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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Recently, Read Write Web’s Richard McManus penned a series of articles around ‘The Visual Web’, “meaning that images and video are becoming an increasingly important part of what we consume online.”

I couldn’t agree more.  Speaking personally, Instagram started replacing Twitter as my social network of choice about a year ago.    More to the point, there is now a wealth of statistics to underpin what Richard is talking about.  This is specially when you consider that many of the biggest social media stories of the past year – Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest and now the likes of Socialcam – are visual.

Here are just a few of those stats:

• Most US and UK consumers now carry a device around with them allowing them to take and share engaging photos and video.   According to Comscore, most UK mobile phones are now smartphones.   The other day, Nielsen came out with research saying the same for the US.

• And more and more of those smartphone owners are using those features.  In 2010, 52% of photos in the US were taken with ‘single purpose cameras’, while 17% were taken with smartphones.   In 2011, that ratio changed to 44% / 27%.   Similarly, here in the UK, almost a third of consumers say their smartphone is the camera they use most often 

• As a result, we’re heading towards a point perhaps 1-2 years down the line where smartphones will account for the majority of pictures taken.   Indeed, the iPhone has been the most popular camera on Flickr for a while now 

• So there’s a huge growth in people taking pictures with their smartphones.  There is too in people sharing them.  At Christmas Instagram had 15 million users.   In March it was 25 million.   Now it’s 50 million, and growing at five million a week

• When it comes to mobile video, Socialcam has 36 million users, while Viddy has 26 million and signing up one million a day

• Tumblr, a blogging platform that lends itself more to images and less to 1000 word missives, is now the world’s largest blogging platform with 20 billion blog posts, 50 billion blogs and more than 120 million users.  Indeed, Tumblr will soon overtake the generic ‘blog’ as a term in Google searches

• Visual social networks are not only getting sign-ups, those signing up hang around.   Though I suspect the numbers have changed since then, at SXSW Instagram boss Kevin Systrom said 67% of users had logged in the previous day.

• Similarly, the latest emarketer figures show that worldwide, Tumblr and Pinterest users spent 89 minutes a month on their networks, compared to 21 minutes for Twitter users and 17 minutes for LinkedIn users.   Yes, Facebook dwarfs all of them with an average of 405 minutes a month / user, but I suspect some of that is due to people having Facebook on in the background during the day

• And speaking of Pinterest, it now sends more referral traffic to sites than Twitter despite being only 7% as big.     There is a debate about whether those referrals translate into sales, but I agree with the argument that it all depends what your Pinterest boards refer them too (i.e. whether they buy or not is really up to you).

So what should you do as a brand? Shift your social media strategy from being word to being image led – or at least change the mix between the two.   Related to that, develop a visual social media strategy.   Register your profiles on various visual social networks and figure out how you want to illustrate your brand.   Because if you don’t, millions of consumers will do so anyway.

Image – Sounds of the Sun

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In the wake of Facebook’s $1billion Instagram buy earlier in the month, one comparison that did the rounds is that Instagram will be to Facebook like YouTube is to Google.  A stand-alone (ish) network, that is the clear leader in what it does (so for YouTube online video, for Instagram mobile photography).

However, while YouTube may be the 800lb gorilla of video sharing, a few networks have managed to carve out their own roles – on positioning as opposed to numbers.   Vimeo for example, is a fraction the size of YouTube, but a lot of creative industry professionals prefer it for the interface, the community and the quality of content.

Though I don’t think anyone is going to catch Instagram on numbers for now, I similarly believe there is an opportunity for a ‘Vimeo’ to sit alongside Instagram’s ‘YouTube.’   Not everyone has been thrilled by Instagram turning from a 15 million user network at Christmas to a 50 million user one today, for example Apple marketing boss Phil Schiller quit the service citing the changing “signal to noise ratio.” 

So who will benefit?  There are easily a dozen Instagram like networks in existence, and it’s too early for the community to coalesce around one.    From the initial chatter, I believe four possible candidates are Via.me (which welcomes Instagram users with a banner on their site) Streamzoo, EyeEm and Tadaa.

Tadaa – growing by word of mouth

Tadaa is one I’ve seen a number of my own Instagram friends move to, and having played around with it for the past fortnight, I thought it worth doing an overview of it.   This is especially since Tadaa by and large hasn’t been included in the ‘Instagram alternatives‘ type articles published since the Facebook deal.

However, from what I can see 1st hand, Tadaa is a network that has been growing almost totally by word of mouth, without the oxygen of free publicity and I was keen to get some insights from Tadaa founder Niko Schoppmeier

The network and app

Tadaa is run by a team of five from Hamburg, meaning there is a parallel with the early Instagram that for a while also only had five staff.  Right now it is an Apple only app.   Again I had echoes from the early Instagram:  Niko told me Android was a possibility, but they wanted to do it right.

In fact, it looks like an iPad app will see the light of day 1st, something Instagram never got around to.

The basics of the network are similar to Instagram.  You put a photo through third party or the in-app filters, you upload it, you geo-tag it (optional), you share to Facebook and Twitter (again, if you want), and you add a comment.    You then follow other users, see their posts in your stream and have the opportunity to like and comment on their images.

However, there are also a lot of differences.  For starters, the navigation is unlike Instagram’s and (from comments I’ve heard) it isn’t to everyone’s taste.   Secondly, you can’t ‘@’ someone in Tadaa or use hashtags.   Both these are under review and Niko told me hashtags is possibly the number one user request.

On the plus side though, you can repost images and also reply to a post with your own image.     Also the in-app filters are infinitely superior to Instagram’s, tying in with Tadaa’s premium positioning (see below).

Finally, Tadaa has something called ‘Tadaa dollars’, basically a score that measures your likes and influence (like Klout, I personally tend to ignore it).

The numbers

Not surprisingly, Tadaa wouldn’t give away any numbers.  Niko did however mention that the network had seen two recent peak periods.   One, in early March when they released version 4 of the app and got a lot of good press in their native Germany.

Here Nikko let slip that they got 150k new members     The second wave, and this was global and much bigger, came post Facebook / Instagram.   At the time, Tadaa also put up a note saying its servers had briefly been down due to the stampede of sign-ups.

The one impressive number however comes around engagement.  Apparently 20% of users post more than 10 images a day.   Compare that to Twitter, where only 25% of users are even moderately engaged.

What’s the vision, and what is the potential for brands?

When I put the Vimeo analogy to Niko Schoppmeier, he agreed.   Time and time again he emphasised Tadaa’s role as a high-quality network for iphoneography enthusiasts as well as semi-professional photographers.

That I think makes Tadaa interesting for brands if the aim is to generate high level content and to tap into a community of super-engaged users.   Any competition or promotion does however need to factor in the point that standards on Tadaa are high.

Finally, the ‘reply’ function on Tadaa is useful, especially given the lack of hash-tags for the moment.  This means people enter a competition or challenge by replying to a master image.

Tadaa’s future success – the community is key

Niko correctly pointed out that Instagram might also have had five staff members at one point, but that this was only half the story, with the other part being how a community grew up around the network.

That’s something I’ve noticed within Tadaa and it is something that will be key to its success.   The numbers are still relatively small, but as I’ve mentioned, they are engaged.    There are also embryonic user groups and accounts starting up, for example the lndtadaa group now runs a challenge every week.   These groups will potentially serve as the glue that keeps the most committed users there.

As a result, though it’s not made as much noise in the tech press as other Instagram competitors, Tadaa is an interesting player in this space, and one to watch.

(I’m dirktherabbit on Tadaa as well as Instagram, find me there!)

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Over the past few years there have been a range of studies showing that once they are online, citizens of countries such as Indonesia, Argentina, Russia, Brazil and the Philippines are more likely than their Western counter-parts to be active in social media.

For example:

• The countries with the highest Facebook penetration as a % of the Internet population are The Philippines, Israel, Turkey, Chile and Argentina

• The most active Instagram fans (members of the IGers groups of super-users) are in the Philippines, Brazil and Turkey

• Who spends the most time on social media?   Once again, it is users in Israel, Russia, Argentina, The Philippines and Turkey

• And though the Netherlands and Japan lead in Twitter use; Indonesia, Venezuela, Argentina, Turkey and The Philippines are also in the top ten list

The latest Ipsos / Reuters study very much chimes in with these findings.   It tells us that an average of 62% of people in the 24 countries surveyed (a mix of G20 and others like Saudi Arabia) that use the Internet also use social media, with Indonesia (83%), Argentina (76%), Russia (75%), Sweden (72%) and South Africa (73%) leading the way.

Both the UK (65%) and US (61%) are mid table, ahead of France (50%), which is near the bottom of the list.

What is the take-out for brands?

First of all, when doing business in emerging markets, social media should be on the agenda.   Yes, proportionally the Internet population is smaller, but these are also likely to be the consumers with some degree of spending power.

Secondly, the stats about the time spent on social channels suggests that social media users in emerging markets are more likely to have an active, as opposed to a passive role

And, related to that, they are also likely to represent users with a reasonable English language proficiency and a willingness to explore sites internationally.   Hence ‘influencers’ from these territories may also be making an appearance on your blog or Facebook page in the US or UK, especially if a global brand is involved.

(Image – Indonesia, the country with the highest social media penetration as a % of the Internet population.   Via Rulhaf)

Here’s some research from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University that again shows the level of trust we place on the opinions of social media contacts – people we may in many cases have never met in real life. (via Poynter.org)

What’s the most believable source on Twitter?

A retweet from someone you trust (4.08/5) followed by a tweet from someone with ‘verified author expertise’ in the subject (4.04/5).  In addition to showing the power of peer recommendations, that also demonstrates how false information can spread quickly online.

Interestingly, the list of top ten trust factors includes the Twitter verification mark.  Getting that blue tick does seem to raise the credibility of your Twitter account.

At the same time, tweets from twitter followers inspire the least credibility concerns, with ones found via search having the highest.

Meanwhile a study published in searchengineland (via Simply Zesty) says that 72% trust online reviews as much as they do recommendations from friends.

In all, 58% say positive customer reviews would make them trust a business more, 25% say they have no impact and 17% pay no attention to them.

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A piece of research from the Brookings Institution (thanks @kenyanpundit for the link) finds that, at least in politics, when it comes to gee-ing up supporters, online video works best.  However, if you are going to trash someone, stick with TV.

Though all eyes are currently on the US Presidential election, the Brookings Institution carried out its study in 12 countries worldwide.

The Brookings Institution found that anyone likely to watch a political video on YouTube was younger, richer, more educated, more likely to be interested in politics – and more partisan.   In other words, you don’t trawl the world’s largest online video site to help inform your point of view.  You look through it to find political content that already confirms it.

The other factor, is that you can run political ads on YouTube for free, meaning lengthy missives to supporters that would cost you a fair amount of money on TV have a home there.

TV is different.  You are more likely to find wavering voters, and ones less interested in politics on telly.  And it costs money, so you need to make it count.  As a result, though 22% of YouTube ads involved a character attack on an opponent, for TV that figure jumped to 38%

The Internet – an organisational tool

Both in the US and UK there has been a certain amount of “see, I told you so!” type reactions to findings that TV not the Internet informs public opinion when it comes to politics  

In fact, the Brookings Institution findings point to a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Internet is good for in political campaigns:

“The internet is not mainly a tool for politicians to communicate directly with voters, even though voters are free to peruse campaign websites if they wish. Instead..the internet serves as a tool for campaigns to inform other members of the broad political elite, including journalists, commentators, activists, and opinion leaders.”

More to the point, it serves as a place where you can recruit volunteers, raise cash, and disseminate campaign material.   Your campaign website or Twitter account will by and large not change minds.  The TV debates still serve that purpose.

Men more engaged with online video

At the same time, a separate Comscore study in the UK shows that unlike the social media arena as a whole, online video is an area dominated by men.  Men are far more engaged with both content videos, as well as ad videos.

Top image – boutmuet

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A SXSW session on the social media bubble hosted by NYC agency Attention neatly summarised what the conference is all about.   One panellist called it a gathering of influencers who come here to be influenced.   And that’s a good way of putting it.

We arrive with the expectation that on our return we will be able to talk about the one amazing ‘thing.’  A shrink-wrapped ready made answer for our clients, “this year it’s all about X.”

Last year it was all about group messaging services such as GroupMe.   Previous year’s featured Foursquare and Twitter.  This year, already ordained by the tech press pre conference, it was all about ‘Highlight’ and another similar service Glancee.   Both tap into your social media profiles and the location based settings of your phone to tell you who is around you with similar interests.   Reactions to it have varied from creepy to awesome.

Highlight is part of a greater trend of socially discovery and predictive check-in apps, that was the subject of a final session I want to called #timebandits .  This featured applications such as Forecast http://foreca.st/ (tell your friends where you are going to be, not where you are now) and redrover , an app for parents that essentially allows you to spot child friendly places on the go and arrange impromptu meet-ups with other parents.

Speaking as a parent, it looks both good and very useful.  That was the take out from the session, these services fulfill a need.   To take location based services such as Foursquare for example, surely you want to know where your friends are going to be rather than have been.   Hence the need for something like Forecast.

Forecast’s designer Rene Pinnell felt that these applications could truly be revolutionary in changing how people react in the real world.   They can, but I think the key is not so much utility as simplicity, a point Rene acknowledged.   In fact, the Forecast team was involved in another venture a year ago called Hurricane Party, allowing you to create spontaneous parties on the fly.

Hurricane Party failed because, as Rene Pinnell admitted, it asked people to do and share too much.   By contrast, Rene pointed out that Instagram was a run-away success because it asked you to do one simple thing: Take a photo.  And that thing was something people do all the time anyway.

It might change behaviour (share your filtered photos through a mobile app), but it doesn’t created new behaviour as such.   Instagram boss Kevin Systrom for example admitted that he had problems getting his Dad to tweet, yet he found that a photo sharing service like his was both generation and language neutral.  Anyone could get it and take part.

I have both a professional and personal interest in wanting these services to succeed.   But I am realistic enough to know that their success or failure will be judged on how they work a month from now…and outside of Austin or San Francisco.   I’m about to fly to Florida.  Will I still get constant notifications about people on Highlight who share my interests and who I can connect with?   It will be interesting to see.

Finally, as a SXSW antidote, it is worth turning our attention to the other (alongside Instagram) social media service of the moment, Pinterest.  As this NY Times article points out , Pinterest did not go down the Foursquare, Highlight route of launching to the influencers in Austin.   It instead built its business organically by getting ordinary users to actually adopt and share.

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The conclusion of a SXSW panel from this afternoon was yes, but the overall message was that it really works best when it comes to deepening viewer engagement – especially given that TV is now a social (media) experience, regardless of whether you use those channels as a programmer or not.

The panel featured Colin Helms of MTV , David Jones of Shazam , Ellen Stone of Bravo , Text 100′s Tara O’Donnell and I think the most engaging of the four, Susie Fogelson of the Food Network.   MTV’s Colin Helms did cite the Nielsen study from last year showing a 9% increase in buzz equating to a 1% increase in ratings, while Bravo’s Ellen Stone said that though she didn’t have any scientific evidence, she was 100% convinced that social media was driving viewers to her shows.

The overall theme though was that social media is a useful tool in keeping a community interested and engaged.

Clearly – this needs to be done through serving up content you won’t get through simply watching the show (the idea of talent sending behind the scenes twit-pics was cited as an example).   Social media was also mentioned as a way of keeping fans hooked in the gaps between series, when they might forget, with their attentions being diverted elsewhere.

Two particularly useful case-studies however came from Susie Fogelson of the Food Network, both including useful metrics.

Susie first of all mentioned the ‘Calling all Cooks‘  programme the channel ran during US Thanksgiving, which she calls the equivalent of their Super Bowl.  Essentially they had major chefs in the kitchen to be viewers “butterball helpline”, where questions could be sent in via social media.  During a two hour live slot, the channel increased its Facebook fans by 20,000, had 15 million social media impressions, and was the subject of five trending topics.

The second Food Network case study involved The Great Food Truck Race, which Susie called “Food trucks meet the apprentice.”   Every week one city and truck would host a free lunch for 100 people and the Food Channel Twitter ID (@FoodNetwork) would tweet out the final location.   People then had to show up for the truck, with the first 100 getting free lunch.

A fairly simple idea, but it connected the dots between the show, the channel’s social media channels, an experiential event in the real world, and finally PR / press coverage that the channel managed to get around it.   The latter in turn made a wider audience aware of the programme and will have driven new viewers to it.

The result?  In addition to press coverage, the channel achieved 100k more likes in six weeks and 70k more Twitter followers.

Photo – from the great food truck race, the food network

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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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