Corporate Social Media Campaigns [Infographic]

The following infographic showcases some recent and interesting findings on how corporations are tackling social media. Initially skeptical of its use for business purposes, it appears many have adopted the two-way communication mindset during this modern age of information and relationship building.

Below are some of the more interesting highlights from the infographic:

  • 94% of corporates use social media in some capacity.
  • 75% saw an increase in website traffic.
  • 58% use it for lead generation.
  • Favorite social sites are Facebook (92%), Twitter (82%), LinkedIn (73%) and blogs (61%).
  • 58% of Fortune 500 companies had Facebook pages in 2011, 62% had Twitter accounts.
  • Companies with blogs dropped from 50% to 37%. Speculated due to content requirements. [I’m not sure about this statistic. My experience shows that more companies are seeing value in Inbound Marketing and blogging their thought leadership]
  • Blog best practices: schedule posts on a regular basis, plan ahead, use a casual tone, interact with customers, and enable social sharing.

Social media is going corporate
Courtesy of: MBA Programs

Social Media Profile Image Size Guide [Infographic]

Consistent branding across your website, print, video, website, and social media accounts is essential in a modern world where consumers are hit with countless advertisements in a single day. It becomes even more difficult when each of those medium’s creative require different sizes, color, software, time, and expertise to produce. Take just publishing your logo on different social media profiles for example. You have to design different creative at a wide variety of sizes for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Google+.

Original Ginger, a “Digital Agency located in the heart of historic Fort Langley, a hip and artistic suburb of Vancouver BC”, created an infographic that quickly communicates the image sizes of each of the popular social media companies. Use this to work with your agency or have your design team prepare your creative so that you can have one look and feel to your brand across them all.

Quick Summary:

  • Facebook Cover: 851 x 315
  • Facebook Profile: 200 x 200
  • Facebook App Boxes: 111 x 74
  • Twitter Background: 2000 x 1200
  • Twitter Profile: 128 x 128
  • Twitter Company Header: 1200 x 600
  • LinkedIn Profile: 200 x 200
  • LinkedIn Company Banner: 640 x 220
  • YouTube Avatar: 1600 x 1600
  • YouTube Channel Background: 1500 x 2000 or 1200 x 2500
  • Pinterest Avatar: 180 x 180
  • Pinterest Image Max Width & Height: 554 & 5000
  • Google+ Banner: 2120 x 1192 *UPDATED!
  • Google+ Profile: 250 x 250
  • Google+ Company Banner: 110 x 110

Social Media Image Sizing Guide Infographic:

Infographic by OriginalGinger.com

SMS Marketing vs Social Media Marketing [Infographic]

A recent infographic by Mogreet, a leader in mobile video and MMS messaging, stacks up the usage and engagement of SMS & MMS mobile communication against social media’s top players Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. They separate the two into what they call Narrowcast and Broadcast.

Narrowcasting is the sharing of information directly to its intended recipient, thereby breaking through all of the clutter. Broadcasting is the mass public sharing, such as a post or tweet. The infographic supports that you’re not only more likely to reach your audience but they’ll be more apt to respond when you do it. This conclusion is drawn from some very interesting statistics.

What does this mean for marketers?

SMS and MMS are powerful marketing tactics that can get your message directly to your audience and more importantly, they’ll see it. What is the average click rate of your last email? It’s unlikely it was above 15%. If it was, you’re part of the lucky minority. How many people viewed your Facebook page? Yes, you can see that now.  Tweets go by even faster. How many of those get a mention or retweet? According to the infographic, 98% of all SMS and MMS messages are opened. That’s a remarkable percentage and clearly demonstrates how much this medium is valued.

Build a Personal Touch-point with Your Loyal Customers

Recently I was talking with the owner of a small family restaurant in my area. They were experimenting with SMS messaging. At first, it was slow going collecting their customer’s information but after a while of asking nicely, displaying signs, and not abusing those already in the program, they started to get a good base of numbers. The owner has had great success with using this channel in a number of ways. In fact, it has become their primary means of communication that trumps email, social, and traditional advertising.

Here shows how they are using SMS messaging.

  • Timely deals - Restaurants have predictable, and sometimes non-predictable, slow times that sack profit. Instead of making employees go home early, they send out a promotion offering a discount within the next few hours.
  • Upcoming events - If you’re a local business then you know how valuable it is to be involved in the community. They announce where they’ll be and what they’ll be promoting. This is also a great way to include your partners and benefit from each others audiences.
  • Special Announcements - Nobody can predict the future and sometimes weather or other events cause a change in regular business. They use the SMS channel to instantly inform their customers if they are closing early, not open on particular day, or a change in staff.

Below is the infographic titled “Is Bigger Always Better?”

Infographic by Mogreet

Pinterest Marketing Drives Sales [Infographic]

According to a recent infographic and article by online store platform Shopify.com

Pinterest is now the 3rd most popular social network site in the world, and ecommerce stores can leverage its popularity to significantly increase traffic and sales.

How did they determine this? Shopify analyzed 25,000 of their stores to see where the referral traffic was coming from. What’s amazing is visitors from Pinterest  are 10% more likely to make a purchase over other major social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Also, the orders tend to be higher, almost double in fact, than Facebook referral orders.

Are you using Pinterest to generate sales for your business? It might be worth a look.

See below as this infographic compares Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.


Infograhic created by Shopify.com

 

 

 

Social Media Helps SEO [Infographic]

Tasty Placement, a search engine optimization and digital design company, attempted to solve the question “Can social media activity boost organic search ranking?” with an experiment. This infographic is a result of that experiment and shows very interesting results. Although maybe not the most perfect experiment, it appears the answer is “Yes”.

Read more about this infographic from the great blog post by Mind Jumpers.

Summary, in order from least effective on SEO to most effective:

  • 100 Google+ Followers yielded a 14.63 rise in search engine ranking position.
  • 300 Google+ Votes yielded a 9.44 rise in search engine ranking position.
  • 60 Facebook Shares & 50 resulting “Likes” yielded a 6.9 rise in search engine ranking position.
  • 50 Tweets yielded a 2.88 rise in search engine ranking position.
  • 1,000 Twitter followers yielded a 1.22 fall in search engine ranking position.

How Marketers Use Social Media [Infographic]

It’s no surprise that advertising professionals are advocates of social media. We research, test, and execute marketing campaigns on a daily basis and they design these campaigns with the purpose of delivering a message to a targeted group of prospects. Social media not only allows for highly targeted messaging but it’s extremely scalable. The message can be sent and re-sent by the recipients. This inherently viral component, along with the ability to measure it, makes it very appealing for use.

But are “Normal” or non-advertising professionals using it the same way? Are they as engaged on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest? Do they log the same amount of hours as the marketing managers?

This infographic by SF Heat provides some interesting insight into the difference.

Some interesting highlights:

  • 92% of Ad Pros follow brands they like versus 33% of normal people.
  • 61% of Ad Pros have a Google+ account versus 23% of normal people.
  • 63% of Ad Pros “Strongly Agree” that companies should invest in social media with their customers versus 23% of normal people.

View the full infographic below, click to enlarge:

Social Media is Complicated [Infographic]

As introduced to us by Business Insider, Buddy Media’s Social Enterprise Software is a suite of products is “designed to help brands build and maintain relationships with consumers to accelerate their business.”

Why do brands need help with this? Well, it’s complicated.

To demonstrate that complexity Buddy Media created this image that shows all of the brands/companies involved including: analytics, social scoring, ad networks, facebook apps, content curation, twitter apps, photo sharing, social TV, and URL shorteners… to name a few.

Click the image below to enlarge.

Buddy Media Social Marketing Infographic

So what does this mean to companies and marketers who want to break into the social media space and start utilizing this industry without getting overwhelmed?

  • Start small - if you’re just starting to test social media and determine if it’s appropriate for your clients or business then pick a few partners and go from there. Start sharing content and use social media as another channel to amplify it. Remember, social media is a conversation used to build relationships. It’s not a shouting match between competitors.
  • Stay informed - as you can see there are a lot of moving parts and companies that are either becoming a social media network themselves or helping enhance the use of those sites. Stay productive, but also stay up-to-date on the latest case studies of companies that are doing a great job in social media - Zappos, American Express, Allstate, Oreo, NBC #TheVoice, Xbox… to name a few.
  • Jump In - stop wondering if you can benefit from social media and just do it. Follow the leaders in your industry or blaze your own trail. Build champions in your company and get them on-board. Show them how they can distribute content, connect with fans, and measure results.

Digital Content Created Every 60 Seconds [Infographic]

I recently attended a digital marketing conference where they showed this very interesting infographic as a slide in their presentation. I found it so interesting that I’d thought I’d write a post and share it. The infographic was created by a web design company called Go-Globe. It summarizes all of the activities that happen online in 60 seconds.

Some of the more interesting stats include:

  • 12,000+ new posts on craigslist
  • 98,000+ tweets
  • 100+ new LinkedIn accounts
  • 6,600 Flicr pictures uploaded
  • 695,000+ Facebook status updates
  • 695,556 Google search queries
  • 168 million emails sent
  • 60+ new blogs created
  • 1,500 blog posts
  • 70 domains registered
  • 13,000 iPhone apps downloaded

See entire infographic below:

We’re living in an unique time where everyone is empowered to create, interact, and share with the entire world. I’m amazed by just how many blogs and domains hit the website every minute. There is no shortage of content and people developing that content, increasingly in the mobile environment.

I’m also interested in the stat of how many people are posting on Facebook (695,000+) compared to how many people are searching Google (694,445+). Google used to be the center of everything someone did online. Even if I knew the domain, in some cases by habit, I’d simple search it in Google’s browser plugin. It just seemed easier. Now it seems that more people are “living” in platforms such as Facebook and connecting with others through it. If you search inside of Facebook it automatically populates with web results powered by Microsoft’s Bing. Clever on Bing’s part to drive up their usage.

As a digital marketer, three thoughts come to mind.

  1. People want to share. We’re living in a modern information age in which people are sharing and communicating quickly and frequently. It’s easier than ever to get your message across multiple devices and across platforms, and it spreads like wildfire. People want desperately to have their voice heard by their peers and uniquely demonstrate that they are innovators.
  2. People connect with brands they like. Companies are able to leverage this movement by putting their products and services in front of their customers. Their customers are willing to share these messages and develop a “relationship” with companies. Companies in the New Economy are becoming personalized and connected. I don’t just buy an MP3 player, I like the Company Page, I review the product, I share the features, and I connect with customer support.
  3. Your message has a lot of competition.  With all this content being generated, it’s easy to see that people’s attention span has some competition. Your message can’t just be louder than everything else, it needs to be more targeted and personalized. It’s expected that you know something about your customers. Use that to give them exactly what they need when they need it. Leverage your CRM and marketing automation tools to message them and measure those conversions.

Another infographic I found by Go-Globe shows some more interesting stats on the hardware and product side. Did you know that every minute 81 iPads are sold, 11 Xboxes are sold, or 1,100 acres of land are farmed in Farmville? Interesting…