New research from Hitwise suggests that social-buying site LivingSocial has gotten off to a running start in 2011. A January traffic surge has helped the company close the gap with Groupon, getting more than half the share of visits of the category leader. Two months ago, Groupon had a 10-to-1 traffic advantage over Living Social, according to the Web measurement firm. Hitwise attributed the traffic spike to LivingSocial's "door-busting" $10 for a $20 Amazon gift certificate deal this month, which brought in more than $13 million in sales. That topped the previous record of $11 million that a national Gap-Groupon offer took in last August. However, the Amazon deal was criticized as a marketing ploy -- since unlike typical deals where LivingSocial takes a 30% cut of sales, it bought the gift cards from Amazon and sold them itself. Amazon recently invested $175 million in LivingSocial, so an increase in business for the deal site also benefits the online retail giant indirectly. The gift certificate offer led to reports of complaints about canceled orders, unauthorized charges and other issues related to the promotion. "Despite some claims of fraud and issues with customer support LivingSocial's 80% traffic surge last week (and Groupon's 20% decline in the same time period) proves that the race for dominance in the group coupon space is far from over," wrote Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, in a Jan. 27 blog post. LivingSocial had 2 million U.S. unique visitors compared to 3.9 million for Groupon as of Jan. 16, according to the latest comScore data. But the cut-off date falls just a few days before the Jan. 19 Amazon deal, so the numbers don't show what kind of bounce LivingSocial got from the deal. However, the site's traffic had already roughly doubled from 1.1 million in mid-December. A growing online audience is one thing, but what about any gain in registered users? LivingSocial said Friday that it had added 5 million subscribers worldwide so far in January and expects to end the month with 20 million overall. That compares to about 50 million for Groupon. Does that mean more Amazon offers are on the way from LivingSocial? "We're always exploring opportunities to offer really amazing deals locally and nationally and working hard to identify the next big deal," stated a LivingSocial spokesperson.
Knowledge Networks, a highly regarded marketing research firm known for its humongous consumer panel, and for helping marketers and agencies understand how consumers use media, has launched a new analytic service capable of identifying social media users based explicitly on the social network conversations they have related to brands and product categories. KN, which is unveiling the new service today, has dubbed it "SoMe," and said it is designed to unlock how consumer conversations in social media affect specific product categories by revealing user feelings about specific products or topics, and how that might influence others listening to their conversations. The new service is part of a progression of activity on Madison Avenue, which is trying to get a handle on the impact the rapid rise of social media behavior is having on brand communications, and to date has been dominated either by so-called "social native" researchers and/or marketing services organizations, or ones that have easily segued into it because of common roots -- especially big public relations firms that are used to listening to people's conversations before the advent of social media, and developing strategies for spinning them in the best direction for a client. But the rapid growth of social media, and especially the increasing dominance, and financial valuation of big networks like Facebook and Twitter, has gotten many traditional marketing services organizations to extend rapidly into social media. Knowledge Networks is a good example, and last year, the consumer research organization teamed up with MediaPost Communications Inc., the parent company and publisher of Online Media Daily, to launch a new syndicated research service, The Faces of Social Media, to begin tracking how the behavior or social media users is affecting brands in 39 specific product categories. SoMe is a custom service, unrelated to that venture, which taps Knowledge Network's humongous consumer insights database to understand how the SoMe influencers directly influence consumer attitudes about brands and product categories. Based on preliminary data released in Knowledge Network's announcement, they are power users of social media for sure. Knowledge Networks said nearly 20% of "SoMe users" believe it has an influence on their purchase decisions, and about 13% who use social media weekly said they use it to discover new brands or products with it, a stat that translates into about 10 million U.S. adults. Knowledge Networks said the relative degree of influence SoMe users have on brands varies widely by category, and said its proprietary "Influence Scores" range from a low of 46 to a high of 193. The company did not say what the scores represent, but they presumably are an index vs. consumer marketplace norms. To help drill into custom analysis of the data, Knowledge Networks said it will work with semantic engine developer Collective Intellect, which has created a system for filtering large amounts of social media conversation data ranging from blogs and message boards to big social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. "We are pulling social media and other data streams out of their usual silos and giving clients a perspective on the complete picture of societal issues and brands," Knowledge Networks CEO Simon Kooyman explained in a statement.
Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter have gained wide attention for the role they have played in popular uprisings in countries like Moldavia, Iran, and most recently, Tunisia and Egypt. In the U.S., they have more quietly become a regular part of the political landscape, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. The study found more than one in five (22%) online adults used Twitter or other social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace in the months leading up to the November 2010 elections to connect to a campaign or the election itself. The midterm elections also showed that Republicans and Tea Party supporters had caught up with Democrats in embracing social media. Among social network users, 40% of Republican voters and 38% of Democratic voters used these sites to become involved politically. Tea Party supporters were especially active, with 22% friending a political candidate or group on a social site. Overall, 58% of Democrats use online social networks compared to 54% of Republicans (among Internet users). A Pew study last month found that people using mobile phones to connect politically are also divided evenly along party lines. "The social networking population as a whole has grown larger and demographically more diverse in recent years, and the same is true when it comes to political activity on social networking sites," said Aaron Smith, a Pew senior researcher specialist. The main reason people follow political groups on social networks or Twitter is because it makes them feel more personally connected to the candidates or groups they follow. More than a third (36%) cited this as the major factor. Two-thirds (67%) of those who follow politicians or other political groups via social media say that the information posted is interesting and relevant. A similar number say they pay attention to most (26%) or some (40%) of the material posted by the politicians or groups they follow. Among other findings, 11% of online users discovered who their friends voted for in November through a social site, 9% got candidate or campaign information on Twitter or a social site, 8% posted political content, and 7% started or joined a political group on a social property. These Pew study findings come from a nationwide telephone survey of 2,257 American adults (including 755 interviewed on cell phones) conducted between November 3 and November 24, 2010.
In a world of technology, Monster Cable's entire business is about connections. The cables themselves connect devices to each other (a business that can't help but grow as we wire more things together), and their headphones literally connect people to their devices. As the company's "Internet Marketing Monster," Ted Sindzinski's job is about helping the company make connections with its customers. He spoke with Marketing Daily about the company's social marketing strategies. Q: How would you describe your company's approach to social media? A: From a high-level, what you see is a people-focused approach. We're going to the customer and having a one-on-one dialogue about the products we work with or a connective issue. We're really building out that dialogue to respond to the customer on their terms and in their world. Q: How do you find places to have these dialogues? A: First, we're not trying to sell [through these dialogues], we're just trying to communicate on those issues. It's finding a discussion we can respond to. The first thing is to look at what the discussion is. We don't want to come across as trying to sell them something. Is there a comment we can answer for them? While they may not expect the company to respond [on a discussion board], we want to be sure that we do. Q: Walking the line between simply commenting or helping and selling is a fine one. How do you negotiate the art of what's appropriate? A: There's a human factor. We do have a litmus test for what's a blanket yes and a blanket no. We try to look at anything where [customers] are looking for a fact, it's ok to respond. If it's an opinion, we stay out of it. It's [also] how we train our social team. By educating them about being involved in the conversation, we can benefit. The company overall is understanding. We believe that if we educate, we can [increase sales]. It's very all-in, including how we train a sales person. It's their job to sell, but it helps if they can educate people rather than just tell them what to buy. The second evolution is to bring the product out there. Make social live outside of the marketing [department]. Q: How do you do that? A: There's only a few departments that don't benefit from improved customer service. I like to take it one person at a time. There may be one person [within a department] who is more comfortable using social media than others. Then they can show that success [with social] to their peers. Q: What emerging platforms are you watching? A: Everyone is excited about mobile. Are customers using it for research, or is there something more we can do to address that [medium], such as location-based. There are some areas that we're starting to wonder how they fit in our business, from the Groupon models to things that are so new like Facebook. It all comes down to "How are customers using those for communications?"
From Facebook to Twitter, a full 90% of chief marketing officers now participate in an average of three or more social media activities, according to a new report from ratings and reviews provider Bazaarvoice and the CMO Club. In 2011, meanwhile, 93% of CMOs plan to use some form of user-generated content to inform product and service decisions. "There is a tremendous change occurring in marketing today," said Erin Mulligan Nelson, CMO of Bazaarvoice. "CMOs have moved beyond fear and skepticism to embrace social media." Optimistic about tracking ROI for social in 2010, 81% of those CMOs who participated in an earlier survey said they planned to track social media to revenues in 2010. However, standard ROI metrics proved difficult to measure for many social efforts, as only 40% of CMOs surveyed in 2011 successfully tracked ROI on their social initiatives. As such, measurability is a top executive priority, with sales conversion and revenue attribution standing out as the first and second growth opportunities in social measurement, according to Bazaarvoice. Top forms of user-generated content used in 2010 included customer stories -- 59% -- product suggestions or ideas -- 54% -- polling --49% -- and customer reviews -- 47%. For their study, Bazaarvoice and the CMO Club surveyed 175 CMOs with U.S. and global marketing responsibility in October 2010. Respondents included executives at business-to-consumer companies -- 39% -- business-to-business companies -- 47% -- and companies serving both consumers and businesses -- 14%. According to Bazaarvoice, a wide range of industries was represented in the survey, including software/hardware -- 21.7% -- consumer goods -- 12.2% -- travel/ hospitality -- 6.9% -- media/publishing -- 7.4% -- retail -- 5.8% -- and manufacturing -- 5.3%.
New research from Hitwise suggests that social-buying site LivingSocial has gotten off to a running start in 2011. A January traffic surge has helped the company close the gap with Groupon, getting more than half the share of visits of the category leader. Two months ago, Groupon had a 10-to-1 traffic advantage over Living Social, according to the Web measurement firm. Hitwise attributed the traffic spike to LivingSocial's "door-busting" $10 for a $20 Amazon gift certificate deal this month, which brought in more than $13 million in sales. That topped the previous record of $11 million that a national Gap-Groupon offer took in last August. However, the Amazon deal was criticized as a marketing ploy -- since unlike typical deals where LivingSocial takes a 30% cut of sales, it bought the gift cards from Amazon and sold them itself. Amazon recently invested $175 million in LivingSocial, so an increase in business for the deal site also benefits the online retail giant indirectly. The gift certificate offer led to reports of complaints about canceled orders, unauthorized charges and other issues related to the promotion. "Despite some claims of fraud and issues with customer support LivingSocial's 80% traffic surge last week (and Groupon's 20% decline in the same time period) proves that the race for dominance in the group coupon space is far from over," wrote Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, in a Jan. 27 blog post. LivingSocial had 2 million U.S. unique visitors compared to 3.9 million for Groupon as of Jan. 16, according to the latest comScore data. But the cut-off date falls just a few days before the Jan. 19 Amazon deal, so the numbers don't show what kind of bounce LivingSocial got from the deal. However, the site's traffic had already roughly doubled from 1.1 million in mid-December. A growing online audience is one thing, but what about any gain in registered users? LivingSocial said Friday that it had added 5 million subscribers worldwide so far in January and expects to end the month with 20 million overall. That compares to about 50 million for Groupon. Does that mean more Amazon offers are on the way from LivingSocial? "We're always exploring opportunities to offer really amazing deals locally and nationally and working hard to identify the next big deal," stated a LivingSocial spokesperson.
Knowledge Networks, a highly regarded marketing research firm known for its humongous consumer panel, and for helping marketers and agencies understand how consumers use media, has launched a new analytic service capable of identifying social media users based explicitly on the social network conversations they have related to brands and product categories. KN, which is unveiling the new service today, has dubbed it "SoMe," and said it is designed to unlock how consumer conversations in social media affect specific product categories by revealing user feelings about specific products or topics, and how that might influence others listening to their conversations. The new service is part of a progression of activity on Madison Avenue, which is trying to get a handle on the impact the rapid rise of social media behavior is having on brand communications, and to date has been dominated either by so-called "social native" researchers and/or marketing services organizations, or ones that have easily segued into it because of common roots -- especially big public relations firms that are used to listening to people's conversations before the advent of social media, and developing strategies for spinning them in the best direction for a client. But the rapid growth of social media, and especially the increasing dominance, and financial valuation of big networks like Facebook and Twitter, has gotten many traditional marketing services organizations to extend rapidly into social media. Knowledge Networks is a good example, and last year, the consumer research organization teamed up with MediaPost Communications Inc., the parent company and publisher of Online Media Daily, to launch a new syndicated research service, The Faces of Social Media, to begin tracking how the behavior or social media users is affecting brands in 39 specific product categories. SoMe is a custom service, unrelated to that venture, which taps Knowledge Network's humongous consumer insights database to understand how the SoMe influencers directly influence consumer attitudes about brands and product categories. Based on preliminary data released in Knowledge Network's announcement, they are power users of social media for sure. Knowledge Networks said nearly 20% of "SoMe users" believe it has an influence on their purchase decisions, and about 13% who use social media weekly said they use it to discover new brands or products with it, a stat that translates into about 10 million U.S. adults. Knowledge Networks said the relative degree of influence SoMe users have on brands varies widely by category, and said its proprietary "Influence Scores" range from a low of 46 to a high of 193. The company did not say what the scores represent, but they presumably are an index vs. consumer marketplace norms. To help drill into custom analysis of the data, Knowledge Networks said it will work with semantic engine developer Collective Intellect, which has created a system for filtering large amounts of social media conversation data ranging from blogs and message boards to big social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. "We are pulling social media and other data streams out of their usual silos and giving clients a perspective on the complete picture of societal issues and brands," Knowledge Networks CEO Simon Kooyman explained in a statement.
Facebook's Sponsored Stories ad unit, announced earlier this week, is one of those amazingly simple social media ad ideas that also leads to a lot of questions. Why? Because in a manner not seen on Facebook before, we consumers are the ad medium. If that's the case, what's in it for us? Sponsored Stories units work like this: when a consumer interacts with or mentions a brand on Facebook -- via a check-in, a "Like," a wall post or a brand-sponsored app -- that interaction can become an ad shared with the user's Facebook friends, taking into account each user's privacy settings. One of the chief benefits of Sponsored Stories is that it leverages each Facebook member's social graph in a more controlled way than when a brand interaction gets inserted into a news feed. As many of us have Facebook friends numbering in the healthy triple digits, it's pretty easy for news feed information to get buried. A "Sponsored Story" -- and each is clearly labeled as such - gets placed in a much more deliberate manner. Also, as Michael Lazerow of Buddy Media points out, the new ad model helps turn Facebook into a reach vehicle, 600 million people or so strong. Try that CBS! Try that Super Bowl on FOX! (Hey media buyers, the ads are being shown on both a CPC and a CPM basis.) This ad model is kind of obvious, right? Well, yeah. But where it gets complicated is in Facebook's relationships with its members. If you're on Facebook, the first thing to know is that Facebook and its advertisers aren't going to ask you if they can re-purpose your wall post or "Like." Some critics, including my partner-in-crime David Berkowitz, say that's a mistake, but I also think it would be completely unfeasible. Let's say you're McDonald's and you're running a weekend special on the McRib. Do you really have time to get approvals from consumers to use their content or actions? Of course not. As members, it's the price we pay for not paying Facebook a dime for what is an essential part of many of our everyday lives. There will be complaints. Some users will find Sponsored Stories creepy, just as I felt when Google Ads started targeting Gmail users by having algorithms "read" each email's content. As with that, pretty soon, the practice will all be white noise. But here's the other big issue that something like Sponsored Stories dredges up. If I'm a really active Facebook user, and I've got lots and lots of Facebook friends, what' s in Sponsored Stories for me? I'm helping your brand, aren't I? In a related matter, when advertisers decide which Stories to sponsor, are they going to select the wall post of the person with five friends or the one with 500 friends? You could offer up the same answer I did before to "solve" the compensation issue: there shouldn't be anything additional in it for Facebook members since this is the price we pay for getting to use Facebook for free. And maybe it is. But what we've been seeing in social media for some time -- now amplified by Sponsored Stories -- is the emergence of consumer-as-ad-medium. Particularly as some of us become sought-after cogs in the wheel of the great reach/frequency machine, we may start to wonder what our social graph is worth. I didn't write today's column to provide answers, because I don't have them. However, I keep wondering how this will work out in the end. There's no standard for how consumers should be treated by advertisers who piggyback on them, but there are precedents. To some extent, that's what being declared Foursquare's "mayor" of the local coffee house - and receiving perks because of it -- is all about. But there's a danger in compensation schemes too, since any sort of compensation, games the authentic brand conversations and interactions that might make Sponsored Stories valuable in the first place. Conversely, some people may stop talking or interacting with brands on Facebook because they don't like their actions being exploited. Yes, these issues have been around for awhile, but there's a difference this time around. This is Facebook, and it has about 600 million users. See you next week at Mediapost's Social Media Insider Summit, in Key Biscayne!
Social media tools like Facebook and Twitter have gained wide attention for the role they have played in popular uprisings in countries like Moldavia, Iran, and most recently, Tunisia and Egypt. In the U.S., they have more quietly become a regular part of the political landscape, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. The study found more than one in five (22%) online adults used Twitter or other social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace in the months leading up to the November 2010 elections to connect to a campaign or the election itself. The midterm elections also showed that Republicans and Tea Party supporters had caught up with Democrats in embracing social media. Among social network users, 40% of Republican voters and 38% of Democratic voters used these sites to become involved politically. Tea Party supporters were especially active, with 22% friending a political candidate or group on a social site. Overall, 58% of Democrats use online social networks compared to 54% of Republicans (among Internet users). A Pew study last month found that people using mobile phones to connect politically are also divided evenly along party lines. "The social networking population as a whole has grown larger and demographically more diverse in recent years, and the same is true when it comes to political activity on social networking sites," said Aaron Smith, a Pew senior researcher specialist. The main reason people follow political groups on social networks or Twitter is because it makes them feel more personally connected to the candidates or groups they follow. More than a third (36%) cited this as the major factor. Two-thirds (67%) of those who follow politicians or other political groups via social media say that the information posted is interesting and relevant. A similar number say they pay attention to most (26%) or some (40%) of the material posted by the politicians or groups they follow. Among other findings, 11% of online users discovered who their friends voted for in November through a social site, 9% got candidate or campaign information on Twitter or a social site, 8% posted political content, and 7% started or joined a political group on a social property. These Pew study findings come from a nationwide telephone survey of 2,257 American adults (including 755 interviewed on cell phones) conducted between November 3 and November 24, 2010.
In a world of technology, Monster Cable's entire business is about connections. The cables themselves connect devices to each other (a business that can't help but grow as we wire more things together), and their headphones literally connect people to their devices. As the company's "Internet Marketing Monster," Ted Sindzinski's job is about helping the company make connections with its customers. He spoke with Marketing Daily about the company's social marketing strategies. Q: How would you describe your company's approach to social media? A: From a high-level, what you see is a people-focused approach. We're going to the customer and having a one-on-one dialogue about the products we work with or a connective issue. We're really building out that dialogue to respond to the customer on their terms and in their world. Q: How do you find places to have these dialogues? A: First, we're not trying to sell [through these dialogues], we're just trying to communicate on those issues. It's finding a discussion we can respond to. The first thing is to look at what the discussion is. We don't want to come across as trying to sell them something. Is there a comment we can answer for them? While they may not expect the company to respond [on a discussion board], we want to be sure that we do. Q: Walking the line between simply commenting or helping and selling is a fine one. How do you negotiate the art of what's appropriate? A: There's a human factor. We do have a litmus test for what's a blanket yes and a blanket no. We try to look at anything where [customers] are looking for a fact, it's ok to respond. If it's an opinion, we stay out of it. It's [also] how we train our social team. By educating them about being involved in the conversation, we can benefit. The company overall is understanding. We believe that if we educate, we can [increase sales]. It's very all-in, including how we train a sales person. It's their job to sell, but it helps if they can educate people rather than just tell them what to buy. The second evolution is to bring the product out there. Make social live outside of the marketing [department]. Q: How do you do that? A: There's only a few departments that don't benefit from improved customer service. I like to take it one person at a time. There may be one person [within a department] who is more comfortable using social media than others. Then they can show that success [with social] to their peers. Q: What emerging platforms are you watching? A: Everyone is excited about mobile. Are customers using it for research, or is there something more we can do to address that [medium], such as location-based. There are some areas that we're starting to wonder how they fit in our business, from the Groupon models to things that are so new like Facebook. It all comes down to "How are customers using those for communications?"
From Facebook to Twitter, a full 90% of chief marketing officers now participate in an average of three or more social media activities, according to a new report from ratings and reviews provider Bazaarvoice and the CMO Club. In 2011, meanwhile, 93% of CMOs plan to use some form of user-generated content to inform product and service decisions. "There is a tremendous change occurring in marketing today," said Erin Mulligan Nelson, CMO of Bazaarvoice. "CMOs have moved beyond fear and skepticism to embrace social media." Optimistic about tracking ROI for social in 2010, 81% of those CMOs who participated in an earlier survey said they planned to track social media to revenues in 2010. However, standard ROI metrics proved difficult to measure for many social efforts, as only 40% of CMOs surveyed in 2011 successfully tracked ROI on their social initiatives. As such, measurability is a top executive priority, with sales conversion and revenue attribution standing out as the first and second growth opportunities in social measurement, according to Bazaarvoice. Top forms of user-generated content used in 2010 included customer stories -- 59% -- product suggestions or ideas -- 54% -- polling --49% -- and customer reviews -- 47%. For their study, Bazaarvoice and the CMO Club surveyed 175 CMOs with U.S. and global marketing responsibility in October 2010. Respondents included executives at business-to-consumer companies -- 39% -- business-to-business companies -- 47% -- and companies serving both consumers and businesses -- 14%. According to Bazaarvoice, a wide range of industries was represented in the survey, including software/hardware -- 21.7% -- consumer goods -- 12.2% -- travel/ hospitality -- 6.9% -- media/publishing -- 7.4% -- retail -- 5.8% -- and manufacturing -- 5.3%.