Healthy Blog Reviews

It appears Twitter is finally had enough of third-party analytics companies getting all of the publicity over tweet counts–so it’s spilling the official beans. Folks were tweeting 5,000 times a day in 2007. By 2008, that number was 300,000, and by 2009 it had grown to 2.5 million per day. Tweets grew 1,400% last year to 35 million per day. Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second. I may have to admit to contributing maybe half that number on some days. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Tags: 600-tweets, maybe-half, million-per, million-tweets, number-on-some, official, partners, Social, the-official
Posted February 22, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

After years of debate and experimentation, the New York Times announced its decision of a pay-meter system last month . Although the switch isn’t due for more than a year, we’ve all had our questions. Last week, executives of the Times took the opportunity at the paidContent conference to answer those questions. Unfortunately, it looks like they’re not all on the same page, especially when it comes to the many popular blogs hosted by the Times. Reports Felix Salmon of Reuters : [Senior VP of Digital Operations Martin] Nisenholtz did say quite clearly that he expected ad revenue to go up rather than down, which implied to me that that paywall was going to be pretty porous. And [owner Arthur Sulzberger] said that “we are not trying to eliminate ourselves from the digital ecosystem”. But when I asked about specifics, it all got rather messy. It started when I asked whether the NYT’s own blogs would be counted towards the quota, and Nisenholtz replied that “our intention is to keep blogs behind the wall”. Salmon also reports that the NYT confirmed to the WSJ that the blogs would be kept behind the paywall. The meter system is designed to allow users to access a certain number of stories for free on the New York Times each month. For the occasional reader, that will probably be fine. However, for loyal followers of such blogs as the Freakonomics blog , it might not take long to meet your free article quota—and though there are many followers of NY Times blogs, I doubt that many of them would be willing to pay to read a blog. Salmon contends that the authors of the Freakonomics blog shouldn’t (and wouldn’t) stand for such an audience-cutting move. RSS is another issue here: with the execs apparently confused about whether or not following a link from a third-party site would count toward your quota, they didn’t discuss whether following a link from a presumably-summary RSS subscription would count. What do you think? Should the Times put blogs behind the paywall? Can they afford to sacrifice their readers—and possibly their blog authors?

Tags: digital, Felix Salmon, freakonomics, nisenholtz, occasional, opportunity, paidcontent, Times, times-building, times-reports, whether-or-not, whether-the-nyt
Posted February 22, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

People may be more honest on Facebook these days, but we still don’t trust them. MediaPost reports that an ARAnet study shows social media and search engine recommendations coming out tied among the general population—but search engine recommendations leap out in front among affluent (> $75,000/yr—49%) and younger adults (25-34—50% vs. 31% for social media). However, the general consensus was that personal advice from friends or family members was tops, with 59% rating it as important in influencing their buying decisions. But to me, that sounds like a completely different dynamic—are we supposed to be measuring the influence of people we know vs. strangers vs. corporate messages, or are we measuring what medium is more influential? If your mom delivers her advice via your Facebook wall, are you less likely to take it than if she told you in a phone call? Is it surprising that most people trust people they know, who know them and their preferences, than random strangers on search engines or social networks? Maybe the medium isn’t the message. The full breakdown, however, does show an interesting breakdown among the information from people we don’t know (and from corporate sources): Overall, most people participating in the survey — 59% — choose personal advice from friends or family members; followed by TV news or other broadcasts at 40%; search engines Google, Bing, Yahoo or Ask at 39%; TV ads, 36%; articles in newspapers or magazines, 33%; newspapers or magazines ads, 31%; online articles, 28%; and radio news or other broadcasts ads, 25%. The remainder of the breakdown follows. Direct mail came in at 24%; radio ads, 20%; emails from retailers or manufacturers, 20%; online ads, 19%; messages or posts on social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or MySpace, 18 percent; and billboards, 15%. Also note that the younger segment found social media to be far more influential than the general population did—31% vs. 18%. They also liked corporate information more: 32% (vs 20% for all respondents) appreciated information in emails from retailers or manufacturers, and 30% believed online ads were influential. So really, what we’re saying is that younger people on the Internet are more influenced by random strangers and advertising. What do you think? Is it the source of information or the medium used to convey it that has more influence here? Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Tags: broadcasts, coming-out-tied, facebook, internet, marketing, preferences, Research, search-engines, Social, source
Posted February 22, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Some more Monday morning research for you to consider while getting back into work mode. A report from Millward Brown takes a look at the top trusted brands in the US based on trust and recommendation. These factors are combined into what the researchers call “TrustR” which is a new metric for understanding and strengthening the bond between consumers and brands. In this day and age where trust is more elusive than ever since it appears that saying whatever needs to be said to get out of any situation is more than OK, we will need some measurement of a brand’s trust level. So who are the big winners according to Millward Brown? This number was arrived at by using the following formula TrustR is calculated by looking at consumer responses to the questions “how trustworthy is this brand?” and “would you recommend this brand?” The scores are indexed and combined to reach a TrustR score. The average score is 100, and anything over 105 is considered “good.” Now, as you can see I have highlighted what I will call the “Toyota factor”. This data was collected before the recall shenanigans of Toyota ( who apparently saved some nice coin by holding off any admission of issues ) so this says two things. 1) Toyota was definitely a trusted brand before the recall and 2) It’s a safe bet that v2 of this study will be out in short order to see just what Toyota did to their TrustR (sounds painful doesn’t it?). So what is your opinion of Toyota now that the full story is coming to bear? Would you expect their position in this chart to change after the recall incident? What have they done to the trust in their brand? Will people trust them more (which I have heard from some folks) or will there be suspicion because of the news of their history of delay tactics with regard to safety issues? What will their TrustR score be now?

Tags: data, history, millward brown, questions, researchers, Toyota, trust, TrustR
Posted February 22, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Advertising in general has had a soul crushing last couple of years. That’s not a surprise. Combine the rapid changes to how everyone communicates with the worst economy in quite some time and you have the perfect storm for advertising woes. The ones who have the greatest difficulty in these times are the local advertisers because they have limited cash flow and limited ability to keep up with rapid change. Hopefully there is an end to this cycle sooner than later. A study conducted by BIA/Kelsey sees the rebound in local advertising overall but more importantly a significant shift to digital which could account for 25% of local ad spend by 2014. ClickZ gives us some more to consider The findings, reported in BIA/Kelsey’s “U.S. Local Media Annual Forecast,” did not surprise BIA/Kelsey President Neal Polachek, who said the recession and lingering economic doldrums have “triggered a more rapid switch to online digital stuff.” Even though companies are increasingly embracing digital media for local advertising, online/interactive was not immune to the recession’s ravages. BIA/Kelsey said there was a slowdown in the growth rate for digital, including search, display and classifieds, but it predicted that digital – now about 14 percent of total local ad spend – will encompass 25 percent by 2014. I don’t know about you but I really appreciate Mr. Polachek’s technical terminology referring to “online digital stuff”. In the process of becoming 25% of all local advertising spend in the next few years digital spend will grow by 2.5 times to total $37 billion annually. Not a small number for sure. Now, we have historically been skeptical of research here at Marketing Pilgrim. We always look for the angle as to why anyone would promote certain findings. Polachek further postulates on the impact of mobile by saying Polachek said a key factor in the local ad market during the next five years will be mobile. However, he said predicting the scope of mobile’s impact is not easy. “I think one of key drivers during the next four or five years will be the phone and how the mobile piece transforms all this,” he said. Not earth shattering, I admit. What he said next though will get some MP props because I have not heard this much from the research community. “I don’t think any analyst out there, ourselves included, really knows what will happen.” Please put up the applause sign for Mr. Polachek! Every other research report is positioned as if it came off a mountain in the form of tablets and should be taken as the truth because, well, the researcher said so. At least this research group has the stones to admit that looking into a crystal ball regarding where any of this goes is probably the least exact science there is. So how do you view local advertising? Do you think that there will still be just a 25/75 split with online and traditional in 5 years or will online advertising take up more of that pie? Given the dearth of news to start the week you should have time to comment.

Tags: advertising, annual-forecast, Local/Mobile, marketing, media, mobile, Online Advertising, phone, postulates, president, recession, Research, start-the-week
Posted February 22, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media