More than one in six visitors to travel sites are also Pinterest usersBecause of its visually oriented interface, Pinterest has been touted as having more promise for travel marketers than other emerging social media sites and even some of the established ones. Another reason travel marketers have their eye on Pinterest—besides its massive growth rate—stems from an assumption not unique to travel: The site’s users are much more likely to be in shopping mode than other social network users.

via Pinterest Users Show Proclivity for Travel Content – eMarketer.

I recently attended an event with a large number of advertising executives. All of them are coming to grips with the change from the era of push media to the era of social media, which might more properly be called “pull media.” At its core, the social revolution allows people to consume what they want, when they want, and largely on the recommendation of friends and other non-professional influencers. Attempt to graft old models onto it and you are doomed to struggle; find models that are native to the medium and you will thrive.

At O’Reilly, we first learned this lesson in 1992, when we published The Whole Internet User’s Guide and Catalog, the first popular book about the Internet, and the first to cover the as-yet undiscovered World Wide Web. (When we published the book, there were only about 200 websites, and the first web conference which we convened, “the World Wide Web Wizards Workshop” had thirty attendees, albeit among them such later luminaries as Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andreesen.) We had the great good fortune to hire Brian Erwin, formerly the head of activism for the Sierra Club, to help us with our PR and marketing.

“People don’t care about your book,” I remember Brian saying to me. “They care about the Internet itself.” Instead of marketing the book, we used the book to market the Internet. And we used the native tools of the Internet (at the time, principally mailing lists and usenet newsgroups) to find people who were also evangelical about the power of the Internet, and offered them free copies of the book to help with their evangelism. The book sold over a million copies, and was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most significant books of the 20th century.

via It’s Not About You: The Truth About Social Media Marketing | LinkedIn.

Although some brands over the years have been skeptical about how social media can bring in revenue, a new infographic reveals social commerce sales are expected to bring in $30 billion each year by 2015, with half of web sales to occur through social media.

Cloud marketing software provider Vocus has put together an infographic with stats from Gartner Research highlighting how brands are currently using social media and what trends are on the horizon.

via 50% of Web Sales to Occur Via Social Media by 2015 [INFOGRAPHIC].

Researchers at MIT say they’ve created an algorithm for Twitter that predicts trending topics better than the site’s existing equation.

Associate Professor Devavrat Shah and student Stanislav Nikolov say their new algorithm predicts trending topics with 95% accuracy an average of 90 minutes faster than Twitter — sometimes, as early as five hours before.

via Researchers Predict Twitter Trends With 95% Accuracy [STUDY].

Almost two-thirds of professionals around the world say that the use of information (including big data) and analytics is creating a competitive advantage for their organizations. But ask these professionals to define big data, and all consensus is thrown out the window. That’s what IBM and Oxford University found when they surveyed [download page] more than 1,000 executives from 95 countries, across 26 industries. The respondents, given a list of choices, were allowed to select up to 2 descriptions of how their organizations view big data. No single characteristic topped 20% of the normalized results.

via More Companies Agree on Big Data’s Benefits Than Its Definition.

A Facebook post will get half of its reach in the 30 minutes after it is published, according to updated data provided to MarketingCharts by Socialbakers. Socialbakers analyzed a select group of posts published on October 31st, finding that an average of one-third of post reach was obtained in just the first 10 minutes after publication. Previous data from Socialbakers has indicated that after the first half of reach is obtained in the 30 minutes post-publication, the rest is attained in the following 7 hours.

via Facebook Posts Get Half Their Reach Within 30 Minutes of Being Published.

Device type, demographics affect readership levelsThe print industry has looked to tablets as a potential savior of a suffering business. Whether digital ad revenues will make up for print losses remains to be seen, but millions of tablet users have taken to the devices to access periodicals on a regular basis.More than a third of tablet users in the US read newspapers on their devices each month, and even more check out magazines, comScore found in August. Readership was a few percentage points above average for Kindle Fire owners, with iPad users coming in second place for both types of periodicals. NOOK and other Android tablet users were slightly less likely than average to read magazines and newspapers on their devices.

via Who’s Reading Magazines and Newspapers on Tablets? – eMarketer.

Effective social care (being customer service through social media channels) fosters strong customer loyalty, finds NM Incite [download page] in a new report released October 2012. Among customers who have sought a social care response, 71% of those who experienced a quick and effective response say they are likely to recommend a brand or company, versus just 17% who had an effective but slow response. 33% would recommend a brand or company that offered a quick but ineffective response, and 19% would still recommend a brand or company, even without a social response.

via 7 in 10 Would Recommend A Brand Or Company After A Good Social Care Response.

One of the most important conclusions is that sending newsletters during readers’ top engagement times of 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. – 4 p.m. can increase their average open rates and CTR by 6%.

However, optimizing email timing takes more than awareness of top engagement times. As our research points out, it’s a combination of many factors, including knowledge of time zone differences, your subscribers’ daily routines and the practices of other marketers. Find out more for yourself:

via Best Time To Send Email [INFOGRAPHIC] | Email Marketing Tips – Blog GetResponse.

YouTube anchors most social video

The power of social video represents an evolution in digital advertising, according to a new eMarketer report, “Social Video: The Next Wave in Digital Advertising.” Marketers are starting to move past the interruptive model of the 15- or 30-second pre-roll ad and toward a broader strategy that includes longer opt-in videos with built-in sharing capabilities. This branded content is designed to be consumed and shared on the social web, driving earned media and raising the potential for viral success.

via Brands Get Users Sharing with Social Video – eMarketer.