Senior executives from around the world aren’t that enthusiastic about social media marketing, according to new figures released by Doremus and the Financial Times from their annual “Decision Dynamics” survey. 51% of respondents feel that advertising in social media is more intrusive than advertising in a magazine or newspaper, while only one-third believe that a social media presence enhances a company’s reputation. The study results indicate that, in general, while executives are embracing online and mobile activities, they’re not doing so at the expense of traditional media.

via Senior Execs Not Convinced About Social’s Worth.

Netflix isn’t the only video service eating up North American bandwidth, although it is the largest, according to [download page] Sandvine’s “Global Internet Phenomena Report 1H 2013.” The report reveals that Netflix accounts for 32.3% share of North American peak downstream fixed access traffic, a slight dip from H1 2012, with YouTube next at 17.1%, up from 13.8% in the researchers’ H1 2012 study. When it comes to mobile traffic, the opposite trends are true: YouTube leads with 27.3% share of peak traffic, but is down from 31%, while Netflix is far back at 4%, but up from 2.2% the prior year.

via Netflix + YouTube = Half of North American Peak Downstream Traffic.

With more than 2 million fans on Facebook, Carnival Cruise Lines has a vibrant social media presence. While Facebook has been a worthwhile and efficient engagement portal for the cruiser, Carnival is constantly looking for new ways to engage its current fans and to reach fresh audiences.The goal of delivering valuable content in a fun and unique way led Carnival to explore advertising opportunities with music streaming company Spotify. As one of the top 10 most integrated social apps on Facebook, according to April 2013 research from AppData, and with 20 million active users, Spotify seemed an ideal destination for Carnival to provide a music-focused, social experience that would resonate with a younger, millennial user base.

via Case Study: With Spotify Playlist, Carnival Engages a Millennial Audience – eMarketer.

If helping our clients to be more visible is the heartbeat of public relations, then learning to integrate basic SEO skills into the work we do is essential to keeping that heartbeat strong. SEO is a must-know skill in PR.

Every senior-level PR and content marketing professional should have a solid understanding of how SEO works and how it applies to their own work.

via 3 best practices of SEO for PR | Articles | Home.

Twitter activity is highly concentrated among a small subset of heavy users, according to an analysis from researchers at the University of Illinois, published in First Monday. The study used Twitter Decahose as the basis of its analysis, with the data set examined over a period of 39 days constituting about 0.9% of Tweets ever sent and 35.6% of all active users as of December 2012. Among the highlights of the study was the revelation that the top 1% of Twitter users accounted for 20% of all tweets. Expanding that out a little, the top 5% accounted for 48% of all tweets and the top 15% accounted for 85%.

via Twitter’s 1% Generates 20% of Tweets.

SimplyMeasured-Interbrand100-Instagram-Adoption-May2013The number of Interbrand 100 brands with an Instagram account has grown to 67 as of May 1st, per a new study by Simply Measured, up from 59 on February 1st. While that’s not quite at the same adoption level as Pinterest (76) or Google+ (77), those brands using Instagram boast significantly larger audiences than those using Pinterest, per the report. Much of that has to do with levels of activity: while some top brands have “placeholder” accounts on Pinterest, the percentage of top brands’ Instagram accounts that have posted photos has grown by 10 points to 65.

via Top Brands Paying More Attention to Instagram.

The social audience is growing across networks and countries. That is the takeaway from GlobalWebIndex’s “Stream Social: Quarterly Social Platforms Update.” The study found that Facebook remained the No. 1 social network worldwide, with just over half of internet users logging on to the site at least once a month in Q1 2013. eMarketer puts worldwide Facebook penetration slightly higher, expected to reach 60% of internet users this year.Behind Facebook, there was a crowded field of second-place contenders, with Google+ out front at 26% of internet users. In the US, Google+ gets limited attention, though its user base is growing. Worldwide, however, Google+ has been much more successful. Given that YouTube was right behind, in use by one-quarter of active internet users, there’s no question that Google, which owns YouTube, is giving Facebook a run for its money in the global social network space.

via Which Social Networks Are Growing Fastest Worldwide? – eMarketer.

India, Brazil and Russia, along with the Middle East and Africa, are driving the biggest gains in Facebook’s worldwide user base. According to new estimates from eMarketer, Facebook will pass 1 billion active users worldwide in 2013 as the company sees particularly strong growth in its Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Latin American user bases, with each region set to rise by about 30% or more this year. By next year, Facebook will reach 1.26 billion global users.

via Emerging Markets Drive Facebook User Growth – eMarketer.

In the finance world, knowledge is currency. And financial professionals seem to understand that staying tapped into their social networks is a great way to stay on top of the latest information. A Q1 2013 survey of financial professionals conducted by Research Now and American Century Investments found that social media platforms had a penetration rate of 90% among this group.

While Facebook remained the most popular overall social network, LinkedIn’s focus on business made it the top platform for work-related issues. One-third of respondents said they used LinkedIn only for business purposes, compared with 2% of Facebook users and 3% of respondents on Twitter.

via LinkedIn Is Social Network of Choice for Financial Professionals – eMarketer.

Pinterest has been the belle of the social media ball for some retailers, who are seeing nice traffic referrals from the social sharing site.

Unlike many social platforms, Pinterest has two things going for it: it isn’t just a bunch of early adopters on the coasts and it leads to actual sales. Here’s 15 stats that retailer’s should know about Pinterest.

via 15 Stats Retailers Should Know About Pinterest | Digiday.