In a new report from Forrester Research analyst, Jeremiah Owyang, entitled “Social Media Playtime is Over” new data supports what many social media providers and evangelists have discussing for sometime. The findings from a recent study show that 53% of marketers plan to increase spending in social media while 42% will remain the same this despite the current economic malaise.

To quote Jeremiah’s report “The recession has put more pressure on interactive marketers to deliver measurable results. While many marketing budgets are being cinched, more than 50% of interactive marketers say they will increase their spending on social marketing. Why? These inexpensive tools can quickly get marketing messages out through interactive discussion and rapid word of mouth and, properly managed, can deliver measurable results. But in this downturn, interactive marketers must move beyond experimentation by making social applications a permanent part of marketing, measuring and demonstrating their value, and integrating them into marketing efforts.”

The main highlights of the report include:

• Many marketers are already using social technologies for marketing, almost all of interactive marketers surveyed are currently using some form of social media and most plan increases despite the recession, starting with investments in social networks, blogs, and user-generated content.
• While social application spending remains small, Fifty-three percent of interactive marketers using social media expect that their budgets for social media marketing will increase as a response to the recession.
• Despite this shift toward social, these budgets remain minute compared with larger expenditures like advertising. Interactive marketers at large companies are still only spending a fraction of their resources on social marketing.
• Social applications aren’t a formalized line item in marketing budgets. Social marketing isn’t yet a formalized line item in the marketing budget, as most social application budgets aren’t predetermined.
• Forrester data suggests that marketers intend to invest more in social media but need to justify larger budgets.
• Marketers shouldn’t continue to invest in social media as an experiment but rather as a long term strategic program/plan.
• Marketers must demonstrate that social investments are effective and how it moves customers down the marketing funnel by measuring awareness, interactions, and intent to buy.
• Social media applications must prove effectiveness in order to pry budgets away from corporate marketing or advertising. Marketers should invest in a listening platform, then integrate social marketing metrics like share of voice and engagement that can reveal ROI through leads and purchase.

Nice report Jeremiah.

Blake Cahill
Visible Technologies

There are many who continue to question Twitter, its increasing importance to consumers and brands, or its overall monetization strategies. But, the data of user growth is staggering and brand participation and initial results from brand interaction more than promising. So many brands that we know and interact with like Microsoft, Alaska Air, Southwest, Wachovia, Dell, PCC Markets and others are doing a great job at building loyal followings, creating real-time communication platforms with customers, and the ability to target marketing specials. These interactions and the follower base are what is generating revenue and cost savings — creating more traction than fan pages of yesteryear did for many brands in places like FaceBook or MySpace.

So, this is why Twitter is and will continue to be valuable. In a recent article from Joe Marchese at SocialVibe he writes “Why Google Will Buy Twitter and Make Billions”. Google’s success has been its ability to “organize information on the Web (search results) and to monetize people’s intentions (marketing based on what people are searching for). Simply put, Google is a multibillion-dollar company because it can put marketers in front of people at the right time in the right way. Google has cornered the market on searching the Web for information, and monetizing that behavior.”

Twitter is the growing consumer interaction channel of choice and is now introducing search functionality that when honed and perfected as Joe says “will bring with it all the riches of search marketing…and will make Twitter worth billions — and why Google will (or at least should) buy Twitter.”  The power in Twitter conversations is that it will “help people find out where to find current discussions on a subject.”  Now what is that worth to marketers and advertisers?  Just as Google has been able to monetize around the traffic of search terms Twitter will be able to monetize around events, passions, concerns, etc. Joe writes “People are already fascinated by watching people discuss various events or topics live in real time, using Twitter search and # (hash tags). What these services do is to provide me with information (a stream of people’s thoughts) on any keyword, or series of keywords. Sound familiar.”

Well, if it worked for Google then it could and should work for Twitter.  “Google has proven that if you can provide a useful search experience, then you can provide useful marketing. If you can provide useful marketing, you can return amazing ROI for marketers. If you can provide amazing ROI for marketers, you can make a lot of money, say Joe.”

All these consumer and business conversations be it on Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, and LinkedIn platforms are where brands and digital investment will continue to flow.  The need for marketers and organizations to understand this new landscape and to build and deploy the people, processes, and technologies to interact with these new channels is impertative.  See my post from a few weeks back with some ‘09 predictions and comments from a Forrester Report.

Nice article Joe.  I agree with you about the opportunity for Twitter or the next platform that may emerge.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

An interesting post from Lee Odden’s Online Marketing Blog that warrants sharing with our audience in case anyone missed it. They conducted a recent reader poll of 400 business marketers asking what are the three internet marketing tactics they plan to emphasize over the next six months and the results are as follows:

• Search engine optimization (36%, 149 Votes)
• Blogging (33%, 134 Votes)
• Pay per click (26%, 107 Votes)
• Email marketing (22%, 89 Votes)
• Social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn) (21%, 86 Votes)
• Blogger relations/blog PR (14%, 56 Votes)
• Microblogging (Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku) (11%, 47 Votes)
• Affiliate marketing (11%, 47 Votes)
• Advertorial (NewsForce, AdFusion) (10%, 40 Votes)
• Video marketing (7%, 29 Votes)

Search engine optimization, blogging and PPC take the top 3 spots. Glad that we are in all three of those businesses with TruView and TruCast (shameless product mentions). Lee has some additional commentary on other categories/choices and I especially agree with his comments about social media investments in engagement strategies. We continue to see many major brands investing in social strategies to do more that just listen. What do you and your organization plan to focus on for the next six months? How will you be measuring ROI to continue to secure budgets and funding for your initiatives?

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

It has been a week of digesting many of the latest papers and data points from IDC, Forrester, and Gartner. Since, I have shared some Forrester and Gartner updates I thought I should post on IDC’s latest figures about Internet advertising revenue which project a doubling from $25.5 billion in 2007 to $51.1 billion in 2012. That will make the internet the #2 advertising medium in five years, growing about eight times as fast as advertising at large. This will make the internet bigger than newspaper, cable TV, broadcast, and second only to direct advertising.

Video advertising will be the principal disruptor of Internet advertising during this time, as its revenue grows sevenfold from $0.5 billion in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012 at a compound annual growth rate of 49.4%. Brand advertisers will shift significant amounts of money into video commercials, primarily from broadcast television and to a lesser extent from cable television.

IDC concludes that

• Search ads will remain at the top of the Internet ad hierarchy with revenue at $10.4 billion last year, reaching almost $18 billion in 2012. IDC believes search, now having almost 41 percent of the market share, will have just above 34 percent by 2012.
• Online video ad spending will grow from about $500 million in 2007 to $3.8 billion in 2012 and its Internet advertising share will expand from 2 percent to 7.4 percent.
• Referral and lead-generation services will see the second strongest market share gain, says IDC. Revenue from referral and lead generation services will grow from $2.3 billion in 2007 to $5.9 billion in 2012.
• Mobile advertising will also show robust growth but the segment will still have “just shy” of 1 percent of the overall online ad market by 2012.

Amazing projections, let’s just hope that brands and their agencies are listening to this and paying attention to the consumers that are consuming it.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Did you know that next month you can find me speaking at WOMM-U? May 8 and 9 I will be in Miami Florida enjoying the weather and the 2-day comprehensive and interactive educational experience that is WOMMA’s Word of Mouth Marketing University.

Let me know if you are planning on attending. I’m looking forward to a great event.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies