Social Media Marketing and Branding

One thing that makes social media marketing powerful is consumers’ trust in “people like them”—their friends, family and other online peers.

Marketers want to tap into that trust through the power of earned media or by engaging in a conversation with consumers, but where social conversations take place has an effect on their perceived trustworthiness as well as who is taking part in them.

A study of frequent social media users by market research firm Invoke Solutions found that the most trusted information was posted by people respondents knew. But blog posts were more likely to be trusted “completely” than posts on Facebook, and trust dropped off sharply when it came to Twitter, even among friends.

Continue reading "Study Reveals: Venues and Relationships Affect How Social Media Users Perceive Advice" »

About a year ago, Starbucks overtook Coca-Cola as the most popular corporate brand on Facebook, with its page drawing 3.7 million fans. Now the coffee brewery has become the first brand to hit the 10 million-fan mark on Facebook.

Image via Wikipedia

The nearest rivals, Coke and Skittles, are both trailing behind at about 6.5 million fans.

To put Starbucks’ success in perspective, the company is quite close to catching up to pop icon

Lady Gaga in Facebook fans, who has about 10.4 million fans, according to data compiled by the Inside Facebook blog. Only other celebrities like Michael Jackson and Vin Diesel, some games (“Texas Hold’em Poker,” “Mafia Wars”), “Family Guy,” Facebook, and the President of the United States, stand ahead of Starbucks in the number of Facebook fans.

Continue reading "Starbucks Cleared 10 Million-Fan Mark on Facebook" »

MyYearbook and Ketchum published recently the results of  a survey on teen social media users.

Image via CrunchBase

It showed that Online Influencers are more likely than the average teen to participate in social media activities by updating their status at least once per day. But the study also shows, that they are sending 3,000 texts per month and spending more time socializing and influencing their peers offline. Social media teen influencers are defined as the top 15% most active and most engaged teens in the myYearbook community. Continue reading "Most Influential Teens Socialize Offline More Than Average" »