Frederic Martin's List: Social Marketing

• By 2012 it’s expected that 65% of the US population will be on social networks
• and consumers now have more trust in their social groups than messages from advertisers
• 30% of Moms comment on products in their blog
• Only 13% of Moms trust “the company”
• 40% trust friends and family
• 50% of Moms tell others about products and services on Facebook.
• the average value of a fan for the top 20 brands on Facebook is $136
• A Starbucks fan is worth $235 vs. $111 for a non-fan
• Coke fans are worth $190 vs. $121 for non-fans
• McDonald’s fans are worth $310 vs. $150 for non-fans
• 1. Listen first, then speak! Harvest the communities and conversations within. Then analyze what’s going on and test, test, test.
• 2. Help your friends. Enlist their voice, give them easy to use sharing tools and amplify their influence
• 4. Make yourself useful.
• tap into your employees’ enthusiasm and talent and capitalize on positive sentiment.
• Best Buy has a Twitter feed called twelpforce where 2,500 employees answer customer service questions on Twitter.
• Act like a social brand, not a brand being social.
• Shift from brands being social, campaign-based to relationships based on sharing, solving problems, idea exchanges—in other words, become a social brand.
• JetBlue and Pepsi Refresh do this well.
• Arm shoppers online: Provide rich tools and resources that meet a wide variety of shopper needs.
• LG provides tools on its website to educate consumers about the category.
• Videos and demos have a significant impact on purchases.

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• the biggest beneficiary of the current euphoria around social is Facebook, with several estimates now pegging the company's 2010 revenue at better than $1 billion.
• Facebook advertising has become a "default for most brands as a part of their media spend."
• At the forefront is Promoted Tweets, a program that inserts a brand-sponsored topic into Twitter's "trending topics" list and presents a tweet from that sponsor to users, in hopes of generating retweets, replies and other forms of engagement.
• Early testers of the program include Virgin America and Coca-Cola  (  KO -    news  -    people  )
• the latter of which reported 86 million impressions and an "engagement rate" of 6% back when it used the program in June during the World Cup.
• More recently, the online brokerage firm Zecco reported that engagement on its promoted tweets was 50% higher than its regular tweets, with "200 to 300% increases in some cases."

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• Due to the proliferation of deals sites like Groupon and Livingsocial, couponing is currently the hottest thing on the Internet
• With currently available technology (like QR or shortcodes) it’s now more than ever possible to interact with your customer at multiple touch points. Touching the consumer no matter whether they are outside, at the store, in home or at point of purchase is crucial for brand absorption.

• Digital Coupons Grow 100% YoY
• More than $1 billion in digital coupon savings was printed or loaded to a store loyalty card via Coupons.com and the Coupons.com network in the last 12 months [which] represents a 100 percent increase compared to $529 million the year before.
• 46.4 million American consumers are now using online coupons
• Searches on Google for “Printable Coupons” increased 67 percent over a year ago
• Research shows that even if economic conditions improve, 8 out of 10 U.S. adults plan to continue to engage in couponing activities

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• videSEO 

   
   
   Numerous studies in the past year reveal that Internet searchers are about 50% more likely to watch a video than read an article. Here are a few tips to make sure the folks you want to find your videos do so.
  
  • Be sure your videos aren’t embedded in a Flash page, or pop up on their own page all by their lonesome. Properly tag all videos and surround them with keyword-related content.
  • Give each video its own URL and ensure that the word ‘video’ ends each URL.
  • Always include a linking/sharing feature, and allow video to cross-reference other topics/feature of your site or your company.
    
  • Extract the key words, topics and other information from your video content to ensure that whenever someone searches a term or phrase that relates to files on your site, the search results point directly to the relevant video content as well as text.
  • Use advanced navigation technology where every word/phrase/video image receives a time-stamp that enables your users to locate and go to the precise portion of the audio or video file in which they are interested.

• Unlike Twitter, discussions about marketing possibilities on Facebook were overwhelmingly positive. The website was lauded for its ability to drive web traffic, brand engagement, and long-term brand relationships
• Facebook ads also received considerable discussion as an affordable way to drive "likes" and brand participation.

• HOW TO: Use Annotations to Promote Your Brand on YouTube
• Probably the most compelling reason to use them is the fact that they can link one video to another video, channel or search result.
• That means that if you’ve got a series of videos on YouTube, you can place annotations in one video that link to the next video in the series.
• If you have a long tutorial or how-to video, you can break that video into several parts and link the sections.
• And if you’re doing a product video, you can create one video that can be used to convey general information, and then use Spotlight Annotations to allow consumers to link to other videos that drill down into more specific product features.
• Linking videos using Annotations has several advantages:
• Breaking out a very long video into sections lets consumers skip to the parts that are most important to them, or focus on the areas that they need the most help with.
• If the viewer is watching from a mobile device, iPad or has a slow connection, shorter videos mean faster load times.

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• Social media pages are like any other, but with the built-in benefit of residing on a very powerful domain
• Use Facebook's "about" box for relevant content and keyword-rich descriptions
• The first 40 characters in a tweet are what appears on a search engine; use them wisely
• Create a custom Twitter background showing links to your other social media pages

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• As marketers continue to experiment with social media, some brands are finding that certain platforms tend to work better than others. Watch as a handful of brand marketers weigh in on what works best for them.