Customer Experience

By Liam Dowd - January 29th, 2014

Telly addicts and Twitter. Is Pinterest overtaking Facebook? And the growth of social media

Pinterest set to overtake Facebook?

The latest research from Adobe makes a bold claim that when it comes to revenue per visit, Pinterest is poised to outstrip the mighty Facebook through this year. The research that is part of Adobe’s Q4 2013 Social Media Intelligence Report analysing paid, earned and owned social media trends concludes that:

“We expect Facebook’s competitors to aggressively drive market share growth in 2014 by adding innovative paid media capabilities,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index, Adobe. “Optimising campaign spending across social channels and seeking a balance between CPCs and CPMs to drive ROI will become even more important.”

The much-debated revenue per visit metric is at the heart of the Adobe findings that also stated that all of the leading social media networks saw massive growth with Facebook leading the charge up by 365%. For brands that are considering how they can further leverage their exposure across the social environment, more visual marketing is clearly a wining strategy and will become even more so this year.

Adobe concluded: “Social media channels are picking up steam and have their eyes on capturing a greater proportion of search dollars. The real race will not be between social media channels, but between marketer’s allocation of dollars across search, display, and social. Social media, however, risks alienating users while it courts marketers. We’re sure to see some missteps along the way, but by 2015, we should expect to see a balance between content, advertising, targeting, and privacy that marketers and users can all live by.”

Pinterest have also just announced they are trialling a new feature they are calling Interests. For example, if you’re curious about traveling, more travel Pins is a good place to start. If you’re really into something specific like travel in New York City, we’ll show you some great Pins we think you may like.

The Pinterest blog states: “We’re working hard to make Pinterest as relevant as possible for each person so it can be a place you can find and save all of the things you love, even if you didn’t even know you were looking for them. This is just the beginning of bringing you more great experiences for your unique interests.”

Telly addicts are brands’ biggest tweeters

According to the latest research from Nielsen, In 2013 alone, 36 million people sent 990 Million Tweets about TV. Until now, however, we haven’t known how many people tweet about TV and brands—critical information for advertisers who want to leverage the momentum of Twitter TV activity to amplify brand messages.

Nielsen state: “The biggest finding, however, was the percentage of brand tweeters that also tweet about TV. Notably, TV tweeters made up 73% of the total number of people who tweeted about brands during that time, and they sent an even greater portion—89%—of the Tweets about brands. Knowing that the majority of people who tweet about brands also tweet about TV is significant for advertisers, agencies and TV networks looking understand how brands can reach people who will socialize their messages.

“The initial analysis also found that TV tweeters talk about brands across categories. Of the 5.5 million Unique Authors who tweeted about both brands and TV from August through October 2013, Nielsen SocialGuide found that 74% tweeted about consumer electronics brands, 48% tweeted about restaurant brands, 29% tweeted about food brands, 27% tweeted about beverage brands, and 24% tweeted about car brands.”

It seems that the second screen phenomenon is offering consumers a fast and convenient mechanism to communicate their thoughts and feelings as they watch television. This ancillary channel is an interesting evolution of how Twitter is being used right across market segments.

Discover more about how Twitter has evolved in our new feature.

Security worries could hamper social media user insight

The latest report to come out of TRUSTe makes for interesting if not worrying reading. Corporations have known for some time that privacy issues are increasingly becoming an important stress point for consumers. In their latest report, more than a third of respondents stated they were either ‘always’ or ‘frequently’ worried about their online privacy.

TRUSTe state: “The potential impact of this concern over business privacy practices is significant as consumer trust is falling. Just over half of US internet users (55%, down from 57% in 2013) say they trust businesses with their personal information online. Furthermore, 89% say they avoid companies they do not trust to protect their privacy, the same as in January 2013. 70% said they felt more confident that they knew how to manage their privacy than one year ago, but this can cause consumers to take actions, which negatively impact businesses.”

For brand owners this trend needs to become a vital component of all marketing activity that often depends on intimate insights into consumer behaviour. Trust can be gained by the appropriate use of social media for instance, with corporations illustrating the benefit of sharing personal information with them. Consumers are concerned as more of their personal information is requested to access the goods and services they want to buy. Brand owners need to work harder to gain this trust to alleviate some of concerns consumers have about their security online.

The growth of social media

If corporations needed to be told that social media has seen a meteoric rise to dominance, a new infographic charts how social media platforms are expanding. Not surprisingly Twitters see the most impressive growth with Google+ close behind, giving even more weight to the argument that Google’s social network is the one to watch this year.

Until next time….

The Useful Social Media team.