We Are Social's Monday Mashup #105

Mashup
michelle.goldfarb

Companies boosting digital marketing budgets
According to Econsultancy’s Marketing Budgets 2012 Report, companies are looking to boost budgets for their 2012 digital marketing strategies. The growth is fairly significant with 68% are increasing their digital budgets in 2012 compared to compared to 45% of companies increasing overall marketing budgets.

Corporate blogging declines as newer tools rule
A study on the usage of social media in Inc. 500 corporations shows fewer of them are using blogging, message/bulletin boards, online video, podcasting and MySpace and more are using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Foursquare.

The platform most utilized by the Inc. 500 is Facebook, with 74% of companies using it. Virtually tied at 73% is the adoption of the professional network, LinkedIn. The use of corporate blogs dropped to 37% from 50% in 2010, as this mature tool evolves into other forms or is replaced by communication through Facebook or Twitter.

Social media tools are seen as important for company goals. Ninety percent of responding executives report that social media tools are important for brand awareness and company reputation. Eighty-eight percent see these tools as important for generating web traffic while 81% find them important for lead generation. Seventy-three percent say that social media tools are important for customer support programs.

India is Now Facebook’s No. 2 Nation Behind the U.S.
India moved from sixth to second place on the global leaderboard for total number of Facebook users in January. It’s still got a considerable way to go to overthrow the US which continues to be the No. 1 Facebook nation in the world.

Colombia was measured as having the fastest user growth on Facebook and Brazil and Indonesia, alongside India, were marked as countries to watch. Looking to Europe, in one month alone Germany and Poland grew a respective 500k and 300k users and they’ve got even more room to grow. Japan have also had strong growth this month.

Facebook Files for IPO; Reveals $1 Billion in 2011 Profit
Facebook’s IPO filing this week has revealed:

Agencies: 89% Facebook, 39% Twitter, 18% Google+
There is no doubt that Facebook will play the dominant role in 2012. 89% of agencies plan to utilize the medium for their clients in the future, with 39% using Twitter, 36% wanting YouTube and 21% choosing Linkedin, and a surprisingly high 18% for Google+.

Facebook ‘likely to roll out mobile ads in weeks’
Given recent IPO filing admitting it was weak on mobile advertising, its unsurprising that its plan is to bring out mobile ads within the next couple of weeks in order to generate advertising revenues. January 2012 saw featured stories within users’ news feeds for the first time so it makes sense that mobile ads would be the next logical step forward. In December it claimed to have 425 million monthly active users using its mobile products, which is around half of its total monthly active users, and 21% growth from September’s 300 million figure.

Facebook groups get Timeline-like cover photos
Facebook groups now have cover photos which are consistent with the Timeline design – you have the options to change the cover photo but the group wall has been kept the same.

Top 20 countries on Twitter
Semiocast have relased detailed statistics on global twitter usage:

The Next Web highlighted the interesting takeaways from the report – namely, how different countries use Twitter:

In the period from September 1st to November 30th, 30% of Japanese accounts posted at least once, while in Brazil the number slipped to 25%. For both countries, the number is surprisingly low, meaning that at least 70% of those millions of accounts were dormant for at least 3 months, if not more. The country with the highest percentage of active accounts is the Netherlands, with 33% of the accounts posting in the 3 month period. The most active countries on Twitter include Spain, the US and Indonesia.

Twitter opens enhanced profile page beta trial to UK brands
Twitter last week launched enhanced beta trials of profile pages to certain UK brands, with Asda, Sky, EA Sports Fifa and Cadbury the first brands given the opportunity to try out live brand pages.

Twitter and LinkedIn’s revenues: an update
With the release of Facebook’s detailed figures, it worth comparing them to those of LinkedIn and Twitter. Where Facebook made $3,150,000,000, Twitter managed a paltry $139,500,000 – over 20 times less:

LinkedIn fared little better with $154,600,000:

Google+ passes 100 million users
Paul Allen has been doing his usual research into Google+ user figures, and according to him, the site has grown by more than 10% between January 19th and February 1st, passing 100 million users. If these growth rates continues, marketers will be unable to ignore Google+.

Pinterest drives incredible referral traffic
According to Shareaholic, Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, YouTube and LinkedIn combined, and is also showing impressive growth month-on-month:

Superbowl hits record for Tweets per second
Last night’s Superbowl broke a record for the most Tweets per second (TPS) for a sporting event. According to Twitter, the average TPS was 10,000, with the peak hit at 12,333 TPS. The way records like these keep on falling, we can only speculate what, say, the 2014 World Cup final will be like.

Something useful from Foursquare!
The Superbowl also produced something useful from Foursquare – many Americans order pizza for their Superbowl parties, and if they checked in on Foursquare, they got $5 off their order, providing they paid via American Express.

KLM launch ‘Meet and Seat’
KLM have launched Meet and Seat, a new social way of flying. Essentially, when checking in online, customers can link up their social profiles, so fellow passengers can see their interests and what they look like and choose to sit next to them accordingly. Clever.

KLM reach a million fans, release video
In more KLM news, they recently reached a million Facebook fans – and celebrated with a video from many of their staff members saying thanks. It’s a really simple but it’s, er, taken off quite well.

Heineken launches Facebook app as part of wider Valentine’s push
Beer brand Heineken have launched a Facebook app as part of a wider push to make the brand appeal to younger men. The ‘Serenade’ app lets fans send one of 640 songs in 20 languages as a date invite to their Valentine. To determine what song is sent using the Serenade app, participants must answer five questions including, “who they would like to take on a date” and “why their chosen date should step out with them”. Ten out of ten.

Another hashtag campaign gone wrong
RIM, the makers of BlackBerry launched a social media campaign last week around a squad of cartoon characters called the Bold Team, together with the hashtag #BeBold. Just like the McDonalds fail of a few weeks ago, the negative sentiment towards RIM was taken up by the masses, with the hashtag abused to (somewhat) amusing effect…

Toyota spams Twitter around the Superbowl
The year is 2012. 2012. 2012, remember that. Because if in 2008 Toyota’s fail around this weekend’s Superbowl might have been forgivable, it’s not now. Essentially, they spammed everyone tweeting on hashtags around the Superbowl with tweets about winning a car. Before suspending the accounts when The Next Web pointed out how bad it was. And it really was very, very, very bad.

More than half of all UK MPs are now on Twitter
Of the 650 elected MPs of the British Parliament, 331 are now on Twitter, meaning more than 50% are using the micro-blogging site. A truly momentous occasion which will go down in history.

Facebook users’ views up in lights in Times Square
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, with the 2012 US Presidential Election now just months away, a new Facebook app has been launched which tracks users emotions towards certain issues and put thems up in lights. The app, called 2012 Matters: What Matters Most will poll users, with questions in their news feeds asking them which of two issues matters more — say, the economy or the environment. When a user answers the question, the result will show up on that user’s personal news feed and on friends’ news feeds. The friends also will be prompted to take the poll.

Once the app is installed, they can rank the three issues that are most important to them and opt in to having the results, including their Facebook profile photos, broadcast on the Reuters billboards, including in Times Square.