As seen by Damien Guinet

Yesterday, Google launched brand Pages on Google+. Like Facebook Pages, Google+ Pages allow brands, products, companies, groups and others to create a professional presence on the social network. However, according to Google+’s Policies, it appears that Google will not allow brand Page owners to host contests or promotions directly on the on the social network itself.

Per Google’s Google+ Pages Contest and Promotion Policies section, Page admins are informed that they may not “run contests, sweepstakes, offers, coupons or other such promotions” on their Google+ Page. Instead, they may display a link on Google+ that points to a separate site where the Promotion is hosted.

The folks over on Sociable.co noticed, too, that in the Additional Terms of Service for Google+ Pages, Google retains the right to block or remove Pages that violate these terms, or, in the case of repeat violations, suspend a user’s Google account. Incidentally, Google also notes that it may, without notice, remove any Google+ Pages that are dormant for more than nine months.

Companies and marketers realize that amassing fans and followers is not the be-all, end-all of social media marketing. Yet the challenge remains how to measure success beyond counting these metrics.

Data from the August 2011 Chief Marketer “2011 Social Marketing Survey” found that only 26% of marketing professionals saw amassing total followers as an aim for social media marketing. More popular goals included driving traffic to a website (66%), generating sales or leads (48%), and identifying and addressing brand fans (47%).

So what have marketers been doing to reach these goals for social media outreach? The most popular tactic among survey respondents was including a social sharing button in emails or on a company website, with 69% of respondents saying they did that. Additionally, 59% offered unique content for social media fans and followers, 58% had a Facebook “like” button on their websites and social pages, and 54% posted videos to social video sites.

1) En moyenne, seulement 5% des entreprises répondent aux questions posées par leur fans sur le mur de leur page Facebook

C'est en tous cas ce qui ressort d'une étude menée par Socialbakers (auprès d'un nombre d'entreprises américaines non précisé, mais sur environ 200 000 questions d'internautes posées sur les murs Facebook d'entreprises).

Seuls 3 secteurs d'activité dépassent les 15% de taux de réponse (voir illustration ci-contre : cliquez pour l'agrandir) :

• les télécoms (plus de 25%),
• les compagnies aériennes (près de 20%),
• et le commerce de détail (plus de 15%).

Si l'on en croit cette étude, il semblerait par ailleurs que l'attention portée par les entreprises aux commentaires de leurs fans soit (globalement) inversement proportionnelle à la taille de leur communauté : pour schématiser, plus le nombre de fans est important, moins le taux de réponse apparaît élevé.

2) 70% des entreprises ne répondent pas aux critiques qui publiées par les internautes sur Twitter

Une autre étude, menée par evolve 24 et téléchargeable ici, s'est quant à elle intéressée aux réponses apportées par les entreprises aux critiques (négatives) ou plaintes à propos d'un produit ou service, publiées sur Twitter, par près de 1300 adultes qui twittent régulièrement.

En résumé :

• 1 Twittos (utilisateur de Twitter) sur 2 espérait que l'entreprise répondrait à sa critique, l'autre moitié n'attendant pas spécialement de réponse ; à noter : le pourcentage des internautes qui auraient aimé recevoir une réponse augmente avec l'âge (38% des Twittos âgés de 18 à 24 ans ne s'attendaient pas à ce que l'entreprise lise leur tweet, tandis que près de 65% des plus de 55 ans l'espéraient),
• parmi le tiers d'internautes qui a reçu une réponse de l'entreprise à sa critique sur Twitter, 83% ont déclaré avoir apprécié cette démarche de la part de l'entreprise et près de 75% se sont déclarés satisfaits du contenu de la réponse reçue,
• parmi les 2/3 dont la critique a été ignorée par l'entreprise, 86% s'en sont déclarés "déçus".

En octobre 2011, 75% des adultes québécois ont utilisé Internet au moins une fois par semaine comparativement à 80,4 % en septembre dernier. Il s’agit d’une différence de -5,4 points de pourcentage. Considérant qu’au cours du mois d’octobre, on compte 7,1% d’internautes occasionnels (i.e. qui n’ont pas utilisé l’Internet au cours de la semaine témoin mais au cours de périodes précédentes) pour un total de 81,2% d’internautes, ce taux s’avère comparable au mois de septembre où on comptait 82,6% d‘internautes au total (dont 2,2% d’occasionnels).

Le taux d’internautes réguliers est significativement plus élevé auprès des adultes québécois de 18-24 ans (96,3%), ceux de 25 à 34 ans (86,6%), ceux de 35 à 44 ans (87,6%), de même que chez ceux de 45 à 54 ans (82,2%). Les adultes québécois qui ont des enfants (90,1%) sont aussi significativement plus nombreux à naviguer sur la toile. Au Québec, les adultes dont le revenu familial est au-delà de 60 000 $ par année figurent aussi parmi les utilisateurs réguliers d’Internet les plus nombreux avec un taux de 95,1%. Selon l’occupation, ce sont les professionnels (95,2%), suivis par les étudiants (93,9%) et les cols blancs (89,3%) où l’on retrouve les plus fortes proportions d’utilisateurs réguliers d’Internet.

Soulignons qu’en octobre 2010, une proportion de 79,9% des adultes québécois utilisaient régulièrement Internet.

 

Base : adultes québécois. n=1000 environ pour chaque mois sondé.  Dans tous les cas, la marge d’erreur est de ±3,1%.

In the next week, we’ll be making some highly requested changes to Google Reader. First, we’re going to introduce a brand new design (like many of Google’s other products) that we hope you love. Second, we’re going to bring Reader and Google+ closer together, so you can share the best of your feeds with just the right circles.

As a result of these changes, we also think it's important to clean things up a bit. Many of Reader's social features will soon be available via Google+, so in a week's time we'll be retiring things like friending, following and shared link blogs inside of Reader.

We think the end result is better than what's available today, and you can sign up for Google+ right now to start prepping Reader-specific circles. We recognize, however, that some of you may feel like the product is no longer for you. That's why we will also be extending Reader's subscription export feature to include the following items. Your data belongs to you, after all, and we want to make sure you can take it with you.

• Your subscriptions
• Your shared items
• Your friends
• Your likes
• Your starred items

Like always, the new Google Reader will be a great place to read and share your feeds. And in addition to Google+, you'll still be able to share to almost any service using Send To. We're looking forward to launching the new features very soon.

Facebook’s Page again topped our quarterly list of the top Pages by the number of Likes, as measured by our PageData tool. As with past lists, the majority of the names on this one remain unchanged even as all of them grew. Both Facebook and Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker reached over 50 million, with several others above 40 million Likes.

The number of Likes that Pages on our list had ranged from Facebook’s 54 million down to MTV’s 28.3 million.

See how other top brands are maximizing their returns on their Facebook campaigns in the Facebook Marketing Bible. See the list below:

1. Facebook – 54,031,990

2. Texas Hold’em Poker – 51,151,002

3. Eminem – 47,880,731

Your first goal with each post from your business Facebook page is to be seen by fans. But every post has a limited lifespan.

During that time, your fans see the post in their news feed and may like or comment.

But after a certain point, Facebook stops showing the post in their news feed.

Worldwide social media revenue is on track to reach $10.3 billion in 2011, a 41.4 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $7.3 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide social media revenue is forecast for consistent growth with 2012 revenue totaling $14.9 billion, and the market is projected to reach $29.1 billion in 2015.

Advertising revenue is, and will remain, the largest contributor to overall social media revenue. Social media advertising revenue is forecast to total $5.5 billion in 2011, and grow to $8.2 billion in 2012. Advertising revenue includes display advertising and digital video commercials on any device including PCs, mobile and media tablets.

“Marketers will begin to transition from ‘onetime placement and click of ads’ toward ‘ongoing engagement’ with the Internet user and will therefore allocate a higher percentage of their advertising budget to social networking sites,” said Neha Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner. “This is mainly because social networking sites, with the help of social analytics firms, are able to unlock the interconnected data structures of users — mapping lists of friends, their comments and messages, photos and all their social connections, contact information and associated media.”

To calculate social media revenue, Gartner analysts defined "social media" as including websites where: (1) content is created, consumed, promoted, distributed, discovered or shared for purposes which are primarily related to communities and social activities, rather than functional, task-oriented objectives; (2) content usually takes the form of words, pictures or videos; (3) the website may be a closed or an open platform; and (4) the flow of expression can be unidirectional or multidirectional.

Social gaming revenue is on pace to reach $3.2 billion in 2011 and grow to $4.5 billion in 2012. Social gaming includes revenue that social networking sites earn directly from users who play games that are developed in-house, and the revenue earned by allowing game developers/publishers to use their sites as a platform to let users play with friends on the network. It includes revenue earned from "virtual wallets" within games (such as when users spend virtual money on in-game items like swords or tanks, or to create virtual armies).

“We have seen social networks take a platform-oriented approach to game monetization. That is, the social networks have evolved into platforms for social gaming by publishing APIs that help build an ecosystem of developers and publishers,” Ms. Gupta said. “The dominant monetization models for social games are ad-led and ‘freemium’ models. The free-to-play games are funded either through advertising (wall advertisements and in-game branding) or through in-game monetary transactions that enable users to ‘level up’ or buy virtual goods.”

Social media subscription revenue is forecast to reach $236 million in 2011 and total $313 million in 2012. Few social sites charge subscription revenue, mostly for premium services. Some professional sites such as LinkedIn, Xing in Germany and Vladeo in France, charge a subscription fee from their users for enhanced services, such as an expanded profile view.

“From a revenue perspective, the social media market is still in its early stages, even though it has a large number of users who, in some cases, are exhibiting increasingly mature usage patterns,” Ms. Gupta said. “Market participants need to build new business models to tap into this increased usage and users’ increased level of engagement.”

When Facebook became a big deal a couple of years ago, it was fairly easy to predict that some brands would quickly become popular there.

It didn’t take a genius to see that, for example, Starbucks would have a big following. The brand has a tech-savvy clientele who are frequently filing a status update from one of the chain’s many locations. (Full disclosure: This story is being written at a Starbucks.) Likewise, you’d have to try hard to screw up Coca-Cola’s inevitable path to Facebook success, and at times it appeared that Coke was trying to do just that.

What is surprising as you go down the list of the top Facebook brands, though, is how random it appears. The list doesn’t remotely match up to what are judged to be the top global brands.

For instance, IBM, a giant in the global brands landscape, is a pygmy on Facebook with just around 68,000 users. General Electric, meanwhile, has around 20,000 fans, which is less than half that of Pep Boys.