Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Henry Blodget's presentation of The Future of Digital is a mammoth slideshow with some delicious nuggets. The three-word takeaway is "Money follows eyeballs." If you want to know where the money is going, follow our attention.That makes this graph, adapted from the widely shared (and occasionally maligned) Mary Meeker presentation, perhaps the most important of the slide. It shows consumer attention vs. U.S. ad spending....

To be truly successful in marketing and advertising, we need to understand human motivation and behaviour at a deep level so that we are more able to influence it. Yet the marketing industry has clung to the same frameworks for modelling the ways that people evaluate information and make decisions for decades.

That picture is changing quickly as thinking from the worlds of economics and psychology creep into marketing. A discipline called behavioural economics, in particular, is challenging many of our old assumptions and helping us to think about how our customers behave in totally new ways...

Does your least favorite shirt fit you too tightly in the shoulders but too baggy on the belly? That’s data. Do your breasts pop out of your bra and the straps dig in too tight? That’s data. Are sleeves strangely loose on you? That’s data.

The data trend that has overtaken everything from job recruiting to sales leads has finally made its way into an unexpected place: the world of Anna Wintour. That’s right. Big data has arrived in Fashionland.

There’s multiple already funded Kickstarters underway right now, all that use data to produce perfectly fitting men’s t-shirts, in 24-50 unique sizes for all fellas of all shapes and sizes....

For the first time ever, a Forrester survey on Internet usage found that users report spending less time online than they did in 2011, nearly back to the average duration reported in 2009.

Forrester had this to say on the subject:...

“Our analysis revealed that “being online” is becoming a fluid concept. Consumers no longer consider some of the online activities they perform to be activities related to “using the Internet.” …

The Internet has become such a normal part of their lives that consumers don’t register that they are using the Internet when they’re on Facebook, for example. It’s only when they are actively doing a specific task, like search, that they consider this to be time that they’re spending online.”

Not only does the data show a decline in reported Internet usage, it also demonstrates a decline in the number of (US-based) consumers who own a laptop, netbook, or desktop. The data shows that smartphones and tablets are primarily used (in relation to the Internet) to access social networking websites, while consumers still prefer either a laptop or a desktop for performing other, more “serious” tasks.

This delineation between PC and mobile device usage may indicate that Internet users don’t consider the times they pull out a smartphone or tablet as “being online,” but rather only when they sit down and perform a specific Internet-related activity on the computer....

Get tips on how to improve your social media marketing that all stem from real research and data....

... As a professional social media scientist and part time unicorn hunter, I spend a lot of time chasing down and busting social media unicorns-and-rainbows myths and superstitions -- advice that has no basis in facts -- with real data and science. I've conducted quite a bit of research about social media marketing, and as a result, I've gotten quite a lot of insight into the tactics that do and don't work.

So I decided to compile a SlideShare highlighting 20 of my favorite data-backed ways to make your inbound marketing efforts in social media more successful. Check it out, and share your favorites using the tweet links below!...

Just two statistics from this most recent technology and media research study......

-  By 2015, the data indicate that Americans will consume media for more than 1.7 trillion hours, an average of approximately 15.5 hours per person per day. The amount of media delivered will exceed 8.75 zettabytes annually, or 74 gigabytes — 9 DVDs worth — of data sent to the average consumer on an average day.

- Mobile messaging hours, which in 2012 accounted for approximately 9% of voice call hours, will double to over 18% of voice hours, a year over year growth rate of more than 27%....

[The Washington Post] If you’ve ever suspected the Internet is taking over your offline life, an economist has some disheartening news for you: It is....

Scott Wallsten, a senior researcher at the Tech Policy Institute, parsed through the American Time Use Survey and analyzed the Internet’s “crowding-out” effect — what things we do less of so we can spend more time online. His findings, released this month in a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, were pretty dramatic. For every minute people spend on “online leisure time” — i.e., not working or checking e-mail — they also spend significantly less time on other common activities....

When you know more, you can do more. Social Media’s ROI can be tracked. But keep in mind that tracking is only the measurement of the result of your efforts. You must be able to tie those results back to your objectives to get real return on investment.The following are Facebook objectives and results we track here at Kruse Control on a weekly basis...

Aimia has released a report on mobile shoppers, from those who routinely use devices for research (Exploiters) to those who are more influenced by in-store experiences (Traditionalists).

Mobile-assisted shoppers (or m-shoppers) are a relatively new species in the retail jungle: 21% of today’s consumers use mobile devices in stores to assist with their shopping, according to a new report from loyalty management company Aimia.

The study, which surveyed 3,000 consumers in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., reveals five groups of shoppers who use mobile in varying degrees when it comes to making purchase decisions online and in-store. Below is a snapshot of who these mobile-savvy consumers are, what makes them tick and the implications for retailers...

A new study by Y&R and Dr. Joel Weinberger of Adelphi University shows that consumers' unconscious desires are at odds with what we say we want.

Ad firm Y&R teamed up with psychologist Dr. Joel Weinberger of Adelphi University to design a study that revealed respondents’ subconscious preferences using implicit association testing. The study, tellingly named “Secrets and Lies,” has been released and is available here.

Three key findings:

1. What consumers say is important is often the opposite of what truly is important to them.

In the chart below “conscious preference” is what people said they held to be of value. “Unconscious preference” shows how testing determined what they actually, subconsciously, valued. These global responses came from Brazil, China, and the US...

We decided to experiment with a new, super-long article format akin to "slow live blogging." When we looked at the traffic charts below, our jaws dropped. Here's what we learned about long form stories--and why quality, not velocity, is the future of online news. As web publishers we're obsessed with analytics. Any strategy that moves the needle gets our attention.

So you can imagine my surprise when a new way of writing articles blew up my assumptions about how to drive traffic. Before I go on--looking at analytics is tricky. Because we have imperfect information about our audience, it can be difficult to translate aggregate reader behavior into real insights. We may see trends or correlations in the data, but they do not necessarily imply causation, and trying to analyze traffic too closely can coax editors and writers into an unhealthy diet of red herrings. Sometimes, though, a trend is so big and consistent that it's impossible not to engage in a little educated speculation. The last month of our traffic at FastCo.Labs has presented is with one such scenario....