Tag Archives: socialmedia

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest: an update

Have you read that post by BusinessInsider about how ridicously complicated social marketing has become?

social media marketingAs a marketing (including social) person I have to admit they were not that far from the truth. Also, I keep asking myself how is that possible to recover from the crisis till all these new tools come up and involve millions of people, usually during their working hours.

But that’s another story… I will soon do some new analysis on the GDP/Social Network trend relations to update the one I did last year.

I know, it’s been a while since I last posted on this blog. To be precise since when I started my new job. May you guess I am quite busy with that?

In the meantime, a few things have changed with the main social networks out there (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) and other that the inspiring and scary image by business insider, maybe it’s good to do a quick recap.

-          Social networking sites now reach 82 percent of the world’s online population, representing 1.2 billion users around the world.

-          Facebook introduced the Timeline (and so far I haven’t heard any enthusiastic comment about it. I like tho)

-          Twitter came out with a brand new app and a new version of Tweetdeck (which I personally don’t like since it’s impossible to add a column with your most recent followers and doesn’t really count well the RTs you get)

-          LinkedIn has launched a new app – which unfortunately lets you add people too easily, regardless of their networking request settings. Note to the reader: LinkedIn is NOT a Pinterest for CVs. Connet to those you want to network with.

instagram camera-          Instagram has been purchased by Facebook, that recently published its Facebook Photos app – not sure where’s the point here. Maybe they bought Instagram to avoid such a huge competitor? And was that really worth 1B$? Personally I like Instagram and I use it a lot, though mainly to adjust images that then I upload on Facebook. I also have my own fancy URL on follogram, I’d suggest you do this – it’s the easiest way to show all your insaphotos in a pinterest style, so to say.

-          3 big news in FB’s founder life: he got married to his girlfriend since almost ever, and she got her PhD a few days before. In the same week, the Facebook IPO got the attention of the media. Many criticize the IPO, many hope Zuck will fail. Have they done so much in any of their past weeks?

But probably one of the most interesting things happened out there is the rise of Pinterest – see it half the way between a visual twitter and wall (picture) posts on Facebook (picture).  Or, if you prefer, a photo version of a content curation website. This latter is definitely my favorite description

And the greatest part of it is you don’t need to fill that annoying forms to register to it. If you have either a Facebook account or a twitter account, all you need is a single click – is that easy.

You can follow your interests on this virtual pinboard and follow others’ pinboards. You can either pin from a website, or upload your own photos or “repin” others’ pins. Pinterest is fully integrated with Facebook and Twitter and it lets you share on more platforms at once.

What is really interesting about Pinterest, is that it’s a great inbound marketing help.

In fact, all links go back to the pages where you spotted that specific picture, including your own company website or eCommerce store – that’s maybe why retailers like it so much and why it’s actually driving a lot of traffic to the US (and some UK based retailers).
There is a small limit though:  for some reason it does not get the € (euro) symbol, and you can only attach prices (do you really need to?) with a dollar or pound symbol.

That’s quite common though – unfortunately though the web is open to everyone, too many US based projects tend to forget about the rest of the world.

Which Social Networks do you currently use? I’d love to hear from you about both your personal and business use of all these social media tools, apps and platforms. Are they effective? Who manages them in your organizations?

Facebook’s new users decline after the launch of Google+, while the two companies fight a new “War of the Roses”

It seems Google+ and Facebook have started some sort of “cold war”, with Google preventing a former employee (now with Facebook) to add more people to his circles, and Facebook blocking Google+ ads on its social network, while media and social media experts start showing their preference by publishing either too positive or too negative articles about G+.  Some independent forums also are not liking some form of censorship in G+.

Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas in "The War of the Roses" (1989)

While the new “War of the Roses” goes on, I was wondering how Google plus is affecting – or may be affecting- current and forthcoming marketing efforts.

While some sources say that a good number of companies are in line waiting to build their company pages on Google+, I was thinking of those whose marketing dollars have been invested in Facebook already:

- Is there any risk companies should evaluate when deciding about their social media marketing dollars?

- Are there countries where Facebook-based marketing campaigns could be at risk?

- are there countries whose Facebook campaigns are “safer” and not impacted by a migration of fans to G+?

In order to answer these questions, I started comparing some figures about Facebook users growth by Country, and compared the last two weeks of June (before G+ was launched) with the first two weeks of July (when G+ was launched).

Analysis by SocialNetConomy, 2011

Interesting enough, in the past two weeks, while Google got 10 million new registered users since its launch, Facebook’s new users grew less than the previous 2 weeks. As shown in the picture above (SocialNetConomy, 2011), out of the 213 Countries where Facebook is present, new users registrations declined by some 3.4 million during the past two weeks.

Which Countries got the biggest decline?

The figure below represents the top 20 countries in Facebook (those with the majority of users, regardless of the Internet penetration in that Country). Top 20 countries decline, in terms of new Facebook registrations as a total, is slightly over 2 million.

Analysis by SocialNetConomy, 2011

Some countries slowed down more than others – and there is some confirmation in the recently launchedunofficial Google+ statistics website.

Analysis by SocialNetConomy, 2011

Data show a vast majority of countries experienced a slowdown – between 0.2 % and 1.3% of their overall Facebook users base for the top 20 countries. The table shows the difference between the number of new users registered in the June 15-June 30 (2011) timeframe, minus the number of new Facebook users registered in the the past two weeks (July 1- 15, 2011, after G+ launched).

The table shows the top 10 “declining countries” (additional data are available on request).

Suggestions to marketers investing on Facebook:

We are still at the beginning of G+ vs Facebook, but surely something more to consider on the marketers’ plate is how to keep people engaged on the platform they invested on. This could also be a good reason for Facebook to get closer to those brands whose pages may be keeping their fans on Facebook and that may keep Facebook growing. It could be a win-win if thhey manage to get closer to each other and become more “social”.