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This week's finest digital marketing infographic

This week’s finest digital marketing infographic comes from Wishpond with this effort looking at the state of social media marketing.

It gives a run through of various useful stats on social media usage and lead generation.

For example, did you know that 52% of marketers have found a customer through Facebook, 43% through LinkedIn, and 36% through Twitter?

Furthermore, roughly 46% of online consumers count on social media when making a purchase.

by David Moth 31 May 2013 12:14pm 4 comments

70+ epic social media case studies, stats, blog posts and more

At Econsultancy, we publish a huge amount of content related to digital marketing and ecommerce. One particular area that gets a lot of attention (and rightly so) is social media, which has had a profound impact on the way that consumers and businesses interact with each other.

To help you keep up to speed with what’s going on in the field, we’ve assembled some of our case studies, statistics, infographics, opinion and best practice blog content all in one place for you to digest at your leisure. You could even bookmark and share this page to add to your ninja toolset.

And if you’re going to be applying for one of the social media jobs advertised on our digital marketing jobs board, these posts will help you brush up and look smart.

Read below for more…

by Andrew Warren-Payne 26 April 2013 15:55pm 7 comments

Sell with social media by knowing when and how to dis-engage

If you want to generate a lead or sale with social media engaging customers is not the goal. It's the starting point.

It's an open door to get customers to respond… to dis-engage with social media and enter into a journey with you.

In other words it's the start of a series of "fair exchanges" that guides prospective buyers toward, or away from, what you’re selling on your turf.

Here's how to get started...

by Jeff Molander 14 March 2013 19:02pm 1 comment

Three content marketing tips from LinkedIn on reaching its audience

Since launching over ten years ago, LinkedIn has grown from a Silicon Valley phenomenon and niche social network for business to a content powerhouse that makes corporations drool for its demographic data and targeted advertising capabilities.

Fortunately for marketers, the growth of this social giant also means dedicated networks, segmented by industry, hosting expert blog posts, forums (in the form of LinkedIn Groups) and even a dedicated news stream that can drive millions of pageviews much like the early days of Digg and current Reddit army.

Here are three tips on how to engage with content and track effectively from my conversations with LinkedIn representatives.

by Ryan Sommer 14 March 2013 14:28pm 1 comment

The Facebook mortgage. Could social data be used for credit scores?

I’m about to move house. Which, as is usual, has involved a painful bank transfer and a lot of paperwork.

One of the steps of self-imposed due diligence I did was to check my credit file. Everything was fine, I had a credit score in the region I expected / hoped and that was the end of it. Contracts done. Property secured.

It got me thinking, though. That one little number is very powerful but, given today’s focus on big data, actually very simplistic in its nature.

For something that can dictate major elements of your life (such as helping the bank decide whether or not you are ‘fit’ to buy a home), the process by which the three main credit reference agencies (Equifax, Experian and Callcredit in the UK) apply a sweeping judgement feels flawed.

I wondered if, instead, social data could provide a more accurate picture of people.

by Craig Le Grice 05 March 2013 09:01am 30 comments

Can social identity improve ecommerce?

A recent Gartner press release suggested a major change in the way we might interact with ecommerce in within the next few years. Their prediction is that by 2015 fully half of retail customer identities will be based on social network identities. The report’s main thrust is on the impact of this shift on IT and security infrastructure, but what is much more interesting is the potential for a more direct connection between purchase and social identity.

The logic behind this potential growth is the frictionless “log-in with Facebook or twitter” option that allows customers to skip the laborious sign up or registration process. But the obvious question that arises is: What happens when social identity becomes purchaser identity? When you consider the potential meshing of purchase data with social data there appears to be a huge opportunity here for e-commerce sites to improve sales and build loyalty.

by Dan Weingrod 13 February 2013 15:58pm 2 comments

Social media measurement: Is Google Analytics getting it wrong?

Social media attribution is BIG news.

Marketers are struggling to attribute revenue to social channels, and lack of definable ROI is one of the major reasons that businesses cut back on social investment.

I spend a lot of time looking at our own social attribution, but it strikes me that in many cases, the closer I look, the less clear a picture I have.

This isn’t because the figures I have to work with aren’t clear.

It’s because, in a lot of cases, they might not be true...

by Matt Owen 12 February 2013 11:39am 48 comments

Small businesses are not impressed by Twitter: survey

Much of the attention lavished on social networks as marketing platforms focuses in on large brands, many of which have invested heavily in these channels and can boast about large audiences.

One of the most popular social networks with brands has been Twitter, which is now generating hundreds of millions of dollars a year in ad revenue and may go public in the next year.

by Patricio Robles 01 February 2013 14:42pm 0 comments

Facebook drives most social B2B traffic, but Twitter is top for conversions: report

Despite the huge attention lavished on social media, it still accounts for only a fraction of the traffic and leads for US B2B websites according to a new report from Optify.

Overall, social accounts for 1.9% of traffic compared to 41% for organic search, however there is potential for it to become a more important and effective channel.

This is a topic we touched on recently in a post about how to use social media to widen your sphere of influence in B2B and in an infographic looking at how B2B companies are currently using social.

Optify’s report found that companies that actively manage social media campaigns (as measured by companies who had more than one lead from social or more than 10 visits per month) have seen comparatively high conversion and engagement rates.

by David Moth 30 January 2013 12:01pm 3 comments

Twitter prepping launch of advertising API: report

Last year, Facebook went public in what was one of the most highly-anticipated and, as it turned out, disastrous IPOs of all time. In the past several months, the world's largest social network has managed to convince Wall Street that it will eventually monetize its billion-plus users.

That's good news for the number two social network, Twitter. Last week, reports surfaced that global investment powerhouse BlackRock is reportedly looking to buy $80m of Twitter shares from early employees, and some believe that the company will look to go public as soon as this year.

by Patricio Robles 28 January 2013 15:31pm 1 comment