In early February 2011, a YouTube user posted a video with the title, “Zach Walls Speaks About Family”. Almost ten months later, the video was reposted on progressive campaigning site, MoveOn with a new title, “Two Lesbians Raised A Baby And This Is What They Got”. Here’s what happened to the views:
via How important are good headlines? – The Magic Bean Laboratory.
In terms of sheer connectivity, it’s hard to outdo millennials. The demographic has taken to the always-on, always-connected way of life in dramatic fashion, as evidenced by the November 2012 Scarborough Research report, "OMG! Is Your Medium Reaching Millennials?" which surveyed 210,000 US consumers ages 18 to 29.
via Millennials Keep Connected on Ever-More Devices – eMarketer.
Leads generated by print, radio, and TV advertising campaigns are of a higher quality than leads generated from a variety of online channels, according to results from a Software Advice survey conducted in partnership with Eloqua and CMO.com. But, there’s a catch: although respondents saw these traditional media delivering the best leads, they also saw them as generating among the lowest quantity of leads.
via Traditional Media Delivers Low Quantity – But Highest Quality – Leads, Say B2B Marketers.
Marketers’ excitement over new social media channels is understandable; these platforms have fundamentally changed the way that companies and their customers interact. But a September poll of adult internet users and marketing decision-makers in the US, the UK, France, Germany and Australia conducted by Pitney Bowes Software found that marketers need to be careful to make sure they are not overcommitting to social channels, and, moreover, that their actions on social media are aligned with consumer preferences.
via Social Media Marketing Can Get Out of Sync with Consumers – eMarketer.
Before doing so, it’s important to understand the data behind each social channel to gain insights into what works and what doesn’t with your audience. Here are 100 of the most fascinating social media statistics and figures from 2012 that can help you better understand Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google Plus for the coming year.
via Brian Honigman: 100 Fascinating Social Media Statistics and Figures From 2012.
On Twitter, Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats has compiled nuggets of narrative wisdom she’s received working for the animation studio over the years. It’s some sage stuff, although there’s nothing here about defending yourself from your childhood toys when they inevitably come to life with murder in their hearts. A truly glaring omission.
In 1748, the British politician and aristocrat John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich used a lot of his free time for playing cards. One of the problems he had was that he greatly enjoyed eating a snack, whilst still keeping one hand free for the cards.
So he came up with the idea to eat beef between slices of toast, which would allow him to finally eat and play cards at the same time. Eating his newly invented “sandwich”, the name for 2 slices of bread with meat in between, became one of the most popular meal inventions in the western world.
What’s interesting about this, is that you are very likely to never forget the story of who invented the sandwich ever again. Or at least, much less likely to do so, if it would have been presented to us in bullet points or other purely information based form.
For over 27,000 years, since the first cave paintings were discovered, telling stories has been one of our most fundamental communication methods. Since recently a good friend of mine, gave me an introduction to the power of storytelling, I wanted to learn more.
ocial media duties are treated more as add-on job functions, and don’t often get a dedicated internal team, details a [download page] new Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions survey. 65% of the survey respondents – the majority of whom hail from organizations that employ more than 100 people – said that social media tasks are assigned on top of current job responsibilities. 27% said they have an internal team that works exclusively on social media, while an additional 5% said they have both an internal department and use an outside agency or partner. Just 3% said they fully outsource all their social media efforts. That 3% figure reflects an apparent unwillingness to spend dollars – rather than time – on social media, a trend that was found by Reply! recently, in research examining SMB use of paid social media services.
via About 1 in 3 Cos. Say They Have A Team Working Exclusively on Social.
The problem comes when that churn, that endless wave of news, crests over our abilities to manage and vet. There is a call, for example, to slow down when it comes to coverage. You don’t care that Angry Birds Star Wars is out the moment it’s released. Why not just sit on that news for a few days, really give it a good dry rub? Why not give old Mighty Eagle a call, get him on camera. Really make an event out of it. We don’t do that because that’s even worse than pasting in a press release. There is a very large percentage of people for whom the words “Hey, Angry Birds Star Wars is out. You can get it here” is far superior to a 1,000-word article on how they got birds to look like Han Solo. We’re not any company’s marketing organ, no matter how many times we post about Apple. Those who want more can always find more. Always. So slowing down isn’t the answer.
via Churn: The Problem Of The New Tech Journalism | TechCrunch.
As content creators look to keep audiences interested and clicking on more assets, they would do well to consider audience composition, as research suggests demographics can have a substantial effect on how web users behave once they have found interesting content.
Research from content optimization firm nRelate shows that age is one major factor in how users engage with content online. An October 2012 survey found that younger US web users, especially younger males, had a high propensity to click on related articles and videos after reading online content. Older users tended to click on links to related content on a weekly basis, and women—especially older women—were more likely to be drawn to a story that featured a photo.
via Online Content Exploration Varies by Demographic – eMarketer.