"How do I think about reach and frequency in social media?"
"How do I use social media to get my brand's message out?"
Clients have asked me questions like these on a number of occasions over the past couple of years. If they are more sophisticated than most, their questions may be along the lines of "How do I use social media as part of an integrated communications plan?" or "How do I assess the ROI of social media compared with other media?"
I always get an uncomfortable feeling when I'm asked these questions.
Too many marketers still don't get what is different about social media. There are two words in "social media," but too many people are hearing just the "media" half.
In the media world (including both traditional and digital non-social media), there is an audience that is essentially passive, receiving an advertising message that has been delivered to them. While people may grumble about the incredible number of ads directed toward them over the course of a day, they generally recognize that this is part of the price they pay for viewing content of interest.
Despite tremendous effort and expense on the part of media and media-research agencies over many years, it is difficult to predict which ads will "work" in this cluttered environment and whether the audience will "hear" what we want them to about our brands.
In the social world, there is no audience; it is people talking to each other. That is what makes it "social" rather than media as we are used to thinking of it. It is inherently active, and when the topic of conversation among people is brands, it gives consumers control of what the brands are about.
Because of the lack of control in the social world, "getting your message out" in social media is an inherently flawed notion.
That is also why "counting eyeballs" that have seen something in social media about a given brand and trying to equate that with views in traditional media is an inherently flawed exercise.
Putting the emphasis on the word "social" means focusing instead on the nature of the brand conversations taking place and how to influence (not control) them.
If we can liberate ourselves from the "media mindset" and adopt a more "social mindset," we will then be able to make significant progress in understanding how to engage, how to take part in the brand conversations going on around us, and how to build relationships in this new world. It is clear, though, that we are still in the early stages of sorting this all through, and there is much to learn.
When jumping into social media, brands need to keep in mind that people will not be receptive to the old paradigm of "push the message."
TNS conducts an annual survey of consumers around the world to try to understand how people live online. The latest Digital Life survey shows some sobering yet encouraging insights as to how people view brand interactions in the social-media world:
- Sixty percent of U.S. consumers who use social networks say that they are a place where they don't want to be bothered by companies or organizations.
- At the same time, 45% say that social networks are a good place to find out about brands -- but 50% say that even a single negative review on a social-media site can affect their brand decisions.
- Most people who join brand communities will do so for mercenary reasons (65% say they do so to get coupons), but many also do so to express their passion for a brand (45%).
- Most of those who write about brands on social media say they do so to praise brands (61%), but nearly as many say they write about brands to express negative feelings (45%).
These data would suggest that brands have opportunities to find creative ways in social media to build stronger relationships, but there is risk too, as they need to overcome many people's wariness. As everyone rushes to develop a Facebook strategy, social media represents a double-edged sword for marketers as they seek to build their brands. Approaching it with a media mind-set may well turn off many people; letting "social be social" will be a better path to growth. The choice is ours. (Source: Larry Friedman, Ph.D., Chief Research Officer at TNS, appearing in Advertising Age, 05/06/12)
Donovan released data showing that nearly 48% of America's 112 million mobile phone users now regularly use their devices to access media content, other than voice or text, and that number will tip the halfway mark by the end of the year.
Donovan said the emergence of smartphones, and especially Apple's IOS and Google's Android operating systems, have been the big game-changers driving mobile media consumption, but that other non-PC-connected devices, particularly tablet computers, are affecting consumer media behavior at an even faster rate.
While conventional computers still account for 93.2% of all Web traffic, according to the latest comScore estimates, Donovan said "mobile devices" -- especially smartphones and tablets -- now account for nearly two-thirds (64.4%) of all non-personal computer-connected Web access, and are growing fast. Among those mobile devices, Donovan said tablets are the fastest-growing segment, and that tablet devices now represent 28.1% of all non-computer traffic to the Web, and that Apple's iPads are the dominant portion (97%) of that market.
Donovan said the rapid growth of mobile Web access is having a remarkable effect on Web publishing, citing comScore stats showing that top publishers now get a significant amount of their total traffic from mobile devices. He said The New York Times currently gets 7.6% of its audience from mobile, while USA Today gets 10% and the Los Angeles Times gets 11.2%.
Some digital native publishers get even more. Online music service Pandora, for example, currently gets more than half (52%) of its total traffic from a mobile device.
While mobile traffic still is a tiny slice of the total Internet (just 0.2%), it is adding significant incremental reach for specific categories of content. Mobile boosts traffic to online mapping services 56.8%, and increases the duration of time users spend on mapping sites by 9.2 times.
Donovan said mobile has also become a significant factor for social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, where many users access them solely via mobile devices.
Currently, he said, mobile is boosting social network traffic by about 12.5%, and expands the duration those users spend with social media by 2.8 times.
"There are people who are only doing Facebook or Twitter on their phone," Donovan noted, citing recent comments by executives at Facebook and Twitter that they are becoming mobile companies.
(Source: Online Media Daily, 10/04/11)
Search and display will continue to be the biggest pieces of the interactive spending pie, comprising 44% and 36%, respectively, in 2016, though search will have lost share from 55% in 2011. Mobile paid advertising and search will experience astronomic growth and are surpassing email and social this year, according to the report.
"This is the first year we saw growth due to interactive tools really gaining legitimacy in the mix," said Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk, noting that search, display and email have become well-established lines in marketers' budgets.
The report, "U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2011 to 2016," projects the overall compound annual growth rate of interactive marketing spending at 17%, but the fastest-growing category is mobile at 38%, set to reach $8.2 billion in 2016. It attributes the surge to a push toward creating more targeted, dynamic mobile ads instead of so much repurposing of online ads; the rise of mobile commerce; and experimentation with new ad formats for tablets.
Search marketing will continue to be the biggest piece of the interactive spending pie -- rising from $18.8 billion to $33.3 billion between 2011 and 2016 -- but will actually lose share of all interactive spending in the same period, falling from 55% to 44%. Ms. VanBoskirk said the rise of biddable display media, the growth of mobile and investment in social networks and alternative search networks such as Facebook, YouTube and ratings and reviews sites such as Yelp will be factors in the drop-off of search's interactive market share.
Investment in display advertising will rise from $10.9 billion in 2011 to $27.6 billion in 2016, driven by greater than 20% compound annual growth rates in rich media, text listings and online video. The rise of biddable display media and improved online ad management tools are cited as key factors.
Email marketing is projected to have a growth rate of 10%, bringing it to $2.5 billion in 2016, but the total spending is kept down because of its low cost of reaching 1,000 consumers, or CPM. And widespread adoption of social media will continue, reflected in a projected 26% growth rate, but total spending will reach only $5 billion in 2016 as it's also an inexpensive tool. (The report notes that listening platforms cost $5,000 to $10,000 per month, but a paid search budget can run up to $500,000 to $3 million per month.)
The report also predicts the rise of subsidized hardware from media giants such as Google and Yahoo, which would look to embed ads into the displays of smartphones, tablets and e-readers in return, creating the possibility of enhanced user targeting for advertisers. It also foresees the onset of daily deals fatigue.
"That will create consolidation and thin out the number of daily deal offers that are available," Ms. VanBoskirk said.
(Source: Advertising Age, 08/25/11)
