarification regarding the agency employee.  Cheers, Jennifer... Jennifer Marlo on: New lessons from 6 tweets gone wrong MOST READ ARTICLES 1. The secrets behind successful landing pages 2. New lessons from 6 tweets gone wrong 3. Mobile is dead: 5 marketing trends 4. 6 signs your client isn't happy 5. Why clicks are the wrong metric SUMMIT COVERAGE More photos  Jonathan Cohen, Founder, YouCast Samantha Giberga, VP Original Programming, Specific Media Stephen Zangre, Sales Manager, Facebook See who else went... Join us at these upcoming events Full calendar »   Agency Summit May 21-25, 2011 Bonita Springs, FL Summit info Brand Summit Jun 12-15, 2011 Albuquerque, NM Summit info Entertainment Summit Jun 28, 2011 Beverly Hills, CA Summit info

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