Over at AdAge, Comscore VP Andrew Lipsman discusses  a study by the Ehren-Bass Institute that showed that only  1% of Facebook fans actually engage with brands they follow on Facebook.

Essentially, the research said that 1.3% of Facebook fans like, post, comment, tag or share content from brands they follow.   In response, Andrew makes a parallel between measuring Facebook content by likes and measuring display ads by clicks, saying that by only looking at the 0.1% who clicked on the ad you ignore the 99.9% that saw it.

Secondly Andrew says that even a low incidence of likes can have a large impact citing previous research that showed “Starbucks fans and friends of fans spent 8% more and purchased 11% more frequently in-store than non-fans who were also Starbucks buyers.”  Note the emphasis on friends of fans as well as fans.

I’d raise another issue with the 1%  brand engagement figure.

The Ehren-Bass study involved the 200 largest brands on Facebook -  the Starbucks and Cokes of this world where a lot of the likes are purely incidental and quickly forgotten about.   There is in fact evidence that the larger your page, the less engaged your fans.

A PageLever study last year showed that the larger the Facebook page, the fewer the % that even *sees* items in your newsfeed

PageLever found that daily unique newsfeed impressions were 9.38 per 100 fans for pages that have between 1000-10,000 fans.    Once you go up to pages with a million fans though, daily unique newsfeed impressions drops to 2.79 per 100 fans.

Visibli came up with a similar study last year.   It  found that for brands and media organisations, pages with more fans received proportionally fewer likes per post (not the case though if you are an artist).  Engagement went down as likes went up

The other week Diageo marketer Philip Gladman said if you don’t have a million Facebook fans you should stick your budget in TV.   Leaving aside for the moment the issue of how far that TV money will even take you  the question should be why a million, and what are they going to do for you?

Arguably as some of the studies I mentioned have shown, working your way up to the big number may not always be the best tactic.   There may even be a case for keeping it small by breaking your communities down by product or interest group to get a series of smaller, but more committed groups.

Top image – Find your search

Related articles

• How Email Subscribers and Facebook Fans are Similar [INFOGRAPHIC] (contently.com)
• Visual, Interactive Content Gives Facebook Timeline Engagement Early Boost (searchenginewatch.com)
• The Evolution of Facebook for Brands (mashable.com)

There is a wealth of research showing that social media users in emerging markets are proportionally more active  than their Western counterparts.    For example, Indonesia, Russia and Egypt all have 80%+ of their internet populations on social media.   Meanwhile, Israeli and Russian social media users spend twice as much time on those channels than people in the UK and US.

A latest stat released by Instagramers, a global Instagram community with 240 local chapters celebrating its 1st birthday today, shows the same holds true on the photo-sharing network.     The three most active Instagramer communities measured in photos tagged and uploaded are the Philippines, Brazil and Turkey.

No, this doesn’t look at actual user numbers but it certainly measures engagement.   Others groups in the top ten are actually sub-sets of the main country groups, such as Igersistanbul (57k photos) and Igersaopaolo (36k tagged images).   A dynamic list can be found on Statigram (one of several web based services for viewing Instagram posts).

Related articles

• The success story of 2011, Instagram growing 2x as fast as Foursquare (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
• Why Join Instagram? (socialmediatoday.com)
• If Your Are Levi’s, Say So On Instagram and Twitter #IAmLevis (adpulp.com)

Recently, there has been a trend of brands being encouraged to think of themselves as media outlets in their own right.     For example, earlier in the month AdAge published a feature “All brands are publishers”

Many brands and organisations seem to agree.   In these recessionary times, content marketing is one area where money is being spent and its worth looking at a range of research that has been released over the past month to support that fact:

• Slideshare and Columnfive media released an infographic on the power of content marketing (snippet above).  This includes the statistic that marketers are spending a quarter of their budgets on content marketing and 71% of b2b companies are doing more content marketing than last year

• According to IDG, content marketing, which IDG defines as “white papers, case studies, videos, custom websites, video and white papers”, is one of tech marketers top five spending priorities for 2011

• These stats are echoed by the (US) Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs.   Nine out of ten b2b marketers are using content marketing, which includes article posting (79%), social media (excluding blogs) (74%), blogs (65%), emailed newsletters (63%), and case studies (58%)

• Another US study, this time from the Custom Content Council (which obviously has a vested interest in the results), shows that 72% of marketers think branded content is more effective than advertising in a magazine, 62% say it is more effective than advertising and 69% say it is ‘superior’ to direct mail and PR

If money is being funnelled into content creation, what are the perceived benefits?    The Content Marketing Institute says it is brand awareness (69%), customer acquisition (68%) and lead generation (67%).

Added to that is of course the effect that a content campaign can have on your search results and traffic.   I’ve written before about the case study of tech company Centerbeam, which created a newsroom and got it listed on Google News, resulting in a 152% increase in landing traffic .

Of course, creating content is the easy bit.

Creating content that is both interesting to your target audience and avoids ramming brand messages down their throats is trickier, and examples such as these 15 best practice corporate blogs featured in Mashable last year, are worth a look for any marketer operating in this area.

Related articles

• 42 Content Marketing Commandments | Content Marketing Institute (affiliatestartingline.com)
• Content Marketing Examples from Home Depot (converstations.com)
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• How to Jump on the Content Marketing Bandwagon [Infographic] (mpdailyfix.com)
• Proof that online content creation works (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)

Stats of the Month

Last week, I went to Leicester with fellow Rabbits Bridey Lipscombe and Cat Turner  to give a presentation to De Montfort University marketing students.  The full presentation (which includes a blurb about Rabbit) is up on the Rabbit Issuu page.

As part of that though, I presented a series of ten consumer and media trends that set the scene for why social media marketing exists as a discipline.   I’ve included them in a separate presentation.   The trends in the presentation are:

• Over the past year the UK’s (daily) national newspapers have lost the equivalent of the population of Glasgow in sales

• Trust in social media is now higher than trust in print media

• Consumers not only get more of their news online, online news carries higher attention spans

• ‘Media stacking’ combined with low attention rates for live TV and radio, means a lot of ads are now ignored

• When it comes to sourcing product info online, consumers trust other consumers

• Super-fans and advocates are more likely to create content that influences a purchase

• Customers engaging with companies on social media spend 20%+ more

• Women and mothers in particular are social media power users

• In-store mobile browsing means customers are checking their smartphones, not the point of sale material

• The standard for replying to online customer comments is now as low as ten minutes

Hope the stats and presentation are useful, each slide has a link to the appropriate post with more info.

The other day research company TNS came out with research claiming that social media users were sick of so-called “digital waste” from brands, with 60% of US and 61% of UK consumers not wanting to engage with them on Facebook or Twitter.

In fact, separate research from analytics firm Crowd Science does show that liking a brand Facebook page is the exception and not the norm.   ‘Only’ 9% of Facebook users have liked a brand page.  And not surprisingly, the older the user, the less likely they are to give up a like.

Of course, a pool of 1/10 Facebook users is still significant given the ’1-9-90′ school of thought that you need to target the 9% of people who actively comment and share.

So how do you get that 9% to actually like your page.   The most effective routes are also the obvious ones.   Crowd Science’s infographic shows that many Facebook users simply want to show support for a brand, while good and interesting content works well too.

As a result, placing prompts for visitors to like your Facebook page on other social properties / your website makes sense.   As does a widget or preview bar displaying the type of content they might expect to see.

Related articles

• Crowd Science’s Facebook Study: People Most Often Click Like to Show Support and Enjoyment (insidefacebook.com)
• Less than 20% of Facebook content is Liked (infographic) (zdnet.com)
• 58% of Facebook Users Expect Exclusive Content From Business Pages [Data] (hubspot.com)

Want to know why the mommy / mummy blogger is a constant discussion topic among brand managers?  Check out this Nielsen chart.

It shows “social moms” (i.e. mothers who use social networks) are more likely to shop, post and comment.   And mothers that blog are – as you’d expect – more active still.

Scarborough Research shows  that (in the US) blogging mothers are 51% more likely than average to visit a newspaper website.   Meanwhile in the past month, 90% visited a social media site (actually – that stat could easily be turned around:  10% of mommy bloggers *aren’t* on social media).

As far back as 2008 TNS showed that in the UK, housewives spend 47% of their free time online, more than even the Chinese (who as a whole spend 44% of leisure time on the Internet).

Meanwhile, Mothers are also more likely to engage in so-called in-store mobile browsing, with 68% going online via their phones while in store.  In other words they will be having conversations online or checking out information, while walking down the aisles of your shop – while ignoring the £25 billion worth of POS material that has been put there for them to see.

Related articles

• When it comes to product reviews, social media users trust each other (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
• Social Media Adoption and Fortune 500 Companies – Have They Reached their Peak? (socialtimes.com)
• 80% Research Products on Web, Most use Social Media Tools for Peer Opinions before Buying (prweb.com)
• A guide to social media influence (liesdamnedliesstatistics.com)
• Marketers And Advertisers: Women Are Driving The Purchasing Bus, Get Used To It (stargroup1.com)

Over at Rabbit, we publish a monthly series of social media guides.  This time around, I’ve put together an overview of the different social media influence systems that try and tell brands how “important” someone is on social channels – it is embedded above.

These scores are not just academic or good for a bout of social media navel-gazing, they now serve practical purposes.

Case in point, Klout scores are built into the two main social media team management systems hootsuite and cotweet.   If you call out a brand, chances are the person at the other end will now be looking at how influential Klout deems you to be.

As the report implies, I am not a big fan of Klout – and that’s not because I lost 14 points in the recent Kloutapocalypse!

Kred however does seem to hold a lot of promise: The transparency in calculating scores (as opposed to Klout’s secret sauce approach) and the different influence scores for different communities are welcome innovations.

(To view, go into full screen mode above.  It is also available to download from our Issuu page - issuu.com/therabbitagency)

Related articles

• Further Reflections on Klout. [Nic Oliver] (ecademy.com)
• What is Klout worth to you? (nevillehobson.com)
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• Klout’s New Metrics Upsetting Bloggers (blogher.com)
• The Measured Life: What’s Your Klout Score? (sportsgeek.com.au)
• How To Manage Your Online Influence (link-assistant.com)

Another study to add to the arsenal of ‘why spend money on social media.’

This time from Nielsen, which shows that among consumers using social media, consumer ratings and reviews come top as the preferred source of product information.

The Nielsen blog post doesn’t specify where the study took place, but assuming it was carried out in the US, social media users = just over half of the population (allowing for 3/4 Internet penetration and 3/4 Facebook use among the Internet population)

Less well received?   A company’s Twitter ID at 7%.  I interpret that in two ways.   First of all, corporate social media accounts aren’t trusted to deliver unbiased product information, but ones run by ordinary consumers are.

Secondly, you may not look to a social media feed for product information, but you will turn to it for news and / or complaints.

Finally, the Nielsen study again confirms female dominance in the social media realm with women on social networks more likely to talk to their friends about brands than men (81% vs 72%)

Related articles

• The State Of Social Media 2011: Social Is The New Normal (fastcompany.com)
• The Nielsen Social Media Report and What It Means to Customer Service (customerthink.com)

Then according to metrics firm Experian, in the UK at least 14 minutes would be spent on social media, ahead of entertainment (9 mins) and shopping (5 mins).

No surprise when it comes to who takes the lion’s share of social media time.   Facebook accounts for half of all UK social networking visits and an average visit time of 22 mins (I wonder how much of that is a visit time, and how much is having Facebook open on your computer).

Related articles

• If UK Internet usage was just 1 hour (weblogs.hitwise.com)
• 20 stunning social media statistics (cyberjournalist.net)

Forrester has come out with a study about European marketers and their attitude towards social media.

The good news if you are someone like me earning their living in this industry?  They “are as excited about social media today as ever before.”   The bad news:   A quarter intend to spend less than 35,000 euros this year (US 48k, GBP 30k)

Forrester’s Nate Elliott says it comes down to a mixture of resourcing and the inability to prove ROI.

Measuring social media is actually pretty easy.  However, as I’ve heard said many times before, it is tracking the right things that is difficult.   On that note check out this SEOMOZ article on social media KPIs, one of the best I’ve read

There is a third problem though, one that revolves around the perception that social media campaigns are free.   They are not.   Some investment, at the very least in monitoring what people are saying about you, needs to be made.

So how much does a social media campaign cost?   It depends on a whole range of factors, but this piece where various (US) social media practitioners took hypothetical ad budgets and scoped out what they would do with it is useful (thanks @shannonpaul for reminding me about the link!).

It shows you how can indeed build a year long programme for the price of a few magazine ads…but not for 35,000 euros.

(photo from loop oh via creative commons)

Related articles

• Social Media Consultant or Copywriter? (renwrite.wordpress.com)
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