New research from the DMA shows that only 48% of marketers agree that social media gives them any return on investment.

A report from the DMA on social media's place in marketing reveals some very interesting trends, but not all of them are positive. Although the vast majority (77%) of marketers are using at least one social network to promote their brand, that doesn't necessarily mean they are getting the most out of social or generating significant ROI from it. The research asked some 111 marketers from a mix of large B2B and B2C companies questions regarding their use of social media. We have also just undertaken our own research in 2017 with a much larger sample size (609) and found a big divide in how marketers view the effectiveness of social media marketing.

Which channels are used most for marketing?

As a rule of thumb, marketers will generally gravitate to the channels…

Chart of the day: Content marketers are changing the social metrics they use to judge their content

Social Media Matrics, such as Facebook shares, video shares and retweets on Facebook are becoming increasingly important for measuring content marketing success. Recent research by Newswhip found that there are some social metrics which are becoming less important, such as Facebook likes and Instagram likes. The research shows that shares are overall becoming much more important than light-touch interaction, such as "likes". Marketers value shares far higher and measure the success of their content on such metrics as they represent more important engagement and reach. In the same study, they found that a lack of people resources and financial resources (lack of budget) are the biggest barriers to social content distribution. Source: Newswhip  Sample: 250 publishing, PR and Marketing professionals …

Use these Social Media Analysis Tools to better understand your customers

With the advent of digital marketing trends, social media analysis has become crucial to monitor the multitude of audience interactions towards the different products and services. Today, there are more than 500 tools in the market to measure a campaign’s performance on the different social media platforms. By 2020, the size of social media analysis tools in the market is expected to exceed 5 billion dollars. Before this happens, here are five of the best tools of today that will help you manage your social media channels more effectively:

1- Keyhole

Keyhole is an all-in-one social media analytics platform that tries to spare users from the hassle of manually switching from one tool to another. It takes note of the keywords users provide across several platforms, and then follows the…

Businesses need to properly measure social ROI, or stop wasting their time on it.

What's the point in doing something you're not sure is going to work? Well there's plenty of good reasons. You might have a great feeling about it. You might feel like you have to give it a try, or else you'll never know. You might think failure is just success in progress, or other nice luvie dovie sentiments, and honestly believe you'd better give this thing a go and if it doesn't work then it's just a great learning experience. All perfectly noble reasons. However, what usually isn't a good reason for doing something is because everyone else is. Yet that seems to be the picture we see when it comes to brand's use of social media, according to marketing consultancy the Brand Gym. Shockingly, 62% of brands are only using social media because it makes them look…

A study by YouGov in association with Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has found that ad blocking use has declined between February and July, previous to that ad blocking software use was increasing. The fall of 0.5% between February and July, which is from 21.7% to 21.2% came from a representative sample of 2011 adults aged 18+ in the UK. The findings are announced as Facebook are taking action to stop ad blockers from working on the social network, which works by making the ad blocker unable to tell which is advertising content or isn't. Facebook also isn't the first website to trial anti-ad blocking software and it probably won't be the last. Another study found that ad blockers are actually breaking the internet, for example the research by Oriel (a technology company) reported problems with the British Airways website and with Vodafone's site too.…

The way people use social sharing is changing markedly. Does this mean the 'collapse of context'?

That we see changes in the way people use social networks is hardly surprising since social media demographics have changed. Networks once dominated by teenagers are being 'invaded' by the middle-aged and elderly. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is the over 65s. Not just that, the very college students that started out as Facebook's core user base are now in their 30s, and probably settling down, starting to have kids. But some of the ways Facebook is changing could prove to be a threat to the very characteristics that make Facebook so successful. The latest figures on social sharing from GWI show what Facebook itself calls the 'collapse of context', where people are sharing far less about their personal lives, and instead tend to share things not personal to them, such as news articles. The number of…

...and what are the implications for managing social media?

Every wondered how different brands share Twitter followers... or not? Simply Measured have analysed over 100,000 new followers against the top 10 most 'followed brands'.

As you might expect, there is little overlap between unrelated brands such as Disney and Nike. For related brands, there is more similarity. Burberry Twitter followers also tend to be Louise Vuitton fans which you would expect considering their demographics and affluence, though it's interesting that they like Disney. Looking at Starbucks, they share 16% of their followers with H&M. This is aligned to their core demographics who are aged 18-24 year olds and account for 40% of sales, mirroring H&M's segment which account for 30% of their visitor traffic. So Starbucks now know they share 16% of followers with H&M, their fans are fashion conscious adults and even more…

Do you know why you are disengaging your social media fans?

Social media channels give Marketers the opportunities for reach, to build a community and quality followers; Followers on Twitter, Fans on Facebook or connections on LinkedIn. This is part or our online PR strategy - though how many strategies include monitoring followers who leave? Fractl and Buzzstream surveyed 900 social media users to find out these answers and the reasons for losing followers.

So what is motivating Social Media users to stop connecting?

The survey found that 21% unfollowed as a result of boring content, due to an overload of posts on Facebook or cluttering feeds. Less can be more...So do consider your maximum frequency by comparing it to others in your sector or run a test where you reduce frequency. There are …

Three ways in which we can use social media insight to take action to improve our marketing

As social media continues to evolve, so too has the amount of data and insight available to marketers. From the ongoing development of tools such as Google Analytics, Sysomos and Salesforce.com, to the progression of native tools such as Facebook Insights, Twitter and Pinterest Analytics, marketers now have a wealth of social insight to choose from. But as with all types of web or digital analytics , it’s essential that in order to make good business decisions we must take actionable insight from the social data we have available. Gone are the days when we could rely on top-level descriptive metrics such as the number of Likes or followers accrued over time and be able to report on what has happened. Leaders and management now demand insight that demonstrates how social media is…

Social Media - One Word to Unlock the Insight Potential

That word is segmentation. In a previous post on Smart Insights, I highlighted the various sources of intelligence achievable through social media analytics and possible ways to measure them. Here I take a step back and discuss how those sources of intelligence are obtained through the careful segmentation of data. The focus will be on the following media: Earned social media (PR and customer generated) Owned social media (both your channels and that of competitors) Paid social media (e.g. using social case to inform paid promotions) Unclaimed social media (e.g. related topics that may not mention your brand). Below are some of the sources of intelligence that were addressed previously but segmented by business function to accomplish varying business needs. Segmenting data will allow you to slice and dice information to enable greater insight for multiple stakeholders. It can therefore accommodate for different…