9 Reasons Your Company Should Use Brand Advocates: New Research
What would you say if you could add 5, 10, 100 or 1000 marketing reps to your team? For free?
What if these marketing reps would freely write about your brand and tell their friends and all they expect in return is recognition and access to insider information?
Who are these free marketers? Brand advocates. BzzAgent has recently released a new research study giving us the skinny on the habitat, behaviors and motivations behind brand advocates.
Who are brand advocates and what motivates them?
This careful study identifies many attributes of brand advocates. I’d like to discuss nine of them that will help you think through how to effectively engage advocates for your business. 
Social Media Spending Habits Rise, New Research Reveals
Are you wondering how other businesses are allocating their social media activities in relation to other marketing tasks?
This article reveals the findings of a few new research studies. What they found might surprise you.
Small Business Focusing Big Time on Social Media and Blogging
Small businesses are spending three times more on social media and blogs than larger businesses.
In HubSpot’s 2011 State of Inbound Marketing Report, researchers discovered that small businesses plan to spend 29% of their lead generation budget on social media and blogs. Asked the same question, medium to large businesses only plan to spend 9% on the same categories.
Small Businesses Benefit Most From Social Media, Study Reveals
Do you wonder if you have what it takes to compete in the social media marketplace? Who, after all, has the time or the budget to mimic Disney or Starbucks? Certainly not a small business!
Well, maybe that’s the wrong set of questions.
In fact, the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report has some good news for small business marketers. Small business owners are seeing the greatest results from social media marketing.
2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report
Have you pondered any of these questions? “Where are my peers targeting their social media efforts? What benefits are they achieving? Where will they focus their future activities?”
Look no further.
All of the answers (and more) are right here in this free third-annual social media report.
Watch the above video for a quick summary.
Most Marketers Clueless About Social Media Conversations
Alterian’s 8th annual survey of marketers examined the changes affecting marketing professionals today. The results below show a developing shift—one that’s moving away from the typical broadcasting we’ve seen in social media’s early days and moving more toward higher engagement.
According to the survey, marketers admit to struggling with customer engagement on multiple channels. This makes sense as many marketers are just beginning to experiment with more engagement efforts, one channel at a time.
In the near future, we’ll begin to see this single channel engagement morph into a more synergistic engagement effort over multiple channels. As we’ve seen with other social media trends, these shifts take time.
Study Reveals Top 6 Social Media Goals for 2011
In 2010, many businesses laid their social media foundations. In 2011, many wonder what social media marketers will tackle as their top priorities.
Altimeter Group‘s recent research reveals that integration, staffing, advertising and measurement are all key areas of focus for social media strategists in 2011.
Jeremiah Owyang, industry analyst and Altimeter Group partner who focuses on customer strategy, recently delivered the keynote Social Business Forecast: 2011 The Year of Integration. He offered some extremely valuable survey results, insights and advice for businesses looking to expand their social media plans in 2011.
8 Social Media Trends Impacting Businesses
As businesses continue to integrate social media and become more confident and comfortable with social media tools and platforms, we’re starting to see a change in social media usage. A new study reveals what’s changing with social media.
SmartBrief recently partnered with Summus Limited to survey more than 6,000 of its readers across a variety of industries.
They benchmarked and measured the state of social media usage among businesspeople. The data identified eight prevalent trends that give great insight into the social media behaviors, beliefs and challenges of the majority of businesses today.
