The six-year-old BuzzFeed is now read by 30 million visitors a month, according to its internal statistics. And most don’t come in through its homepage or Google searches. They come because a friend, colleague, or celebrity recommended an article to them—bouncing from glass screen to glass screen, a network of human connections overlaid on digital ones.

That network has long fascinated Peretti, the Web’s king of viral content. While his site encourages readers to laugh out loud at its stories, he made no jokes as he discussed the history of his company, the future of media, and his plans to make his funny site be taken seriously by the world.

via Inside Buzzfeed With Jonah Peretti – Business Insider.

You think your landing page is top-notch, right? Maybe. Perhaps. Probably not. Most landing pages suck and it’s easy to run a marketing campaign that doesn’t deliver the results you’re hoping for. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Admitting you need help is the first step towards making your page better. But how do you do it? It’s not like there’s a 12-step program for this type of thing. Actually, there is. But for the sake of making this post meaningful, let’s pretend there isn’t.

via A 50-Point Checklist For Creating The Ultimate Landing Page | Unbounce.

The world’s top 100 brands (according to Interbrand) are almost universally using Twitter, although far fewer are actively engaging in customer service over the platform, details Simply Measured in a December study. The study finds that while 95 of the top 100 brands are active on Twitter, less than a quarter of those (23) have a dedicated customer service handle, and only 15 respond to 10 or more tweets per day on such a handle.

via 23 of the World’s Top 100 Brands Have a Dedicated Twitter Customer Service Handle.

With almost 6 million shares, and owing to the success of campaigns such as Project Glass: One Day, Google takes the top spot as the most shared advertiser of 2012, finds Unruly Media, based on data from January 1-November 22. The 5.9 million shares attracted by Google represented a 197% increase from that same time period last year, and vaulted the search engine to the top spot from the #7 ranking last year. In second place was Nike, which drew 166% more shares than last year (5.5 million), jumping from the 6th spot.

via Google Heads List of Top 10 Viral Video Brands of 2012.

Recent research from HubSpot has indicated that Facebook photos generate higher engagement than the average post, and new data provided to MarketingCharts by Socialbakers supports this finding. Socialbakers took a sample of approximately 90,000 posts from 24,000 brand pages around the world during the week of November 26-December 2, and analyzed the top 10% most engaging posts. Of those, 89% were photos, with the remainder being links 4%, videos 4%, and status updates 3%.

via On Facebook, Photos Represent 89% of Brands’ Most Engaging Posts.

Research from Cognizant has shown that companies that involve direct customer input in their innovation processes report higher satisfaction with a variety of innovation areas than those who don’t. For brands looking to go that route, Millennials may prove a willing source of ideas. According to new survey results from Edelman Berland and Edelman 8095, 4 in 10 Millennials (aged 18-33) from around the world want brands to allow them to influence their products (co-creation). In fact, this is the leading way in which Millennials want to be entertained by brands.

via 4 in 10 Millennials Interested in Co-Creating Products With Brands.

Small businesses are behind in their adoption of social media, finds Hiscox in survey results released in December 2012. Just 35% of the respondents said they are actively using social media (a figure that appears rather low), although 16% are interested in learning how to use social, and 7% would like to but don’t have the time. But, while small businesses might not yet be fully cottoning on to social media, Facebook claims to have seen a rapid rise in the number of local business pages. As reported by TechCrunch, Facebook’s head of small business, Dan Levy, says that there are now 13 million local business pages, and that represents a jump of more than 40% from January. What’s more, the number of local business pages buying ads on Facebook has close to doubled in that period.

via Small Businesses Lag in Social Media Use, but Facebook Says That’s Changing.

Verizon has released new data from its “Borderless Lifestyle Survey,” exploring consumer attitudes to an always-connected lifestyle. Of the many findings, attitudes towards real-time interaction with TV shows prove particularly interesting, as emerging technologies provide another potential activity for so-called “second screeners.” Specifically, 35% of respondents indicated an interest in real-time games and challenges with shows via a second screen, and 32% expressed an interest in the ability to control or influence a TV show’s plot via a mobile phone or tablet. Beyond TV programs, more than one-quarter also said they’d be interested in real-time interaction with TV commercials from a mobile device.

via 1 in 3 Online Consumers Want to Interact With TV Shows Via a Second Screen.

Wikipedia has become almost a staple in society, and its prominence in search engines and frequency of use make it a very powerful website. This study explores the views, experiences and beliefs of public relations/communications professionals about editing Wikipedia for their company or client. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has what he believes to be a “bright line” rule whereby public relations/communications professionals are not to directly edit the Wikipedia articles about their companies or clients. Through a survey with 1,284 responses, this study found that the “bright line” rule is not working. This is because, among other reasons, 60% of the Wikipedia articles for respondents who were familiar with their company or recent client’s article contained factual errors. When the talk pages were used to request edits, it was found to typically take days for a response and 24% never received one. Plus, most of the public relations/communication professionals in this study were unaware of the rule and almost half of those who were familiar with it did not understand what it meant to them. This study provides survey results that establish a benchmark for Wikipedia engagement.

via Measuring public relations Wikipedia engagement: How bright is the rule? | Institute for Public Relations.

China remains a difficult market for foreign brands to penetrate on social media. Social networkers are concentrated on homegrown sites, as opposed to Facebook, which is banned in the country, and other worldwide social sites. Still, the massive social user base in China, and the growing buying power of the population, have made the country hard to ignore. And data indicates that brands who do make the foray into social in China are likely to be well-received.

In Q2 2012, InSites Consulting surveyed social network users in select countries and found that two-thirds of those in China reported following brands on social media—the highest percentage among all surveyed countries.

via In China, Social Networkers Embrace Brands – eMarketer.