04 Nov Understand Social Sharing & Understand Social Media Marketing

Posted at 16:09h in Social Media Promotion

Around 2007 and 2008, I remember social media marketers harping that the most important thing for a brand to do in the social space was listen and respond to consumers. As we come closer to 2011, I can't help but feel that the most important thing for brands moving forward is to activate social sharing. In order to do this, marketers must move from slapping "Share This" and "Like" buttons on everything to understanding exactly how and why their specific target audience is currently sharing.

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08 Apr How to Develop a Sound Facebook Fan Page Strategy: Step 1

Posted at 20:18h in Facebook Marketing

As a social media agency, we advise companies on how to conduct their presence within Facebook, particularly for fan pages.  In this exercise, we must figure out why a fan would want to become a fan in the first place, why they would stay a fan, and how we can get them to become more invested and engaged as a fan.

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06 Jan 4 Ways Social Media Budgets will Move in 2010

Posted at 21:18h in Social Media Trends

As we move into a new year, we also are experiencing a shift in budgets towards social media, as well as how they are allocated in the social space. This is evident in Pepsi’s decision to choose social media over Super Bowl ads, but it...

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14 Sep 7 Moves Facebook Has Made to Outflank Twitter in the Last 6 Months

Posted at 15:57h in Facebook Marketing

Back in July, I predicted that Facebook would eventually kill Twitter. The argument I was making was that Facebook was taking steps to make itself capable of doing everything Twitter does, plus much, much more. When you add in the fact that their user base is roughly 25x 14x Twitter's (about 250m to 1018m). (UPDATE 9/14: Emarketer reports that Twitter is up to 18m, although Facebook is projected to break 300m in November), it becomes hard to see a compelling long-term strategy for growth for Twitter.

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16 Apr Adults and Teens Use Social Networks Differently

Posted at 20:59h in Social Media Stats

How we talk about social networks has changed a lot in the last 12 months.

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24 Nov As E-Mail Open Rates Plunge, Social Media Marketing Makes Even More Sense

Posted at 14:06h in Social Media Stats

I was speaking with a friend the other day, as she had the opportunity to take a new job in social media marketing at the large company she worked for. The job was only funded for one year, however, so she was going to sit tight, feeling it was too risky. She currently works in email marketing for that company.

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04 Nov Internet Usage by Age, Gender, Race and More

Posted at 14:30h in Social Media Stats

People interested in social media marketing often ask me how age impacts Internet usage, and there's clear drop off in usage as people age. Now, new data from Pew Internet & American Life Project and eMarketer shows this drop off clearly.

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27 Oct New Research: Consumers Like Social Media Marketing

Posted at 15:45h in Social Media Stats

New data from a survey of 1,092 consumers by Opinion Research Corporation found that 85% of social media users thought companies should interact with them through social media. This is strong validation for social media marketing. Consumers, tired of being shouted at, are ok with properly managed social media marketing campaigns like those we do for our clients.

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06 Oct As Corporate Websites Fade, Retailers Follow Consumers to Social Media for Sales

Posted at 16:17h in Social Media Stats

It's been a while since I've pulled in e-Marketer data into this blog, but they often have great information. New research has found that corporate websites have fallen to 5th place in the list of valuable sources of product information as consumers turn to social media for trusted information.

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04 Apr Social Media Posts that are Igniting – Week of 3/31

Posted at 20:06h in Lifestyle

The following are Ignite's favorite posts coming out of this week. Enjoy!

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12 Feb Rising Popularity of Widgets for Social Media Marketing

Posted at 21:19h in Widgets and Plugins

In my experience, clients calling a social media agency like Ignite are trying to figure out how to get more traffic to their website. A laudable goal. So in instances where we talk about incorporating widgets into their strategy, we often get blank stares.

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04 Feb Do People Really Watch User-Generated Online Videos?

Posted at 21:24h in Video Marketing

One of the things that social media is great at is soliciting and distributing user-generated video. With all the platforms available now (from YouTube to Viddler to Seesmic and JustinTV), creating and sharing video has never been easier. As a social media agency though, we come across clients all the time (usually old-school marketers or PR types) who are just skeptical. "Sure, Jim, you can get the video and put it out there, but do you really think people sit around and watch this stuff?"

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