Social Media Marketing Resources

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Mobile commerce has become widespread in the US: 80% of smartphone owners say they have used their devices to help make buying decisions in the past year and two-thirds have made a purchase with their phone, according to a study by LEK Consulting. Moreover, mobile shopping apps are giving on-the-go consumers new ways to compare prices across stores and channels—and the added impetus to seek out the best deals.

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Penetration levels of microblogging and social networking continue to grow worldwide, driven by increased adoption in emerging countries; but as the Web has evolved, Internet users have moved toward consuming and transmitting content rather than producing it themselves, according to Wave 5 of the GlobalWebIndex by Trendstream.

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Only 12% of adult smartphone owners in the US say they use their phones to check in with geosocial services such as Foursquare and Gowalla, whereas 55% use their smartphones to find location-based directions or recommendations, according to a new report by Pew Research. Nearly six in ten (59%) smartphone owners use their phones to access social networking sites, while 15% use their phone to access Twitter.

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Digital moms are less likely than other online women to use social networking sites on a regular basis, but moms who do are more likely to interact with brands and post opinions about products and services on social sites and forums, according to Forrester Research.

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Small and midsize companies (SMBs) continue to move marketing dollars to digital channels, according to BIA/Kelsey, which now forecasts digital spending among US SMBs to reach $16.6 billion annually by 2015—roughly 70% of total SMB marketing budgets.

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US advertisers are expected to spend nearly $77 billion on interactive marketing by 2016—as much as they now spend on TV—according to a new report by Forrester Research. By 2016, search, display, mobile, email, and social media together are expected to constitute 26% of all ad spending, up from 16% in 2011.

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One-quarter (25%) of online Americans strongly agree that a brand's presence on Facebook signals that it's interested in hearing what customers have to say, and another 51% somewhat agree with that statement, according to a survey from Polaris Marketing Research.

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As marketers gear up for the fourth quarter, the busiest time on their marketing calendars, nearly two-thirds (63.4%) say they are planning to increase focus on social media over the next 12 months, while nearly one-half plan to increase focus on email (45.5%) and content marketing (45.3%), according to a new survey from Bizo.

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Nearly three-quarters (74%) of surveyed marketers say they are actively monitoring social media via paid or free tools, but less than one-quarter (24%) among them say they are extremely satisfied with their social monitoring tools, according to a survey from Web Liquid.

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Since 2002, search and email have been the most popular online activities in the US and remain so today, according to a new report by Pew Research.

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Time Magazine, People, and Self earned the top three spots among a list of 87 prominent magazine brands for exceptional marketing performance across digital, social, and mobile channels, according to the newly launched L2 ThinkTank Digital IQ Index, which measures and ranks the digital competence of magazine brands.

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Only one month after its launch, the Google+ project has gained tremendous momentum and praise, and it's already forecast to become the second most popular social networking site in the US by mid-2012, according to a study by YouGov.

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LinkedIn continues to dominate the executive corner of the social media universe with a highly-engaged member base: 61% of registered LinkedIn users say LinkedIn is the social site they use most for professional networking, and 35% check the site daily, according to a survey from Lab42.

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Though word-of-mouth recommendations still have the greatest influence on purchasing decisions among small and medium-sized businesses, online forums and blogs play a huge role in the process, too—and a more influential one than advertisements or consultations with salespeople, according to a new survey from Ivy Worldwide.

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Brands that conduct Facebook marketing can gain huge benefits by targeting the friends of their Facebook fans, according to a new report by comScore and Facebook, which also found that Facebook users spend 27% of their time browsing homepage newsfeeds.

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Brands are using a new and expanding set of advertising tools to reach social consumers: 67% of surveyed brand managers say they conduct some type of social media advertising and another 18% plan to implement such activities in the next year, according to a new study by The Pivot Conference and Brian Solis.