http://www.thestreet.com/story/10493027/3/learn-to-measure-your-web-presence.html

Unbound Technologies' social monetizer will give a marketer a precise idea of what customers to target a specific campaign to. With these programs, it's possible to increase conversions by reaching the right customers at the right times, and represents a merging of internal and social network data.

Saavn and Verizon used Unbound Technology to find Bollywood dance enthusiasts on sites such as MySpace and Facebook and invite them to participate in Bollypop, the first-ever Bollywood-themed online dance competition. The chances for success greatly improve if people are already interested or exposed to marketing about your business.

"To successfully engage with the busy space of social media, brands need to prioritise quality over quantity, relevance over ubiquity: just joining the hottest parties and shouting into the crowd is a reactive approach that can quickly lead to brand fatigue and hostility."

I fully agree with Molly and what we have been talking for for so many year on spending time with your quality customer who have reach in your target audience.

April 22, 2009

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Guest Post by Molly Flatt of 1000heads: Chasing Social Media Tools Discuss This Story What's your Twitter strategy? What's going to be the next Facebook? How do you make inroads on the latest mega-platform before anyone else? For some brands, social media marketing has become a tools and technology chasing exercise. Once the mainstream media latch onto a platform, companies feel that if they're not instantly on-board with a host of apps, add-ons and highly visible branded activity, the fragile facade that they're run by a switched-on bunch of kool kids will evaporate like spring mist in the sun.

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004719.html
http://www.colinmercer.co.uk/2009/04/06/the-anatomy-of-a-facebook-meme/
http://www.hooversbiz.com/2008/12/02/the-social-media-are-not-so-new/

European Internet Stats

Stats; it's what's for dinner! We all love statistics. In the WOM realm, these European web usage statistics should help your reports. Quote away. Kudos to 77Lab for the great piece. Current European growth trends: * 9 hours per week spent on the web in 2008, up 27% from 2004 - more time than people spent reading print media, watching movies or playing video games * North South divide in Europe: Nordic countries have an internet penetration rate of 76% on average, compared to 45% in Southern Europe * Internet consumption set to overtake traditional TV in June 2010 - 2.5 days per month spent on internet versus 2 days on traditional TV: but does not signify decline in TV- simply a shift in how it is consumed * Online video established as most popular online audiovisual entertainment application, with more than 1 in 4 (28%) Europeans and over 300 million people worldwide watching short or full-length videos on the internet * Time spent on the internet using a PC will drop from 95% today to 50% over the next 5 years

Facebook Refers 19% of Google's Uniques

RBC Capital Markets points out that 19% of Google's unique visitors are referred by Facebook, up from just 9% a year ago. Given current rates of growth, they also suggest that Facebook will overtake Google in terms of number of unique visitors by 2011-2012. These two fairly amazing data points permit a couple of interesting conclusions: A much higher proportion of referrals from Facebook go to Google rather than to Yahoo or Microsoft (who actually have a paid agreement with Facebook) which means that Facebook's growth is pushing Google's share of search higher than it would be otherwise. If Facebook are seeking monetization, then a referral deal with Google seems like a good place to begin. RBC concludes: Facebook is actually positive and complementary for Google thus far, but that could change if Facebook's rapid growth trajectory continues on its current path, or if/when social media can find a business model and attract ad dollars from other online media. At the very least, we think Facebook as the "starting point" for more and more users on the Internet could create some multiple compression for Google over time, if the momentum continues. Using my secret-agent financial analyst decoder ring, I can tell you that "multiple compression for Google" in this context should be taken to read, "Google is paying MySpace $1 billion per year for perhaps 3% of Google's traffic. On that basis Facebook should be hitting Google up for $6 billion a year, no?"