What Are The 10 Top Social Networks For Marketing?

Jeff Bullas | Aug 23, 2011 | Comments: 0

So you are the new marketing manager for an organisation with a 100 employees and you are planning your social media marketing strategy for the next 12 months.

If you are a follow the crowd type of marketer and want to play it safe then the decision of which social media networks to deliver and spread the brand message is is not a tough call.

You will start with a list that will have Facebook at the top and you will work down from there.

If you are a bit more creative, like innovation and living dangerously and are an extreme sports fan then you may consider looking at mobile, apps, and locally targeted advertising strategies and tactics that are starting to make their presence felt as part of the marketing toolkit.

So if  you want to know where the rest of the marketing crowd have been playing for the last 12 months then here is some revealing research from emarketer.com that has some intriguing results at the bottom end of the scale

1. Facebook

Facebook was found to be used by 93% of marketers in companies with 100 employees or more and four key elements drive its high participation rate.

1. 750 million plus users
2. Availability of targeted demographic data
3. Self serve ad platform that makes it quick and easy for marketers to launch an advertising campaign
4. Facebook brand “”Pages”

Expect to see competition from Google+ make Facebook even more innovative over the next 12 months

2. Twitter

Twitter is still working out its business model and with only 140 million in ad revenue this year (Facebook’s is projected to exceed 2 billion this year) is still being used 78% of the time by the marketing manager. It is rumored that it will be rolling out a self serve ad function later this year that will make it much more efficient and cost effective to utilize. If the self serve feature is done well then Twitter could accelerate its revenue and value to marketers over the next 12 months.

3. YouTube

YouTube ranks third in the survey at 61% but don’t expect this social media network channel to become a laggard over the next 6 months. One driver for this platform that wasn’t foreseen 12 months ago will be its closer integration into the new Google+ social network which has more than 25 million users. 20% of the marketers in the survey  also indicated they would begin campaigns next year on YouTube.

4. LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s is a less public social network and can provide a great place to market higher value products and services that are more B2B focused ( Business to Business). At 44% nearly half of companies are using its platform to run an ad campaign in this survey

5. Foursquare

The rise of mobiles that are  GPS enabled  is slowly bringing back marketing options for local merchants that want to tempt buyers in the local area with alerts of offers to lure them into a struggling bricks and mortar retail sector. At 10 million registered users as at June 2011 it will need to keep an eye on Facebook’s “Places” feature as its closet competitor. Marketers are using Foursquare 16% of the time for their advertising.

6. MySpace

After having been sold recently for $30 million by the News corporation to a media company (News bought it several years ago for over  $500 million), MySpace is struggling but not quite down and out and I would expect to see it reinvented with its new owners.

It is finding some use for social advertisers at 7%

7. Meebo

Meebo is a social platform connecting users with their friends across the web supporting a wide range of instant messaging platforms including Yahoo messenger, Windows Live Messenger and Facebook Chat. At a usage rate of 4% I wouldn’t be rushing to advertise on this channel

8. Zynga

Zynga is the company behind the loved and hated Farmville and Texas holdem poker. The rise of social gaming has created a company that in a few short years is now reportedly valued at $15-20 billion and has 270 million monthly active users on Facebook. It is currently used by 2% of marketers but this may increase in the future as marketers work how to target their audience

9. Gowalla

Gowalla is a competitor to Foursquare and Facebook “Places” and with an estimated 600,000 active  users it will be interesting to watch how it competes in the location based social networking arena. 1% of marketers in the survey had advertised on Gowalla.

10. Mylife

Mylife was started in 2002 (formerly reunion.com) as a social network service. It did claim to be the 6th largest networking site in 2007 with 28 million users but today according to Quantcast it has an estimated 4.2 million monthly unique users and is still the 7th largest social network in the US. Along with MyLife and Gowalla it attracted 1% of marketers attention.

The bottom five is where the numbers drop into the single digits. So the top five are as most people would have predicted and are generally the place to play if you want leverage, scale and a rapidly developing and vibrant ecosystems with many apps and contributors to their evolution.

Expect to see Google+ on this list next year but at what position will be the billion dollar question as it evolves and rolls out its social integration across all its platforms from mobile to mail and adds the highly anticipated Google+ for brands!

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Author: Jeff Bullas

*This post originally appeared on Jeffbullas’s Blog and has been reposted with permission.

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Filed Under: Social Media

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American Express OPEN ‘Doubles Down’ on Membership Rewards(R) Points Enabling …

NEW YORK, Aug 22, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) –
American
Express OPEN, the small business division of the financial services
company, today announced a new Business Gold Rewards Card which includes
double points for all spending on online marketing. With small
businesses rapidly moving marketing dollars online, American Express is
offering richer and more innovative ways to help them get more out of
their investments. Examples include Membership Rewards redemption on
Facebook ads, and YourBuzz, a new online reputation management tool.

American Express’ Rewards programs, including the industry-leading
Membership Rewards, are a featured benefit used by millions of American
Express Cardmembers. With the Business Gold Card, business owners will
now receive:

–
3X* points on airfare

–
2X* points on advertising, gas and shipping

–
1X* points on everything else

“What small businesses need more than anything else is demand for their
products and services,” said Doug Tabish, vice president of Charge Cards
at American Express OPEN. “They are pushing us to help them think more
holistically about how to generate demand. We’re responding by offering
maximized benefits with Business Gold Rewards, allowing entrepreneurs to
reinvest the points they earn to better their existing businesses.”

Importance of Online Marketing, a Business Owner Perspective

For one New York City-based small business FertilityAuthority.com,
an online source for male and female fertility information, online
marketing has become a core function and vehicle for increasing its
growing customer base.

“As an online company, we have spent a significant amount of time and
effort in advertising across social channels, including Facebook and
Google. This allows us to attract new users and connect with existing
ones,” says Paul Bucalo, director of customer acquisitions for
FertilityAuthority. “We spend thousands of dollars a month to actively
market our company. The new rewards platform will enable us to convert
this spend into valuable rewards points that we can use to reinvest in
other business functions at no cost.”

According to the American
Express OPEN Small Business Search Marketing Survey, a survey of
small business owners utilizing some type of online marketing for their
business, three-quarters of entrepreneurs planned to add some form of
online marketing in 2011. Roughly three-in-ten will add a company
website (36%) or social media strategy (29%). About one-in-five plan to
add search engine optimization strategies (23%), mass email campaigns
(22%) or search advertising campaigns (16%).

Kick Starting Small Business Marketing Online

While small businesses like FertilityAuthority are increasingly tapping
digital marketing tools and services to reach customers and prospects,
kick starting campaigns can be complicated and many businesses owners
don’t fully comprehend the potential.

American
Express OPEN’s Marketing Suite offers a one-stop-shop of online
products for everything small business owners need to know to develop
and manage their online marketing efforts.

Currently, the Marketing Suite includes:

–
YourBuzz, a free tool to help small businesses manage their
online presence, learn what is being said about them and their
competitors, and connect with customers in the places where they are
most vocal–social media. YourBuzz aggregates conversations across
highly influential review sites such as Yelp and CitySearch, and
social networks such as Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter, to ensure
listings are accurate, build customer relationships, and mitigate the
damage that can be done from poor reviews.

–
AdManager, a tool for helping small businesses create, target
and measure the results of their online advertising campaigns.
AdManager combines creative templates and testing capabilities with
media-buying software to deliver a complete, easy-to-use, customizable
platform.

–
SearchManager, an online solution for managing paid search
campaigns across all major search ad networks, including Google
Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft AdCenter and Facebook Ads,
via a centralized dashboard.

These tools are part of the OPEN Business Apps, a group of software
products that help small businesses market their products and services,
increase margins and improve cash flow.

*$100,000 cap on each bonus spend category (airfare, advertising, gas
and shipping represent individual categories); caps based on calendar
year

About American Express OPEN(R)

American Express OPEN is the leading payment card issuer for small
businesses in the United States and supports business owners with
products and services to help them run and grow their businesses. This
includes business charge and credit cards that deliver purchasing power,
flexibility, rewards, savings on business services from an expanded
lineup of partners, and software-as-a-service applications designed to
help with cash flow, marketing and business expenses. Learn more at
www.OPEN.com
and connect with us at openforum.com,
twitter.com/openforum
and facebook.com/open.

American Express is a global services company, providing customers with
access to products, insights and experiences that enrich lives and build
business success. Learn more at
www.americanexpress.com
and connect with us on
www.facebook.com/americanexpress ,

www.twitter.com/americanexpress
and
www.youtube.com/americanexpress .

SOURCE: American Express OPEN

        
        National: 
        American Express OPEN 
        Rosa Alfonso 
        Vice President, Corporate Affairs 
        and Communications 
        212-640-1712 
        rosa.m.alfonso@aexp.com 
        or 
        for American Express OPEN 
        Sal Della Monica, 212-539-3272 
        sald@mbooth.com
        

Copyright Business Wire 2011

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