International Digital Marketing

Pinterest. Surprise, surprise – another new social network everyone talks about. There is a lot of hype around the platform, but is it really necessary to invest again money, time and resources in another social network?

Yes. There is actually a very good reason why Pinterest should not be ignored: the total number of global unique visitors in Pinterest increased 2,702.2% since May 2011 reaching 11,716,000 visitors by January 2012. It has 1,36 million visitors a day.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social photo sharing network that allows people and brands to create image collections, Pinboards, based on their interests, hobbies, products, beliefs, humour, art, events and more. The idea is to connect people through the things they find interesting and get inspired by. Users are able to browse other users’ collections, re-pin images for their own Pinboard, follow other users, and like their photos. Pinterest allows users to share pins also on other social networks, which increases the social visibility.

Pinterest – user demographics and engagement

The average Pinterest user spends almost 16 minutes on the site per visit compared to 16.4 min. in Youtube, 12.1 min. in Facebook, and 3.3 min. in Twitter. Surprisingly, Pinterest provides more referral traffic to other sites than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined together, and the apparel retailer referral traffic from Pinterest increased 289% between July and December 2011.

50% of the Pinterest users have children, almost 70% of Pinterest users are female, and 97% of Pinterest’s Facebook fans are women. Instead of teenagers and young adults, the platform seems to appeal most for the older age groups: largest age group is 25-34 year olds (27.4%) followed by 35-44 year old users (22.1%). Interestingly 45-54 year old users represent 17.9% of the user base, which is a high number compared to other social networks.

Pinterest in Europe

In Europe Pinterest has grown exponentially since May 2011 becoming the fastest growing social network. According to Comscore, in January 2012 the UK had the highest number of unique visitors in Europe (245,000), Germany had 67,000 unique visitors, and Spain had 62,000 unique visitors. What comes to the growth, from May 2011 to January 2012 Germany had the highest growth rate of 2956% in Pinterest, followed by Spain (1348%), and Italy (794%).

Even if the unique visitors decreased in France and the UK between December 2011 and January 2012, engagement on Pinterest increased by 1740% and 20%, respectively.

Is Pinterest worth investing?

Pinterest is currently the fastest growing social network in the US and Europe, and it is very interesting from a brand perspective. You have a possibility to target people according to their interests in real time without being their “friends”, provoke a stronger response with images as people are very visual, and obtain social recommendations when people “pin” or like your image. With a proper preparation, the social photo sharing platform may be very beneficial for sales,  and looking at the demographics, it is great especially if you are targeting women and more mature demographics.

How brands can use Pinterest? For example, ecommerce sites and brands can use Pinterest to pin their products (fashion, clothes, shoes, accessories, interior designs, household items, wedding items, baby products, etc), travel companies and hotels can pin location pictures, food manufacturers can pin beautiful dishes, pet food companies can pin cute animals, etc. etc. The list goes on, but as with other social networks stop and think before you start pinning. Pinterest has a lot of potential, but if not done properly the end result may not be what you expected. To be successful as a brand you need a proper Pinterest strategy to reach right people, and if you have a good strategy  – an image can be worth a thousand words.

Social Media, Social Networks, Social Commerce … there is no escaping social these days especially after the launch of Google+. We communicate with the consumers via wall posts and tweets, build our business network in LinkedIn instead of meeting face-to-face and handle customer service via Twitter. But maybe we are right to become so obsessed with Social Media.

According to an European comScore MobiLens study, the mobile social networking has increased  44% in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK during 2011. What is even more interesting is that more than 40% of the European Mobile Social Networking users are engaging with brands.

 Snapshot of the 2011 European mobile market

•  UK and Spain are leading countries in Smartphone usage with 46.9% and 46.3% penetration respectively, compared to the European average of 40.1%. Germany has the lowest Smartphone penetration with 33%.
• British and Spanish mobile users also use non pre-installed apps above European average of 34.5%, UK with 44.9% and Spain with 35.4%. Germans have the lowest percentage with 30.4%.
• 46.9% of the mobile users in the UK and 35.3% in France use browser, compared to the European average of 35%. Germans users browse the least with 28.4%.
• 33.8% of the British , 30.1% of the Italian and 28.7% of the Spanish users play mobile games, compared to the European average of 26.5%. French users play games the least with 15.6%.
• Sending text messages is the most popular mobile activity across all five European markets, the average reaching 82.9%.
• 32.6% of the Spanish mobile users listen to music, above European average of 25.9%. Only 23.3% of the French use mobile to listen to music.
• 35.1% of the UK mobile users access news, way above European average of 18.5%. Germans are the least interested on news, with 15.7%.
• 35.1% of the UK mobile users access social networks and blogs well above average of 23.5%. Germans were the least social with 17.3%

 Increasing mobile social network addiction

 55.1 million European mobile users accessed social networks or blogs via mobile devices in September 2011 only, representing 23.5% of the total mobile audience. Not only did the mobile social media usage nearly double, but 47% of the users accessed social networks and blogs daily.

“Over the past year we have seen social networking use grow rapidly among mobile users across Europe, driven largely by the growth in smartphone adoption, making it easier than ever for users to stay connected and engage in social activities while on-the-go,” stated Jeremy Copp, comScore Europe vice president for Mobile. “More notably, the rate of growth in daily social networking usage has surpassed even the rate of growth in total social networking adoption among mobile users, suggesting that the behavior is becoming even more ingrained into people’s daily mobile lives. As social networks continue to invest in improving the user experience on mobile devices and tablets, it will be interesting to see how social behaviours on the mobile platform further evolve.”

 Interestingly, while most of the European mobile users accessed social networking sites via browser (31.3 million), the usage of social network mobile apps doubled to 24.2 million.

Mobile Social Networking Activities

Finally good news for marketers: 44% of the mobile social networking users admitted reading posts from brands and about 27% reported receiving offers, coupons or deals on their mobiles.

 What comes to other activities, 74% of the users read posts from people they know and 62% updated their status. Peer recommendation also has an important role with 35% of the users posting links to websites and 49% of the users following posted links to websites.

Leading European mobile social networks

In 2011 Facebook increased its European mobile audience 54% up to 39 million. This represents 71% of the EU5 mobile social networking audience positioning Facebook as a clear leader. However, even if the social network gathered the most users, it did not experience as big growth as its competitors: Twitter grew its mobile audience 115% up to 8.6 million, 2.2 million unique users accessed LinkedIn increasing network’s mobile users by 134% and the Spanish social network Tuenti grew by 60% gathering 2.3 million unique users.

Go social, think local

The results highlight the importance of Social Media in European brand communication strategy. With localized mobile site and social network pages brands can increase user engagement and user referrals, and the little snapshot of the social media activities can provide some insight to the best tactics in each country. While building a game app seems to work in the UK and Spain, a mobile game might not be very successful in France.

Reaching European audience is tricky because of the different languages, cultures and customs, but for brand to engage with the European audience, social media seems like a good starting point.

After the recent launch of Google+ pages, companies and marketers around the world are debating whether it is worth investing money and time in another social network especially taking in account the effort an international social media strategy requires. On the other hand, there has also been discussion whether it would be worth ditching the website and replacing it with a Facebook page.

It takes a bit of convincing to encourage top managers to invest in social networks, but once you have started, engage successfully with your audience, and see referrals and leads coming in – are you able to stop?

Growing dependency on Social Network platforms

How dependent are we on social networks? Many companies are using Twitter for customer service, communicate with consumers through Facebook newsfeed rather than newsletters and news articles, and promote in TV commercials their Facebook page instead of the official site. Also, in place of the own database acquired via website, brands are directing the communication to databases owned by social networks.

For some companies, such as Zynga (FarmVille, Mafia Wars), the situation is a bit more complicated. Even if the interconnected business model has allowed the social gaming company, which has 60 million active users in 166 countries, to grow faster, it is highly dependent on Facebook’s platform and user base. “We generate substantially all of our revenue and players through the Facebook platform and expect to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Any deterioration in our relationship with Facebook would harm our business”, says Zynga’s IPO. This means that despite Facebook policy changes that have been negative for the business, Zynga cannot leave the platform in close future even if it would try to diversify to other networks, such as Google+.

Co-dependent Business Model

According to Kevin Werbach, a Wharton legal studies and business ethics professor, Zynga’s dependency on Facebook could show a preview to a dominant business model for the future digital world, that revolves around what he calls “real-time value webs.”

“We’re seeing that model play out today with the rise of digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon.com. They are offering services to customers directly, but also providing the infrastructure for ecosystems of other companies,” Werbach states. “In a digital era, everything is potentially interconnected. Companies are no longer isolated islands.”

It is not obvious whether in five years the users will still visit the company websites or whether they will only use social networks and apps to check the latest news and offers. The social networks have re-designed and developed their businesses as platforms, and offer a starting point for emerging companies willing to grow fast. The same trend goes beyond social media: app developers are reliant on iPhone OS and Android, and Japanese app developers are dependent on cell phone carrier NTT DoCoMo.

Worldwide Social Network referrals

But which social network brings the most traffic? In Q3 2011 Facebook was the biggest traffic driver worldwide with 63.5% of the social network referrals, while Google owned Youtube followed it with 21.2% of the referrals.

Twitter and StumbleUpon followed with 6.3% of the social media referrals each, Reddit drove 1% of the traffic to the websites, but Google+ only reached 0.2%. However, to put it in perspective, even if the new social network was launched just few months ago, Google+ brings 2 times more referrals than Delicious, 4 times more referrals than Flickr and 6 times more referrals than Mashable.

The small amount of Google+ referrals might also be due to the lack of brand presence and brand pages on the platform, and the situation may change in few months since Google has now enabled Google+ pages for companies. The power balance is likely to get even more interesting, since according to Spotify investor and former Facebook President Sean Parker, the influencers are now leaving Facebook and moving to other social networks.

Dependency between Social Networks

Despite of the fierce competition between different social platforms, interestingly there seems to be also certain dependency between the  networks. For example, 28% of the traffic to Google+ comes from other social networks. To put this in context, 6% of the users go to Facebook from other social platforms and 22% of the traffic arriving to YouTube comes from social. Twitter has the highest dependency compared to other social sites with 32% of its traffic coming from the other social networks.

It might be that in the future companies and social networks become so interconnected that neither can survive without each other. Or then we hopefully find a more convenient business model.

Google+ with user base of over 40 million people and growing has finally opened the doors for businesses. Since the launch there has been a lot of speculation whether Google would keep its promise to create business pages for brands and finally the wait is over. The launch of Google+ pages enables brands to connect with customers and fans while improving their search ranking as well as SEO campaigns.

A couple of brand pages are already available, including +Angry Birds, +Pepsi, +Toyota and +Barcelona Football club (you can create your own Google+ page here). If you already have played with your personal Google+ profile, the features Google+ page offers are familiar. For example, the page works through the Google+ mobile app, your brand can have live video conversations with the customers or fans, and you can place people in different circles – a feature which enables you to target better.

However, there are certain differences: brand page cannot send messages to a user who has not added them yet in their circle and the content on a Google+ page defaults to public (unlike personal profiles). Pages also cannot share with extended circles.

Google+ demographics

But who actually uses Google+? According to a Comscore study, Google+ has currently over 40 million users and 20 million active visitors across the world.

Top Google+ 10 countries:

• US: 5.31 million
• India: 2.85 million
• U.K: 0.87 million
• Canada: 0.86 million
• Germany: 0.71 million
• Brazil: 0.62 million
• Taiwan: 0.52 million
• France: 0.5 million
• Turkey: 0.37 million
• Spain: 0.37 million:

Unique visitors in Google+ are in average between 25-34-years-old. The Google+ audience tends to be more affluent, 54% earning a household income of $30k and over, and 12% earning $150k and up. 72% of the Google+ population is male and 78% of the professions in top 100 list consists of different developers, engineers and designers.

But despite the very interesting user base, is it really worth creating yet another social network page, even if it is Google+?

Google+ page benefits for brands

Besides of being an additional channel for user engagement, Google+ page allows you to have a different conversation with different circles increasing the effectiveness and relevancy of your message. With pages people are as well able to recommend a brand, not only separate sites, articles or ads.

What comes to the SEO,+1 recommendations have a positive effect in search ranking as well as search and display ads increasing their performance. Also, not only does Google include Google+ pages in search results, but it also is experimenting with a feature called Direct Connect. The latter enables user to navigate quickly to a brand Google+ page via typing + and the brand name. For example, if the user searches for +angry birds or +youtube he will be taken directly to the Angry Birds or Youtube Google+ page and he has a possibility to add the page to his circle. To become eligible for Direct Connect, Google suggests linking from your Google+ page to your homepage and vice versa. This also allows Google to determine your site relevancy in normal search, which means your pages are likely to index faster and have a better ranking than competitor pages without Google+.

Google+ replacing Facebook?

Once Google+ was launched I was playing with the possibility of Google+ threatening Facebook. 40 million and growing is still far away from the 800 million Facebook users, however it seems like influencers might be leaving Facebook.

Improved SEO and power influencers? Sounds good to me.

According to a 2010 study by Pew Research Center, the amount of young bloggers has decreased dramatically over the past few years by half. The number of blogging teenagers decreased to 14 % compared to 28% in 2006 and the amount of young adult bloggers (18-29-years-old) has dropped 9% since 2007.

Meanwhile, the older generation is getting more comfortable with blogging: 11% of the over 30-year-old adults blogged in 2010, compared with 7% in 2007. Also, during the last two years blogging by the 34-45 year-old Internet users has increased 6%  (up to 16%), 46-55-year-old bloggers saw an increase of 5%  (up to 11%), and even 65-73-year-olds blogged 2% more (up to 8%).

It seems like the blogger generation is getting older and younger generation prefers social networking – is blogging becoming the sport of “old” people?

Micro-blogging in Social Networks

“The first thing going on here is the broader movement from MySpace, which had a integrated blogging function, to Facebook, which doesn’t put its blogging capabilities up front as MySpace does,” says Aaron Smith, a research specialist at Pew Internet & American Life Project.

There has been a clear movement from long blog posts, “macro-blogging”, to quick status updates and messages, “micro-blogging”, offered by Facebook, Twitter and other similar social networks. Young people “do not have time” to write long blog posts nor can they be bothered to read “two page novels” of someone’s life or brand’s awards. The new generation wants it short, actual and in real-time.

Also, according to a 2010 study by Technorati based on respondents in North-America, Europe, APAC and South America, even users who are currently blogging say that their devotion to micro-blogging (30%) and social networks (28%) have reduced their blogging activity. Another very interesting detail was that on average the bloggers actually spent more time on social media sites (9.9h/week) than they spent reading other blogs (9.2h/week).

Increasing popularity of Smartphones

Smartphones are constantly increasing their market share around the globe, especially among young people, and as Japanese “Twittermania” has shown they are perfect for micro-blogging. With the augmented Internet use and social media apps, people spend more time checking the latest headlines and status updates, watching videos, commenting with few words and sharing interesting content through mobile devices.

Anyone who has ever blogged knows it requires hard work and concentration and anyone who has ever read a blog post in a mobile knows the effort it takes to read a long post in the small screen. More online or digital communications are happening through mobile devices and the amount of text user can type and read is quite limited.

So, are blogs getting out of fashion?

No. Let’s say they are just becoming more refined by age.

According to the Technorati study, bloggers are more affluent and educated than the general population: 79% have college degrees and 43% have graduate degrees, 30% has a household income of $75K+ and 25% has a household income of $100K+.

65% of the bloggers are 18-44-years-old and 81% of them have been blogging more than 2 years, which increases the quality of the content. In the early ages, blogging was seen as an entertainment for teenagers while now Facebook and other social networks are taking that role and “old” people are catching up. Also, the amount of companies using blogs for marketing has been increasing during the years as shown in the graph below.

Now let’s see. How much relevant content can you include in 140 characters or a Facebook status update if you cannot link it to anything? Why users would be interested in any of your posts if they cannot click to find out more?

Linking the posts only to the official website or other people’s content does not seem enough either. Blogging allows the brand to talk more than just products and services and explore more fun and creative ideas. Blog is also a great way to establish an image of an expert and let your or brand’s voice to be heard over the competition. Only passing someone else’s posts or tweets around without bringing anything your own to the content does not really show who you are or what you really are worth. People and brands without opinions are boring.

From SEO perspective, new and relevant keyword filled content quickly shows in Google, which increases traffic to your blog. Linking posts properly can increase traffic to your website, which in turn improves your website’s ranking.

In reality, social media, micro-blogging and blogs can complement each other. Including social bookmarking buttons into the blog posts helps it to spread around the social networks and promoting the blog posts in Twitter and Facebook increase traffic to the blog. Meanwhile, short relevant posts or tweets about the blog posts add interesting content to your social network sites.

New generation, new trends

However, it is very important to remember that in the end young people are early adopters of the new technologies and communication channels and “old” people are slow to follow. First blogs were for teenagers, then Twitter and Facebook were just for silly teenage talk and no doubt the increased amount of Smartphones will change the settings and trends even more. Whether new generation moves from micro-blogging to traditional blogging in the future is a good question, but at least for the next few years blogs will still remain a good channel to express more profound thoughts, ideas, expertise and opinions of current events and future trends.

A recent analysis by Goldman Sachs Investment has estimated Facebook’s value to be 50 billion dollars. Twitter’s estimated value reached 4 billion dollars in January 2011 and the business network LinkedIn is worth more than 2 billion dollars.

But these three are not the only social networks that have reached astronomical values. There are more members in the billionaires’ social club such as Zynga and the most recent Groupon.

What all these companies have in common is their youth. All these platforms are less than 10 years old, which demonstrates how incredibly fast they have grown and obtained their high stock value. While many investors have got rich betting on them, it might well be that the next bubble to burst is social networks. Why?

Unfamiliar business model

The social media companies have surely known how to build an empire formed by hundreds of thousands of users all over the world. Only Facebook has more than 500 million users, Twitter is close to 200 millions of users and LinkedIn has already more than 80 million valuable business contacts. Zynga on the other hand receives daily millions of online players and Groupon has a database of more than 35 million users happy to receive offers of the day to their inboxes.

However, in spite of these unusual figures, the majority of the social media companies are still investigating how to receive economical benefits of their large user base and with different results. LinkedIn gets benefits from its own users who agree to pay the premium access with bigger functionalities than basic account, while Groupon gets a commission for each client who buys. But Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and most of the other social networks trust in their advertising income.

Return of investment: Advertising

But is targeted advertising in social networks that effective? According to Jeffrey I. Cole, the director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, “users express strong negative views about online advertising, but they still prefer seeing ads as an alternative to paying for content. Consumers really want free content without advertising, but ultimately they understand that content has to be paid for — one way or another.”

So it is not wanted, yet tolerated. There are also various apps for users to remove advertising completely from the social media platforms. Yet effective or not, it seems like at least Twitter and Facebook do not have a choice. According to the 2010 USC Annenberg Digital Future Study on Twitter, a whopping 0% of the interviewed users said they would be ready to pay for the platform. And it is not difficult to imagine that a similar percentage would be ready to pay for Facebook (and their current slogan on sign up page is effectively “Sign up. It’s free and always will be!”).

Question is: will companies keep investing on the social network ad space in the future, if these advertisements are blocked or ineffective?

Return of Investment: Users

How to measure social media? Unlike in any other business area: no one really knows. People say they do, but to be honest…if you want a straight answer what your ROI on social media campaign or Facebook group is or will be, you are likely to get a following conversation:

“There are so many different ways and tools to measure social media, it really depends what your goals are.”

“Yes but how many leads and sales this campaign is going to create?”

“Human interaction is so difficult to estimate… Right now I can’t tell you the exact figure you will have, but  in the end of the campaign we can tell how many more people “liked” your brand or talked about you”

“Yes, but will I know how many of these people actually bought my product?”

“Well…”

Do not get me wrong, social media is a very effective communication and customer service tool yet very, very difficult to measure. Without a clear idea of ROI, it will be harder to convince investors or companies to stay if they lose confidence on the platform and want to abandon the sinking ship.

Dot com – fever?

Previously mentioned social networks are the biggest ones with the largest number of users, yet creation of different types of social networks has boomed all over the globe, waking up interest of investors of all sizes. They are investing on a new virtual business model, living in some way the dot com company fever, in which the big investments that promised fantastic ROI turned into nothing when the bubble exploded.

Constantly changing virtual world

This kind of risks could happen in social networks, because there are already examples how big virtual companies can fall quickly when new concepts and improved versions of the same model arrive.

Examples of this are the AOL and MySpace, companies who were in their time the little favourites of the Wall Street and “going to conquer the virtual world”. Now their current economical value is just a fraction of the value they had in their moments of glory. The brand lost its value, then the confidence of the investors then the market to new comers such as Facebook. MySpace France office close down already few years ago and now even German office is shutting down, even if the platform is trying to re-launch itself with a new image.

At present, almost every marketer “likes” Facebook, however there was a time when also Second Life was supposed to become “a must” and brands invested great amount of money to get on board. Where is it now? I am not saying brands should not use Facebook and Twitter or other social networks, in the contrary they definitely should. It is just a word of warning to potential investors to not to get too excited on new virtual business models without certain amount of caution. Many social media companies can for sure be easily substituted by new concepts or new technologies in the constantly changing virtual world.

Right now Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms are powerful tools, but let’s give the new generation some time and – POP.

Zed Digital released recently a fourth wave of the study  “Mobiles and Advertising: perception, use and tendencies” (Móviles y Publicidad: percepción, usos y tendencias), which interviewed 16.000 consumers between 14 and 44 years - the largest sample in Spain so far in this type of studies.

In Spain we are facing a mature mobile market with more advanced capacities and services with 58% of the respondents having had their mobile for less than a year.  Consumers have learned how to access more advanced and innovative services and there is a clear turning point from a professional internet mobile into a personal internet mobile.

However, the market is still expanding. Most popular operators are Movistar (35,85%), Vodafone (29,70%) and Orange (20,65%), however they are all losing market share for the smaller operators. Main reasons for the change are costs, customer service and different model that is offered if you change your operator.

Internet usage:

54% of the respondents confirms accessing internet via mobile. The principal activities are checking emails, using search, entering social networks and instant messaging.

Almost 50% has a wi-fi with an increase of a 95% compared with the third wave, which shows the rapidity that the terminals adopt new services in the mobiles and smartphones. Yet even if the internet access via mobile has increased, in the next years we will see how it will still see a growth because consumers are yet behind all the technical possibilities their phones offer. This shows in the fact that even if 84% of the users have internet access, only 54% uses it. Same thing happens with packages and use of email, instant messaging and GPS. It shows the clear potential Internet Mobile has in the near future, since users own already devices that are technologically advanced and they only need to learn how to use all the features.

Social Networks:

Use of social networks via mobile has increased between 16-44 years old individuals by 275% in 2010.

The study also analyzes the profile of the users that access social networks via mobile: Young urban who enters social networks to take advantage of the time in the metro or bus to principally send messages (80%) and gossip in 48% of the cases. The most popular network in the device is Facebook with 89% of the users.

62% of the users have less than 30 years and 44% lives in cities with more than 200.000 habitants.

19.8% of the users spend more than an hour and 29% between an hour and half an hour  in Social Networks. Main perceived advantages users saw were taking advantage of time in bus or metro, being connected to the Social Networks even if they were not at work or at home and being more active user than others because they can connect more time than their friends do.

Communication & Apps:

64% of the respondents counts with instant messenger, mostly Windows Live Messenger with 79% penetration among the users, compared with 31,24% with Skype.

What comes to the use of email and instant messenger, there are two different profiles. Email is mostly used by a man between 30-40 years and Hotmail stays the most used service with 68% of the users, followed by Gmail with 55%. In the contrary, the instant messager is equally popular between two sexes, but is used by younger users (18-24-year-olds).

Concerning the apps, already 24% of the users download them habitually. The principle downloads are games and entertainment followed by social networks and instant messenger. These apps are the ones they keep in their phone and use mostly daily.

Advertising

According to the study, respondents perceive mobile marketing as a meeting point between consumer and the brand and think it offers the brand modernity, innovation, differentiation and leadership.

They also noticed the advertising in mobiles: 72% remembers having seen advertisements in their phone and 49% has clicked an advert some time. Besides, surprisingly 46% of the consumers would give permission to receive advertising into their phone and this percentage would increase if there was some advantage for the consumer (discounts, operator loyalization points) or if it was advertising they have requested.

The most attractive advertising formats are audio MMS and the sponsored videos, advergaming and sponsored apps – formats that offer consumer additional advantage for user.

On the other hand, the geolocalization services have huge potential, because 73% of the interviewed said they would be interested of receiving advertising messages related to the place where they are.

Only 3 years ago half of the intelligent mobiles in Spain were used in professional environment, however, with the more attractive smartphone prices and offers from the operators, the balance has tipped in a favour of consumer market and personal use. The use of social networks, music and games are the keys in the new era where mobile marketing in Spain is no more an option, but a necessity – and it is even welcome according to the users! From a web design and usability point of view, it is now important to consider if your website is mobile friendly and is it easy to use in small scale.

Of course, it is not about concentrating only on mobile marketing, but integrating it slowly yet steadily into your other marketing and communication strategies. Taking advantage of the trend now when the interactive mobile advertising is not yet saturated and is perceived positive can give your brand a strong position in the future.

Besides of constant rumour of Twitter and Facebook planning to make their users pay for the platform, we know they are not going to do it. Why? Because it would simply not work.

According to the 2010 USC Annenberg Digital Future Study (PDF) on Twitter, a stunning 0% of the interviewed users said they would be ready to pay for the platform. And it is not difficult to imagine that a similar percentage would be ready to pay for Facebook.

So, if the Social Networks cannot charge the users, how do they cover their costs and get so rich?

Yes, you guessed right: Advertisers are happy to pay. But is it worth it? Does the money companies pay for ad space in Social Networks really bring a strong ROI?  According to Jeffrey I. Cole, the director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, “users express strong negative views about online advertising, but they still prefer seeing ads as an alternative to paying for content. Consumers really want free content without advertising, but ultimately they understand that content has to be paid for — one way or another.”

So the users do not like the ads, but they can stand them. But is not the whole point of Social Media and advertising to engage the users, make them love the brand and get them excited of seeing your ad?  Sure, “Banner ad blindness” is not new, but should the advertisers pay thousands for Social Networks if the ad they place there will be barely tolerated?

Maybe it is better to sit down and write on a piece of paper the real reason why you got involved with the Social Networks in the first place. If you wrote down “Because everyone does”, think again. You want to sell your product or service, right? Social Networks are the perfect way to engage with the consumers, to forget the one-way discussion and have a real conversation with them. When the consumers have an emotional connection with your brand, they will buy your product or service. AND recommend it not only for their real friends, but their Twitter followers and Facebook” friends”.

I am not ruling out the banner ads, of course. But there is a big difference whether the banner is seen as an ad or as a way to communicate with your consumers. One of the mistakes many companies do is to concentrate only on ads selling their products in Social Networks – it is better to use other sites for that. Main point here is to reduce the amount of money you pay for Social Networks on direct, pushy advertising, use these ads on other more targeted sites and shift your focus on Social Media engagement. If you have to pay your eye off for a small ad space, make sure it will work. Invite people to your site, offer them an application or a tool, funny game, or contest instead of a banner that says “Buy this today”.

It might not be a waste of money to pay for ad space in Social Networks, but it would be useless to place an ad there that does not work.

I found an interesting study on Spanish youth and their preference for brands, online habits and belonging to “urban tribes”. The study “Observatorio de la Juventud”, conducted by Webtools, Social Network Tuenti and Bufete de Marketing, surveyed more than 900 Spanish youth, 16-21 years old, between January and March 2010. In Spain this age group represents 2,5 millions individuals, with 51% males and 49% females.

The study revealed the following facts:

• 88% connect daily to Internet for personal reasons
• 72% confirm that they have profile in more than one social network
• 98% have a own mobile
• 75% live still at home with their parents
• 30% have some kind of motor vehicle (car, motorcycle or both)
• 67% are studying and prefers spending their time off in recreational activities more than cultural ones.
• More than half of the youth have a credit card
• Practically everybody shows clear preferences for brands in different categories
• The interviewed group confesses consuming alcohol regularly, in addition to cigarettes and other alcoholic drinks such as beer and wine

This specific age group can be very attractive for brands since youth are either potential or future clients, love new trends and have strong influence online. The question is: how to connect with them?

Youth are experts in multitasking and are able to use different medias at once, be it TV, Messenger, Mobile, Internet…if they use different media, why we marketers would not? Considering that in Spain the large majority of the youth surfs daily in Internet and has a profile in more than one Social Network, more interactive approach and specific Social Media strategy might be the key factor. Also mobile marketing is an effective way to reach this age group, especially when the quantity of smartphones is increasing rapidly.

What comes to the social networks, the best platform to target this age group in Spain is Facebook and especially Tuenti with more than 6,2 million users. 74% of 16-21 year olds have profile in Tuenti and 60% connect the network daily for at least 83 minutes. I also recommend checking out the FORD Maskedummies 2.0 created by Spanish agency Genetsis. The platform targeted to young consumers won the Spanish IMAN Award of the Best Loyalization Program in 2009.

Having done some research on Social Media and SEO, I started wondering whether these two could be integrated. Could active participation in Social Media improve your ranking in search engines?

To start with the basics, the link-related factors that affect the website’s ranking are:

• Anchor text of incoming links (actual words in a link)
• Link popularity (number of incoming links)
• Diversity of links (number of pages those links come from)

In theory Social Media offers a great opportunity to build backlinks in every social media network, which will then rise the website closer to the top in search engine rankings. The reality is a bit tougher: Social media does offer a possibility to create links and improve your rankings if it goes viral. However, only building a great amount of backlinks will not improve your search rankings. According to Norm Elrod, most of the biggest social media platforms use so called “nofollow” in their outgoing links. It means that the search engine robots are told to not follow the given link. Even if the users click the link and visit your website, the link will not improve your ranking. This applies especially with the king of the search engine, Google, while Yahoo! and Bing are less strict. Social networks Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg and Flickr use the “nofollow” as does Wikipedia. The most of the links in blog’s “comments” section are “nofollow”.

But yes, it is still possible!

After realizing the potential Social Media has, Google and Microsoft’s Bing recently signed a deal with few social networks to integrate social media into their search results. Google agreed with Twitter to add “tweets” into its search results and Microsoft agreed with both Twitter and Facebook to show tweets and status updates in Bing. But it is not all: most of the Social Media platforms have an RSS feed of the content. Even if the links on the page are “nofollow”, same links in the RSS feed are not. Also, all the major blog-hosting sites such as WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr and less popular social network sites do not use the “nofollow” and neither do forums and article submission sites.

So, how to improve your search-engine ranking with Social Media?

Use keywords in tweets and status updates.

When you have identified those specific keywords, use them. It is very important to integrate them to every tweet and status update, but do NOT be BORING. If all your tweets or status all look the same, people will stop following you. Norm Elrod recommends using the long-tail phrases that apply to deeper pages, and then linking them to the pages with strong anchor text. Search engines like it and will improve your ranking.

Link from profile pages.

It is very easy to link in Social media, especially from the profile page. Integrate your links to the site and tell the world where they can find you. There might be “nofollow” tags, but it will increase the traffic to your site. If people find it interesting, they may link to it from their own site. For example, bloggers are always looking for something new to write about.  And remember: different search engines treat the “nofollow” tags differently.

Expand your social network.

For example, Google is considering the inclusion of blogs from your social circle in search results.

Your “social circle means:

• Direct connections from Google Chat and Contacts.
• Direct connections from links on your Google profile.
• Secondary connections publicly associated with your direct connections.

The bigger your “social circle” is, more possibilities your content has to appear in the search results of people connected to you.

Listen what the experts have to say.

The internet is full of expert blogs and advice on the subject. But if you are sick of online world, there are many seminars and conferences covering search engine marketing and social media, that bring in experts to talk about the integration of SEO and Social Media. They will discuss about their insights and best practices you could also apply in your marketing strategy.

Interact and keep on linking.

The best way to use social media for SEO purposes is to participate in the conversation. If you have something interesting and relevant to say, say it and link it. The results might be additional traffic, improved search results or both.