The Anatomy Of An Agency (Infographic)

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Facebook more popular than TV during work hours

Baby boomers are using the social networking site, but still prefer TV

People use socal networking site Facebook more than TV during work hours, a new study by Frank N. Magid Associates Generational Strategies revealed.


The study surveyed consumers of various ages about how they spend their media time throughout the day. Between 9am and 5pm, more consumers surveyed reported using Facebook than watching TV. This was true for each age group broken out from ages 15 to 46, eMarketer said.


Among the youngest consumer group, 8- to 14-year-olds, 16% logged on to Facebook during those hours, the same percentage who said they tuned in to TV.
However, baby boomers were the exception. Those surveyed preferred TV over Facebook at all hours. But 26% of those surveyed used the social network between 9am and 5pm as well, said eMarketer.


Millennials were the most stalwart Facebook users during the work day. Thirty percent of teen millennials (ages 15 to 17) spent time on the social network, compared to 24% who spent time with TV.


Among adult millennials, 44% said they went on Facebook (presumably while at work or school) during the 9am to 5pm period, while 28% watched TV.
Evening hours, including primetime, remain the best time for TV ads as audiences of all ages begin to lose interest in Facebook and pay more attention to television, said eMarketer.



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Facebook Credits could become 'web currency'

Facebook has begun working with web companies to allow them to use Facebook Credits to buy items and play games outside of the social network.

The scheme, which was announced through the official blog, could eventually see Facebook Credits become a universal web currency that can be used to replace conventional forms of online payment.

The social networking giant is testing the scheme with with social games company GameHouse.

Unified app experience

GameHouse will use Facebook credits to allow members to play games likeCollapse! Blast and Uno on its own network as well as on Facebook.com, to offer a 'unified app experience'.

The blog post says: "We have begun working with a few developers to test the ability to offer Facebook Credits on websites, with the goal of helping them offer a more unified app experience to users beyond apps on Facebook. One early example is Collapse! Blast on Gamehouse.com.

"At this time, we are focused on gathering early developer feedback. We will keep you posted as our tests continue. If you are interested in Facebook Credits for websites should we broaden the test, please sign up here."

Facebook will get 30 per cent of the proceeds according to the AllThingsD blog.

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Channel 4 Innovate With....Closets

UK TV broadcaster Channel 4 has launched Closet Swap, a free online fashion community and accompanying mobile app which allows teens to share clothes with friends on Facebook, says Mark Terry. The target demographic – 14-to-19 year-olds – will also be able to find vintage and charity shops.

“Sign in with your Facebook ID to create your own virtual closet,” says C4. “Upload some pictures of clothes you own and get your friends to do the same. Then you can start borrowing and lending items.”

Users will learn how clothes are made, about sustainable designers, and about the impact of buying vintage, designer or from the High Street. The project is from Channel 4 Education which is highlighting the arguments surrounding sustainable and ethical fashion.

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Freeview Launches Social TV App

Freeview has launched a TV-guide app that uses social media to personalise programme recommendations.

The guide, developed by digital agency Grand Union and TV Genius, aims to help people discover new shows and content on TV based on what their peers and friends are watching or talking about.

The app is available on iPhone, Android and iPad, and includes features such as Top Picks, Recommendations and Favourites.

The app also has a deep integration of social media, with the Freeview tweets being scrolled across it, giving suggestions for what to watch, as well as providing a list of the shows generating the most buzz on social media.

Adrian Mack, new media manager at Freeview, said, “How people are consuming content continues to evolve at a rapid rate, so it made sense for us to look at a new version that keeps up with the more social consumption of TV.”

Tom Weiss, general manager of TV Genius at Red Bee Media, said, “Social platforms such as Twitter are enabling the real-time sharing of opinions and recommendations around TV shows. These act as a call to action to switch to that particular programme and become part of the discussion.”

The news comes as Diffusion PR released research on TV-viewing behaviours, revealing that 76% of viewers surf the internet while watching TV.

It also found that 49% of 18-24-year-olds comment on Facebook when watching TV, 42% text friends and family about the TV show, 18% instant message and 12% use Twitter.

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Brands With Social Stock

There’s a statistically significant correlation between the social media popularity of key brands and their respective share prices, according to a new study conducted by a researcher at Pace University in association with Famecount.com, writes Mark Terry.

In addition, the correlation remained when 10-, and a 30-day lags were introduced, suggesting that social media popularity may be a lead indicator of stock price performance.

The study analysed data over a 10-month period from April 2010 to February 2011, focussing on three of the most popular brands on social networks – Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Nike – and looking at the daily movements in popularity for each company’s major social network accounts at three of the most popular services: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

“By using social network popularity data on three major consumer brands, we were able to reliably predict their respective daily stock prices over a 10 month period – during which the stocks of the companies experienced radically different returns, with Starbucks climbing 29%, Nike appreciating by 14%, and yet Coke declining by nearly 6% – even when the social media data was lagged by as much as 30 days,” says Arthur O’Connor, author of the study.

And, if the correlation holds, the stocks to watch include Walmart, Viacom and Sony, each of which have seen major recent growth in key social media profiles.

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91% of Recruiters Use Social Media To Screen Applicants

Social media monitoring service Reppler has found that 91% of employers use social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to screen job applicants – with 69% rejecting a candidate based on something they saw.

The study was conducted with Lab42 using a random sample of 300 individuals involved in the hiring process of a company.

It found that 47% of employers check social networking sites to screen prospective employees immediately after receiving their job application, with 76% checking Facebook, 53% checking Twitter and 48% checking LinkedIn.

Of the 69% who rejected a candidate because of something they saw on social media websites, in 13% of cases it was because they lied about their qualifications, with posted inappropriate comments; inappropriate photos; posting negative comments about a previous employer; and demonstrating poor communication skills all coming next at 11%.

However, it was found that 68% had employed someone because of what saw seen about them on a social networking site, with giving a positive impression on their personality and organisational fit coming top at 39%.

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Beyond the Arc releases social media mining tool

Beyond the Arc, Inc., a customer experience consulting firm that helps financial services companies use social media to meet concrete business objectives, launched a new Social Customer Insights service today at the American Bankers Association's Annual Convention.


This new service, available to banks, credit unions, insurance companies and credit card issuers, combines social media data mining, strategic marketing and Voice of the Customer strategy.

Social Customer Insights helps financial institutions accelerate the return on investment on social media by helping them to reach well-defined business objectives, including:

* acquiring new customers, measured by new customer growth;
* increasing customer engagement, measured by increased transactions and share of wallet; and
* building loyalty, measured by a reduction in customer complaints.

"If the average Facebook user has more than 130 friends and the average Twitter user has approximately 30 followers, then each customer active on social media can have a measurable impact on your business," notes Steven J. Ramirez, CEO of Beyond the Arc. "Our Social Customer Insights service helps companies to amplify the value of brand awareness and a positive customer experience."

Beyond the Arc collects millions of social media posts from a variety of social media platforms, applies their proprietary Social Analytics Development Kit and data mining algorithms and creates a highly refined social data set for financial services. They exclude irrelevant noise, including spam posts, which make most social media analytics time consuming and unproductive.

Beyond the Arc data analysts and strategy consultants collaborate to create customer insights that are actionable and tied to metrics. This new service will be used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of social media promotions, which make such promotions more effective. Beyond the Arc will also deliver competitive benchmarking studies in social media that help companies to measure brand awareness and share of voice. For example, social media benchmarking can be used to evaluate the value of event sponsorships and naming rights.

"The next step in the evolution of social media is using advanced analytics, particuarticularly text mining, to understand which social media programs are most effective," said Ramirez.


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As 4 more social media magazines arrive in print format, we ask…why?

With magazines and newspapers steadily gravitating towards the app world, and eBooks growing in popularity every day, you could be forgiven for thinking that print is on the way out. But four new monthly magazines dedicated to Twitter, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn would suggest otherwise.

Published by GSG World Media, Tweeting & Business, fb & Business, The Big G & Business andLI & Business are aimed at helping business owners harness the power of the social sphere, and the publications – released last Monday – have some pretty prominent and well regardedpeople at the helm. One of the founders is Eric Yaverbaum, who wrote Public Relations For Dummies, which is required reading in marketing classes at 57 universities in the United States, and he appears regularly on Fox News, CBS This Morning, The Today Show and CNN. Whilst Jeffrey W. Hayzlett, the former CMO for Kodak, is the editor of the new Twitter magazine.

So have these magazines deliberately shunned the digital world for print? Well, no. They are all available for free via a digital subscription too. But they are also available to buy for $7.95 each from Office Depot stores in the US, as the New York Times reports.

At almost 8 dollars per magazine, it’s not entirely clear how many they hope to sell, especially when readers can just as easily access all the content for free, but the initial print run will amount to 250,000 copies. Yaverbaum said:

“Small-business owners and entrepreneurs are all trying to figure social media out. Print magazines help make the information accessible to them. There will be great success stories and useful information.”

What this fails to address is that many small businesses are facing tough financial times, and smartphones and tablets are booming, with many preferring to access content in digital formats. So can print magazines – on topics relating to the digital realm – still flourish? With so many digital social media advice columns, articles and blogs available online for free, I’d say there is a limited shelf life for such endeavors.

The Social Media Monthly

Back in August, the Cool Blue Company also launched a social media print magazine called The Social MediaMonthly, which it called at the time “the World’s First Printed Social Media Magazine”. So are we starting to see a buck in the trend of magazines shifting over to the digital realm? Or are these short-lived fads?

To use The Social Media Monthly as an example, it has a $34.99 annual subscription fee in the US for the print edition, or $29.99 for the iPad edition, so it doesn’t replicate its content for free in digital. If the quality is good enough, and enough fresh content and features are brought to the table, it could perhaps build a solid core of readers.

With the four new publications from GSG World Media, there’s no real incentive to buy hard copies. Plus, they’ve chosen to separate their social media publications by channel, rather than encompassing them all into one magazine as The Social Media Monthly has done. Do businesses really just want to focus on one social channel? If not, they’re faced with forking out $32 a month to learn about things they can also choose to read for free.

There’s little question there is still demand for print – people still like to leaf their way through magazines and books. But with so much content available in digital format for nothing, it’s difficult to see how these latest social media mags can seriously hope to cash in through their print editions.

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TBG launches social media page management tool

TBG Digital, the digital technology agency, has launched a brand page manager tool to give agencies and brands real-time control over their pages on Facebook.

Simon Mansell: chief executive of TBG Digital

Building on the agency’s Facebook API service One Media Manager, its One Page Manager platform allows clients to manage multiple social media platforms from one dashboard, tracking the performance of conversations and making real-time amendments.

The tool also allows users to create template brand pages that can be adapted to suit different regions and audiences, and has a function for moderating brand pages to detect negative posts.

Sainsbury's, Peugeot, John Lewis and Energizer have been trialling the tool.

Energizer used the tool for its recent 'Heroes Rugby' campaign and' according to TBG Digital' in the first six days it delivered a cost-per-fan reduction of 8% through the display of 10.3 million impressions, which generated more than 6,400 clicks and resulted in the acquisition of nearly 4,000 fans.

Simon Mansell, chief executive of TBG Digital, said: "The level of real-time control that One Page Manager offers to our clients is essential in the fast-moving world of Facebook and we are confident that it can play a meaningful role in the development of their Facebook engagement campaigns."

TBG Digital was one of the first three companies to work with Facebook to become an approved API vendor in 2009, with the One Media Manager platform, an automated program for social media advertising.

According to recent research from TBG Digital, click-through rates for Facebook ads in the UK and other markets increased by 18.5% between the second and third quarters of 2011.

Follow Sarah Shearman on Twitter @shearmans

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Social media influence requires sustained effort (No S*IT!)

About the author:

Want to be influential on Twitter? You'll have to work hard at it. Sustained personal engagement on Twitter is the most pivotal driver of influence on the microblogging site, say researchers at the Max Planck Institute.

Researchers at the institute analysed 1.7 billion tweets from 54 million Twitter users and discovered that true influence is determined by personal effort and active engagement with followers. The researchers also stated that sustained and relevant engagement was a more important driver of influence than simply having a large following.

They looked at different measures of influence, which they identified as: indegree (the number of people who follow each user), retweets and mentions. The researchers then looked at how effective influential users were in spreading popular news topics.

The study's authors claim the findings have repercussions for viral marketing as the number of followers alone reveal little about the influence of a given user.

'We found that influence is not gained spontaneously or accidentally, but through concerted effort. In order to gain and maintain influence, users need to keep great personal involvement,' the report's authors said.

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How a Journalist Uses Social Media

I spoke to Anthony DeRosa, who is the Reuters Social Media Editor. As part of his mission, he helps Reuters journalists and editors use social media tools to monitor news, report news, and find leads. Anthony has contributed his writing to Reuters, Gawker, Mediaite, BrandChannel and IFC. Anthony is currently the editor in chief of the SB Nation Tumblr. SB Nation is the largest and fastest-growing network of fan-centric online sports communities, founded by Jerome Armstrong. In this interview, Anthony talks about how social media has impacted his life, how it’s created new jobs, which social networks he’s paying attention to, and more.

How has social media impacted your life personally and professionally?

Personally, it has allowed me to connect with people I normally may have never had the chance to. It’s allowed me to be a better global citizen, stay informed about what it is like to live in countries all over the world. Professionally, it has led me to the job I have today, as Social Media Editor at Reuters. I have that job because of the ways I have used social media to engage and inform.

Do you feel that social media has created new jobs for the economy or not? Explain.

Yes, there is a big need for companies to understand how to use social media in a smart way. Most don’t really understand the proper use of the medium and are looking for folks to help them teach people across the company how. I don’t think a single person or even a team of people can be specifically focused on social, it’s more about that person trying to train the company as a whole how to use it individually and integrate it into each person’s role within the company.

Which social networks are you paying the most attention to now?

Twitter has been the one I pay attention to most since the green revolution in Iran, that opened my eyes to Twitter as the new go-to news wire. You still need to apply journalistic skills to make sure you’re properly vetting the information you get via Twitter but certain people over time become trusted sources. I’ve used Tumblr as my main platform for blogging since 2007, before that it was WordPress. I’m increasing my use of Facebook because it’s simply the biggest audience out there, with close to one billion users, it cannot be ignored.

How do you think the way we engage on social networks changed over the past five years? Has it?

I think it is more mainstream, my aunts, uncles, and parents and friend’s grandparents are on it. It isn’t this strange, tech-crowd, geeky thing it once was. It is now full integrated into all of our lives, that was not the case five years ago. We see it as a natural way to connect with each other, the way the telephone once was.

In what ways do you manage your own presence daily?

I spend all day at work on social networks as it is part of my job to monitor news that breaks there. I use Twitter Lists to focus on specific topics. I use Storyful to verify information that’s trending, along with vetting photos and video. I’m jumping between Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr to post updates, along with, if there’s a live blog we’re covering a big story with, ScribbleLive. All these tools help me manage what I publish. Tweetdeck is invaluable, I have yet to find a better dashboard.

Dan Schawbel, recognized as a “personal branding guru” by The New York Times, is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, LLC, a full-servicepersonal branding agency. Dan is the author of Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future, the founder of the Personal Branding Blog, and publisher ofPersonal Branding Magazine. He has worked with companies such as Google, Time Warner, Symantec, IBM, EMC, and CitiGroup.

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A Brands Guide To Sociability (Infographic)

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Nokia’s new vision for monetising social media

Nokia gave an intriguing presentation on how they are restructuring to put social media at the heart of their business as well as their marketing. Key to this is moving from a successful fan acquisition strategy (4m fans) to use social media for commerce activation across local markets. Hear how Nokia are using EngageSciences as the Social Media Engagement Platform, to power a major part of this global brands social business future.

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Debt Collectors Warned About Using Social

Debt collection regulations are changing as firms have been warned not to target people using social networking websites.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has revised the Debt Collection Guidance report so that debt collectors cannot use social networking websites to recover outstanding payments.

The OFT cautioned the industry, saying that firms should not contact people at inappropriate times and locations such as a hospital.

David Fisher, the OFT's Director of Consumer Credit, said; “In the present economic climate, with many people, including those who may be particularly vulnerable, in financial difficulties, it is crucial they are treated fairly by companies recovering their debts.

“This updated guidance makes clear the standards the OFT expects of all businesses involved in debt recovery, including debt collectors, banks and law firms.”

The report is aimed at all businesses engaged in recovering debt, from banks to law firms. It also aims to provide greater clarity for consumers who may be targeted and treated unfairly.

During these tough economic times, many risk falling into debt. Money management is a sensitive issue for many and the OFT believes it is unfair for firms to post messages on social networking websites where friends, family and work colleagues can see.

If the regulator finds that a firm is doing this and breaking the rules, it could fine them or strip them of their consumer credit licence. This is the first time the guidelines have been adjusted to raise the standard of service for consumers since 2006.

Debt recovery firms can use aggressive and intimidating methods to collect outstanding payments, which could be upsetting for individuals. If you have debt problems, a debt management solution tailored to your individual needs could be ideal.

Compare debt management solutions with Money Expert.

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