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A Successful Social Media Post DOES Drive Consumer Spending

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Whether the post is positive or negative, the more attention it gets, the more you will sell.

For businesses using social media, posts with high engagement have the greatest impact on customer spending. This is according to new research from the University at Buffalo School of Management.

Published in the Journal of Marketing, the study assessed social media posts for sentiment (positive, neutral or negative), popularity (engagement) and customers’ likelihood to use social media, and found the popularity of a social media post had the greatest effect on purchases.

“A neutral or even negative social media post with high engagement will impact sales more than a positive post that draws no likes, comments or shares,” says study co-author Ram Bezawada, PhD, associate professor of marketing in the UB School of Management. “This is true even among customers who say their purchase decisions are not swayed by what they read on social media.”

The researchers studied data from a large specialty retailer with multiple locations in the northeast United States. They combined data about customer participation on the company’s social media page with in-store purchases before and after the retailer’s social media engagement efforts. They also conducted a survey to determine customers’ attitudes toward technology and social media.

The study also found that businesses’ social posts significantly strengthen the effect of traditional television and email marketing efforts. When social media is combined with TV marketing, customer spending increased by 1.03 percent and cross buying by 0.84 percent. When combined with email marketing, customer spending increased by 2.02 percent and cross buying by 1.22 percent. Cross buying refers to when a customer purchases additional products or services from the same firm.

“The clear message here is that social media marketing matters, and managers should embrace it to build relationships with customers,” says Bezawada. “Developing a community with a dedicated fan base can lead to a definitive impact on revenues and profits.”

 

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Will Facebook be the ‘New’ YouTube?

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It seems that Facebook is trying to muscle in on YouTube territory.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Facebook is indirectly becoming a solid source of user-generated content, often replacing time otherwise spent viewing similar videos on YouTube.

A new report from the UXS group at Strategy Analytics has been investigating the needs, behaviours and expectations of consumers regarding video consumption. The result? While consumers look to Facebook to see what friends/family are up to and to gain information overall, videos are being increasingly consumed as a part of this experience.

According to the report:

  • Social platforms are becoming the main source of consumption of ad-hoc short-form video. Sites such as Facebook and Instagram are increasingly sources to communicate new content availability; while sites such as Snapchat, IG stories and Boomerang are leading the drive towards social video creation and sharing.
  • Socially shared and discovered ‘viral’ content not only serves as entertainment on its own but can impact an unintended direction for users and their video consumption.
  • Ongoing live video streaming and posting of temporary ‘stories’ across Facebook and Instagram are also driving users to return.

Says Christopher Dodge, report author, “Content is ‘finding’ the user within social media: consumers no longer have to search for videos themselves. Furthermore, new ‘live’ video, along with countless shared video content, is shifting behaviours and resulting in more unintended video consumption.”

Chris Schreiner, Director of Syndicated Research, UXIP, agrees. “Identifying Facebook as a solid source for video – inclusive of professional, user-generated, and ‘viral’-type videos – not only makes Facebook’s experience even more compelling for users, but also drives advertisement revenues for this platform.”

There’s plenty of ways to use facebook video to advertise products.

But will they take YouTube’s thunder? Perhaps this is wishful thinking at this point. But, stranger things have happened. We will stay tuned.

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Reviews are the Most Prominent Local SEO Ranking Factor in 2017

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By Matt Southern

Reviews appear to be the most prominent ranking factor in local search, helping businesses rank well even if they have low quality link profiles.

This information comes from the annual study of local SEO ranking factors conducted by Local SEO Guide.

The study examined 200+ factors over 100,000 local business to find similarities between the businesses that are ranking well in Google’s local pack.

Despite local businesses having “crappy link profiles,” organic ranking factors are still highly interconnected with local ranking factors.

If a business ranks well in organic search, it was found to also rank well in Google’s local pack.

With that said, it was also found that businesses can rank well in local packs without the presence of traditional SEO ranking factors. That includes things like links, or even a website.

Reviews Correlate With Rankings

A business with a significant number of reviews on its Google My Business page can rank relatively well in local packs.

”The prominence of reviews isn’t particularly shocking, as it’s a way for Google to crowdsource ranking factors, it’s hard to spam, and the most problematic type of abuse is illegal.”

However, it’s not just the number of reviews that matter. Even more important than quantity of reviews is what’s being said in those reviews.

Google My Business pages with reviews that mention a keyword, and/or the name of a city, were found to have higher rankings in Google’s local pack.

”At a high level, having a keyword you are trying to rank for, and a mention of a city you are working to rank in, in reviews has a high correlation with high ranking Google My Business results.”

Do Links Still Matter?

Websites without high quality link profiles do not seem to have a problem with ranking in local search. Although that doesn’t mean links have become any less important.

”What I think is most interesting about this data, is that websites that rank tend to have low quality and low authority links.”

Businesses are able to rank in local search without a lot of great links, but those that put effort into building their link profile were also positioned well in search results.

”While it’s only correlation, Google still seems to be rewarding some level of optimized anchor text, around both keyword and city.”

Don’t Neglect Your Website

Small businesses are bad at websites, the study says. So bad, in fact, that some didn’t even have a website.

Having a website is key to ranking in organic search, and ranking in organic search means a business is much more likely to rank in local packs.

The study concludes that investing in owned assets, like a website, should be a business’s highest priority.

What Does this All Mean?

There’s a lot to digest in this study, but it all boils down to a few important takeaways.

  • Ranking in organic search correlates to ranking in local packs.
  • Make a concerted effort to acquire reviews on your GMB page.
  • Have a website and optimize it.

For further details see the full study.

By Matt Southern

Sourced from Search Engine Journal

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Deceptive Marketing Can Backfire For Companies Caught In The Act

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The truth always comes out and it will make you look stupid.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

In the era of fake news, less scrupulous businesses are using deceptive tactics to smear their rivals. But companies that spread fake news against their competitors ultimately experience the brunt of negative publicity and reputational damage.

That’s a key finding of new research co-authored by the UBC Sauder School of Business. The researchers examined a real-life case from 2012 in South Korea, when a customer reportedly found a dead rat in a loaf of bread made by one of the country’s most popular bakery brands. The company’s business plummeted, until a reporter discovered that a rival bakery had whipped up the fake story. Suddenly, the offending franchise found itself in the hot seat, in the media and online.

“People doubted the credibility of this firm and its management practices,” said study co-author Gene Moo Lee, assistant professor of information systems at UBC Sauder. “What’s more, the offender was a franchisee, which ultimately tarnished the reputation of the larger company. This study showed that deceptive marketing just doesn’t pay.”

The researchers examined three years’ worth of blog posts, news articles and social media exchanges, and counted how many positive and negative words were used in reference to each company.

They found that, while the fake story damaged the victim company at first, it caused far more significant and lasting damage to the firm that originally concocted the story. In fact, damage to the victim company lasted one year, while the effects for the offender lingered for more than two years.

For businesses that practice these smear tactics, the researchers caution that fake news detection technology is becoming increasingly more precise.

“Social media services like Facebook, Google and Twitter are building very sophisticated fake news detection algorithms now, which means it’s increasingly easy to be caught,” said study co-author Sungha Jang, assistant professor of marketing at Kansas State University. “Practically speaking and also ethically speaking, you don’t want to do that. Ultimately the truth prevails.”

According to study co-author Ho Kim, assistant professor of digital and social media marketing at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, the findings serve as a warning to companies to avoid using smear tactics.

“It’s a lesson we all learned in kindergarten: don’t tell a lie,” said Kim. “It’s not surprising, but a lot of people spread fake news. When it’s uncovered as fake news, it brings lasting reputational damage for the offender.”

 

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When Brands Tempt us to Lie, Cheat and Steal

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Get your company reputation in order, or you might find that even your satisfied customers will betray you.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

While many people consider themselves generally moral and honest, even the most upstanding citizens will likely become willing to lie, cheat and steal under certain circumstances, according to evidence from a new study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

If consumers believe that a company is harmful in some way – to the environment or to people – then they feel justified participating in illegal activities, such as shoplifting, piracy or hacking, according to findings in the study.

“People are much more willing to do something that risks their own integrity if they believe a company is unethical,” says Jeffrey Rotman, a professor in the business school at Deakin University in Australia. “And this desire to punish a harmful brand occurs even when the consumer has not personally had a bad experience with the company.”

Rotman’s team discovered this effect in one study in which participants were introduced to a fictitious pharmaceutical company that produced drugs to treat Parkinson’s disease and a bacterial infection called Brucellosis. Some of the participants learned that the company planned to increase the price of the drug by 300 percent to generate considerably more profit, even if it meant that certain customers could no longer afford the medication. Other participants learned that the company would not raise prices despite the profit benefits.

The researchers discovered that the participants who were told that the company was raising prices were significantly more willing to punish the company via unethical means, such as lying, cheating or stealing.

So why do consumers violate their personal code of ethics in these situations? The researchers conducted another experiment in which participants read a report stating that on average, internet speeds are consistently below advertised speeds. The federal report explained that this occurs because many ISPs intentionally cap speeds at 20 percent lower than advertised speeds. One group of participants was told that their internet speeds had in fact underperformed, and they were asked to sign a letter to the ISP asking for a 10 percent discount on monthly fees. The other group was told that their internet speeds were as advertised, but they should still sign the letter based on the findings in the federal report. Even though their internet speeds were good, they were encouraged to lie to justify the discount and capture the company’s attention.

Typically, people feel emotional consequences when they engage in unethical behaviour, but the researchers found that negative feelings, such as guilt, were absent because people felt that the company was cheating customers. “People felt morally justified lying to the ISP because the report claimed that the company was not delivering promised speeds,” Rotman says.

The researchers discovered that this desire to punish companies perceived as harmful is also reflected in the real world. Participants rated how harmful they perceived a variety of different industries, such as pharmacies, supermarkets and home improvement stores. On average, the more harmful the ratings, the greater the rates of theft were in these industries.

“There is growing distrust among the public of certain aspects of business and government, and these findings suggest that if people perceive these entities as harmful, they might feel justified in being unethical,” Rotman says. “My hope is that organisations will make it a priority to build a reputation that allows consumers and businesses to be on the same side.”

 

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Study: Social Media Is Simply “People Watching”

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If you worry that people today are using social media as a crutch for a real social life, a University of Kansas study will set you at ease.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Jeffrey Hall, associate professor of communication studies, found that people are actually quite adept at discerning the difference between using social media and having an honest-to-goodness social interaction. The results of his studies appear in the journal New Media & Society.

“There is a tendency to equate what we do on social media as if it is social interaction, but that does not reflect people’s actual experience using it,” Hall said. “All of this worry that we’re seeking out more and more social interaction on Facebook is not true. Most interactions are face to face, and most of what we consider social interaction is face to face.”

According to Hall, social media is more like old-fashioned people-watching. “Liking” something is similar to a head nod. It’s not social interaction, but it’s acknowledging you are sharing space with someone else.

“Keeping tabs on other people sharing our social spaces is normal and part of what it means to be human,” Hall said.

Hall is no stranger to research on social media. New Media & Society published an earlier study of his that found people can accurately detect the personality traits of strangers through Facebook activity.

In his current paper in the journal, Hall details three studies. The first demonstrates that when using social media, most of us are engaged in passive behaviours that we don’t consider social interaction, like browsing others’ profiles and reading news articles.

The second diary study demonstrates that most of what we consider social interaction with people in our close circle of friends happens face to face. When interaction with these close others is through social media, it’s not something passive like browsing or “liking” but rather using chat or instant message functions.

Here’s where it gets interesting, Hall said. The first study found that chatting and commenting – things that we would even consider social interaction – are but 3.5 percent of our time on social media.

The third study had participants contacted at random times throughout the day. This study drives home how adept we are at separating social media use with social interaction. People reported 98 percent of their social interactions took some other way than through social media.

“Although people often socially interact and use social media in the same time period, people understand they are different things,” Hall said. “People feel a sense of relatedness when they’re interacting face to face, but using social media does not make them feel connected.”

All three studies, Hall said, circle around the idea that we still value face-to-face time with close others for the purpose of talking.

“If we want to have a conversation, we’re not using social media to do it,” he said.

The findings speak to a broader anxiety that many still have regarding social media.

“There’s a worry that people are seeking out more and more social interactions on Facebook and that social media is taking over our face-to-face time,” Hall said. “I’m saying, ‘Not so fast.’ People use social media to people-watch and still seem to enjoy a good face-to-face conversation.”

 

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How do I Know if my Online Ads Work When 90% of my Sales are Offline?

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A recent study in the journal Marketing Science has shown that online display ads can increase both online and offline retail sales. This provides valuable insight for future marketing decisions.

The study (titled When Less is More: Data and Power in Advertising Experiments) was a collaboration between Garrett Johnson of the University of Rochester, Randall Lewis of Netflix, and David Reiley of Pandora, plus Yahoo.com.

The Yahoo! researchers worked with an unnamed national apparel retailer to evaluate the effects of the retailer’s advertising. They collaborated on a large-scale field experiment involving over 3 million Yahoo! users. For two weeks, Yahoo! users in the experiment’s treatment group saw branded apparel ads from the retailer whereas users in the control group saw ads for Yahoo! Search. Relative to the baseline established by the control group, the experiment showed that the retailer’s campaign increased sales by 3.6 percent or roughly three times the retailer’s spending on ads.

Reiley said, “This apparel retailer approached us with an interesting problem: ‘How do I know if my online ads work when 90 percent of my sales are offline?'”

The authors attacked this problem by matching customer records between the retailer and Yahoo!. Importantly, the authors combined customer-level online and offline sales data with a controlled experiment that allowed them to assess how much the consumers would have purchased in the absence of the ad campaign. They determined that 84 percent of the sales increase from the ads came from offline sales. Reiley added, “Without the experiment, the retailer could have erroneously concluded that the ads only increased online sales and not offline sales. Ironically, this could have led to underinvestment in online advertising.”

The study notes that their novel experimental design can be valuable for companies seeking to measure advertising effectiveness. Lewis noted, “We’d run experiments with this retailer before, but this was the largest experiment where we used ‘control ads’ to determine which control-group members would have seen the ads. This allowed us to ignore statistical noise from the purchases of consumers who never saw the ads. We also discovered that we only needed to look at sales after the first ad because an ad can only affect you after you have seen it. These two tricks allowed us to improve the statistical precision of the estimated benefits from online advertising.”

The improvement in precision from using control ads is critically important for managers making advertising decisions. Johnson explained, “Ad effectiveness estimates tend to be small, but also imprecise. Even with a study of 3 million users, standard methods to improve precision by controlling for customer’s past behaviour and demographics were less effective than most expected. However, by making full use of the control ads, we further improved by six times the statistical precision of our ad effects estimates. For managers, this improvement could be the deciding factor in learning whether online advertising has a clear and statistically significant positive impact. We hope the ideas in our design can help firms invest confidently in ad campaigns when they are likely to be profitable.”

 

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How to Build a Predictable and Profitable Website

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Know the basics before even setting foot on the internet.

We are well aware of the need to have a website developed for our business. Website design, aesthetics, usability, and user and search engine friendliness have been discussed time and time again by various experts. These things are important in discussions about website design. Today, we will delve into the heaviest part of website design, the elements that have to do with usability for web visitors and giving them a reason to stay on your website.

The first thing that we think of when we start building our website is what will be the chosen design? When we configure our designs, we think of things that could attract web visitors, and entice them to stay on for a longer period of time. Images, graphics, colour, white spaces, navigation settings, calls to action, buttons, and content placement are included in the list of website design elements that impact why visitors may stay on the site, subscribe to an offer, leave a trail or possibly become your next customer.

We want our web visitors to concentrate on our web pages. If your web space is crowded and people experience a difficult time navigating it, or encounter difficulty in finding information, they will walk away quickly. Therefore, in selecting our design preferences, the following should be considered:

Simple Design

Keep your design simple and to the point. Choose the right set of colours, but make use of white spaces efficiently and remove unnecessary elements that are not serving any real purpose except that of occupying usable spaced on the web page.

See The World Through Customer Eyes

Take a look at your web page like a web visitor would. What are elements that your website visitor would like to learn about? What are the elements that could confuse them? Which content is most enticing? If you put yourself in the shoes of the web visitors, you could possibly make effective web pages that could help you sell your products and disseminate information.

Use of Images in Website Design

Choose images wisely. High resolution, purposeful images. If you are trying to sell sweets, but display pictures of puppies, this won’t help you sell your product. You likely won’t be able to retain web visitors for more than 2 seconds. Pick images that relate to your business, products and services. Do not create false alerts. Such efforts simply go to waste.

Use of Fonts in Website Design

Typography is another highly important element to focus on when you design your web page. The font type, font size, and font colours must be chosen with care. Readable text makes a difference. Faded text or small fonts can make reading difficult for some audiences.

Larger fonts and bold text work well with H1 (heading or headlines). The text that you want to emphasise must be written in these types of fonts. Overcrowding the content area with bold text in other areas could force visitors to lose focus and wander off to other places on the net.

Call to Actions

The web page that you create must carry a clear call to action. Don’t hide behind words; tell your web visitors what they need to do, whether they are eager to learn more, or wanting to take you up on a discount offer. Put your call to action in catchy words to make users want to quickly grab the offer that you are presenting to them in exchange for the information they leave for you to catch up with them later.

The development of web pages isn’t as simple as it appears. However, a customer-focused approach and attractive design can help you garner the interest your products deserve.

 

Author:  Qamar Zaman – KISS PR – Dallas Web Site Design & SEO Company

 

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Mobile Scroll Ads More Effective Than Pop-Up And Static Banner Ads

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A new experiment suggests that pop-up ads can have an adverse effect on consumers’ perceptions of the content.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Scrolls ads, a newer style of advertisement designed for mobile screens, show signs of being more effective than older forms of digital advertising. This is according to a new experimental study conducted by The Media Insight Project, a collaboration between the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. This new research has significant implications for a news industry that is constantly searching for new revenue models to finance journalism.

(For the unitiated, a scroll ad is an interactive ad format which is adapted to the reading behavior of your visitors. The ad opens at the bottom right only when the visitor scrolls down. This ad format will close automatically or can closed directly from the visitor.)

An example is here:

“Banner and pop-up ads have been the standard way to advertise online for decades, though they have met consumer resistance, especially in mobile,” said Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute. “Our research into online advertisements finds that formats designed more recently, and with mobile in mind, strike users as less intrusive and more pleasing. To our surprise, compared with ad formats designed for other web environments, scroll ads can also improve recall of the product being advertised and enhance trust in the article where the ad appears.”

These are some of the results of the online survey experiment conducted with 1,489 participants between November 9 and December 6, 2016, using AmeriSpeak, NORC’s nationally representative survey panel. The online panel interface allows respondents to see and respond to content presented to them digitally, something that is not possible with traditional phone surveys.

Key findings:

  • The experiment finds that people are more likely to recall the product accurately if it appears in a scroll ad than if it appears in either a pop-up or static ad. Indeed, 34 percent of users accurately recalled the product from the scroll ad versus 26 percent in static ads and 25 percent in pop-up ads. The differences were even more pronounced if you take just those people who say they noticed the ad at all. The majority of all respondents, 57 percent, fell into this group.
  • People are no more likely to notice pop-up ads than they are scroll ads (61 percent vs. 62 percent for scroll) and are less likely to recall the product in pop-up ads, just 41 percent versus 55 percent in scroll ads and 53 percent in static ads. Pop-up ads also have several negative effects. For instance, 61 percent of people say pop-up ads make the article more difficult to read (vs. 37 percent for scroll ads and 19 percent for static ads).
  • When readers are interested in the topic of the ad, they are more likely to express some positive evaluations of the article and engage with that article. Overall, people who are interested in the topic of the ad provide more positive evaluations of the article, including that it provides diverse points of view (28 percent vs. 19 percent) and that it is entertaining (32 percent vs. 25 percent). However, those interested in the subject of the ad are no more likely to say the article got the facts right, had a professional appearance, that it was easy to find important information, or that the information was trustworthy.

“Scroll ads should play an even bigger role in online advertising because they appear to be more effective on a range of metrics than pop-up ads and static banners,” said Trevor Tompson, director of The AP-NORC Center. “These ads optimised for mobile produce benefits to the advertiser and the news outlet compared to older styles of digital advertising.”

 

 

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The Most Exciting Social Media Platforms Among Teens

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Musical.ly is currently the place for your influencer marketing money.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

A new survey of teenagers age 13-17 finds that teens have shifted their favoured social media platforms to Instagram and Snapchat. But the most exciting breakthrough is that of Musical.ly.

A survey taken by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in the USA found that:

  • 76 percent of teens age 13-17 use Instagram.
  • 75 percent of teens use Snapchat.
  • 66 percent of teens use Facebook, down from 71 percent of teens using the site in 2015.
  • 47 percent of teens use Twitter.
  • Fewer than 30 percent of teens use Tumblr, Twitch, or LinkedIn.

Strangely, however, there is one contender that fails to be mentioned: Musical.ly, which is roaring into popularity, especially in Europe. And there are great opportunities for marketers to reach that ever-elusive teen and tween market.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjf8tvnaIQs

 

Musical.ly was founded by friends Alex Zhu and Luyu Yang. They decided to target the US teenage market, as this market is characterised for being an early adopter of new trends. The main idea was to create a platform that incorporates music and video in a social network. The first version of musical.ly was officially launched in August 2014.

In 2015, the app began to attract millions of users and in July 2015, musical.ly climbed up to the number 1 position in the iOS App Store, becoming the most-downloaded free app in over 30 countries, including the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Brazil, Philippines, and Japan. In July 2016, musical.ly reached 90 million downloads, with over 12 million new videos posted every day.

So how does it work? To put it simply, “musers” lip-sync to their favourite tunes, by themselves or with a friend, and share it. That’s actually the main thrust of it. But the opportunities for marketers are strong. In June 2016, Coca-Cola launched its #ShareACoke campaign on musical.ly, which introduced musical.ly’s “User-Generated Ads” model.

Kids were making some seriously cool little ads for Coke.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LgMzMl9OFA

The hashtags that are popular on this social network usually make reference to bits of pop culture and trends among the internet world.

So, marketers, if you want to reach tweens and teens, it is definitely worth your while to check out Musical.ly. It has fast become a Go-To destination for influencer marketing. The app is still finding a way to monetise its platform.This means that they are a little more loose with restrictions or requirements in place for branded content, advertising, and influencer marketing campaigns. You never know, it might just be the perfect spot to place your influencer-marketing budget.

 

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