With so many concerns about the current economic climate, allocating resources and planning a budget have become increasingly important. Although many businesses are facing financial hardship, nearly half of marketers in the B2B space have decided to increase their budgets for 2013. Specifically, 67.2% of marketers plan to increase their digital marketing spending, and 52.5% of content marketers will up their search marketing budgets.

This infographic, compiled by Ambassador, a service that helps turn your customers into brand ambassadors, illustrates where B2B marketers plan to increase their spending in 2013.

Check out the full infographic below, and tell us in the comments where your business will stretch the cash this year.


Image via istockphoto, RapidEye

























View the Original article

Mistakes are a good thing if you learn from them and they don’t kill you.



Well, that is the common wisdom.

The reality is that mistakes can cost you your job, your relationship and significant dollops of money.

All of these are painful.

Social media provides a public platform that make stuff ups visible at velocity. Humiliation on a global scale is the downside of the social web.

Tweet some stupidity and you have the potential for a viral campaign of the very wrong kind that provides a new category of embarrassment.

Embarrassment at speed.

Public relations agencies have made a lot of money from advising companies on how to be ready or recover from a social media disaster.

So not engaging your brain before you post to Facebook or tweet on Twitter is a mistake that should be avoided at all costs when participating on social media networks.

So what should you do?

There are are some basic principles to keep in mind when you next punch out 140 characters to 200 million people.

• Think before tweeting
• Summon your commonsense
• Don’t drink and tweet
• Don’t tweet when angry
• Implement social media policies or guidelines

There maybe more but these will enable Twitter harm minimization that will help you retain your job, your business and your sanity.

What shouldn’t you do?

Here are 14 Twitter mistakes to be avoided to ensure that the boss values you on Monday morning, your wife still loves you on Friday evening and your career path is not hijacked by an insane moment.


Infographic source: Boot Camp Digital 











































View the Original article

From hactivism to the flipped classroom, the Internet has sparked an online revolution with digital tools.

Classified documents on Wikileaks helped spark the Arab Spring, and protestors organized through Facebook. Daily tweets about the Egyptian revolution increased 100% after the overthrow of the country, showcasing the power of trending.

Not only has the World Wide Web assisted in shaping our political persuasions, but also our personal interests. While there are 139,500 professional photographers in the U.S., Instagram rekindled the snap-happy side of everyone, with 90 million active users each month on the social platform.

As the number of Internet users grow, the world changes, as suggested by this infographic from NowSourcing. There were more than 2 billion web users in 2012, which is a 566.4% increase from the year 2000 (we've come a long way from Y2K).

Check out the infographic for more stats about how the Internet has made an impact.



Image via iStockphoto, franckreporter. Infographic courtesy of Best Communication Degrees
































View the Original article

With the Oscars 2013 broadcast less than a day away, everyone's wondering who will win. Social media has an answer, and we've compiled the data into the infographic, below.

The Meltwater Group has been tracking social media for the past month, gathering information about the Oscar nominees from Twitter, Facebook, blogs, comments and YouTube videos. Researchers delivered data on the Oscars' top six categories.

While the actual names of the Oscar winners are safely sealed inside envelopes to be opened on Sunday night, the popularity contest that is social media offers hints at what might transpire.

During the collection of this social-media data, there's been one especially tight race: Best Picture. Until our last roundup of data gathered late Friday afternoon, the movie Lincoln held the top spot for Best Picture. However, Argo is now more popular among our respondents in the world of social media.

How accurate is this data? One indication is to see how Meltwater's picks did the last time we worked with the company, back in 2011. When it retrieved information about the three main categories — Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Actress — Meltwater's social-media sample predicted two of the three winners.

As a result, our infographic showed The King's Speech as winner of Best Picture (correct), James Franco as Best Actor (incorrect) for 127 Hours and Natalie Portman as Best Actress (correct) for Black Swan.

Armed with this 66% success rate, perhaps your Oscars office pool might be a little more accurate than it would have been.

So how about you, readers? Do you have any predictions for Oscars 2013? Allow me to be first: I've seen all nine Best Picture nominees, and I liked Lincoln the best — but think the crowd-pleasing Argo will win.


Thumbnail image courtesy of Flickr, Dave B.





































View the Original article

Advertising has  evolved rapidly over the last century.


Before the advent of radio and television all you had was the printed advertisement. Ads appeared in newspapers and magazines.

Direct mail emerged and many companies leveraged their brand with brochures and leaflets dropped straight into the letterboxes of houses across cities and suburbs.

The madmen of Madison avenue became more creative when television allowed them to beam ideas and images into mullions of homes via a 30 second ad spot.

Today television advertising is still strong but  print advertising is rapidly shrinking and has now been surpassed by digital. It is estimated that digital online advertising could reach 30-50% of all advertising spend in the next ten years.

With so much of our media consumption being conducted via computers, tablets and smart phones, that may even be a conservative number.

Facebook Ads are the New Kid on the Block

Digital Advertising has for the past 15 years been dominated by the the ever present display banner ads. Flashing, twirling and in your face ads. It is estimated that several hundred billion of these appear every month on computer screens. The “Google Display Network” is one of the big kids on this global block.

In the last few years the new kid on the block has arrived and their name is “Facebook”.

Facebook advertising started cheaply and low key. In recent times the costs have increased significantly by 40% plus and the number of ads that crowd the page have  increased significantly. Facebook is attempting to  monetize its 1 billion users.

It now needs to keep its public shareholders happy.

Is the Google Ad Network More Effective?

Google earns 95% of its money from advertising. The Google Display Network” is 20% of this income mix.  Facebook also generates most of its revenue from advertising, but does “new” mean “better”?

A recent study by Wordstream had a close look at the reach and effectiveness of each and the results were surprising.

• Facebook has a huge reach of nearly 1 billion users with 1 trillion page views per month
• Facebook reaches 51% of the world’s internet users
• Google reaches 90% of all internet users with its online assets including YouTube, Blogger and Gmail
• Google serves up 180 billion “Ad” impressions per month
• Facebook revenues in Q1, 2012 were $1.06 billion
• Google’s Display Network generated $2.9 billion

The study revealed though that there was huge difference in effectiveness.

• Facebook  ads receive a “Click Through Rate” (CTR) of 0.051% in the USA
• CTR for Google ads is an average of 0.4%

This is almost 10 times higher than a Facebook ad!

Below in the infographic are many other measurements that look at key elements such as targeting options, formats, mobile and the life of an ad on Facebook.


Infographic Source: © WordStream

What About You?

Which has been effective for your advertising campaigns? Have you tried Facebook ads?

Have you been advertising on the Google Display network? Did it work for you? Would you do it again?

Look forward to hearing your stories.





































View the Original article

Social media is emerging from its adolescent phase and is rapidly maturing.


Initially social networks had an image problem with some CEO’s and executives thinking Facebook was for teenagers to post the weekend’s party photos and Twitter was for narcisstic attention seekers with a limited vocabulary.


There was also an initial perception that because the platforms were free to use that participating was cheap and easy. Experience has shown otherwise.

Social media, blogging and digital content creation are resource intensive and doing it right takes time and money.

Tools and time saving apps are emerging to help companies to be more efficient and able to manage, control and  monitor social media. These functions and features are also being integrated into Enterprise class software solutions.

Social media has grown up and is now accepted as mainstream by companies including the Fortune Global 100. These companies include Ford, Walmart and BP.

Facebook , Twitter, Google+, YouTube and the fast emerging Pinterest have all been embraced by the top companies as they find ways to leverage their brands globally.

Burson-Marsteller first launched a study in 2010 that looked closely at how companies were adapting to this new media. Here are their 2012 findings

5 Insights into Global Social Media

In 2010 the Fortune 100 were participating on social media but not to the extent they are now. The social networks were used for broadcasting but there was limited engagement. In 2012 they are having constant conversations with their customers and followers and creating vast amounts of  digital content.

What are the top 5 findings from their latest research?

1. Twitter is more than 50% of the Conversations

Corporations, Brands and organisations have realized that  social media spreads stories in real time and at high velocity. In 2012 the Fortune Global 100 are mentioned 10.4 million times per month with Twitter transmitting 5.6 million of those conversations. This represents a growth in Twitter conversations of over 700% in just 2 years.

Gone are the days when PR companies were clipping media mentions from newspapers and magazines and posting them to the corporation via snail mail.

2.  YouTube is a Serious Media Channel

In just one year YouTube use has increased by 39 percent. It is no longer considered a channel for just entertainment but also education and positioning and branding. Corporate YouTube channels are averaging over 2 million views. This growth in conversations and views by customers is making it compulsory for companies to participate on social networks.  The social networks are proving to be a great source of free media attention that is not paid but earned.

3. Engagement is the Norm

Organisations are not just broadcasting but engaging with their customers and prospects. On Twitter 79 percent of companies are engaging via retweeting and @mentions. On Facebook 70 percent of brands are are responding to comments on their walls and timelines.

4. Multiple Accounts are Common

The average number of multiple social media accounts has soared since 2010. The number of average Twitter accounts is now over ten (up from four since 2010)  and over 8 YouTube channels (up from 1.6 in 2010). This is because companies have realized that they need to target audiences by geography, topic and service. The larger organisations now have both the tools and the resources allocated.

5. Companies are Rapidly Adapting to New Platforms

In the last twelve months Google+ and Pinterest have entered the social networking ecosystem. Companies have quickly embraced these channels with  nearly 50 perecent of the Fortune Global 100 on Google+ brand pages and 25 percent on Pinterest.


Infographic source: Burson-Marsteller







































View the Original article