Latest Community Management content from Econsultancy

Digital Vision grant winners announced

2012-02-09T21:54:00+00:00

The Digital Vision grant winners will be featured at South by Southwest (SXSW), March 12 in Austin, TX. Their proposed projects include:
Allison Aldridge-Saur: Redefining digital "Tribes" using Native American tribal practices

Allison has worked in the high tech and web field for the past 12 years. As a member of the Chickasaw Nation, she jumped at the chance to leverage Digital Media to support the tribal business initiatives that fund services for Chickasaw and Native Americans.

"Tribe" has become a popular social media marketing term that just hints at a deeper human experience. Allison will look at how Native American tribal characteristics reveal substantive practices that build stronger, more fulfilling and highly committed online communities. The first piece of her research will launch during South by Southwest (SXSW) this March.

Julia Nalven: Applying mathematical analysis to marketing campaigns

Julia Nalven is a mathematician who uses analytical methods to answer the most pressing questions in the online advertising industry. She currently works for Vizu, a technology company focused on real-time ad campaign measurement. She is seeking to expand the use of mathematical analysis to influence the advertising decision-making process. Julia holds a BA in Applied Math from the UC Berkeley and an MS in Applied Math from the University of Washington.

Julia will be conducting research on how to apply mathematical analysis to the optimization of online brand advertising campaigns. Her theory is that rigorous data analysis will lead to an optimization strategy that will maximize impact of a brand’s ad budget.

Boris Grinkot: Creating a better conversion optimization model

Boris Grinkot’s conversion optimization work with Fortune 500 and international clients includes experimental design, e-commerce and content strategy, and lead generation. He holds an MBA from the University of Florida and a bachelor's degree in Religious Studies from Cornell.

Through his research, Boris will be showing how one-off case studies and "universal" best practices fail in tests has been a favorite topic among conversion optimization experts. As marketers, we want to learn from each other's successes, but attempts to replicate them tend to fail. This project will provide marketers with heuristic tools to determine optimization and testing opportunities for their websites based on years of consulting, teaching, and secondary research.

Douglas Karr: Testing for the 'tipping points' in social media

Douglas is the author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies, Chief Blogger/Founder of the Marketing Technology Blog and CEO of DK New Media. Douglas and his team specialize in performing due diligence analysis of marketing technology companies for venture capital and investment firms.

Does it make sense to get 5,000 fake twitter followers? Unfortunately, the answer may be yes. Douglas will test the the impact of accelerating sharing and counts for different social media outlets. His goal is to show that numbers have a psychological impact when it comes to theories regarding ‘herd’ behavior. If marketers realize this, they can better prepare by driving early counts with incentives to overcome the negative impact of low counts.

Dewita Soeharjono: How Social Media will change the non-profits landscape

Dewita works with a number of non-profit organisations to help them use social media to benefit their campaigns and grow awareness.

Dewita is looking to see what percentage of the 1.5M non-profits actually use or integrate social media into their online activities (fundraising, recruiting volunteers and communications). From this research she will publish a series of case studies/ interviews with non-profits using social media leading to a collected piece with key findings and practical advice.

The projects proposed by our five winners will be produced in the first half of 2012. Some of the winners will discuss their upcoming research at the Digital Vision launch party at SXSW so do join us.

Walgreens launches new Foursquare and Twitter campaign

2012-02-08T23:50:00+00:00

This type of tweet is perfect if the person who checked in was looking for cold products. It is the flu season after all. For those who get it, and don't need Halls, they may disregard or unfollow. Those who are fervent about true engagement may dislike this approach. The only worry may be for those looking to follow Walgreens as they may be turned off if they stumble upon the Twitter feed.

As you can see from Walgreens Twitter page, it has been overtaken by two versions of an ad for Halls Warm-ups cough drops.

Twitter hides @ replies unless you follow both parties. So if you follow Walgreens, you won't see these replies in your stream unless you have that option set on Tweetdeck or are on Walgreen's page itself. For most, they'd never see the multiple tweets above.

Adam Kmiec, Walgreens director of social media, felt confident that this was a program worth implementing.

Our social media strategy is built around being real time, local, innovating and providing value. Over the past year we’ve continued to pilot several Social-Local initiatives. From cause related programs like our Flu Shot donation initiative that leveraged check-ins on foursquare to seasonal tips to this most recent initiative with Local Response, we’re constantly innovating, testing and learning.

The Local Response program was based on insights that were mined from our social monitoring and analysis platforms and a desire to learn more about the opportunities in the local-social space.

Michael Muse, Co-Founder and VP of Product & Operations for LocalReponse, had reservations at first about this type of approach on Twitter but it sooned changed as his company tested its model.

For local businesses, they have a very different voice then nationals so it works for them and can be quite personal. What's interesting is that over time is that we looked at bigger brands and thought this could work for them if it was done right.

So we customise for clients. The first step is you can't reply to people not talking to you. If the client wants to reach out to people who are shopping for certain things or only on Tuesdays, we cater to that. There is a selection bias and it focuses on people who are interested and engaged.

Every single campaign we've run has less than 2% opt-out rate. Also we provide frequency caps, rate limits, and a 2 level opt out to better serve users who do not wish to receive replies to their check-ins. No one receives more than one tweet per day from companies on the platform, one tweet per week from the same campaign and no more than one tweet a month from an advertiser.

It's all about experimenting. Advisors Muse met with told him this happens in every medium. There are potential pitfalls, you develop best practise and then you have specific guidelines you can follow.

LocalResponse has its own guidelines companies have to meet to use their service. As Muse outlines

If a campaign's goals in targeting do not meet all of our guidelines for context, we offer another product that can go broader: retargeting with banner ads as an alternative to response. This allows for broader targeting, but with banners instead of responses. The majority of our clients use this product, often in conjunction with the response product.

It is refreshing to see Walgreens take a chance on a start up in conjunction with a large social media campaign. Not many large companies do.

With no background on how this campaign is being run, the efforts could be misconstrued or seen as “spammy”. By taking the whole picture into account, this may be another way brands can reach the customers interested in them.

It will be interesting to see the results of this campaign, and if they are as successful as the other campaigns run by LocalResponse so far, it may be one we may be seeing a lot of.

Social media for the healthcare industry: examples from MENA

2012-02-08T08:34:00+00:00

The most challenging part of implementing a successful social media campaign is pulling in the relevant audience. Like in any other website, social media is driven by content.

It is common to find Twitter accounts without followers and Facebook pages without fans. You have to provide value to get value. Below are a few pointers on how to effectively do so.

Provide useful medical information

The internet is filled with medical advice from quacks. Consumers of such information can end up complicating their conditions further. Healthcare institutions can help bridge this gap by providing those in need with proper information and advice through social media.

You can provide simple solutions to common ailments and later follow up to determine the level of success. For complicated medical conditions, you can simply refer them to specialists in that field even though they do not belong to your organization.

This helps build trust and validates your noble intentions. You should never indulge in self promotion in the social media space. Users find it repulsive.

Social media enables you to have a one on one conversation with those seeking information. This builds your reputation and positions your institution as the go to source of reliable healthcare information.

This is the most effective way of marketing your products and services at almost no cost.

Social media can also bo effectively used to raise awareness about healthcare issues and be used to promote a health lifestyle.

For example, GE Healthcare's Get Fit social media competition on Twitter aimed to raise awarenss about cancer prevention and healthy living. The campaign elicited a strong response from the Middle East, with residents in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the UAE actively taking part to endorse a healthy lifestyle.

The GE global campaign took place as competition between different continents, where Twitter users simply tweeted what they were doing to to strive for a healthier lifestyle, with each tweet including a country-specific Get Fit hash tag.

The Get Fit website showed a map showing which continent generated the most 'healthy tweets'. The winning country in that continent (as determined by open vote) received a $20,000 donation to the Red Cross or Red Crescent society operating in that country.

Listen

Whether you like it or not, your clients are on social media and are talking about you. You can either choose to engage them or ignore them at your peril.

To successfully engage them, you first need to listen to what is being said about your organization and others in the industry.

This does not have to take too much time as there are apps that help you do this without too much of a hustle. There are many tools and specialists that can help you to track and analyze what is being said on Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

Listening allows you to fashion your communication with your audience according to their needs. Most healthcare providers make the mistake of throwing information at people yet they are unaware of their needs.

Initiate conversation

Instead of waiting for your audience to initiate conversation it is most often prudent to do so yourself. Although your audience may have ideas and suggestions on how to improve your products and services they may not voice them unless prompted.

You can leverage the power of social media to get feedback on any new products, payment procedures, doctor reviews and any other issues.

During large scale disasters that require emergency medical response, a hospital can use social media to give the public updates on the status of the crisis. You can give hotlines for the public to call in case they are stranded, survival tips, number of casualties and any other relevant information.

You can also help people find their loved ones who may have been admitted at your facility. A pharmaceutical company can share information on new drugs to fight epidemics and tips on avoiding infection.

This will grow your influence among members of the online community as more people seek out and share the information you provide.

A good example of a healthcare brand actively engaging in conversation on social networks is skincare services company, Kaya Skin Clinic. The skin speclalist actively replies to queries on Facebook, resolving issues and there-by building strong relationships with customers.

Take action

The most important thing on social media is reputation. You should guard it at all costs. Be truthful always. If an issue is raised, make sure that you respond to it and act accordingly. Failure to keep your word can damage the reputation of any healthcare institution irreparably.

Check your social media accounts regularly for any requests or comments that may need immediate response. Hiring a dedicated resource to do so can be a good idea.

Involve employees

To make your foray into social media successful you have to involve all the employees. Make it a team sport and they will gladly contribute to the growth of your influence in the social media space.

At the end of the day, employees are people who relate with others on social media. By recruiting them as evangelists you can increase the likelihood of success in your social media campaign.

Econsultancy's next Social Media Marketing training course takes place in Dubai on 22nd February 2012.This one-day workshop looks at the effect of social media and web 2.0 on marketing communications and public relations and provides valuable hands-on techniques and tools to understand and harness the opportunities of User Generated Content. Book your place now.

Image credit: GE Healthcare's Get Fit campaign website, Kaya Skin Clinic on Facebook

Five emerging revenue strategies for digital content producers

2012-02-07T20:47:00+00:00

1) The New Inquiry: Making a first step

A growing politics and literature blog produced by alienated Ivy League graduates and made famous by a NYT Style Section article, has just announced a new emailed PDF subscription model. The cost is $2/month, with funds accepted via Amazon Payments.

The New Inquiry will also be accepting donations pending IRS approval of their status as a 501(c)3 non-profit group.

Check 'em out.

2) Hacker News Monthly: Convenience & a different form factor

Hacker News is a crowd-produced news aggregator for programmers and entrepreneurs, hosted by the startup incubator Y Combinator.

Hacker News Monthly, is a print and digital subscription option of the highest rated pieces in Hacker News. It is produced by netizensmedia and benefits financially from the content but has no association with Y Combinator.

The first three issues were offered for free, and are still available for download.

Single issues are available for download in PDF, MOBI, and EPUB formats at $3.
Print copies, made available via the HP Mag Cloud service, are $9.
A 12 month digital subscription costs $29/year, and includes access to all previous issues.
A 12 month print subscription includes all digital access, and is $88/year plus shipping.

By allowing consumption of their publication through multiple formats, they'll have further reach, especially in a community that embraces this sort of flexibility.

3) Nectar Ads: A specialized ad network for specialized content sites

Nectar Ads is an online advertising network that specializes in the visual arts, and works almost exclusively with New York City based open-access art blogs, such as Hyperallergic, Colossal, Art Fag City, Two Coats of Paint, and Rhizome, which is affiliated with the New Museum.

Working with these blogs, Nectar has a acquired a “Highly Targeted & Influential Audience” that it connects to “Well Vetted and Curated Sponsors.” That is to say, not every advertiser is welcomed, in order to preserve the credibility of the participating publications.

4) Vice: A magazine upstart, growing into an international digital youth lifestyle channel

Vice, which started as a punk magazine in Toronto, is perhaps the biggest smash hit out of all the new digital media models. Marketing & Communications conglomerate WPP invested in Vice “to further develop our content capabilities, particularly in new media and amongst the youth consumer segments. Vice has been extremely successful in developing and repositioning major brands in these areas.” Vice has since aggressively and successfully scaled out its televisual work, building a platform that fully takes advantage of the potentials of digital media.

So far, the company Vice appears to have worked with most closely is Intel, with whom it maintains an ongoing media property, The Creators Project, and throws events with tastemakers internationally.

Their ad-supported magazine is free, and reportedly disappears from hip skater and clothier shelves within minutes.

Limited information is available on the specifics of Vice’s income, but revenue in 2011 was more than $100 million. Projections for this year are doubled, with 20%+ margins, making the company worth an estimated $1 billion.

5) The New York Times: A massively scaled, mature operation struggling to adapt to a paradigm shift in media consumption

The NYT offers free, unfettered digital access for all print subscribers. The cost of getting a print copy delivered is regionally adjusted, but New York City residents are charged $6.05/week for a 7-day subscription.

For non-print subscribers:

Access for up to 20 articles a month is free. In order to not discourage social sharing or SEO, visits from social media sites and search engines are not counted towards this total.
Unlimited desktop browsing + smartphone app is $15/month.
Unlimited desktop access + tablet is $20/month
Unlimited access across all devices and “share it with a family member” is $35/month.

The introductory rate, for all levels of subscription, is $.99 for the first four weeks.

Cleverly, when the NYT first launched their pay wall, certain users - qualifying paradigms undefined, but probably the heaviest users who shared most frequently - were given a year of free service, a giveaway sponsored by Lincoln. When their trial was expiring, these users were emailed the $.99 deal, after which their credit cards were autobilled for the full payment amount monthly.

The NYT is also available on the Amazon Kindle

As a $19.98 subscription
Or a $.99 single issue

Is any one of these models going to “prevail” over the others?

This analyst thinks not.

It’s entirely possible that a fresh, politically engaged publication can grow to be wildly successful by nurturing a devoted and paying reader base. It's almost certainly a better path than emulating an aging, advertising-supported “everything for everyone” model still executing the SEO strategies of yesterday. Writing that's done for the machine isn't as good as writing that's done for people.

Media companies exist to serve a community of readers, and communities, like people, are all different. No two communities, no two people’s media needs are exactly alike, and there is room for many different types of solutions. Indeed, the barriers for entry are so low, there are so many emerging possibilities for revenue generation, and there are so many people ready to leap into the gap when a company scales beyond connection with it’s readership, that it seems doubtful a single revenue model will ever reemerge.

For publications that do accept advertising, it is perhaps more important than ever to ensure the appropriateness of the marketing to their readership. Achieving a state of deep and meaningful rapport with consumers is one of the healthiest places for a company to be. Maintaining that state will almost always ensure a regular supply of supportive customers.

JUMP 2012 London

2012-02-07T15:59:14+00:00

JUMP, now in its third year, is a one-day conference for senior marketers looking to join up on and offline data, technologies, campaigns, agencies and creative. If the last decade was all about figuring out digital, the next is about integrating it, dissolving it into the mix and finding new hybrid strategies that combine on and offline.

JUMP brings together over 1500 digital and offline and marketers who are not just learning to speak the same language, they are their sharing data, insight, strategies and successes.

JUMP is a fast-moving, content-rich symposium packed with exciting new insight from top marketers across every industry wanting to learn about how to join up online and offline.

Photos from JUMP

JUMP is all about more effective marketing across channels...

Using search marketing to improve TV campaign effectiveness
Doubling catalogue sales using insights from web analytics
Driving call centre improvements with web metrics
Generating media coverage via online buzz (and vice versa)
Optimising marketing budgets with the right mix
Leveraging customer insight from all channels
Driving up ROI

See what happened at JUMP

Do sponsored messages ever work online?

2012-02-07T14:53:40+00:00

A deeper investigation in to the feedback reveals that:

Almost all of the feedback comes from four accounts.
Many accounts that left feedback have no avatar image or bio.
Most feedback is a single word like “Great!” repeated across multiple items.

Here’s an example snapshot of feedback:

The negative reviews are damning as well:

Taking all of this in to consideration it’s easy to see that this particular “paid tweets” service is poor. That’s just one example from Fiverr but you can see the same pattern of spam feedback and extreme negative comments here.

Although my personal favourite is this one:

Because who doesn’t want to be spammed with the same message for the rest of time?

It’s not just Fiverr.com, Ad.ly has an equally bad review from Ian Lurie with the great line:

Sponsored tweets rank in profitability somewhere below hiring alchemists to try to turn lead into gold.

What’s the risk?

Part of the problem is that it’s very easy to amass a large Twitter following very quickly through spammy tactics, such as following a lot of people, then un-following those that don’t follow back.

So one account with 40,000 followers could be rubbish if it’s been made in this way. The followers won’t trust what is said on the account, which means it would very rarely lead to sales.

If you compare this to a natural account that was grown slowly with only a thousand followers, this could be a far better option if the fans are engaged and actually care about and believe what the person says.

The other thing to consider is that to be legal, any message that is made to promote your product must be labelled as sponsored (such as by writing #spon).

The Office of Fair Trading has begun a crackdown in this area to ensure the rules are being followed. Which begs the question: if people know someone has been paid to post a sponsored message, will they believe it?

Let’s take two examples:

The first example is paid, the second is a beauty blogger who tried the product. Whilst the first one is very clearly a corporate plug, the second could have occurred naturally by someone who liked and enjoyed the product.

It’s likely that seeing “spon” on messages will become the equivalent of “I’ll just pop out for a cuppah” or using Sky+ to fast forward adverts.

This type of advert blindness is going to make people less receptive to sponsored tweets and more sceptical of these types of endorsements, especially when crammed in to 140 characters.

So do sponsored messages ever work?

If you don’t get sponsored messages absolutely right you also face investigation from legal bodies. The Katie Price snickers campaign is one such campaign being investigated as it had a leading series of messages, only that last of which was labelled as sponsored.

This means that people who saw the early messages in isolation (via retweets or missing the feed) didn’t get the whole picture.

Sponsored messages can work, but they do carry a lot of risk. For all the fallout from the Snickers campaign it got a lot of people talking about the brand. It was a great PR stunt, and if you don’t take it too seriously, actually funny too.

Yes, Katie Price was temporarily intelligent and eating a snickers did make her return back in to an “idiot”, but at the same time it played around with media perceptions and was an interesting enough campaign to get picked up in a lot of places.

Organising a campaign with a celebrity isn’t as hard as you’d think either. Sponsored Tweets list celebrities and you can take your pick.

As for whether or not they’re worth it, well unless you create something viral like Snickers did, most campaigns will only ever stick with the original celebrity so you get a one hit of coverage and views and that’s your lot.

There must be a better way

The Apple Approach

Apple is the most extreme brand for customer love. People like to post genuine messages of affection for the brand’s products, they do it for free, and they do it because they love the brand.

There’s no trickery here, and those honest messages help to encourage more people to get involved with the brand.

If people don’t naturally say nice things about your brand then you can get them involved in your brand instead. Cadbury’s are the kings at this. They recently launched a new Wispa pack via Facebook and got a “super-fan” to reveal it.

The over 270 comments that resulted from this are then helping to spread the word for free.

Want more examples?

The TOM’s shoes philosophy of giving away a pair of shoes to the third world whenever a pair is sold, makes them a brand people like to talk about.
Gucci has 6.3m Facebook fans. The quality of the product is what gets people talking about them.
Like our beauty blogger earlier, you can send products out to get them reviewed (More detail on this here).
When one of our employees had a bad experience with AutoGlass, he tweeted the company and it was fixed within days. He then wrote an article praising the service.
Equally, bad service can get you noticed in the wrong way, such as the McDStories hashtag or the same for Quantas that became flooded with bad experiences.
Creating fun shareable content will get your brand noticed. A page about Hydraulic Fracturing should not have 7,000 Facebook shares but it does because it’s well designed content.

So yes, you could pay for coverage, or you could get lifelong coverage by being a fun brand, with likeable content and good customer service. Your choice.

Internet Statistics Compendium

2012-02-03T17:00:00+00:00

Econsultancy’s Internet Statistics Compendium is a collection of the most recent statistics and market data publicly available on online marketing, e-commerce, the internet and related digital media.

The compendium is available as eight main reports, split across different geographical regions:

Updated monthly, each document is a comprehensive compilation of internet, statistics and online market research with data, facts, charts and figures.The reports have been collated from information available to the public, which we have aggregated together in one place to help you quickly find the internet statistics you need, to help make your pitch or internal report up to date.

There are all sorts of internet statistics which you can slot into your next presentation, report or client pitch.

Those looking for B2B-specific data should consult our B2B Internet Statistics Compendium.

Areas covered in the main compendium include:

2012: Email in Action

2012-02-02T17:32:00+00:00

New digital devices and services are causing large shifts in online behavior, altering how consumers are using email. Marketers are responding to the new mix, and adjusting their email strategies to compensate. Challenges abound, but there are also new opportunities just waiting to be maximized.

This 42-page study, asks over 450 in-the-trenches North American email marketing experts about:

Integrating email and social media
Email use trends
Spending trends & Budget distribution
Segmentation & Personalization
Automation
Benchmarking KPIs

Conducted in partnership with the Email Experience Council of the Direct Marketing Association, this report features 45 charts, covering a range of topics, and broken down by target market. It will be an asset to all levels of marketers, from beginners who are just learning about email marketing, to experienced professionals seeking to benchmark their performance and outlook against their peers.

Introduction
Executive Summary
Challenges to Email
Email and Social
Testing and Tracking
Budgeting and Financial Metrics
Email Benchmarks
Personalization & Segmentation
List Size and Growth
Automation
Improving Email Performance
Methodology and Respondent Demographics

Table of Figures

Figure 1: Challenges to Future Success in Email

Figure 2: Clients’ Use of Email: The Agency View

Figure 3: Social and Email Integration

Figure 4: Social and Email Integration (B2C)

Figure 5: Social and Email Integration (B2B)

Figure 6: Email Factors Tested

Figure 7: Email Factors Tested (B2C)

Figure 8: Email Factors Tested (B2B)

Figure 9: Email Metrics Tracked

Figure 10: Email Metrics Tracked (B2C)

Figure 11: Email Metrics Tracked (B2B)

Figure 12: Email Budget Distribution

Figure 13: Email Budget Distribution (B2C)

Figure 14: Email Budget Distribution (B2B)

Figure 15: Financial Metrics Tracked

Figure 16: Financial Metrics Tracked (B2C)

Figure 17: Financial Metrics Tracked (B2B)

Figure 18: B2C Lead Generation – Newsletter Benchmarks

Figure 19: B2C Lead Generation – Sales Email Benchmarks

Figure 20: B2B Lead Generation – Newsletter Benchmarks

Figure 21: B2B Lead Generation – Sales Email Benchmarks

Figure 22: B2C Direct Sales – Newsletter Benchmarks

Figure 23: B2C Direct Sales – Sales Email Benchmarks

Figure 24: B2B Direct Sales – Newsletter Benchmarks

Figure 25: B2B Direct Sales – Sales Email Benchmarks

Figure 26: Definitions of Inactivity

Figure 27: Factors in Personalization/Segmentation

Figure 28: Factors in Personalization/Segmentation (B2C)

Figure 29: Factors in Personalization/Segmentation (B2B)

Figure 30: Preferences Offered to Subscribers

Figure 31: Preferences Offered to Subscribers (B2C)

Figure 32: Preferences Offered to Subscribers (B2B)

Figure 33: Changes in List Size

Figure 34: Changes in List Size (B2C)

Figure 35: Changes in List Size (B2B)

Figure 36: Effectiveness of Automated Triggers

Figure 37: Effectiveness of Automated Triggers (B2C)

Figure 38: Effectiveness of Automated Triggers (B2B)

Figure 39: Word Cloud – “What’s the Key to Effective Email?”

Figure 40: Respondent Organizations by Type

Figure 42: Target Markets of Respondent Organizations

Figure 43: Respondents’ Primary Conversion Goal

Figure 44: Respondents’ Database Size (B2C)

Figure 45: Respondents’ Database Size (B2B)

Brands are finding new budgets for Facebook advertising

2012-01-30T11:25:20+00:00

Last week, eMarketer issued a report saying that online advertising in the US is set to overtake print for the first time in 2012. In the UK, online spend has grown consistently (the IAB reported a whopping 13.5% growth in the first half of 2011).

Our own analysis of 2011 search and social media ad spend makes interesting reading. Search advertising bucks the spending trend every quarter: search spend has increased by 19% over the same period last year in the UK (slightly lower in the US at 14%). The majority of this, of course, is on Google (around 80%).

But the really interesting thing I think is the growth in social media advertising. Although brands are still spending a relatively low proportion of their online advertising budgets on social media (and for social media, read Facebook), at around 2.7% of total online spend, the budgets are growing significantly.

We expect Facebook advertising to make up 5% of total online spend in 2012. And what’s more, the money for Facebook advertising doesn’t appear to be cannibalising other online budgets. Brands are finding separate budgets to fund Facebook campaigns.

Brands are still very focused on Facebook fan acquisition. The bigger brands expect to increase the number of engaged fans by around 9% each month, and to double their fan bases in 2012.

But there is a real shift towards meaningful engagement with those fans, rather than simply collecting numbers: improving engagement strategies and creating campaigns that keep fans coming back to and interacting with the brand’s Facebook page.

Mobile search is also on the up. Around half of us in the UK have a smartphone, which means better mobile internet access, which means more mobile search. (Interesting fact: around 40% of new smartphones sold are iPhones, according to a Comtech report.)

As a result, mobile search now accounts for between 7% and 8% of search spend, an increase of 2.7 times since December 2010. Around 50% of this spend is specifically geared towards tablets. We expect to see this increase to between 16% and 22% of search spend by the end of 2012.

I think ‘this is the year of mobile’ has been a stock phrase for about the last seven years, but if brands are prepared to spend between a fifth and a quarter of their search budgets on it, that’s a pretty good indication that the UK really is going mobile in 2012.

So, in summary:

Search: budgets up by 19%, mostly spent on Google.

Facebook: new budgets being found for the right campaigns, nearly doubling in spend in 2012.

Mobile: more than doubling in 2012, and it’s all about search.

Facebook IPO filing could come next week

2012-01-28T18:36:22+00:00

Its sources say that papers could be filed with the SEC as early as next Wednesday, with the company seeking to raise as much as $10bn at a valuation of $75bn to $100bn. In raising $10bn, Facebook would be the richest technology IPO ever. As the Wall Street Journal notes, the largest tech IPO ever to date was that of Infineon Technologies, which raised $5.9bn at the height of the .com bubble in 2000.

Obviously, there's a huge difference between $75bn and $100bn, and industry observers will be closely following just how high a valuation Facebook can command. But one thing is certain: Facebook will go public with a valuation few could have imagined a few short years ago.

The big question, of course, is whether Facebook's IPO marks a momentous event in the company's rise, or whether it represents the company's peak. Skeptics of social networking's importance are hard to come by; today there's a broad consensus that social networking is here to stay. But that doesn't mean questions don't linger about Facebook's future.

The massive growth of the company's user base can't continue forever, and there's always the risk that large portions of its user base will eventually tire of the service, particularly as it evolves. Furthermore, while Facebook does have revenue and profit, current revenue and profit alone doesn't seem to justify a valuation of even $50bn. Clearly, for the company to sustain the valuation it will have when it goes public, it will need to monetize at a level far greater than it is doing now.