Gannett Co. Inc. announced Tuesday it was acquiring social-media marketing firm Blinq Media to help build out its digital marketing services for brands and agencies. New York-based Blinq develops and executes ad campaigns on Facebook and other social networks. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, it is believed to be less than the figure of up to $92 million total cited by TechCrunch, which first reported on the transaction earlier this month. The acquisition follows a series of other recent deals in the social media ad space, including Oracle's purchase of Vitrue and Involver, and Salesforce.com buying Buddy Media for nearly $800 million. For Gannett, its aim in snapping up Blinq is to upgrade its in-house social marketing expertise as part of a broader push to expand its digital marketing business alongside its core media properties. “We want to have a one-stop shop on services that span circulars, coupons, daily deals and connector services like search, email, Web sites,” said Vikram Sharma, president and CEO of Gannett Digital Marketing Services. Sharma explained the company is interested in harnessing Blinq's social advertising platform and know-how to help marketers target local audiences, working together with other digital units like ShopLocal, specializing in local retail advertising. “We'll bring Blinq to our customer base, with ShopLocal, to national customers, then small businesses as well,” he said. To that end, Gannett in the last month rolled out its first campaign with Blinq and ShopLocal on behalf of regional supermarket chain Meijer. The media company boasts 150,000 national and local advertisers across its properties in publishing, broadcast, digital and mobile. Gannett reported digital revenue in its publishing segment increased 29% in the second quarter, driven by higher sales from its digital advertising and marketing solutions business. But overall revenue in the quarter was down 2% to $1.3 billion, reflecting softer ad demand more widely. With Blinq, Gannett stands to capture a larger share of the ad dollars flowing to Facebook, Twitter and other social properties. BIA/Kelsey projects U.S. social media ad spending will grow to $4.8 billion from $3.8 billion in 2011. For its part, Blinq will remain a separate entity within Gannett and maintain its New York City headquarters and sales and support offices in London, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Blinq CEO Dave Williams will report to Sharma. The company, which works with some 600 advertisers, is a Facebook Ads API partner and a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer.
Using dramatic scenes from “Glee,” Fox and the Ad Council are illustrating the risks of texting while driving to teens nationwide with a new series of PSAs produced in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and all 50 state attorneys general. The PSAs will run in donated TV airtime as well as online. “Glee” fans can probably guess which episode the PSAs draw on: the cliffhanger at the end of the last season, in which Quinn Fabray, played by Dianna Agron, gets into a car wreck because she takes her eyes off the road for only a few moments to send a text message. The scene highlights, in vivid fashion, the message that even five seconds is too long to take your eyes off the road. According to the NHTSA, a car traveling 55 miles per hour can traverse a football field in that amount of time. The PSAs also direct viewers to visit the campaign’s dedicated Web site, StopTextsStopWrecks.org. The new PSAs capitalize on the popularity of “Glee” to reach the crucial target demo for the anti-texting campaign: young adults ages 16-24. Studies have shown that young drivers suffer a disproportionate number of accidents due to distracted driving, including texting and talking on the phone. Over 3,000 people were killed and 416,000 injured due to distracted driving in 2010, per the NHTSA. The Ad Council has been working with state attorneys general to stop reckless driving by teens since 2006, and the “Stop the Texts. Stop the Wrecks” campaign alone has received more than $20 million in donated media so far, according to the organization.
Pinterest may be the darling of the social media world, but it has not been widely embraced by agencies. A new survey by the Creative Group finds that only 7% of advertising and marketing executives said their firms are using the visual social network for business purposes and 44% have no interest in adopting Pinterest. Another 18% had never heard of the site, and 17% said it caught their eye but they were hesitant about using it for work. Just 10% said they planned to start using Pinterest as a business-related tool. Staff at larger agencies were more likely than those at smaller agencies or companies to be on Pinterest. Among those with more than 100 employees, almost a quarter (24%) used the virtual pin board as part of the marketing mix, compared to 19% at those with fewer employees. But a higher proportion of smaller firms planned to go on Pinterest -- at 30%, compared to 6% of large firms. The findings were based on more than 500 phone interviews with 375 marketing executives randomly selected from companies with 100 or more employees, and 125 ad executives from agencies with 20 or more. Pinterest enjoyed meteoric growth earlier this year, becoming the fastest stand-alone site to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark, according to comScore. As of July, it had 23 million monthly visitors. Its rapid rise also made it the next big thing on the shifting social media landscape and a new marketing vehicle for brands from fashion e-commerce site Bottica to home improvement chain Lowe's. Still, the vast majority of agencies and companies are still on the sidelines. “While Pinterest has attracted a large following recently, it’s still a relatively new site,” said Donna Farrugia, executive director of The Creative Group, which provides staffing services for design and advertising professionals. "Agencies, or any organization for that matter, may be hesitant to join the social network until they determine how best to use it given their businesses’ goals and needs.” Among the large agencies on Pinterest are Digitas, Saatchi & Saatchi, Edelman, Wunderman, and JWT. The Creative Group also emphasized that the visual nature of Pinterest makes it a natural platform for agencies or individuals to showcase their creative work.
Social's influence on consumers continues to increase, depending on the network. Males seem to flock to tech-oriented sites like Slashdot at 87%, followed by Hacker News at 77% and Stack Overflow at 76%. Females like Pinterest, 79%; Goodreads, 70%; and Blogger, 66%. Facebook and Twitter have the same gender user percentage, with 40% being male and 60% female. That's according to findings released Wednesday. Pingdom used DoubleClick Ad Planner to mine demographic data in the United States and create the study across numerous social sites. The findings analyze data across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit, Hacker News, Slashdot, Github, Stack, Overflow, Orkut, Quora, WordPress, Blogger, Flickr, MySpace, Tagged, Hi5, LiveJournal, Yelp, deviantART, StumbleUpon, Googdreads, and Last.fm. Ironically, Pingdom omitted Google+ information from the study for lack of data accessible in the Google DoubleClick platform. When averaging the age of social users across all the sites in the survey, 26% are between 25 and 34. Those ages 35 to 44 make up 25%; 45 to 54, 19%; 18 to 24, 16%; 55 to 64, 6%; 0 to 17, 5%; and 65 and older, 2%. There are substantial differences in the age demographics of individual sites. Marketers looking to target brand messages to social users ages 25 to 34 might want to use Orkut, Hi5, Stack Overflow, Blogger and Hacker News. Those ages 35 to 44 more often flock to Stack Overflow, Quora and Slashdot. LinkedIn attracts users 35 to 54. Those 65 and older tend to like LinkedIn, Yelp, Flickr, and WordPress. Breaking the numbers down further, when it comes to Twitter users, 55% of tweeters are 35 and older, compared with 63% at Pinterest; 65% at Facebook; and 79% at LinkedIn. Some sites tend to attract younger uses. Some 58% of Reddit users are under 35, compared with 60% at Github, 63% at Hi5, 69% at both Hacker News and deviantART, and 83% at Orkut. Based on the sites in this survey, the estimated age of the average social media user is under 37, according to Pingdom's data. LinkedIn supports the oldest user base, with the average member being 44, compared with Facebook at almost 51 years old and Twitter at 37 years old. The age of the average Facebook users rose two years, while the average age of Twitter users declined by two years since Pingdom's last study 2.5 years ago.
Gannett Co. Inc. announced Tuesday it was acquiring social-media marketing firm Blinq Media to help build out its digital marketing services for brands and agencies. New York-based Blinq develops and executes ad campaigns on Facebook and other social networks. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. However, it is believed to be less than the figure of up to $92 million total cited by TechCrunch, which first reported on the transaction earlier this month. The acquisition follows a series of other recent deals in the social media ad space, including Oracle's purchase of Vitrue and Involver, and Salesforce.com buying Buddy Media for nearly $800 million. For Gannett, its aim in snapping up Blinq is to upgrade its in-house social marketing expertise as part of a broader push to expand its digital marketing business alongside its core media properties. “We want to have a one-stop shop on services that span circulars, coupons, daily deals and connector services like search, email, Web sites,” said Vikram Sharma, president and CEO of Gannett Digital Marketing Services. Sharma explained the company is interested in harnessing Blinq's social advertising platform and know-how to help marketers target local audiences, working together with other digital units like ShopLocal, specializing in local retail advertising. “We'll bring Blinq to our customer base, with ShopLocal, to national customers, then small businesses as well,” he said. To that end, Gannett in the last month rolled out its first campaign with Blinq and ShopLocal on behalf of regional supermarket chain Meijer. The media company boasts 150,000 national and local advertisers across its properties in publishing, broadcast, digital and mobile. Gannett reported digital revenue in its publishing segment increased 29% in the second quarter, driven by higher sales from its digital advertising and marketing solutions business. But overall revenue in the quarter was down 2% to $1.3 billion, reflecting softer ad demand more widely. With Blinq, Gannett stands to capture a larger share of the ad dollars flowing to Facebook, Twitter and other social properties. BIA/Kelsey projects U.S. social media ad spending will grow to $4.8 billion from $3.8 billion in 2011. For its part, Blinq will remain a separate entity within Gannett and maintain its New York City headquarters and sales and support offices in London, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Blinq CEO Dave Williams will report to Sharma. The company, which works with some 600 advertisers, is a Facebook Ads API partner and a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer.
Using dramatic scenes from “Glee,” Fox and the Ad Council are illustrating the risks of texting while driving to teens nationwide with a new series of PSAs produced in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and all 50 state attorneys general. The PSAs will run in donated TV airtime as well as online. “Glee” fans can probably guess which episode the PSAs draw on: the cliffhanger at the end of the last season, in which Quinn Fabray, played by Dianna Agron, gets into a car wreck because she takes her eyes off the road for only a few moments to send a text message. The scene highlights, in vivid fashion, the message that even five seconds is too long to take your eyes off the road. According to the NHTSA, a car traveling 55 miles per hour can traverse a football field in that amount of time. The PSAs also direct viewers to visit the campaign’s dedicated Web site, StopTextsStopWrecks.org. The new PSAs capitalize on the popularity of “Glee” to reach the crucial target demo for the anti-texting campaign: young adults ages 16-24. Studies have shown that young drivers suffer a disproportionate number of accidents due to distracted driving, including texting and talking on the phone. Over 3,000 people were killed and 416,000 injured due to distracted driving in 2010, per the NHTSA. The Ad Council has been working with state attorneys general to stop reckless driving by teens since 2006, and the “Stop the Texts. Stop the Wrecks” campaign alone has received more than $20 million in donated media so far, according to the organization.
Pinterest may be the darling of the social media world, but it has not been widely embraced by agencies. A new survey by the Creative Group finds that only 7% of advertising and marketing executives said their firms are using the visual social network for business purposes and 44% have no interest in adopting Pinterest. Another 18% had never heard of the site, and 17% said it caught their eye but they were hesitant about using it for work. Just 10% said they planned to start using Pinterest as a business-related tool. Staff at larger agencies were more likely than those at smaller agencies or companies to be on Pinterest. Among those with more than 100 employees, almost a quarter (24%) used the virtual pin board as part of the marketing mix, compared to 19% at those with fewer employees. But a higher proportion of smaller firms planned to go on Pinterest -- at 30%, compared to 6% of large firms. The findings were based on more than 500 phone interviews with 375 marketing executives randomly selected from companies with 100 or more employees, and 125 ad executives from agencies with 20 or more. Pinterest enjoyed meteoric growth earlier this year, becoming the fastest stand-alone site to break through the 10 million unique visitor mark, according to comScore. As of July, it had 23 million monthly visitors. Its rapid rise also made it the next big thing on the shifting social media landscape and a new marketing vehicle for brands from fashion e-commerce site Bottica to home improvement chain Lowe's. Still, the vast majority of agencies and companies are still on the sidelines. “While Pinterest has attracted a large following recently, it’s still a relatively new site,” said Donna Farrugia, executive director of The Creative Group, which provides staffing services for design and advertising professionals. "Agencies, or any organization for that matter, may be hesitant to join the social network until they determine how best to use it given their businesses’ goals and needs.” Among the large agencies on Pinterest are Digitas, Saatchi & Saatchi, Edelman, Wunderman, and JWT. The Creative Group also emphasized that the visual nature of Pinterest makes it a natural platform for agencies or individuals to showcase their creative work.
Social's influence on consumers continues to increase, depending on the network. Males seem to flock to tech-oriented sites like Slashdot at 87%, followed by Hacker News at 77% and Stack Overflow at 76%. Females like Pinterest, 79%; Goodreads, 70%; and Blogger, 66%. Facebook and Twitter have the same gender user percentage, with 40% being male and 60% female. That's according to findings released Wednesday. Pingdom used DoubleClick Ad Planner to mine demographic data in the United States and create the study across numerous social sites. The findings analyze data across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit, Hacker News, Slashdot, Github, Stack, Overflow, Orkut, Quora, WordPress, Blogger, Flickr, MySpace, Tagged, Hi5, LiveJournal, Yelp, deviantART, StumbleUpon, Googdreads, and Last.fm. Ironically, Pingdom omitted Google+ information from the study for lack of data accessible in the Google DoubleClick platform. When averaging the age of social users across all the sites in the survey, 26% are between 25 and 34. Those ages 35 to 44 make up 25%; 45 to 54, 19%; 18 to 24, 16%; 55 to 64, 6%; 0 to 17, 5%; and 65 and older, 2%. There are substantial differences in the age demographics of individual sites. Marketers looking to target brand messages to social users ages 25 to 34 might want to use Orkut, Hi5, Stack Overflow, Blogger and Hacker News. Those ages 35 to 44 more often flock to Stack Overflow, Quora and Slashdot. LinkedIn attracts users 35 to 54. Those 65 and older tend to like LinkedIn, Yelp, Flickr, and WordPress. Breaking the numbers down further, when it comes to Twitter users, 55% of tweeters are 35 and older, compared with 63% at Pinterest; 65% at Facebook; and 79% at LinkedIn. Some sites tend to attract younger uses. Some 58% of Reddit users are under 35, compared with 60% at Github, 63% at Hi5, 69% at both Hacker News and deviantART, and 83% at Orkut. Based on the sites in this survey, the estimated age of the average social media user is under 37, according to Pingdom's data. LinkedIn supports the oldest user base, with the average member being 44, compared with Facebook at almost 51 years old and Twitter at 37 years old. The age of the average Facebook users rose two years, while the average age of Twitter users declined by two years since Pingdom's last study 2.5 years ago.
Some 17% of respondents participating in the SEOmoz 2012 survey spend more than $1,000 per month on tools and software. The largest segment -- at 17.5% -- spends $101 to $300 per month, followed by 10.5% at between $301 and $500. The SEOmoz 2012 results looks at salaries, spending and budgets, paid and free tools, tactics, and more. The top five tactics that individual respondents said they spend time doing include 24% for SEO; 11, on-page optimization; 10% link building; 8%, social media marketing; and 6%, copywriting and blogging. When it comes to working in teams, the percentage changes. Some 18% spend time optimizing content and sites, 14% build links, 12% write copy and blog, 11% spend time doing on-page optimization, and 10% support social media marketing. Social media tops the list of services in demand, as it becomes more influential on rankings. The report states that "the fate of newer networks, like Google+ and Pinterest, may be uncertain, but it's clear that there's room at the table for more than just Facebook and Twitter." When asked which tasks SEO professionals spend time doing overall, 76% said they set up and run Facebook business pages; 74% analyze, track site speed and page-load times; 69% analyze competitors' backlinks; 64% analyze competitors' content; 64% set up and manage Google+ business profiles; 63% analyze data in Google Analytics; and 59% blog. SEO is becoming more complicated. Some 58% use rel="canonical" to control duplicate content, with 25% admitting they have used the even more obscure rel="prev"/"next" tags for pagination. Also, 57% manage conversion tracking to improve return on investments; and 55% focus on local SEO. About 41% of respondents have implemented schemas or micro-data, 30% have fought Panda and declared victory, and nearly as many said they continue to fight Panda. How much do SEO professionals make? SEOmoz broke down the salary chart in four categories: Agency, Consultant, In-house, and Owner. Those running their own business make the most, on average. When it comes to in-house marketers, only 2% make $250,000, and 6% make between $150,000 and $250,000. Eighteen percent of in-house marketers make a salary of between $45,000 and $60,000; followed by 17% at between $75,000 and $100,000; 16% make between $30,000 and $45,000; 13% make between $60,000 and $75,000; 12% between $100,000 and $150,000; and 9% would rather not say. Consultants and freelancers had the widest range of salaries, with the highest percentage, 22%, falling into the $30,000 to $45,000 range. Some 1% take home $250,000; and 3% earn between $150,000 and $250,000. The survey data includes the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
Your company’s sustainability commitments can be some of the toughest stories to tell. There’s often no “hard news,” very few reporters actually cover the topic as a dedicated beat and initiatives often take place thousands of miles away, far from the backyards of the average consumer. So how are people engaged? Obviously, a company’s website is often the sole source, but sometimes a blog entry or a blurb on product packaging can invite readers in. Obviously, event marketing, cause marketing and creative partnerships can make a much bigger impact, but why not try something more subtle: Pinterest. I like to think of the fastest-growing social channel as the marketing equivalent to sneaking spinach into your mac & cheese because it’s not a place where consumers are likely to be seeking CSR information, but rather are apt to stumble across it. What is Pinterest? If you haven’t already succumbed to the hullaballoo, Pinterest exploded onto the social networking scene and has already attracted more than 10 million users. Essentially a virtual pinboard, it’s a website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections based on events, interests and hobbies. Users can browse other users’ pinboards for inspiration,re-pin images to their own collections or simply like those images. Pinterest's mission – so says its website – is to "connect everyone in the world through the things they find interesting via a global platform of inspiration and idea sharing.” Whereas Facebook is a place where users document life experiences, Pinterest is more aspirational. On Facebook, people share “what I did.” On Pinterest, people share “here’s what I wish I could do.” Connecting Your Sustainability Story Sustainability commitments run the gamut of green building, green energy, certified sourcing (e.g., Fair Trade), nonprofit partnerships and more. The key is to make your story visual and link what you’re doing with a broader lifestyle. Depending on your sustainability programs, there are plenty of opportunities to intersect with what people already care about. Right now, the most popular and shared categories on Pinterest are food, style and fashion, home, arts and crafts, and inspiration and education. Savvy brands are using visuals on Pinterest to educate, share behind-the scenes information about their culture, while connecting with these popular categories. Making the Connection Here are just a few examples of how to bridge what you do, with how people are already searching. • Purchase only organic ingredients? Start a board on backyard gardening and homesteading under “Grow Your Own” and classify under the popular Home category. • Care about sourcing? Pin exotic pictures of your countries of origin under “Places We Love” and categorize under travel. • Want to share about your green operations? Pin beautiful green architecture and sustainable design under “Build Green” and categorize under style. • Want to tout the relationship with the people who grow your ingredients? Start a “We Love Farmers” board, and show pictures of the people and places behind your brand and categorize under inspiration. Pinterest is certainly an emerging versus established communication channel, but you can’t deny that it’s the fastest-growing social network. If you haven’t already done so, reserve your brand name on Pinterest today. Identify your board themes and get creative with naming your pin boards. Find like-minded accounts and boards to follow. And develop content guidelines that will ensure that you always practice ethical pinning (e.g., attribute your content to the original creator or owner). Lastly, don’t forget to integrate. Add “Follow us” and “Pin It” buttons on your website, incorporate the Pinterest app on Facebook, tweet links to pins, add social links to your Pinterest profile, and share your boards. Yes, it’s more work for you and your team. But the benefits of Pinterest are its power to bring life to your sustainability story through images in our highly visual society. Not only that, it will help amplify efforts on your other channels, increase referral traffic to your website and help with SEO. Not too shabby for a picture. Might just be worth a thousand words after all.
For all of the talk about “search and social” as an interdependent concept and discipline, perhaps the most important connective point between the two is the use of shared language. I mention this because many search professionals are not fully leveraging their keyword skills in social areas, and social media marketers are not leveraging search-based keyword tools for social audiences as much as they should. In the following excerpts from my upcoming book, “Search and Social: The Definitive Guide to Real-Time Content Marketing,” (Sybex, 2012) I discuss how language connects search and social, and also provide some additional keyword advice for social media managers: Natural language as it relates to search and social is just like it sounds --it reflects the keywords, tone, content, conversation, and tastes of your audience, as they project and reflect them in search and social channels. Whether your audience is using a keyword in a search engine, dictating commands with their voice, or writing their thoughts down in the activity stream of their favorite social network, the language they use tells a lot about them and what they’re seeking. Accepting the natural language of your audience is a critical aspect of succeeding in modern online marketing,. Observing and using the natural language of your audience is a way of enabling the spirit of your audience into your brand conversation. Simply put, the effectiveness of your strategy and tactical execution is in many ways proportional to how well you use and understand the language of your audience. For a search marketer, this means sunderstanding the keyword and content tastes of your audience and optimizing for existing or newly created content. For content strategists, it means understanding the topics and interests of the audience in order to provide engaging content. Social marketers must also have a similar grasp of language, in terms of the way a company communicates, and how it creates content. To an even a greater degree, understanding natural language helps you find your audience when they don’t know where to look for you. “Keywords are Connections to People” Keywords are not just for search marketers. Serious social marketers should also have masterful command of keyword research as well. Taking a social view of keyword research helps you extend your communications to audiences by shared language, and also listen to your audience in their own language. If you use TweetDeck, Twitter hash tags, Radian6, or other popular social programs, all of these use keywords, or other language cues to identify audiences, topic, sentiment, and conversation. No matter how you try to divide it, the role of social media manager relies on the use of shared natural language. Within this shared language there are common triggers, and within these triggers there is keyword and linguistic research to be done. Social Media Managers are the Curators of the Living Keyword Language of Their Audience In contrast to a paid or natural search marketer who focuses more on the somewhat static keyword lexicon, social media managers are often on the frontlines with their audience, and know the real-time lexicon firsthand, as they interact and consume the content that surfaces in their like-minded networks. The key to capturing this living language of your audience is being present in your marketing efforts. In other words, if the language is alive, then as a real-time content marketer, you need to be alive and present as well. As a frontline social media or audience manager, you know what topics resonate at a given moment, or what news is tracking within your area of business. This means that you should be literally tracking new words, adding dates they appeared, adding notes about their significance, and mining real-time tools and your internal analytics programs for similar trends. Monitor and track this language, use it with your audience, create content using the language, and also use these keyword triggers to find new audiences in different spaces using popular search engines. Keyword research is largely perceived by social media marketers to be a “search thing,” but this is far from the truth. I would posit that keyword skills are one of the things that separate the great social marketers from just the good ones. It is up to you to determine which kind of social media manager you want to be.