Facebook statistics for retail brands: An infographic on customer engagement

Some of the most useful statistics regarding social media use and online consumer trends came from the Nielsen State of the Media: Social Media Report Q3 (2011). In America, more time is spent on Facebook than on any other website. Likewise, Hitwise found that for every one Facebook “like,” a consumer will visit a retailer’s website an average of 20 times throughout the year.

We gathered some of the most recent Facebook statistics from Nielsen, Buddy Media, Constant Contact and Hitwise related specifically to retail brands. Take a look at what we thought were the key findings from these studies in our Facebook Statistics for Retail Brands Infographic below:

The biggest surprise to us was the staggering 76% of consumers who say they’ve never “unliked” a brand. Your job? Figure out how to engage your audience and capture those Facebook brand page “likes” because once you do, it’s likely you’ll have a fan for life.

For those of you trying to figure out that sweet post spot, why not try your hand on Wednesdays? According to Buddy Media, Wednesday overthrew Sunday as the best time to post Facebook updates with engagement up 8% over other days of the week.

And pay attention to the reason you’re gaining Facebook “likes.” Constant Contact revealed that 58% of your Facebook fans are customers and another 57% are looking for discounts and promotions. So enough of the “for new customer only” gimmicks. Engage your current customers and give them what they ask for. Float a few weekly coupons their way and give them the heads up on service specials or deals.

What do you think about the stats above? Does any of this information come as a surprise to you? How will you utilize this information to increase your Facebook presence and engage your audience?

Thanks, Allée: I’m smarter now!

This past summer, I’ve been spending a lot of my evenings working as an Allée intern. If I wasn’t going to pick up new skills and learn things, well, I may as well have spent my summer on the History Center lawn or at the Science Museum. Looking back, I am pleased to say that I have learned a lot; it was well worth the time I spent and the socializing I gave up. And, what exactly didn’t I know three months ago that I do know now? A lot about social media, how to work with the print media and that Melissa Harrison is an incredible person.

Social media

Although I had a lot of personal experience with social media when I started this internship, I have learned a lot of things I didn’t even know that I didn’t know. Overall, I’m a better e-citizen.

• I’ve learned the importance of a social media strategy, how to create one, and how to track success.
• I’ve learned about a lot of social media platforms I was previously unaware existed and how they work. It gave me courage to jump in on Twitter.
• I’ve learned how to better engage people on my personal accounts as well as the Facebook and Twitter accounts for the St. Paul JCC where I do updates and tweets.
• I learned that friends do tell friends when they are bad at social media (in a nice way, of course).

Media relations

Working as an intern at Allée provided me with experience working directly with the media in a professional setting for the first time.

• I learned how to research media outlets.
• I learned how to decipher relevant contacts.
• I learned how to pitch a story and follow up on a pitch.
• I learned about editorial calendars.

Melissa is incredible

I always knew Melissa to be a woman of diverse talent and someone I enjoyed working with at the St. Paul JCC. After a while it ceased to surprise me that she was also good at, say, Bodypump while nine months pregnant. I’ve often felt that I should soak up as much information from her as possible, and working with her this summer gave me an opportunity. Melissa is professional, creative, organized and fearless. Watching her run a meeting was an exceptional learning experience in itself. Her ability to cover everything, stay on track and walk away with everyone feeling like something was accomplished was masterful. She is an exceptional role model. It has been a real pleasure working with her.

Is it bad that while I have been an Allée social media and community engagement intern actually meant that my personal Facebook interactions suffered? Absolutely not. With the skills I’ve picked up, I’m a much better member of the social media society, probably a better person. At the very least, I’m smarter now than I was three months ago. The more you learn, the more you realize the things you don’t yet know, luckily, I love to learn and look forward to taking what I’ve learned and using it to continue growing professionally.

Shannon Neeser is a summer 2011 intern at Allée. She has a fondness for punctuation: writes love poems to hyphens, mourns every serial comma she removes from AP style copy, and is disgusted that she missed celebrating National Punctuation Day this year. As her internship comes to an end, she looks forward to spending her free time crafting, winning arguments with logic, and writing book reviews of trashy pulp fiction from the early part of the last century.

6 lbs of influence: Measuring social media success

Social media takes time, and it can be fatiguing. How can you tell if the payoff is worth the investment? According to Peter Drucker “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” but how do you measure something as seemingly intangible as social media success?

Strategies:

Instead of always wondering if social media is or is not working, create a social media strategy with defined goals that you can track.

A social media strategy should outline your objectives for social media. It needs to include clear and measurable goals. If these goals are in place, you will be able to measure your success and see clearly if your strategy is working or needs to be revised. Some goals might initially seem immeasurable, but try to be specific about what you expect. If you want to improve customer service, make a goal to respond to comments generated in social media platforms in a given amount of time. Here are some other examples of measurable goals:

• Increase number of page views or website traffic.
• Increase number of donations generated or dollar amount.
• Increase sales for a specific product.

Tools:

Now that you have defined your goals, how do you measure them?

• Sign up for Google Alerts; it’s free, easy and fast. To sign up you simply indicate words or phrases that interest you, like your company name. When Google gets a match, it will send an email alert to let you know someone mentioned you in a blog, article, website post, etc. It is a good way to keep track of your company in the news and in social media. It allows you to keep a handle on what is being said about you, and once set up, it takes little effort to maintain; Google does all the web crawling.
• Use Google Analytics on your website. If you have Google Analytics set up on your website, you can track the number of visitors to the site, to specific pages, and even know how much time they have spent there. If one of your social media goals is to increase traffic to part of your website, Google Analytics is a great tool for checking success.
• Create a Klout account. Klout is a company that gives users scores based on how many people are in your social media networks, how influential those people are, how often your content solicits interaction. Using Klout can give you a snapshot of how many people you can potentially reach with social media and lets you know if the content you post is effective in engaging your audience.
• Use social media monitoring tools or inbound marketing tracking applications such as Radian6, Vocus or HubSpot to help understand your online influence, movements and presence.

Tips:

• If you use coupons, create coupon codes that are specific to social media campaigns. If you want to know if your social media campaigns are actually bringing in sales or registrants, create a code unique to the campaign and track to see how many people use it.
• Keep track of the time you spend on social media. Maybe set specific time aside each day or week to monitor and respond to any activity. You won’t be able to measure your return on investment unless you understand how much time you’re spending on social media.
• Keep a spreadsheet that you can refer to with all your goals and goal tracking listed so you can easily see any progress or trends. Success with social media will be the sum of many factors, so having them in one place will make it easier see how you’re doing.

Marketing pioneer, John Wanamaker, is credited with saying ”Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Had Wanamaker been using social media, his outlook would have been much more optimistic.

Shannon Neeser is a summer 2011 intern at Allée. She keeps busy with a full-time job, a part-time internship, and gallivanting all over the Midwest in search of weird food, historical reenactments, and roadside kitsch. In her free time, when it exists, she enjoys crafting, winning arguments with logic, and writing book reviews of trashy pulp fiction from the early part of the last century.

A List: Five reasons you need print communication (back to school edition)

It’s that time of year again when excited kids walking to bus stops and squealing school bus brakes wake me up much too early, often after a long night of reading McSweeney’s online. This feels like a great time to look back fondly on my school days and how back then, I could just blame missing assignments on the beloved family dog. And I wonder, in this electronic age, what excuse will kids make now? The dog can’t eat e-homework, and that’s not the only reason we still need print communication.

1. Science

When reading a computer screen, you use a certain percentage of concentration just so your eye can focus the image. If your content requires processing important information, print is better than digital because more of the brain can be used to process information and less to focus images. Another point on focus, when reading print material, readers are less likely to get distracted by a link, click, and be taken on a completely new reading adventure.

2. History

Newspapers and magazines are left on coffee tables for other readers to pick up later, or the same reader to see again. A newspaper might not last more than a day or two, but magazines can last for months or even years. With the history print media provides, readers can peruse at their own pace.

3. Study skills

Print resources are generally perceived as more credible than online sources. It takes more resources and time to produce print communication, and readers know an editor likely vetted the content. Print communication can end up on shelves in libraries or bookstores where people learn to seek out credible information. If you publish in a print publication that has been around for a long time, just being a part of that publication can add credibility to your message.

4. Geography

Print communication works well for targeting specific geographic areas. Do some research on zip codes, and drop your postcard in the mail. Like email, recipients must process everything coming into their mailboxes. So, if experience tells me anything, printed materials will lie on dining room tables or kitchen counters for weeks. I would not seek out the Como-Midway Monitor online, but I will read it before I recycle it when it shows up on my doorstep.

5. Physical education

Print communication is tangible and actively engages the reader. You hold it; you turn the pages. You can roll it up and tuck it under your arm. This closeness with the media creates a more personal connection to the content as well.

Reading online is defensive, a constant battle to filter out information you don’t want distracting you from your purpose. People read print in more relaxed environments when they are more open to the messages they receive. Print communication can be accessed at any time without any special tools or even electricity. It is easy to consume. Even in this electronic age, we need print communication. Passing notes is still, and always will be, a very effective means of getting in trouble in the classroom

Shannon Neeser is a summer 2011 intern at Allée. She writes love poems to hyphens and appreciates wordplay and math jokes. Often found with her nose figuratively and literally in a book, one of Shannon’s simplest pleasures is smelling an old novel.

Consumer tendencies of Generation Y

Social media and the digital world is inherently entwined in the lives of Generation Y. I can remember getting my first computer in the mid 1990s. A bulky desktop, hooked up to a million cables and wires. The possibilities, it seemed, were endless with this machine. Little did I know that this computer and what came to be in the years following, would come to define my generation. Can I imagine a world without my laptop or my smart phone? Not really. As a 22-year-old consumer, I can tell you that my attention can be short and my demands can be great. I live in a world where practically anything from social media to many of the products I purchase can be customized to fit my lifestyle.

Can you grab our attention?

Heavily immersed in the digital world, Generation Y has grown accustomed to extreme multi-tasking. With an iPod plugged in, we surf the Web, write and research papers, text friends, tweet and chat with friends via Facebook simultaneously. We are always connected. Gen Yers (or Millennials, as we are often called) are also willing and not afraid to challenge the status quo. We search out environments that inspire our creativity and independent thinking. Gen Y is tech-savvy and achievement-oriented. However, this drive to achieve doesn’t necessarily equal making a lot of money. This ambition comes in the form of seeking out new challenges and taking advantage of meaningful opportunities.

Like me, others in my demographic have used the digital world to grow, question, learn and express ourselves. Gen Y is different from generations that have come before, and this even includes our consumer tendencies. We are blind to the more traditional forms of advertising. TV commercials and magazine ads don’t really affect us. We pay little to no attention to them. So here’s a secret: in order to grab our attention, you have to fish where the fish are. And where are we? You guessed it! We’re online. Twitter, Facebook, blogs and our favorite websites are places we frequent at least once a day, either from a computer, a smart phone or an iPad. Gen Y seeks to spend their time in meaningful and useful ways and we search for brands and products that we feel have meaning and relevance to the way we live our lives. For many Gen Yers, that whole image thing is pretty important too. We become loyal to the brands that align with our lifestyle and the image we want to put forth.

We have power.

According to an article in USA Today, “Gen Y is the most influential generation for retailers because it is bigger than the Baby Boomers and its members have spending power and strong opinions at an earlier age.” As a Millennial, this spending power can come in the form of influencing the purchases of my Baby Boomer parents even though I no longer live under their roof. Parents of Gen Y trust their children’s consumer opinion.

It’s also interesting to note that this generation has a strong need for instant gratification. In some cases, this immediacy can be a bit extreme. For instance, these consumers will wait no longer than six long seconds for a page to download before they click away. The need for immediacy can be both a benefit and disadvantage for a brand. For example, the first day that the pumpkin spice flavor was back on Starbucks’ menu, I tweeted my excitement while standing in line for the first of many pumpkin spice lattes I would consume during the fall season. However, if I would have had a bad customer service experience while at Starbucks, I could have just as easily tweeted my dissatisfaction before even receiving my drink.

We’re smart and resourceful.

Gen Y uses the Internet for more than just response and reaction. We use the Internet as a resource. Even if we plan on purchasing a particular item in a store, Gen Yers have a high tendency to go online to research a product before setting foot in the store. We are smart consumers. Online research, online price comparison and social media marketing play a prominent role in our purchasing decisions.

Oh, and what about that Recession? Many Gen Yers can also be dubbed “Recessionistas.” We have learned to become informed shoppers who keep tight budgets, but are still able to stay trendy and cultured.

Wondering what changes Generation Z will bring to the digital and consumerist worlds? Only time will tell.

Jodi Osmond recently graduated summa cum laude from UW-Milwaukee with a Bachelor’s degree in journalism and media communication and certification in digital arts and culture. As a social media and community engagement intern at Allée, she is eager to continue growing professionally while embracing her passion for public relations and social media.

How much influence does the media have?

PR professionals use social media every day to promote clients, to communicate and engage with audiences and to respond to questions or issues. It’s no secret that Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites have become important tools in a PR pro’s comprehensive tool box. I like to call this new tool box, PR 2.0.

So what’s the difference between PR 1.0 and PR 2.0? PR 1.0 can be thought of as traditional PR using traditional media (TV, radio, print) to get the word out.

PR 1.0 (traditional)

• Focus on presentation and content dissemination
• Controlled messages
• Feedback is a linear process
• Eloquence is vital

PR 2.0 (social)

• Focus on conversation
• Dialogue
• Feedback is 24/7
• Truth and transparency

Social media is the use of technology combined with social interaction to create value and it has permanently transformed the way people connect and share information. Sharing is caring with social media. This many-to-many form of communication welcomes discussion and enhances conversation. It pushes for networking and builds a sense of community in a way that traditional media cannot. As a PR professional, this means that more and more people are participating in the media they consume. The primary audience in PR 2.0 is no longer a handful of journalists. Your audience is more directly the people you want to reach and create connections with.

Social PR is about having a presence online. Many times this includes Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, maybe even blogging and YouTube. But social PR can encompass much more. Think about what you see when you’re online. Have you Google searched your own brand or company? Search engine optimization can be considered another facet of social PR.

Social PR has also alerted the rules of pitching. A PR Newswire Study found that:

The prevalence of social and consumer-generated media has led to several changes in the way that PR practitioners view and engage the press. While PR professionals still consider email to be the most effective means for pitching journalists (74%), 43% of journalists report having being pitched through social networks compared to 31% in 2009. Higher success rates may be a reason behind the increase. In both the US and Canada, pitches through a social network resulted in coverage approximately 70% of the time. In contrast, the standard pitch to a US or Canadian journalist rarely leads to coverage, with 66% pegging the success rate at 0-20%.

Source: PR Newswire Study: Journalists Tap Social Media; More Bloggers Associate Work as Journalism; PR Practitioners Increasingly Leverage Online Opportunities. Qualifier: Results based on survey of a total of 1,568 traditional and non-traditional media and, for the first time, 1,670 PR practitioners in 2010.

These stats bring up many questions. Are these results surprising to you? How do you pitch your stories? What have you found successful in the past?

It can seem like the options for social PR are endless. However, it’s important to be careful of creating a lot of noise without receiving results. It’s all about engagement, so build a roadmap and decide what works best for your company.

And in the end, the one thing that seems to remain the same is that the most effective form of advertising is still word of mouth. People trust the people they know and are likely to take their friends’ recommendations to heart. Social PR helps create and drive conversation, so use it to build trust and loyalty with your audience. Engage with consumers to spark this word of mouth advertising.

Jodi Osmond recently graduated summa cum laude from UW-Milwaukee with a Bachelor’s degree in journalism and media communication and certification in digital arts and culture. As a social media and community engagement intern at Allée, she is eager to continue growing professionally while embracing her passion for public relations and social media.

A List: The others

The Others from Lost. Maybe not mainstream, but worth paying attention to; just like your social media tools. (Source: Lost Media)

Recently, I was reading about an organization gaining support using Twitter, Facebook “and other social media.” I’m sure you’ve noticed the array of icons at the bottom of articles and blogs suggesting the multiple ways you can share the content. Do you just skim over them? Are the others worth your time? Millions of users think so. If you’re just using Facebook and Twitter, you haven’t maximized your social media reach. Here is a snapshot of a few of the most commonly used social media platforms in 2011 in the “and other social media” category.

Ning:

Ning is a social site geared towards businesses and organizations that allows you to create unique networks for people with a specific interest or common goal. People have used Ning to help gain support for a cause, share information, raise funds, collaborate and more. This is not a free platform; prices start at $20 per year.

A few features:

Pick your own features
Create discussion forums
Build your own member profile questions
Freedom to create unique visual style

What I like: Each Ning feels like its own website.

Meetup:

Meetup allows groups and individuals to post events for people with specific interests in specific geographic areas. As an event organizer, there is a small fee which runs at about $19 per month; there is no cost to searching for events.

A few features:

Shows event trends in specific areas
Keeps track of attendees
Allows users to offer member perks
Shares events on Twitter and Facebook for more event visibility
Allows for review of events

What I like: Meetup is very easy to use.

Bebo:

Bebo is a platform similar to Facebook that allows users to create profiles to share content, especially videos, music and blogs. You can use it like you use Facebook. It is very popular in the UK and is gaining popularity in the US.

A few features:

Easy to share videos and music
Blogging tools
Open media platform allows businesses to easily distribute content
Create your own quizzes to gather feedback
Widgets, or tools, available to customize pages

What I like: It’s an excellent way to share digital content.

By now, you might be thinking, how would I possibly keep up with all those platforms; I hardly have time for Facebook? This is where a social media dashboard comes in. This is a place you can monitor many of your social media platforms in one place. Hootsuite does this, as does Postling, but like social media platforms, there are many different ones to choose from.

Using multiple social media networks will give you the potential to reach a much wider audience. Find platforms that work for you based on what is important to your business and the type of content you are creating. Are you using something I didn’t mention? I’d love to hear about it.

Shannon Neeser is a summer 2011 intern at Allée. She writes love poems to hyphens and appreciates wordplay and math jokes. Although her dream of becoming a quantum physicist has long been laid to rest, she still enjoys a good joke about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Tired yet? The challenges of social media fatigue

Are you getting tired? Tired of managing what seems like hundreds of different social media sites. Running out of motivation to engage and interact online on a daily basis? Has tweeting now become more work than fun? Is updating your Facebook status a chore? When’s the last time you logged in to LinkedIn or checked in via Foursquare? Was your initial reaction to Google+ something like “Wait, another one?”

You’re not alone

These feelings are very normal. In fact, there’s a name for it. Social networking fatigue is what you’re experiencing. This is the very common feeling of being overwhelmed by the vast number of social media sites out there today and the notion that we must consistently update and interact with each one on a daily basis.

Ever at a loss of what to share on social networking sites? You feel this fatigue when you become tired of having to think up even more content for yet another social media platform. Maybe the fatigue comes from the sense that you’re doing all this work, but not seeing any real results or not receiving the interaction you’re looking for.

Studies actually back the concept of social media fatigue. Gartner research has found that users who were among the first and early adopters of the social media have started to experience fatigue and are therefore visiting the social networking sites less often.

Is it relevant?

These social networking sites give us the opportunity to share something interesting and meaningful, but staying active on these sites is difficult. Look back on your recent tweets, Facebook status updates, blog posts. Do you find this material interesting and relevant? If you don’t, chances are others won’t either. If you find yourself posting just for the sake of posting, you may be experiencing this fatigue.

Combat the fatigue

Find ways to integrate all of your social media platforms on to one tool. Using Hootsuite is one way to do this. And, even if you were like me and initially neutral about its launch, Google+ could potentially make communicating online even easier. In fact, Google doesn’t call this a social networking site and instead is trying to dub Google+ a “social sharing” site. Google+ combines multiple features such as email and chat services, news feed and social networking (which includes video conferencing) so that things are all in one place. This consolidation may be able to help combat social networking fatigue.

It’s also important to keep track of where your time is being spent. Setting up a routine is something that may not sound like fun, but could be a way to fight fatigue. Set appointments with your social networking sites. Set aside two hours (or however long) in the morning for blogging, scheduling tweets and updating LinkedIn/Facebook/Google+. Later, pick a part of the day where you can cut loose and catch up on things. Pop into each network for five to 10 minutes to survey activity and reply to what you need to. If nothing needs your attention, don’t waste your time. Shut it down and move on to the next one. Getting into the habit of tracking your time on social media sites takes persistence before you see results.

Overcome the overload

Whether it’s because of overload or boredom, let’s face it: It’s sometimes challenging to create, respond to and track content over multiple social media platforms. Social media is, of course a powerful communication tool for personal and business reasons, but it is not something that has to control your every action and thought. Push yourself to be relevant on these sites and try to remind yourself why these tools were initially fun and exciting.

I think I’ll combat my fatigue by taking a nap!

Jodi Osmond recently graduated summa cum laude from UW-Milwaukee with a Bachelor’s degree in journalism and media communication and certification in digital arts and culture. As a social media and community engagement intern at Allée, she is eager to continue growing professionally while embracing her passion for public relations and social media.