So well done! I love this.

The awesome crew over at SocialMediaExaminer.com just released their 2010 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. The 33 page report is geared to marketers and has some great info for anyone looking to create and grow their personal brand.

Here are some of the major findings from the survey:

• Marketers are mostly new to social media: A significant 65% of marketers surveyed have only been involved with social media marketing for a few months or less.

• The top benefits of social media marketing: The number-one advantage of social media marketing (by a long shot) is generating exposure for the business, indicated by 85% of all marketers, followed by increasing traffic (63%) and building new business partnerships (56%).

• In 2009, only 23% of marketers were using social media for years. Now that number has grown to 31%.

• A significant 56% of marketers are using social media for 6 hours or more each week and 30% for 11 or more hours weekly. It’s interesting to note that 12.5% of marketers spend more than 20 hours each week on social media.

• People age 20 to 29 spend the most time using social media marketing (59.1% spending 6+ hours weekly), followed by 40- to 49-year-olds (58.3% spending 6+ hours weekly) and then 30- to 39-year-olds (58% spending 6+ hours weekly).

• The number-one benefit of social media marketing is gaining the all-important eyeball. A significant 85% of all marketers indicated that their social media efforts have generated exposure for their businesses. Improving traffic was the second major benefit, followed by building new partnerships.

• More than half of marketers indicated a rise in search engine rankings was a benefit of social media marketing. As search engine rankings improve, so will business exposure, lead generation efforts and a reduction in overall marketing expenses. More than half of marketers found social media generated qualified leads.

• Those who invest the most time in social media marketing gain the most business partnerships. However, 53.1% of people who’ve only invested a few months with social media marketing report newpartnerships were gained.

• We asked marketers which social media tools they most want to learn more about.Social bookmarking sites slightly edged out Twitter for the number-one slot. Facebook came in third, followed closely by Digg/Reddit/Mixx/StumbleUpon and then LinkedIn.

Research from social media analytics firm Sysomos supports Twitter’s stickiness. The company examined more than 1 billion tweets over a four-month period and found that 41.6% of the tweet volume in March 2010 came from users who had joined Twitter at least nine months prior.

As recently as December 2009, these percentages were substantially different, with 26% of tweets coming from nine-month veterans and the largest single percentage, 28.9%, coming from users who had joined six to nine months prior.

A posting on the Sysomos blog sums up the significance of this data: “New users are continuing to tweet at a steady pace while the veterans are becoming more and more active.

According to the study, new Twitter users like to experiment. Their statement that the users who have used Twitter the longest are becoming more and more active? I completely agree.

Or maybe that is because I Tweet all day. :)

Most marketing executives cite email or search marketing as their company's top-performing advertising channel in 2009—39.4% and 23.6%, respectively—and over nine in ten (93.6%) say they plan to increase their budget allocation to digital marketing in the next five years, according to the Fourth Annual Marketing and Media Survey from Datran Media.

Just 9.4% of marketers cited offline channels as their most effective response channel last year. Another 4.7% cited social media, while mobile marketing, still in its early stages, was cited by 0.8% of marketers.

Below, other findings from the Fourth Annual Marketing and Media Survey from Datran Media.

Budget Shifts to Online in 2010 and Beyond

Among marketers who plan to increase investments in digital marketing, 75.2% say their allocations will increase steadily as 2014 approaches, while 18.4% say their allocations will increase greatly.

Moreover, 58.4% plan to reduce or keep flat their offline marketing budgets.

In 2010, most marketers (59.8%) are allocating over one-half of their overall multichannel advertising to digital channels. Another 15.2% of marketers are allocating 30-50% of their budgets to digital, and 7.1% of marketers are allocating 20-29% to digital.

Online Marketing Objectives

Asked to identify their company's objectives when conducting online marketing, marketers cited the following:

• Reach a target audience: 82%
• Lead generation: 72%
• Convert leads into sales: 63.2%
• Measure and understand audience: 60.0%
• Retain existing customers: 56.8%
• Digitally transact with customers: 53.6%
• Avoiding wasted media spend: 40.0%

Among specific tactics, over three-quarters (77.6%) of marketers are using targeting as part of their online marketing strategy this year. Some 71.2% say they are employing customer analytics and measurement tools.

Over six in ten (62.3%) are focusing both on retention and loyalty campaigns and on email list growth.

Mobile, Social, and Video

Interest in online video and mobile marketing is substantial this year: 67.2% of marketers are planning to leverage video, and 54.4% are planning mobile marketing initiatives targeting smartphones users (vs. 34.3% who planned to do so last year).

Marketers are leveraging social media as well: 72.3% have a company Facebook page, and 72.0% have a company Twitter account.

Still, marketers are mixed on whether social media marketing can deliver results: 50.4% say social media will generate quantifiable results this year (vs. 49.4% last year); however, another 37.6% are uncertain and 12.0% say social media cannot deliver quantifiable results this year.

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Looking for real, hard data that can help you match social media tools and tactics to your marketing goals? The State of Social Media Marketing, a 240-page original research report from MarketingProfs, gives you the inside scoop on how 5,140 marketing pros are using social media to create winning campaigns, measure ROI, and reach audiences in new and exciting ways.

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Online Audience Analytics

Marketers are focused on quantifying ROI this year: 72.8% say they now use audience measurement and analytics to assess the success of their digital campaigns, while just 21.6% do not.

Over one-half (54.4%) of marketers say they have optimized campaigns based on audience measurement analytics, while 29.6% have not done so as yet, but plan to in 2010 or beyond.

Most marketers cite clicks (72%), conversions (59.2%), and impressions (58.4%) as the three most important metrics:

Driving Brand Awareness and Revenue with Analytics

Nearly one-half  46.4%) of marketers say accurate online audience measurement is very important for driving increased brand awareness, revenue, and better campaign performance, while another 40.8% say it is somewhat important.

Among the greatest challenges to conducting online audience measurement, marketers cite the following:

• Accuracy: 29.5%
• Lack of ability to take action on data: 23.2%
• Wasted impressions: 9.6%
• Standards: 8.0%

Some 26.4% of marketers say they do not conduct online audience measurement.

About the data: Findings are from the Fourth Annual Marketing and Media Survey, conducted in December 2009 by Datran Media among over 5,000 marketing executives from Fortune 500 brands, top publishers, and leading advertising and media agencies. The survey was conducted in association with the Direct Marketing Association Email Experience Council and other media partners.

Quantifying ROI is still so difficult, but marketers are trying. Surprised that 21.6% do not focus on quantifying ROI of digital campaigns.

Video and Mobile will continue to be huge. Great for BlissTV :)

"In 2010, most marketers (59.8%) are allocating over one-half of overall multichannel advertising to digital." Impressive.

We surveyed people who use AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail – 500 people for each service. Here’s a bit of what they shared with us.

• You’re still very attached to your personal email accounts. We asked the survey group which communication method they would choose if they were allowed to keep only one to communicate with friends and family. Of the choices – email, texting, IM, or the ability to post to their favorite social network – most people told us they’d choose email over all of the other communication methods and tools.     
• Email is today’s tool of choice for managing and sharing documents, interacting with businesses, tracking online activities, receiving and responding to social networking alerts, communicating with friends and family, dating, and so on. Your inbox is your job search strategy room, your filing cabinet, your to-do list, and your social center
• Email is your online photo album, too. People send and receive over 1.5 billion photos each month on Hotmail alone, and email is still the most popular way to share photos.
• Email might be the only cloud storage solution you use. People currently keep 15,576,853,555 Microsoft Office documents stored on our servers – Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. 95% of our storage capacity is taken up not by messages, but by attachments.

Here’s some other data you might find interesting.

Top 10 reasons people use email today

Lots of reasons – people are busy in their inboxes!

Frequency of email usage

It’s frequent.

How people communicate – by email, social networking, or both

The results are pretty balanced although you can see that if it’s a more serious conversation it tends to land in email.

I have a love hate relationship with email. I think we all do. I think is it very important to keep email very short and easily absorbed. I try to keep my all messages 2-4 sentences if possible. I am also selective about what I send and bother to open.

a new Forrester reports says that the role will become obsolete.

You see, “the agency of record” will need to be able to handle both traditional and interactive marketing–the lines have blurred. If you’re not the agency of record, you’ll still have a role to play–even if it’s a niche role that your firm specializes in.

Fortunately, you still have some time to prepare for this migration. Apparently, there’s still so little overlap between the “big 5″ agency types–advertising, direct, media buying, interactive, and PR–that companies are not going to be able to put all of their marketing eggs in one basket–at least not yet.

So what should your company look for in a marketing agency? Well, Forrester says we’re approaching the age of Adaptive Marketing. One that requires three core skills from the agency of record: ideas, interaction, and intelligence.

It will be interesting to watch the agencies adapt to the new landscape. Many will focus in on a specific niche while other expand and bring in talent from many areas.

The ability to master both traditional and interactive is key.

While the site’s growth has certainly been impressive and it has reached the point of non-displacement, there are some interesting hidden truths about Twitter and its users. The following graphic takes a look at Twitter’s path to 10 billion tweets, what we have learned about its users and what they’ve been talking about along the way.

Click the Image for Full Size Version

Earlier today I linked the blurb about how using visuals is so much stronger for the reader than just text? Um yeah. Great work on this one.

Although user adoption is slowing, existing users appear more engaged. According to the report, the average user is following a greater number of people and earning a greater reach through an increased number of followers. Existing users are also posting more content.

Once engaged in Twitter, the seduction of response, by a stranger or someone we know, combined with the allure of popularity is enticing and intoxicating. Many people fall victim to its addictive qualities as you are rewarded with feedback, connections, and presence through engagement. As such, Twitter is a rich network of opportunity to increase stature as measured through online social capital. Experienced users realize that the value of participatory media is powered by so much more than just simple tweets or conversations.

Paying it forward, reciprocity, and recognition are the investments we make in earning attention and awareness for the value we bring to the table.

When we realize that Twitter is far more than a tool to enliven self-actualization, “I Tweet therefore I am,” we uncork the essence of who we are today and who we wish to become tomorrow. As such, we embrace nuances of self-branding by presenting ourselves through bios, locations, and outbound profile links. Users are making the connection that they can define and shape the experience of those who clickthrough to their profile in order to better present the persona they wish rather than the personality left open to interpretation and perception.

The Twittersphere is more engaged and the possibilities are endless.