Moms Are Biggest Brand Boosters on Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC] Moms lead the pack when comes to liking brands on Facebook, according to a recent survey by Burst media. Fifty eight percent of moms follow or like brands on social media sites. The survey showed that moms are the group of consumers most likely to follow their favorite brands on social media. It also found that 2 in 3 readers learn about brands via "likes" from blogs, with moms and 18-34-year-olds particularly influenced by brand mentions. Sixty-six percent of blog readers answered that a promotion by a blogger influences their purchase decisions online. The survey, provided by Burst Media, uncovered some other interesting stats: 49% of respondents are loyal to brands online and occasionally "like" or follow a brand on social media sites.
The survey was conducted in May and released on Friday. "For some audience segments, such as moms, social media is a constant presence in daily life," Mark Kaefer, marketing director, Burst Media said in a press statement. The Biggest Brands on Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC] Facebook started out as a way for friends to connect and interact online. Yet, as the startup grew from a few thousand users at New England colleges to hundreds of millions around the world, it quickly became a place where businesses could interact more intimately with their customers. In the past few years, big brands have started taking social media seriously, and Facebook marketing is a big part of the plan for many companies. However, even big brands struggled to amass a Facebook following or extract value in the beginning. Coca-Cola, one of the world's most recognizable brands, for example, had 800 Facebook fans in November 2007.
It has 16.5 million now. Facebook Places Explained (video) So everyone who reads Digital Buzz would have heard about Facebook Places by now, but really, unless you’re in the US, you’ve not had an opportunity to experience exactly what Facebook Places is. So here is the demo video from the official Facebook YouTube Channel. Facebook Places to me, will ultimately kill off Gowalla & Foursquare over the next few years in the looming battle for the GeoSocial Check In world.
That’s a pretty big call with all the VC funding those guys have been getting, but what people probably don’t understand right now, is that Facebook Places isn’t just another location based check in service, and I don’t think it’s even meant to compete directly with them, Facebook Places provides the API that will connect the next generation of mobile applications, websites and beyond.
Think of Facebook Places as if it was the “Like Button”, that button, allowed Facebook to become part of every website in the world. Be Sociable, Share! What Do Facebook Users Expect from Brands? Companies are often on the hunt for more “likes” for their Facebook pages, hoping to get more brand advocates and social media fans. However only 42% of US Facebook users think marketers should interpret a “like” in that way.
This data comes from a June 2011 study from ExactTarget, “Subscribers, Fans and Followers: The Meaning of Like,” which found that 25% of US Facebook users disagree that marketers should interpret “like” to mean they are a fan or advocate of the company. Facebook users themselves have some preconceived notions about what to expect when they “like” a company on the site, and among those who do not become brand fans, many are negative. More than half of users expect to be bombarded with messages or ads (54%), while 45% do not want to give companies access to profile information and 31% do not want to push content from a company into friends’ newsfeeds.
These possibilities have prevented users from making brand connections on the social networking giant. Are Facebook “Likes” a Good Metric? Or a Metric at All? Social media has become a line item on virtually every agenda for marketing strategy meetings. There’s no denying that. But the questions reverberating from CMO’s and senior executive come down to ROI-a concern that is particularly bristly during tight economic times, as marketing budgets have in many cases been slashed the hardest.
Yet, despite the fact that the ROI questions remain largely unanswered, many marketing departments have conceded to the indisputable impact of social media in consumer lives-and are shifting a larger chunk of their budgets toward social media, whether they can neatly analyze the return or not. There is no standard set of KPI’s for social campaigns, when it comes to Facebook, the arena’s biggest outlet, the one unanimous metric is picked up in terms of “Likes”.
In fact, some brands have been so captivated by the concept of accumulating Facebook “likes”, they have spawned entire multi-channel campaigns around the idea. Their friends’ newsfeeds. Number of Fans and Followers is NOT a Business Metric –What You Do With Them Is. Companies are frequently misguided by relying on fan and follower count as the primary measurement for their social media investments, instead they must focus on the outcomes of these fans and followers. We wouldn’t buy a car without looking under the hood, or buy a house without getting it inspected, or hiring an employee without doing a background check, so we should also ensure we’re providing the right metrics for our social efforts. Because fans and followers are so easily viewable by all employees of our owned social accounts as well as our competitors, it’s easy to use that as a default index.
In fact, strategists should not serve up fan and follower data to executives, as they often self-diagnose this number to be most important and compare themselves to their competitors. Don’t focus solely on fans and followers as a primary key performance indicator, instead focus on the business goals the fans and followers yield for you. Take Action Now. Why Brands Need Friends - Not Fans - on Facebook. Clyde McKendrick is founder of Cultural Capital, an innovations and insights lab based within WDCW-LA, an integrated advertising agency where he also serves as executive strategy director. Clyde has spent the last 15 years guiding brands like Pepsi, Red Bull and T-Mobile to develop their brand strategies and communications.
Facebook offers brands access to its vast audience with no apparent cost of entry. Therefore, one would presume that brands would develop strategic and forward-thinking campaigns to maximize their reach. Not so. Instead, brands quickly entered a popularity contest for the most Likes. It seemed companies were simply content with growing audience numbers.
SEE ALSO: How Facebook Timeline Might Radically Change the Look of Brand Pages [PICS] Starbucks, one of the most popular brands on Facebook, has startlingly low engagement numbers, despite its 26 million fans. Facebook's Edgerank algorithm is the first step for measuring a brand's relevance across its community. 1. 2.