July 2009
Social Media Moms: Is your mom online?
Submitted by Alex Alexeeva on Mon, 07/06/2009 - 12:54
Here is a paradox: my mom doesn’t know how to send a text message from her cell phone, but she is all over the internet – forums are her second home.
Moms’ social media revolution has come and gone: US moms have conquered the web and established themselves across all online fronts: blogs, message boards, groups, social networking sites – you name it. Moms have become one of the Internet’s most influential groups and desirable targets for social media marketers.
eMarketer.com estimates 34 million mothers in the US go online at least once a month – an astonishing number, especially if you compare it to the total number of internet users in Great Britain, for example, which is just 43 million!
Moms have always relied on viral word of mouth – now they just moved it online. According to a research study conducted by MomCentral.com, 94% of moms rely on recommendations from other moms when it comes to purchasing decisions.
Thanks to Mom Central, now we also know where to find moms online:
- 60% are active on Facebook
- 40% of moms are active on MySpace
- 39% are active on Yahoo! Groups
- 37% use YouTube
- 25% have their own blog
- 20% use Twitter
- 14% use Flickr
For moms who use Twitter specifically, the numbers are even higher:
- 65% actively use Facebook
- 54% blog themselves, and 99% regularly read blogs
- 48% consider themselves early tech adopters
Staying in touch with social media moms is particularly pertinent for our clients on the consumer products side. And here comes another paradox: these days, you can sometimes ignore your own mom terrorizing your cell five times a day, but you can’t afford ignoring the booming mom community online.
Check out this post on Mashable for some really useful tips on “HOW TO: Attract and Engage Social Media Moms.”
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING FORECAST: Partly Cloudy With a Chance of Astonishing Budget Growth
Submitted by Alex Alexeeva on Wed, 07/15/2009 - 10:46
We all know that social media marketing is on the rise, but by how much exactly?
Last week, Forrester Research released their Interactive Marketing Forecast for the next five years that estimated social media marketing to grow at an astonishing annual rate of 34 percent – faster than any other form of online marketing – to hit 3.1 billion by 2014.
Of course, social media is still an infant – compared to other segments of online marketing, like display advertising and search marketing — but an infant that’s growing really fast. In just five years, this kid will be making more money than both email and mobile marketing. Quite a promising forecast, isn’t it? Can we get a portable time machine already (say, in the form of another iPhone application and fast-forward to 2014?!
However, it looks like 2009 is not a bad year either, despite the mostly cloudy economic climate. The experimental phase of social media marketing is coming to an end. eMarketer.com called 2009 “the year of building social media strategy.” Indeed, it seems like everybody is finally realizing the importance of social media, and companies all over the world are busy developing best practices and implementing first social media strategies.
Still very young and under-developed, social media is like a kid who is only getting ready to start school this fall. And gosh, aren’t we anxious for this kid to study well, grow up strong and healthy, and start making a lot of money – as soon as possible?
Our Daily Dose of Reading: 5 Blogs We Love
Submitted by Alex Alexeeva on Tue, 07/21/2009 - 13:11Working on the Consumer Engagement Marketing team, we don’t have textbooks to help us out when we have a question. Blogs on social media trends are our Textbooks 2.0, and we thought it’s about time we share our appreciation for all the great tips and thoughtful guidance we got from our favorite bloggers.
MASHABLE—We LOVE Mashable and follow their updates almost religiously. Their blogs are the words we live by. One of the largest blogs on the Internet, it’s also one of the “funnest”—at least for us, semi-geeky girls on the digital division. Thanks to Mashable, I can find my way in the ever-changing universe of Social Web 2.0 (or, better to say, I don’t feel completely lost anymore.) Plus, I know all about upcoming iPhone applications and can shamelessly show off my erudition in front of my boyfriend’s pals. What I love the most about Mashable is reading user comments on the posts: witty one-liners or three-paragraph-long “reviews. The responses help us look at the news and trends from different perspectives.
TECHCRUNCH—Here at BBC, we live in a very feminine environment (just two guys to our more than a dozen girls) and work with mostly female-oriented products. But we also read TechCrunch — and truly enjoy it. After all, every girl needs a break from all that tabloid craziness once in a while.
CISION BLOG—Coming from a traditional PR background and working as “digital communicators,” we have to be adapting to the changing media landscape every day. Luckily, there’s the Cision Blog – a great resource for news and trends from the worlds of PR and digital. They cover all we need to know about the present state of the PR industry, evolution of social media, and provide useful tips on media analysis, monitoring, and research.
ROTOR BLOG—Rotor Blog is a great destination for news on social networking and online communications. The blogger, Maris Dagis, is the 25-year-old CEO of an IT company and blogs from Latvia. The content is always fresh and interesting; all the posts are super-easy to comprehend, and there is something appealing for everyone, from online fashion and style news (check out his blog post on StyleCaster) to finding the perfect personal trainer online.
NETWITSTHINKTANK.COM—This blog publishes great information on social media for non-profits, how to fundraise via Twitter, how to recruit volunteers on Facebook, how to leverage web technology for charities. Net-Wits-Think-Tank has it all. It is also a great place to read about the growing role and power of social media in online marketing. Our pro-bono client charity:water is often mentioned in this blog because of its success at maximizing the potential of various social media tools. For instance, all the funds charity:water raised via Twestival back in February 2009 and all the donations it received via YouTube’s Call To Action tool were among the success stories, described on the blog.
Mommy Blogger PR Blackout
Submitted by Kelly Lynch on Wed, 07/22/2009 - 15:58
Publicists in the inner media/marketing circles have been a-buzz this week with news of a formal statement from a mommy blog network—Momdot—challenging their network to blackout out all publicists, pitches, press releases, review requests, etc for one week in August to re-focus on their core passion—family.
As a long-time publicist and Internet marketer, my initial gut reaction was not a good one… “Are they kidding, who do they think they are?” “Don’t bite the mouth that feeds you, it will burn you later.” “See how much content you have without media experts sharing news with you on a daily basis,” and the likes. After the initial sting, I took a step back and read deeper and understood the plan is more about allowing time for each blogger to get back to their roots—sharing insights on family life—and less about being upset with PR and publicity as a practice. I myself am a mom, so I understand figuring out the balance of career and family.
So now I actually support the opportunity for our favorite mommy bloggers to take a break to look inward, to make sure they are using their popular platforms to communicate their real perspective. But I do throw out a word of caution: A good publicist only makes a blogger (or any media outlet for that matter) look better by giving them relevant, fresh and interesting stuff to talk about.
Source: momdot.com, happi.com