12% of Americans Cite Social Media in Purchases by Erik Sass

The social media ROI discussion is heating up with a spate of new research drawing connections between social media, brand perceptions, and purchase behavior. That includes a new study released earlier this week by Knowledge Networks and MediaPost's very own Center for Media Research, showing that the number of Americans who say their brand consumption choices are influenced by social media has increased substantially in the last year. ...Read the whole story

10 Reasons Why PR Professionals Should Be Using Social Video by David Murdico

I've often argued that video is a tool of social media. So as many social media responsibilities are being taken on by PR departments, we are seeing public relations teams becoming more actively involved in the creation and deployment of social video content. Viral videos, branded entertainment, web series videos and video game trailers top the list along with original, entertaining product launch videos. This new breed of video content, rather than simply supplementing the efforts of PR teams, is often spearheading them. ...More

  • Don't Let the Facebook Numbers Get You Down -- Or, Why Advertisers Sometimes Get All Confused About 'The Internets' by Catharine P. Taylor

    We started the week with the news that after months and months of ascendance, traffic to Facebook in May was actually down in the U.S., according to Inside Facebook, which said that active users dropped by six million. Meanwhile, there has recently been hand-wringing over Groupon's planned IPO. Forrester's Sucharita Mulpuru said in an open letter to the social commerce site's potential investors last week that " there is no rational math that could possibly get anyone to the valuation Groupon thinks it deserves." ...More

  • Social Media Videos: The Custom Creative Paradox by Neil Perry

    Would you send your friend a Pampers TV commercial to watch? Of course you wouldn't, unless it happened to be unusually funny or otherwise compelling. He or she could see that on TV any day of the week. This is the crux of the problem with social media videos: In their anxiousness to get involved with social media, marketers continue to repurpose the same old TV commercials on Facebook and other social platforms for their friends and followers. And that's just wrong. ...More