An occasional hurdle you face in social media marketing is the ‘Facebook only’ approach.

Depending on their level of social media knowledge and their need to show the big number internally, you’ll sometimes get a directive from a marketer to focus on Facebook at the expense of other networks.   After all, surely 900 million users can’t be wrong.

In fact, a study by Virtue showed that adopting several social networks in tandem with Facebook is the route to increasing Facebook engagement – depending on which networks you use by more than 50%.

The above chart speaks for itself.   When using Facebook only, brands had an average of five likes per 1000 fans, or an engagement rate of 0.5%.    When also using Twitter and Google+, that engagement rate  went up to 0.77%.

And what about Pinterest?   Brands that integrated Pinterest into their Facebook pages saw upwards of 60% in Facebook engagement rates.

Why is that?  Using multiple social touch-points gives you different options to share different content to different audiences.   Meanwhile, bringing in Pinterest and Instagram into your Facebook eco-system integrates both a highly engaged community and engaging visual content.

So to recap: A stat to remember and quote:  Using Twitter and Google+ in tandem with Facebook increases engagement by 50%.  Adding Pinterest to the mix makes that 60%.

(h/t @caff via Business Insider)

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The other week  I wrote a post with a run-down of stats, about why brands need to be ‘mobile first’ rather than ‘digital first’.  Following that stats came out showing that in the US, mobile users spent longer on Facebook than PC users.

Now data about mobile social networking in Europe has appeared from Comscore.  While the social media audience on PCs grew 8% to 171 million in the major EU states (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain) over the past year, the mobile audience grew 43% to 66.9 million.

Yes, that means the PC audience for social media is still 2.5x larger than the mobile audience, but the trend is only one way.   Moreover, if you look at individual social networks, the picture is different.  Twitter’s mobile audience grew 101% and LinkedIn’s 96%.

At the IAB UK Mobile Engage conference last week, Twitter actually stated that 80% of its UK user base now accessed the network via their phones.

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The Rabbit Feed on Instagram – 2.0

Yesterday afternoon (UK time) Instagram for Android finally saw the light of day.    The result?  Three million new sign-ups over night.   On Monday when checking the latest Instagram numbers for a presentation I counted 28.7 million odd.   Today at Noon (London time), the total stood at 32 million – 32,104,009 to be precise

What does this mean for Instagram, will this trajectory continue?  Yes and no:

Just because Android is here, we can’t assume numbers will double.   It’s more important to look at user behaviour as opposed to handset sales, and the fact is most activity on the mobile web comes from people who have Apple devices

As a result, Instagram may not hit 60 million this year – but 50 million is entirely realistic

However, whether we are talking 50 or 100 million, Instagram is now the world’s biggest mobile only social network (aside from a number of China specific networks which have more users).   It is now in the top social media tier and if brands haven’t considered their visual social media strategy they need to start now.

At Rabbit we’ve put together a “Rabbit Feed” guide to Instagram, giving brand marketers who may not be that familiar with the network an introduction along with some suggested next steps.   It is embedded above and you can also download it here.

(Re-posted from my original article up at Rabbit)

Related articles

• Instagram for Android Released (gramfeed.com)
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How many brands would be brave enough to cut half of their social media followers, losing the ones who hadn’t engaged with them for months?  That’s exactly what is happening with many core Instagram users at the moment.

One of the many things that fascinates me about Instagram is the way a unique sub-culture and series of communities have grown up around the network in a relatively short (18 months) period of time (see an article I wrote for The Wall on the subject).

Most recently, there has been a trend among core Instagramers to do something interesting around their follower numbers.   Instead of looking at the vanity metric of a large follower total, many are actually shedding followers.   I’m one of those that did this.  I used a 3rd party tool to lose 300+ followers, bringing me down from the psychologically important 1000 follower milestone, back down to 700.

Before moving onto why that is, it is worth outlining a group of services that now exist giving you intelligence on your Instagram account.

Statigram
Statigram is not only one of the main free web services (along with Webstagram and Ink361) that allow you to view Instagram images online, it also (as the name implies) provides basic metrics around your account.

This includes best time to post per day, most successful filters (assuming you actually use IG filters and not 3rd party apps), a like and comment average, and a list of your most engaged followers.   Useful info if you are running a company Instagram account, as well as a personal one.

Statigram has also started to run ads supporting Instagram competitions, we noticed Ford Fiesta using it to bring their campaign to the attention of Instagramers.

InstaPop
This iPhone application will tell you the minimum number of likes and comments you will probably need to get on the popular page / tab on Instagram.  It compares the least popular image on the popular page with your most recent post in terms of likes, comments and the amount of time the post has been live.

InstaFrManager
This is an iPhone app that looks at your posts over the last 40 days and gives you a league table of your most engaged and least engaged followers based on comments and likes.   A lot of Instagramers have been using it to get rid of dormant or ‘ghost’ followers.   However, more recently they’ve been turning their attention to a tool that does the job automatically, namely:

IGexorcist (igexorcist.com)
IGexorcist is a free web-based tool that gets rid of inactive followers.   Give it access to your account and it then shows you how many followers haven’t liked or commented on any of your images for the past 60, 90, 120 and 180 days.   You can then completely purge the total, bringing your follower number down.

On my part, it told me I had 307 inactive followers over 180 days and 368 over 60 days.   As an aside that told me that most IG users in my circles are active, and (given the fact that the 60 and 180 day totals weren’t vastly different) that if you stick with Instagram for a month or so, you are likely to keep going.

IGexorcist is popular because it automates the process of blocking and then unblocking a follower.

Why does it go through these two steps?  Because the block / unblock route is the only real way to let a follower loose.   And most committed Instagramers don’t do the first part of that and just block because of a belief that Instagram still counts a blocked follower as a follower when deciding who gets onto the popular page.

Which brings us onto the concept of ghost followers and ‘popping.’   Many Instagram biographies now include the words ‘no ghost followers.’

A ghost follower is someone who never interacts with you.  That might be someone who has left Instagram.   Or it may be, much like you still see on Twitter, Instagram users who follow huge numbers of other users en masse with the aim of in turn acquiring a big follower number.

Popping is Instagram speak for getting on the popular page.   Doing so generally depends on having a large number of likes and comments in a very short (less than 15 mins) period of time, hence groups exist to deliberately members “pop.”   In addition to having a concentrated number of likes for each post, most Instagramers believe that a smaller follower total gives you an advantage.

As a result,  there is no benefit in having an artificially large follower number that is exactly that – just a number.

Though most brands now do understand the importance of a committed follower, the philosophy of the big number is still alive and well.   By contrast, its interesting to see a group of core users of a social network embrace the concept of (as the IGexorcist site puts it) people over numbers.

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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).

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As we head into 2012, a number of social networks are being touted as the next big thing – this includes Path, Pinterest…and SoundCloud.    With SoundCloud having just raised $50 million, we’ve produced a Rabbit (where I work) guide to sound based communities.

I’ve included an embed above, we’ve got other guide and resources up on the Rabbit site available for download.

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Despite commanding 95% of social networking time in the US it is Twitter which shaped the news agenda in 2011.

According to Highbeam Research (via Inside Facebook), Twitter received around 50% of mentions about social media in the (traditional) media, compared to 45% odd for Facebook

Except for February and April, Twitter was ahead every month, including September when Facebook launched Timeline and other features.

Why does this matter? Despite dwarfing every other social network and having a (now) celebrity founder in Mark Zuckerberg, the news media was more interested in the role Twitter had to play in society.   Which brings to mind the old arguments that many like myself used to make about the need to look beyond Twitter’s numbers to influence.

At 100 million regular (according to Twitter) users , Twitter’s user base is of course now substantial.   Twitter’s lead in the news agenda would have been down to everything from the Arab Spring, which has resulted in Arabic becoming the fastest growing language on Twitter , to here in the UK celebrity led scandals, which resulted in Twitter appearing on the front page of the nation’s tabloid newspapers

Photo – L.e.e  

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More than half of UK mobile users that access social networks from their phones do so almost every day.   This is according to Comscore, which says that overall around 35% of the UK mobile phone population uses social networks from their phones.

Note that around 44% of UK mobile users have a smartphone, with iPhone users most likely to go online.   The overlap between smartphone and mobile social network users won’t be exact, but it will be pretty strong.

As a result, the conclusion is that smartphone ownership is increasing mobile social network use.   And that use is by and large heavy, rather than infrequent.

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Who gives the most on social networks?  The answer if you are a charity is Twitter users, who donate on average £30 ($46) compared to Facebook users who on average give £18.

This comes from charity donations site JustGiving (via The Telegraph) using their own data.    However, JustGiving also shows that the vast majority of donations (97%) were made through Facebook.

That’s probably more an indication of how JustGiving works, the fact that they have apps they want to push (another stat – apps drive more donations) and that Facebook appears to be the default for charities.

However the JustGiving research does show that Twitter is a potentially fruitful area that charities should consider.

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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.

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