Consumers, specifically women, are interacting on social media via advertising cues to show support for favorite brands

BURLINGTON, MA - Burst Media, (http://burstmedia.com), a leading online media company and wholly owned subsidiary of blinkx PLC (LSE AIM: BLNX), released the results of a survey revealing how and why web users interact with brands via social media. Conducted in March among 2,577 U.S. online adults aged 18 or older, the study found that the effectiveness of social cues in advertisements varies by the medium the ad appears in. Among respondents who recall social media prompts in advertising, digital ads (61.0%) and television ads (58.7%) are most effective at driving interaction with a brand’s social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. These are followed by print ads (52.4%), radio ads (41.5%) and outdoor ads (39.4%).

Notably, two-thirds (67.6%) of 18 to 34 year-old respondents—including 73.9% of 18 to 34 year-old women—say digital ads that feature prompts to social media assets are effective at inspiring them to take action.

“We found that marketers who use social sharing and action prompts within advertisements create authentic interactions that drive further engagement,” said Mark Kaefer, marketing director, Burst Media. “On the digital front especially, display, mobile and sponsored online content campaigns that include social media prompts can virally and exponentially extend campaign reach through consumer status updates, likes, tweets, pins and more.”

Survey Highlights

Web users interact with brands on social media for a variety of reasons.

·         More than one-half (53.8%) of women and 44.1% of men who interact on social media via cues in advertising cite “to show my support for a brand that I like” as a reason for doing so.

·         The gender divide is even wider with the next most-cited reason, which is to access special offers, coupons and/or promotions: 53.2% of women versus just over one-third (35.5%) of men cite this as a reason.

·         Notably, two-thirds (66.7%) of 35 to 44 year-old women cite the access to offers/coupons as a reason to interact with a brand’s social assets.

The majority (65.4%) of all survey respondents have at least one social media account set-up for personal use.

·         Facebook—at 53.0%—is by far the leading provider. Google+ follows a distant second, with one-quarter (25.6%) of respondents reporting they use the up-and-coming platform.

·         Three-fifths (58.6%) of respondents with social media accounts use them at least once a day, and another one-fifth (22.3%) check accounts at least once per week.

Interestingly, Pinterest and Instagram—as image and photo-driven social platforms—skew towards a female audience.

·         One-fifth (21.9%) of all female respondents have a Pinterest account, versus only 4.8% of men. The disparity of Pinterest use between the sexes is even greater among 18 to 34 year-olds: 1-in-4 (25.5%) women in this segment have a Pinterest account, versus just 3.6% of men this age.

·         Instagram’s audience also skews more female than male—10.4% versus 5.8%, respectively. Again, the gender gap is biggest among respondents aged 18 to 34, as 20.8% of women this age have Instagram accounts, versus 8.4% of men.

Download the full “Expanding the Conversation: Leveraging Social Media for Brand Interaction” Online Insights report (PDF) at http://burstmedia.com/pdf/burst_media_online_insights_2013_04.pdf.

About Burst Media
Founded in 1995, Burst Media represents thousands of independent web publishers. Through a select group of vertical channels, built around areas of specific interest, Burst connects advertisers with audiences across the web’s most dynamic communities in a social, engaging way. A wholly owned subsidiary of blinkx PLC (LSE AIM: BLNX), Burst is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, with sales offices throughout the United States and in the UK.

Visit us at http://burstmedia.com or call +1 (781) 852 5200 for more information.

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HOUSTON - FrogDog, a national marketing strategy and execution firm, this week released the results of a three-year national longitudinal research study on social media. The study shows how social media use has changed over time.

Highlights from the study:

• Facebook continues to be the dominant social media platform for every social media purpose—spreading marketing messages, business networking, connecting with friends and family, keeping abreast of the news, and finding sources of entertainment—according to 80 percent of respondents.

• For entertainment, Facebook remains king, with 78 percent of respondents spending their leisure time on the social media giant. YouTube (at 55 percent) remains the second destination respondents chose for entertainment. Facebook and YouTube have not lost any footing in this category; both received almost identical numbers in 2011.

• Twitter is relevant when delivering marketing for 60 percent of respondents; however, Twitter usage is declining.

• LinkedIn has emerged as the leading social media platform for professional networking, with 77 percent of respondents preferring LinkedIn over Facebook, at 48 percent. Additionally, LinkedIn has increased as a destination for information over the past three years, moving up almost 15 percent since 2010.

FrogDog’s survey also revealed several emerging social media platforms that garner a mention for use in reaching customers and clients, including YouTube, Pinterest, and Tumblr.

Also, by comparing results from prior years, the firm determined that social media platforms have become more relevant in all forms of business communications with clients and customers.

FrogDog CEO Leslie Farnsworth said, “I felt certain we would see a year-over-year increase in the number of companies with formal social media strategies. Instead, the percentage stayed relatively flat in 2010 and 2011, at 38 percent and 36 percent, and only increased to 58 percent in 2012. I’m surprised it’s still only at 58 percent. Developing these strategies is critical.”

For additional results from the survey and further analysis, including charts and graphs, read FrogDog’s 2012 Social Media Survey Results.

Farnsworth is available for interviews on the topic with all media outlets.

About FrogDog

FrogDog is a national consulting firm that has helped companies with marketing and communications strategy and execution since 1997. FrogDog’s customized approach helps clients across a variety of industries and business sectors thrive. For more information, visit www.frog-dog.com.

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ST. LOUIS - GroupM Next, the forward-looking innovation unit of GroupM, has signed a licensing agreement with visual social media marketing startup Curalate to provide clients of GroupM media agencies (Maxus, MEC, MediaCom and Mindshare) with engagement analytics on the social platform Pinterest.

The relationship provides an open door to what the company has identified as the top image and Pinterest analytics tools in the market today. GroupM Next will absorb the licensing fees, making the social analytics tool available to clients for a defined period with no pass through costs.

A core focus of GroupM Next is to identify emerging companies worthy of evaluation by GroupM agencies for client benefit. GroupM Next identified Curalate for its distinct specialist approach to ‘image’ analytics. Through data from Curalate, clients with pinboards on Pinterest will benefit from deeper, actionable insights into their visibility and engagement on the social network, including: image recognition of images related to a brand, brand advocate identification, trend identification, competitive analysis, and understanding of traffic sources. The combination of the product, where product development is going and competitive pricing put Curalate at the forefront of the category for GroupM Next when evaluating startups.

“The value of a platform is only as good as a brand’s ability to measure it. Visual curation is an important area of social media and we want to remove any barriers for brands, including financial ones, so that they have the data they need, can allocate resources and be able to do things beyond what they are able to do today,” said GroupM Next Chief Innovation Officer Cary Tilds. “Innovation through a test-learn-scale approach is useful for most emerging companies. However, we recognize there are times we need to go beyond. A benefit our agencies can provide to clients is a faster way to understand new, emerging, visually-based social ecosystems that are engaging consumers in new ways. This partnership with Curalate delivers that.”

A differentiation of Pinterest compared to other social networks is that it allows people to indicate and socialize via the Web visuals of what matters most to them. This curation allows brands to discover trends, track and measure activity, and to take action.

“As social media conversations become increasingly visual and product oriented, brands have more and more opportunities to identify the value of relationships and form more meaningful relationships with consumers,” said Apu Gupta, Curalate co-founder and CEO. “This partnership with GroupM Next is the first of its nature for Curalate, and will accelerate the pace at which forward-looking brands embrace and profit from this evolution in social media.”

“Throughout the ages, people have told stories and have identified what’s important to them using images. Visual curation at this scale and ease is new and powerful,” Tilds stated. “Our licensing agreement allows a large scale of brands to learn quicker than any other group of companies, speeding innovation, and therefore, future application of the learnings.”

About GroupM Next

GroupM Next is the forward-looking, innovation unit of GroupM, the world’s largest global media investment management group that serves as the parent company to WPP media agencies including Maxus, MEC, MediaCom and Mindshare, as well as Catalyst Online and Xaxis. Together with GroupM agencies, GroupM Next focuses on the curation and application of insight-focused solutions across the online, social, mobile and addressable channels. Through thought, technology, research and education, GroupM Next delivers data-driven, actionable insights and a clear path to action so that GroupM agencies and their clients harness the right opportunities made possible in the digital technology and new media industry environments with speed and relevance. Access our work and discover our perspective at www.groupmnext.com.

About Curalate

Headquartered in Philadelphia, Curalate is leading the pack in developing a new breed of marketing tools for the emerging sector of socially curated sites, starting with Pinterest. Curalate offers the most comprehensive solution available for brands and agencies looking to measure, monitor, and grow brand engagement on today’s socially curated sites. Curalate is backed by top tier venture capitalists including NEA and First Round Capital, and is in use by over 500 notable brands and agencies. For more information please visit www.curalate.com.

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iOS app allows users to easily share their passions and expertise by tapping the new Pinterest button within the app to “Pin” their favorite guides
San Francisco, CA  – Snapguide, the new iOS app and web service for those that want to create and share step-by-step “how to guides,” today announced that any Snapguide users with the Pinterest mobile app installed can now easily “pin” their favorite guides to Pinterest with just the tap of a button. This is the first mobile Pinterest integration of its kind and makes sharing seamless between the apps.

Users will now find Pinterest in Snapguide’s sharing options if they have the latest version of the Pinterest app installed. When they see a guide they love, they can tap the Pinterest button and then choose an image to pin. Once the Pinterest app opens, they will tap the pin button and they are all done! The image gets pinned to their board and they return to Snapguide – easy as that.

Snapguide is available in the App Store at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapguide/id421477397?ls=1&mt=8

Snapguide, which features thousands of user created guides, provides easy to understand instructions for a wide array of topics including cooking, gardening, crafts, repairs, do-it-yourself projects, fashion tips, entertaining and more. Users are invited to submit their own guides, so that they can share their passions and expertise with the Snapguide community. Snapguide is funded by leading venture and angel investors: Index Ventures, Atlas Venture, SV Angel, Dave Morin and Michael Arrington.

“With millions of users ‘pinning’ their interests to Pinterest everyday, it was a natural fit to make it easy to ‘pin’ your favorite guides,” said Daniel Raffel, founder and CEO of Snapguide. “Snapguide is about sharing your passions and expertise this new integration with Pinterest will make that easier and more rewarding than ever.”

Features of Snapguide include:

- Discover new things. Explore step-by-step guides on topics from cooking to crafts. Guides are viewable on the web, mobile phones, and tablets.

- Create your own guide. Use your iPhone to snap pictures and videos of your project. Add captions using voice-to-text or type them in by hand.

- Learn together. Connect with people who share your interests. Comment on a Snapguide and privately message other users.

- Share with others. Post guides to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and send via email.

Creating and sharing a Snapguide is easy and fast and can be completed in realtime by taking pictures and videos on an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad and then adding captions to describe each step. Documenting a project and sharing your knowledge has never been this easy. Snapguide features voice dictation powered by Nuance to ensure that spoken text is accurate and reliable.

Download a press kit containing screenshots, product logos and more: http://bit.ly/H6s8ts

About Snapguide

Snapguide was created by a small, passionate team in San Francisco, California and was founded by Daniel Raffel and Steve Krulewitz. Daniel was previously the product lead on Yahoo! Pipes. Prior to Yahoo! he worked as a chef at Per Se in NYC. Steve is an accomplished software engineer who previously worked on Google Chrome.

The company is funded by a group of successful entrepreneurs including Michael Arrington (Crunchfund), Gary Clayton, Jeff Fagnan (Atlas Venture), David Lee (SV Angel), Dave Morin (Slow Ventures), and Mike Volpi (Index Ventures).

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Pinterest is quickly establishing itself as a must-go destination for online marketers looking for a fresh approach to reaching the desired audiences. It has been around for two years but it is the very recent growth spur that caught the attention of users and marketers alike. With millions of consumers signing up, brands are scrambling to develop strategies for marketing on Pinterest and to efficiently engage with those who are pinning their interests.

Social media agency Banyan Branch (www.banyanbranch.com) is developing highly successful campaigns on Pinterest and we spoke with Blake Cahill, President of Banyan Branch, about the specifics of the platform and how brands can best utilize it.

Otilia Otlacan: We have recently noticed a number of high-profile campaigns developed by Banyan Branch on Pinterest. What made you consider adding a relatively new platform into the social media mix for your clients?

Blake Cahill: Pinterest demonstrates some of the strongest user engagement, retention, and virality metrics we’ve seen in an online business for sometime. It’s core demographic and the potential reach of its users lends itself to many of our fashion, home and beauty clients.

Otilia Otlacan: Was it difficult to get your clients excited about Pinterest? Why so?

Blake Cahill: No, not really as our clients are used to Banyan leading the way to bring them appropriately into new platforms and communities that can support their marketing or sales goals. We are always testing and executing programs, platforms and contests that can extend the reach and results of our clients.

Otilia Otlacan: Will budgets shift from other, already established social media platforms to Pinterest, or will Pinterest be able to entice brands to spend more on social media campaigns overall?

Blake Cahill: It’s early days, but for some clients Pinterest is revealing more user engagement and sharing with some demographics than investments on other platforms. So, we will shift time and resources from one to another but we are tying Pinerest and contests on Facebook together fairly closely as you can see in my example below for Gilt Home.

Otilia Otlacan: What makes a successful Pinterest campaign? Could you also share the pitfalls, if any?

Blake Cahill: Success varies depending on clients goals such as awareness verses sales, but reaching new people for you overall community efforts is a great measure of success. Additionally, many of the early adopters are very influential and attaching your brand to these folks can create a strong long tail of validation for the brand and for getting increased website traffic. From, a pitfall POV we see three areas: finding the right visual brand voice, balancing the level of investment, and naturally balancing self-promotion verses authenticity.

Otilia Otlacan: Targeting on Pinterest may not appear to a marketer as straightforward as targeting on Facebook or Twitter. How would one go about making sure that a brand’s message reaches the right audience?

Blake Cahill: Curation is key, establishing that visual brand voice and interacting with other Pinterest community members that align with your vertical/business is a key to success. No one wants to see a PIN of a dog or a paper clip from Office Depot on the Bergdorf Goodman Manolo Blahnik shoe page, keep it relevant.

Otilia Otlacan: Can you comment on the level of earned media through Pinterest versus Facebook? How would you measure it?

Blake Cahill: Earned media in general comes from having a very curated, compelling PIN board, and interesting campaigns or tie-ins to other branded platforms or properties. Again, at present we measure success in term of site traffic and if the clients is an e-commerce players we can track further to the shopping cart when web analytics tags can be embedded.

Otilia Otlacan: Tell us about attribution for to Pinterest campaigns; do you see the deep integration of Pinterest into Facebook and other platforms as a hindrance to accurate attribution?

Blake Cahill: I’d argue that there really isn’t deep integration and I don’t think it would be a hindrance. We leverage Facebook to host information on the campaign or content that we are running.

Otilia Otlacan: Is there any exciting campaign that you run on Pinterest at the moment and would like to share it with us?

Blake Cahill: We are presenting running a campaign for Gilt Home and Kids on Pinterest that attracts influencers to our weekly Facebook Q&A’s with notable design experts. So far the results are pulling in new and unique users that we were unable to connect with on other platforms.

http://pinterest.com/pin/241083386272184904/

Additionally, the following PIN demonstrates a promotion of a visual Facebook contest for Gilt:

http://pinterest.com/pin/241083386272183992/

About Banyan Branch

Banyan Branch, based in Seattle, WA, is a full-service social media agency that provides end-to-end marketing services including strategy, creative, execution and analytics. With a holistic approach that integrates Strategy, Social Media Creative, Engagement and Research & Analytics, Banyan Branch delivers social media programs unmatched by smaller agencies, while providing more personalized service and quicker response than large-scale digital firms. Dozens of the world’s leading brands, including FOX, Viacom, Paramount, Hartz, Univision, Gilt Groupe, Microsoft and Windstar Cruises have partnered with Banyan Branch to implement a wide variety of social media campaigns. Any company ready to connect with its customers where they live and breathe, can contact Banyan Branch via www.BanyanBranch.com

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