But are they getting substantial returns on their investment? Are they able to target the right segment of the audience who would actually be interested in their product as in whatever it is a movie, a documentary or a TV serial. Perhaps no!

Then why are the trendsetters not able to recognize the trend of marketing and switch to digital than still practicing the same old traditional marketing and splurging money like anything.

Let’s go ahead and see how digital marketing can help Bollywood and your business.

Specific Targeting

First thing first! Specific targeting! Spending money is not a big issue if you get an appreciable amount of customers by doing so. By advertising on TV, Radio , newspapers or through posters you simply broadcast your information to the masses and who all would interested will become your customers however how about if you can specifically target your ads to these ‘who all’ . Certainly, you will get better results and will save a lot of money too. This is what you can do in digital marketing. Whether they are the ads on search engines or various websites, they are only displayed if your buyers’ persona matches your ads. So, depending on your product, you very well know what part of the audience will need it and that through digital marketing you can extend your offer to only that part of the audience. Chances of any miss outs on it are kind of negligible here.

Cost-Effective

Not only you can put across your message to the right segment of the audience but you also save a lot of money in digital marketing. You only spend where you need to and that too far lesser than what you were paying in the traditional marketing.

Measure it at its every part

The best thing about digital marketing is that you can monitor traffic and results and optimize your advertising campaigns accordingly. The tool called analytics in digital marketing helps you measure different ad campaigns with respect to traffic and other results. Thus, you get to have a better idea of what part of your budget is bringing result and what part is going waste so that you take actions in view of that.

Customer Engagement

Being interactive in design digital marketing lets the customer to interact and get engaged. Unlike the traditional marketing, here the user has the command to browse through whatever they wish to, making it far more interactive and engaging. Gone are those days when your audience will entertain your ads even on getting interrupted by you while they are on their go. They would simply change the channel on TV or radio, or overlook the ad on newspaper. No one loves interruption marketing now. Recognize this trend and switch to digital marketing. The sooner you switch the better results you gain.

Generating awareness for your business and spreading business defying all geographical constraints are something that you can do with traditional marketing as well the only difference is that in digital marketing you do the same thing at relatively very low cost and in a more specifically targeted way. In simple words, digital marketing is far more effective than traditional marketing and that too at relatively very low cost.

The post How Digital Marketing Is Helping Bollywood? appeared first on Digitrock.

But are they getting substantial returns on their investment? Are they able to target the right segment of the audience who would actually be interested in their product as in whatever it is a movie, a documentary or a TV serial. Perhaps no!

Then why are the trendsetters not able to recognize the trend of marketing and switch to digital than still practicing the same old traditional marketing and splurging money like anything.

Let’s go ahead and see how digital marketing can help Bollywood and your business.

Specific Targeting

First thing first! Specific targeting! Spending money is not a big issue if you get an appreciable amount of customers by doing so. By advertising on TV, Radio , newspapers or through posters you simply broadcast your information to the masses and who all would interested will become your customers however how about if you can specifically target your ads to these ‘who all’ . Certainly, you will get better results and will save a lot of money too. This is what you can do in digital marketing. Whether they are the ads on search engines or various websites, they are only displayed if your buyers’ persona matches your ads. So, depending on your product, you very well know what part of the audience will need it and that through digital marketing you can extend your offer to only that part of the audience. Chances of any miss outs on it are kind of negligible here.

Cost-Effective

Not only you can put across your message to the right segment of the audience but you also save a lot of money in digital marketing. You only spend where you need to and that too far lesser than what you were paying in the traditional marketing.

Measure it at its every part

The best thing about digital marketing is that you can monitor traffic and results and optimize your advertising campaigns accordingly. The tool called analytics in digital marketing helps you measure different ad campaigns with respect to traffic and other results. Thus, you get to have a better idea of what part of your budget is bringing result and what part is going waste so that you take actions in view of that.

Customer Engagement

Being interactive in design digital marketing lets the customer to interact and get engaged. Unlike the traditional marketing, here the user has the command to browse through whatever they wish to, making it far more interactive and engaging. Gone are those days when your audience will entertain your ads even on getting interrupted by you while they are on their go. They would simply change the channel on TV or radio, or overlook the ad on newspaper. No one loves interruption marketing now. Recognize this trend and switch to digital marketing. The sooner you switch the better results you gain.

Generating awareness for your business and spreading business defying all geographical constraints are something that you can do with traditional marketing as well the only difference is that in digital marketing you do the same thing at relatively very low cost and in a more specifically targeted way. In simple words, digital marketing is far more effective than traditional marketing and that too at relatively very low cost.

The post How Digital Marketing Is Helping Bollywood? appeared first on Digitrock.

For many, that was the takeaway from an Oct. 10 Piper Jaffray study of 8,650 teens. That conclusion was false. The study had a much narrower focus than has been reported and only referred to purchasing activity on the platforms.

This key paragraph in the press release explaining the study caused the confusion (emphasis ours):

Teens have cited “friends” as the strongest influence over their purchase decisions for the duration of our survey history, but “Internet” is quickly rising in profile. More than half of teens indicate that social media impacts their purchases with Twitter being the most important, eclipsing Facebook, followed closely by Instagram. But the popularity of Facebook is waning among teens with 23% citing it as the most important, down from 33% six months ago and 42% a year ago.

There’s no doubt the report shows bad news for Facebook. However, the data refers to importance for purchases. The ambiguous wording of the presser — including remarks about the “popularity” of the social networks — didn’t help. After all, it was possible to read the last sentence as its own entity in which “most important” referred to most important overall.

That may be the case, but that’s not what Piper Jaffray was asking about. A rep for the financial advisor says the study was looking specifically at buying behavior and wasn’t trying to determine whether teens prefer Twitter to Facebook overall.

This sounds like great news for Twitter. Yet it’s unclear how much of teens’ purchasing activity is actually spurred by the social network. A study last year by IBM found that it had exactly zero effect on Black Friday sales. Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube didn’t fare much better, generating only 0.34% of online sales on Black Friday.

It’s also true that Twitter is gaining popularity with teens: A Pew Research study in May showed that the number of teens on Twitter doubled from 2011 to 26%. Yet 94% of teens reported being on Facebook. The “teens are tired of Facebook” narrative also picked up over the summer when Mashable ran an op-ed by 13 year-old Ruby Karp explaining that neither she nor her friends were on Facebook.

Nevertheless, researcher The Futures Company, which looks closely at teens’ behavior, has found that while Facebook use has plateaued (which tends to happen when you hit 94%), teens still aren’t leaving the social network en masse.

All of which is to say that there may be something to the persistent narrative that teens are getting sick of Facebook. The Piper Jaffray report doesn’t make that case.

Source: Mashable

The post Do Teens Really Think Twitter Is ‘More Important’ Than Facebook? appeared first on Digitrock.

The study, “Big Five Personality Traits Reflected in Job Applicants’ Social Media Postings,” identified links between job applicants’ online behaviors and characteristics that might impact their work performance.

Unfiltered personal communications and photos, comments about others, and references to alcohol and drug use are the key indicators of personality traits that job applicants truly possess — traits that may actually suggest a candidate will be a great hire, according to the study, which was conducted by researchers in North Carolina State University’s department of psychology and published recently in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.

According to the researchers, a job applicant’s social media activities reflect the following five personality traits: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to experience.

To get a better idea of what social media postings reveal about personality traits, researchers focused on two broad posting types: those that demonstrated badmouthing behavior, and those that referenced drug and alcohol use.

For instance, those who rated highly in agreeableness and conscientiousness were unlikely to badmouth others in social media, the study found. This doesn’t mean, however, that conscientiousness has any bearing on posts that employers often consider red flags.

“Companies often scan a job applicant’s Facebook profile to see whether there is evidence of drug or alcohol use, believing that such behavior means the applicant is not ‘conscientious,’ or responsible and self-disciplined,” Dr. Lori Foster Thompson, co-author of the study and a professor of psychology at NCSU, said in a statement. However, the researchers said there is no significant correlation between conscientiousness and a job applicant’s propensity to post about drug or alcohol use on Facebook.

“This means companies are eliminating some conscientious job applicants based on erroneous assumptions regarding what social media behavior tells us about the applicants,” said Will Stoughton, lead author of the study and a Ph.D. student at NCSU.

Extraversion is also a trait that’s often misunderstood. Consider, for instance, sales and marketing positions that require candidates to have extroverted personalities. Based on data presented in the study, extroverts are more likely to post about drugs or alcohol on Facebook; thus, employers will be limiting their sales and marketing pool of candidates if they automatically red flag those who exhibit drug- or alcohol-related behaviors on social media, the study found.

“If employers plan to keep using social media to screen job applicants, this study indicates they may want to focus on eliminating candidates who badmouth others — not necessarily those who post about drinking beer,” Stoughton said.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

Image: Jason A. Howie

The post What Social Media Can (Really) Tell You About Job Applicants appeared first on Digitrock.

Facebook accounted for more than 10% of overall traffic to publishers in September, by far the most of any social network, according to data released Tuesday from Shareaholic, a social plugin service that collects data from 200,000 publishers reaching 250 million monthly unique visitors collectively.

Pinterest drove 3.68% of traffic to publishers in September, the second highest of the social networks on the list and three times as much as Twitter, which ranked third. In fact, Pinterest’s share of overall visits increased by 66% year-over-year, more than any other social network. Pinterest now drives more traffic to publishers than Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and Google+ combined.

While most of the social networks tracked in the study showed significant year-over-year gains in referring traffic to publishers, referral traffic from Reddit and StumbleUpon declined 35% and 27.5%, respectively. Google+ remained essentially stagnant year-over-year and continues to refer the least traffic to publishers of the major social networks included in the study.

Image: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Source : Mashable

The post Pinterest Drives More Traffic to Publishers Than Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit Combined appeared first on Digitrock.

Some businesses say otherwise. Wixon Jewelers Online Marketing Director Jayme Pretzloff thinks that social media is going to be more important for sales than any other metric in 2013, as the platform continues to receive user acceptance and integrates into the overall marketing strategy.

70% consumers suggested that social media didn’t have any impact on their purchase decision in 2011, a percentage that was cut in half in 2012. Such statistics provide helpful insights to marketers as they look to make the most out of their time and investment.

Policies of social media companies also had a significant impact on referrals. There was a time when a post on Facebook fan page was seen by every follower/fan of the brand, but after policy changes, any post shared by a brand today is only seen by 10% of the total number of people following the page. Unfortunately, and fortunately for Facebook, you now need to pay for greater outreach.

This also shows that just because a particular social network has a huge user base doesn’t mean it’s an ideal place to get referrals. For example, tech sites usually concentrate a lot on Facebook, but they would be better off with Google+.

Likewise, a DIY jewelry brand may not get any retweets, but drive loads of traffic from Pinterest. Trying and testing the engagement ratio (the percentage of fans responding/number of fans present on the page) on different sites can help your brand to create a better online experience.

It is also important to note at this point that though referrals through social media are crucial for brand awareness, you shouldn’t give a wide berth to other referral resources. Doing so would be a BIG mistake. This is because social media doesn’t have the same level of intimacy as other sources of referrals like face-to-face networking, phone call, live chat etc.

The right approach

Some brands are smart enough to use all sources. For example, Blinds.com, told us “We encourage customers to refer Blinds.com on social media, and we also invite customers to contact us via phone or live video chat if they have any questions about our products. Referrals are important to us, as is customer retention; over 60% of our business comes from referral or repeat customers.” Food for thought.

However, other forms of referral networking can turn out to be inefficient, which is the main reason why social media referrals have a future in business marketing. It’s not a surprise to see businesses, especially new ones, struggle at networking events. The end result can be hours spent at a networking, only to walk away with a couple of business cards (Zoinks).

Social media, when being used as a major referral tool, should be supported by creative and relevant content. Businesses that establish themselves as credible and trustworthy providers of fun, inspiring and highly engaging content will be able to reach thousands of prospects through social channels. It requires a significant amount of time and investment, so it’s time that you take a closer look at your customer preferences and content sharing strategy.

Photo Credit: Social Media Referrals/shutterstock

Source: socialmediatoday.com

The post Do Social Media Referrals Have A Future In Your Business? appeared first on Digitrock.

Instagram announced on Thursday that the company will bring advertisements to the photo-sharing app in the near future, and frankly, it’s surprising it took this long. Unlike Facebook’s famous mantra, “Move fast and break things,” its subsidiary Instagram seems to be taking a slightly more subtle approach.

“Seeing photos and videos from brands you don’t follow will be new, so we’ll start slow,” the company wrote on its blog. “We’ll focus on delivering a small number of beautiful, high-quality photos and videos from a handful of brands that are already great members of the Instagram community.”

Facebook has capitalized on mobile ads over the past nine months — the company’s mobile ads brought in $655 million last quarter alone — and now Instagram will look to do the same. Instagram says it will do its best to make the ads blend in with the content users already see, and it will be in the best interest of advertisers to ensure their ads feel natural within the platform. Facebook’s mobile ads have done well for the company’s pocketbook, but some users have complained to Mashable that they can be overbearing or irrelevant.

No matter how well Instagram’s upcoming ads look, though, they are still ads, and the impact on user experience is hard to predict. So what do you think? Will Instagram ads be a dud, or will they offer valuable content to your Instagram feed?

The post What Do You Think of Instagram Ads? – Instagram Marketing appeared first on Digitrock.

But, beyond anecdotal evidence, it can be hard to parse just how many fans use which networks and where the greatest opportunities for marketers are. Catalyst PR, recently acquired by sports marketing titan IMG, is the latest to take a stab at quantifying where sports fans hangout online and how they can be reached.

The results of Catalyst’s survey provide some interesting food for thought.

Released this week, Catalyst’s fourth annual fan engagement study surveyed 2,100 sports fans between the ages of 16 and 64. That group encompasses fans of the NFL, MLB, NBA, college football, college basketball and soccer.

A couple of thousand fans don’t speak for everyone who follows sports, of course. But it’s an interesting starting point for considering trends in the industry. Here are a few of Catalyst’s most interesting findings:

• Nearly twice as many respondents use Facebook compared to Twitter, at 73% to 37%. But on game day, they check Twitter about 1.5 times as often as they do Facebook.

• Google+ and YouTube are on the rise among fans. When fans responded to a question about which platforms they use to “disseminate and acquire sports information,” those two platforms showed the most year-over-year growth, at 94% and 35%, respectively.

• Seven out of 10 sports fans who Like or follow a brand online say they’re open to sharing brand content, buying goods or engaging with social posts.

For more findings, check out the infographic below. Then let us know what you think in the comments.

Image: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images

The post How Sports Fans Engage With Social Media – Social Media Marketing appeared first on Digitrock.

In comparison to Facebook’s numbers leading up to its IPO last year, Twitter has far fewer active users, far less ad revenue and far greater losses. On the other hand, Twitter is planning a much smaller IPO, which may insulate it against some of the sell off Facebook experienced, and it has at least one key asset that Facebook didn’t have at this point in the process: significant mobile ad revenue.

Here are a few key stats comparing the two companies:

Twitter plans to raise $1 billion from its public offering. Facebook initially planned to raise $5 billion in its IPO, but increased that to $16 billion by the time it went public.

Twitter reported having 218 million monthly active users and more than 100 million daily active users in its S-1. Facebook’s initial S-1 revealed the social network had 845 million monthly active users and 483 million daily active users. By the time Facebook went public, those numbers had increased to 901 million monthly active users and 526 million daily active users and it now has 1.15 billion and 699 million, respectively.

Twitter reported generating $317 million in revenue in 2012. Facebook generated $3.7 billion in revenue — more than ten times as much — in 2011, the year before its IPO.

In an unorthodox move, Twitter did not disclose revenue per user. Instead, Twitter said its ad revenue “per 1,000 timeline views” was $2.17 in the second quarter in the U.S. and $0.30 in the rest of the world. Facebook generated $3.67 in ad revenue per U.S. and Canada user in the second quarter of this year and $1.41 per user worldwide.

Just as importantly, Twitter is still not profitable. Twitter lost nearly $80 million in 2012 and reported a net loss of $69 million in the first six months of this year. Facebook reported a profit of $1 billion in the full year before its IPO.

Twitter’s S-1 proved that it is already a mobile-first company: 65% of Twitter’s ad revenue comes from mobile products. Facebook, by comparison, had only just started to advertise on mobile by the time it went public and reported that mobile accounted for 41% of its total ad revenue in the most recent quarter.

If the IPO paperwork is any indication, Twitter also appears to be more mindful of Facebook than Facebook was of Twitter at this point. Twitter mentioned the word “Facebook” 9 times in its S-1. Facebook only mentioned “Twitter” twice.

Image: Steve Jennings/Getty

The post How Twitter’s Business Compares to Facebook’s appeared first on Digitrock.

Previously, articles pinned on Pinterest only contained photos from the article with a link at the bottom. (Users who wanted to include the article title or description had to add it manually.)

“We’re always looking for ways to make pins more useful so that when you discover and pin something great, it’s easy to act on it, whether that’s cooking a dish, watching a movie, buying a new gadget or reading an article,” Jon Parise, a software engineer at Pinterest, wrote on the company’s blog.

Pinterest is hoping that the change will encourage more users to pin and share articles they find interesting. The new updates could also encourage more media outlets to utilize Pinterest as a tool to promote content with
readers like they do with Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Pinterest says that users are pinning five million articles to the site per day and many use reading boards to save articles to consume at a later time. As of Tuesday, the new feature will only work with articles from a small number of publications, including Mashable, Rolling Stone and The New Yorker. Pinterest plans to expand the feature to all article pins “shortly after that,” according to a company spokesperson.

The new update will also roll out on mobile “soon,” per Pinterest’s blog post.

What do you use Pinterest for most? Tell us in the comments below.

Images: mkhmarketing; Pinterest

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