As social media tears down the walls between brands and consumers—and puts a premium on visibility and engagement—companies are finding that getting their CEOs out in front of online channels is becoming a more essential part of a brand’s business strategy.

via Social CEOs Drive Company Visibility – eMarketer.

Long considered a helpful tool for consumers to make informed decisions, online user reviews have become a subject of scrutiny, according to a new eMarketer report, “Online User Reviews: Building Trust and Boosting Sales.” Reports abound of fake reviews and the dramatic countersteps taken to prevent them. The question is whether consumers can see past bogus reviews as isolated incidents or if such reviews are pervasive enough to threaten the confidence of shoppers.

via Users Seek Out the Truth in Online Reviews – eMarketer.

Professional reviewers are often seen as having the last word on consumer electronics, but their influence on purchase decisions may actually be weaker than the recommendations of fellow consumers.

A study of consumers who had recently made an electronics purchase, conducted by Weber Shandwick and KRC Research in September 2012, found that shoppers were more likely to pay attention to consumer reviews than professional reviews across every product category. Respondents favored consumer reviews by the greatest margin when buying headphones or earbuds, at 79%. Shoppers were most likely to take a professional critic’s advice when buying a tablet, but still only 39% preferred “official” advice on such a purchase.

via For Driving Purchases, Customer Reviews Trump Pro Critics – eMarketer.

The Pew Research Center released a survey on Facebook Tuesday, and it’s causing quite a stir. The reason? It found 61% of Facebook users have at some point “taken a break” from the world’s top social network. Facebook is leaking users! Sound the alarm!

Nah, not really. The closer you look at the study, the less of a big deal this statistic seems. First of all, it’s a fairly small sample size. Pew reached 1,006 adults in the continental U.S. by phone during three days in December. Some 860 of them use the Internet, and 525 use Facebook.

via Most of Us Take Facebook Breaks, Then We Come Back.

Digital marketing channels have been viewed as better than traditional media for their measurability, but new research from Econsultancy and Responsys [download page] suggests that marketers are having a harder time measuring their ROI from digital channels. Among company marketers surveyed – primarily from the UK (46%) and other European countries (19%) – just 50% rated their understanding of ROI from digital marketing channels as “good” (33%) or “very good” (17%), down from 55% last year. By contrast, the proportion rating their understanding as “okay” or “poor” rose from 42% to 48%. The remaining 2% this year rated their understanding as “very poor.”

via More Marketers Having Trouble Understanding ROI From Digital Channels.

Any illusions that marketers have gotten this whole social media thing down pat will be blown away by the latest findings from Technorati Media’s 2013 Digital Influence Report, which suggests that for everything the media spends across social platforms, the most desired influencers aren’t even being reached.

The new report points out a huge disconnect: only 11% of corporate social media budgets are devoted to advertising on blogs and influencer sites. But fully 86% of the influencers these corporate brands are trying to reach are using blogs as their primary publishing platform.

via Brand Marketers Totally Miss Social Media Influencers – ReadWrite.

Everyone’s talking about Pinterest, social media’s “It Girl,” right now. It’s making history and referring tons of traffic for businesses who make it work. But, it’s not a fit for everyone. Should you start pinning for your small business? Use this decision tree created with Intuit to find out.

via Intuit Infographic: Should Your Business Be On Pinterest? – Column Five Media.

Digital marketers have quickly seized on the importance of channeling resources to content marketing, according to the “Quarterly Intelligence Briefing: Digital Trends for 2013,” report from Econsultancy and Adobe.The report, which surveyed client-side marketers worldwide, found that content marketing had climbed to the top of the list in terms of importance, named as a top priority for 2013 by 39% of respondents. That compared with 29% in 2012. The other area to see a significant year-over-year jump was conversion rate optimization, which was named as a priority by 39% of respondents, compared with 34% the previous year.

via Content Vaults to No. 1 Marketing Priority for 2013 – eMarketer.

A survey of small business owners by the Wall Street Journal and Vistage International has found that LinkedIn is not only the most commonly used social media tool by small businesses, but also the most positively perceived. Asked which social media tool had the greatest potential to help their firms, 41% of respondents chose LinkedIn, compared to 16% who pointed to YouTube, 14% to Facebook, and just 3% to Twitter. In fact, more CEOs chose LinkedIn than did Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest combined.

via Small Biz Owners Say LinkedIn Offers Them More Potential Than Facebook, Twitter.

As of January 31, 2013, the LinkedIn Answers feature will be retired from LinkedIn. We’ll be focusing our efforts on the development of new and more engaging ways to share and discuss professional topics across LinkedIn. In the meantime, you can still pose questions and facilitate professional discussions through other popular LinkedIn channels including LinkedIn Polls, Groups, or status updates.

via LinkedIn Answers – Shutdown | LinkedIn Help Center.