Social Media Marketing 2014

Market Assessment 2014
Third Edition May 2014

Edited by Robert Hucker
ISBN 978-1-78304-162-6
Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing Foreword
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© Key Note Ltd 2014

Social Media Marketing Contents
Contents
Executive Summary 1
1. Introduction 3
DEFINITION....................................................................................................................................5
2. Strategic Overview 8
MARKET DYNAMICS AND SEGMENTATION.......................................................................8
Market Sectors................................................................................................................................8
Total Market Value and Growth.................................................................................................9
Table 2.1: Top Ten Social Media Networking Sites in the UK
by Total Unique Visitors and Average Daily Visitors (000), 2013.......................................10
Figure 2.1: Top Ten Social Media Networking Sites in the UK
by Total Unique Visitors (000), 2013........................................................................................10
Internet Advertising Expenditure.............................................................................................11
Table 2.2: Total UK Internet Advertising Expenditure (£m), 2009-2013...........................11
Figure 2.2: Total UK Internet Advertising Expenditure (£m), 2009-2013.........................12
COMPETITIVE STRUCTURE......................................................................................................13
Table 2.3: Top Ten Web Properties by Total Unique Visitors
by Channel (000), December 2013............................................................................................13
THE CONSUMER.........................................................................................................................15
Use of the Internet......................................................................................................................15
Table 2.4: Household Internet Access in Great Britain (%), 2009-2013............................16
Table 2.5: Internet Activities by Age (%), 2013.....................................................................16
Reach of Social Networking by Device....................................................................................17
Table 2.6: Proportion of Adults That Access Social Networking by Device
(% of adults), April 2013............................................................................................................18
Social Media Marketing..............................................................................................................18
Table 2.7: Respondents That Have Purchased Goods and/
or Services as a Direct Result of Advertising on Social
Media in the Last 12 Months (% of respondents), March 2014.........................................19
BUSINESS USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA.........................................................................................21
Table 2.8: Proportion of Businesses Using Social Media by Type and Size of Business
(number and %), 2012................................................................................................................22
Table 2.9: Proportion of Businesses Using Social Media
by Industry Sector (%), 2012......................................................................................................23

Table 2.10: Reasons for Using Social Media by Employment Sizeband

(number and %), 2012................................................................................................................24
Table 2.11: Reasons for Using Social Media by Industry Sector (%), 2013.......................25
EDUCATING THE MARKET......................................................................................................26
Books..............................................................................................................................................26
Conferences and Seminars.........................................................................................................27
Awards...........................................................................................................................................28
Social Buzz Awards......................................................................................................................28
The UK Social Media Communications Awards.....................................................................29
British Interactive Media Association Awards, 2013.............................................................30
The Digitals 2013..........................................................................................................................30
Brand Republic Digital Awards 2013 (formerly Revolution Awards)................................30
The Drum Marketing Awards 2013..........................................................................................31
Digital Impact Awards 2013.......................................................................................................31
MARKET FORECASTS................................................................................................................31
3. Social Media 33
BACKGROUND ...........................................................................................................................33
THE SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE..........................................................................................34
Social Networking Sites..............................................................................................................34
Facebook........................................................................................................................................34
YouTube.........................................................................................................................................34
Pinterest.........................................................................................................................................35
Instagram.......................................................................................................................................35
Vimeo.............................................................................................................................................36
Flickr...............................................................................................................................................37
Others.............................................................................................................................................37
Professional/Niche Social Networks..........................................................................................38
LinkedIn.........................................................................................................................................38
DeviantART...................................................................................................................................39
XING................................................................................................................................................39
Spiceworks.....................................................................................................................................39
SunZu .............................................................................................................................................40
Biznik..............................................................................................................................................40
Micro-Publication Networks......................................................................................................40
Twitter............................................................................................................................................40
Tumblr............................................................................................................................................40
Aggregators..................................................................................................................................41
HootSuite.......................................................................................................................................41
FriendFeed (Facebook)................................................................................................................41
TweetDeck (Twitter)....................................................................................................................42

Flipboard........................................................................................................................................42
Stackla............................................................................................................................................43
Blogging Sites...............................................................................................................................43
WordPress......................................................................................................................................43
Blogger...........................................................................................................................................44
HubPages.......................................................................................................................................44
LiveJournal....................................................................................................................................44
Medium..........................................................................................................................................45
Bookmarking Sites.......................................................................................................................45
Reddit.............................................................................................................................................45
StumbleUpon................................................................................................................................46
Delicious.........................................................................................................................................46
WIDGETS, ADD-ONS, AFFILIATE ADS AND APPS............................................................46
Bitcoin News Widget...................................................................................................................47
Facebook Paper............................................................................................................................48
Official FIFA App..........................................................................................................................48
Greggs Rewards Mobile App.....................................................................................................48
Idealo Flight Finder Widget.......................................................................................................49
Spotify Play Button Widget.......................................................................................................49
CONSUMER RESEARCH............................................................................................................49
Penetration of Social Networking............................................................................................49
Table 3.1: Penetration of Users That Have Set Up Their Own Social Networking
Profile by Gender, Age and Social Grade (% of respondents), 2007, 2009-2012............50
Frequency of Visiting Social Networking Sites.......................................................................50
Table 3.2: Frequency of Visiting Any Social Networking Sites
(% of respondents), 2007, 2009-2012......................................................................................51
Uses of Social Networking Sites................................................................................................51
Table 3.3: Uses of Social Networking Sites (% of respondents), 2012..............................51
HOW TO ENGAGE ON SOCIAL NETWORKS......................................................................52
4. Social Networking Tools for Enterprises 54

BACKGROUND............................................................................................................................54
SOCIAL ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS — COMPETITOR ACTIVITY......................................56
IBM .................................................................................................................................................57
Jive Software.................................................................................................................................57
Microsoft........................................................................................................................................58
Oracle.............................................................................................................................................58
Salesforce.......................................................................................................................................59
SAP..................................................................................................................................................59
Zimbra............................................................................................................................................60
CONSUMER RESEARCH............................................................................................................60

SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOLS FOR MARKETERS............................................................62

Link Name/URL Shortening........................................................................................................62
Social Media Optimisation Tools..............................................................................................62
Social Media Marketing Tools...................................................................................................63
THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING....................................................................65
Table 4.1: DMA Social Media Scorecard (rating out of 10), September 2013.................65
Table 4.2: Proportion of Marketers That Consider Social Analysis to be Important
(% of marketers), 2014...............................................................................................................66
Table 4.3: Priorities of Social Media Marketers for 2014
by Social Networking Site (% of respondents), 2014...........................................................67
Table 4.4: Active Support of Social Media Marketing
by Management Level (% of respondents), 2014.................................................................68
THE TIME FACTOR.....................................................................................................................68
Real-Time Social Engagement...................................................................................................69
Table 4.5: Benefits of Real-Time Social Engagement (% of respondents), 2014............69
Table 4.6: Biggest Challenges in Managing Real-Time Social Engagement
(% of respondents), 2014...........................................................................................................70
5. Social Brands 71
INTRODUCTION..........................................................................................................................71
TOP 20 BRANDS ON SOCIAL MEDIA...................................................................................71
Table 5.1: Top 20 Social Brands by Social Brand Score, 2013..............................................73
By Sector........................................................................................................................................74
Table 5.2: Top Social Brands in Each Sector by Social Brand Score, 2013.........................75
Social Networking Sites by Adoption Rates...........................................................................76
Table 5.3: Social Brand Adoption of Social Platforms (%), 2011-2013..............................77
Marketing Budgets......................................................................................................................77
Table 5.4: Proportion of Marketing Budgets Committed
to Social Media Activities (% of brands), 2013......................................................................77
WHAT MAKES A BRAND WORK ON SOCIAL MEDIA?...................................................78
Table 5.5: Reasons for Following Brands on Social Media
(% of respondents), September 2013......................................................................................79
Case Studies: Social Media Successes and Epic Fails..............................................................79
Social Media Successes................................................................................................................80
Epic Fails.........................................................................................................................................81
6. An International Perspective 83
OVERVIEW...................................................................................................................................83
Use of Social Networking Sites by Region..............................................................................84
Table 6.1: Total Social Network Users Worldwide by Region (number and %),
2011-2013......................................................................................................................................84

Table 6.2: Leading Social Networking Sites in the World

by Monthly Active Users (million), November 2013..............................................................85
The Social Consumer...................................................................................................................86
Table 6.3: Method of Accessing Social Networking Sites
(% of respondents), 2012...........................................................................................................87
Table 6.4: Likelihood of Purchase Based on Social Media Websites/Online Product
Reviews by Product Type (% of respondents), 2012.............................................................88
EUROPE.........................................................................................................................................88
Table 6.5: Number of Social Media Users in Europe
by Country (000), February 2014...............................................................................................89
Table 6.6: Enterprises in the EU-28 Using Social Media
by Purpose of Use (%), 2013......................................................................................................90
NORTH AMERICA.......................................................................................................................91
Table 6.7: Penetration of Social Media Sites in the US (% of online adults), 2012
and 2013........................................................................................................................................91
ASIA/PACIFIC...............................................................................................................................92
Table 6.8: Number of Social Media Users in Asia/Pacific
by Country (000), January 2014.................................................................................................93
LATIN AMERICA.........................................................................................................................94
Table 6.9: Proportion of Companies in Latin America Using Social Media Platforms
by Country (%), 2010 and 2012.................................................................................................95
Table 6.10: Proportion of Companies in Latin America Using Social Media
by Platform (%), 2010 and 2012...............................................................................................96
MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA..............................................................................................................96
7. PEST Analysis 98
POLITICAL.....................................................................................................................................98
EU Proposes Data Protection Laws be Updated....................................................................98
Latest Snowdon Leaks Show GCHQ Spied on Social Media................................................99
Communications Data Bill Delayed........................................................................................100
Defamation Act to Provide Protection for Social Media Companies..............................100
ECONOMIC.................................................................................................................................101
Is the Tech Bubble About to Burst... Again?........................................................................101
SOCIAL.........................................................................................................................................102
Social Counterfeiting: A Danger to Brands..........................................................................102
The Rise of the Fake Social Media Follower.........................................................................103
Security Breach: Heartbleed....................................................................................................104
TECHNOLOGICAL.....................................................................................................................105
Superfast Broadband UK Roll Out..........................................................................................105
The Power of Video Advertising.............................................................................................106
Mobile Advertising Continues to Soar...................................................................................107

8. Industry Dynamics 109

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................109
Leanne Rinning, Head of Marketing and Communication, StormID..............................109
Dominic Sparkes, CEO & Founder, Tempero........................................................................109
VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLE.........................................................................................................110
Which Social Networking Sites Do You Think PR and Marketing Companies
Participate With the Most for Business Purposes? Any Reason Why?............................110
Leanne Rinning, Storm ID........................................................................................................110
Dominic Sparkes, Tempero......................................................................................................110
What Do You Think Are the Main Advantages/Disadvantages of Social Media
Marketing?..................................................................................................................................111
How Does Your Organisation Monitor and Measure the Success of Social Media
Marketing Activities/Campaigns? What Challenges Have You Encountered in Doing
So?.................................................................................................................................................112
To What Extent Do You Integrate Social Media Marketing Activities With Wider
Marketing Strategies? How Are They Integrated?.............................................................112
What Percentage of Your Working Day is Spent Interacting on Social Networking
Sites for Business Purposes?.....................................................................................................113
Do You Believe That Social Media Marketing Has a Clear and Direct Impact on Sales?
To What Extent?.........................................................................................................................113
Do You Intend to Increase/Decrease (or Continue at the Same Level) Your Social
Media Marketing Activities Over the Next 12 Months? What Are Your Predictions
for the Future in Terms of Social Media?..............................................................................113

9. Competitor Analysis 115

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................115
FACEBOOK INC.........................................................................................................................115
Company Structure....................................................................................................................115
Profitability.................................................................................................................................116
Table 9.1: Financial Results for Facebook Inc ($m),
Years Ending 31st December 2011-2013...............................................................................116
Current and Future Developments.........................................................................................116
GOOGLE INC..............................................................................................................................119
Profitability.................................................................................................................................120
Table 9.2: Financial Results for Google Inc ($m),
LINKEDIN CORP........................................................................................................................122
Profitability.................................................................................................................................122
Table 9.3: Financial Results for LinkedIn Corp ($m),
TWITTER INC..............................................................................................................................123
Profitability ................................................................................................................................124
Table 9.4: Financial Results or Twitter Inc ($m),
Years Ending December 2011-2013........................................................................................124
10. The Future 127

OVERVIEW.................................................................................................................................127
FORECAST GROWTH...............................................................................................................128
Table 10.1: Forecast Number of UK Social Network Users (millions of users),
2013-2017....................................................................................................................................128
Figure 10.1: Forecast Number of UK Social Network Users (millions of users),
2013-2017....................................................................................................................................128
Table 10.2: Forecast UK Digital Advertising Revenues at Google, Facebook
and Twitter (£m and %), 2011-2015......................................................................................129
FUTURE TRENDS.......................................................................................................................130
Mobile Technology....................................................................................................................130
New Competitors to Enter The Market.................................................................................131

LinkedIn to Become a Major Player in B2B Services...........................................................132

Big Data.......................................................................................................................................134
11. Further Sources 136

Associations...............................................................................................................................136
Publications...............................................................................................................................136
General Sources.......................................................................................................................137
Government Publications ....................................................................................................137
Other Sources...........................................................................................................................138
Understanding Consumer Survey Data 140

Number, Profile, Penetration..............................................................................................140
Social Grade...............................................................................................................................141
Standard Region......................................................................................................................141
Key Note Research 142
The Key Note Range of Reports 143

Social Media Marketing Executive Summary
Executive Summary
The continued growth of social networks across the globe over the past decade
has opened up huge marketing potential to advertisers, with Facebook now
estimated to have approximately 1.23 billion users worldwide, while
micro-blogging site Twitter has approximately 500 million accounts and
LinkedIn has around 259 million members. The wide reach of social networks
has provided significant opportunities for brands the world over, while the
accessibility of such sites has opened up social media marketing (SMM)
possibilities for both large corporations and small- to medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) alike. As a result, expenditure on SMM has continued to increase over
the past few years, with figures compiled by the Internet Advertising Bureau
(IAB) revealing that adspend on social media channels had increased nearly
three-fold over the past 3 years.
This growth has been stimulated by the continued expansion of such sites’ user
bases, as well as the ongoing development of more sophisticated advertising
tools and solutions by social networks and third-party software vendors. For
example, April 2014 saw both Twitter and Facebook launch their own mobile
advertising networks in direct competition with leading online advertising
platform Google; with Twitter, in particular, rumoured to be gearing up for a
number of new advertising product launches over the remainder of 2014. A
number of other newer, smaller social media properties, such as Google+,
Pinterest and Tumblr, have also begun to launch their own advertising
products. These developments have been instigated as part of such companies’
wider efforts to monetise their Web properties, with Twitter, Facebook and
LinkedIn all holding initial public offerings (IPOs) on the stock market in recent
years.
Social media as a marketing tool — although still drawing criticism from some
market analysts — has become increasingly powerful, with the majority of big
name brands investing in developing their social media presence. Phrases such
as ‘going viral’ and ‘trending’ have now become commonplace among
marketers as a result, with viral video advertising generating huge brand
awareness for some big name brands, such as Dove and Old Spice, in recent
years. Advertising on social media can have a number of benefits for brands;
for example, in increasing traffic to web and e-commerce sites, gathering
market research and intelligence, developing brand loyalty, improving
customer engagement, providing customer service and generating sales leads.
© Key Note Ltd 2014 1

Social Media Marketing Executive Summary
Social media tools designed specifically for internal use by businesses (also
known as social enterprise tools) have also become a common component of
customer relationship management (CRM) packages in recent years, with these
types of tools providing a range of solutions to businesses, such as internal
collaboration, document management, metrics analysis and providing rich site
summary (RSS) feeds to distribute company news. However, despite initial
growth in social enterprise tools following several high-profile acquisitions in
the market by large tech companies, such as Microsoft and Salesforce, recent
reports have suggested that capital funding in such systems has taken a
nosedive. In addition, estimations from IDC regarding market growth have
been downgraded, with some critics suggesting that social enterprise has not
yet lived up to its potential and, worst yet, may not ever do so.
Looking towards the future, however, expenditure on SMM is likely to

continue to increase, with this particular sector of the wider marketing mix still
very much in its infancy. SMM expenditure still represents just 8% of the digital
marketing mix, suggesting that there is huge potential for further growth
within this particular area in the future. Indeed, according to estimates
published by Forrester Research, SMM spend is expected to observe a
compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 15% between 2012 and 2017,
with this growth being boosted by increased mobile Internet connectivity and
a rise in the uptake of mobile devices, as well as further consolidation within
the social media landscape. A more positive economic outlook for the UK and
the wider European market should also help to drive investment across SMM
budgets; with specific areas such as image- and video-based marketing, ‘big
data’ and mobile likely to represent key drivers underpinning this growth.
Further diversification in the services provided by social networks are also likely
to become a key trend going forwards, with Facebook in particular continuing
to enhance and expand its activities through acquisitions, which have included
mobile photo-sharing application (app) Instagram; messaging app WhatsApp
and, most recently, virtual-reality gaming software firm Oculus Rift in recent
years, to name but a few.
Nonetheless, challenges remain for the industry, with some analysts predicting
that the technology market could soon be subject to another collapse — similar
to the dotcom bubble burst of 1999. Overly generous market valuations of
leading social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, following
their IPOs have effectively fanned the flames of such predictions, with many
critics voicing concerns that such valuations are not succinct with the platforms’
actual revenue. Despite this, investment in SMM activities are fast-becoming
an essential component of wider marketing strategies for the majority of big
name brands — a trend that has been fuelled by the continued development
of more sophisticated social media advertising tools. As such — tech bubble
burst or not — social media could soon become a crucial component of the
digital marketing mix in the near future.

Social Media Marketing Introduction
1. Introduction
The past few years have born witness to a digital marketing revolution, with
figures compiled by the Advertising Association and Warc estimating UK
Internet advertising expenditure to have increased by 75% between 2009 and
2013. Much of this growth has been driven by increased penetration of
household Internet connections, with approximately 44.3 million adults (87%)
in the UK using the Internet in Q4 2013. The proliferation of mobile devices in
the UK has also served to speed up the migration of consumers onto digital
platforms in recent years and, as such, marketers have begun to invest an
increasing amount of money and time into developing their online presence
across a variety of Web-based channels, including social media networks.
Although social media marketing (SMM) remains a relatively small sector

within the wider digital marketing mix, spending by marketers on social media
activities has continued to gain traction over the past few years, with recent
figures produced by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) estimating spend on
social media advertising to have increased nearly three-fold (by 285%) in the
UK over the past 3 years. The expansion of social networking sites across the
globe has helped to drive such spending, with leading social media site
Facebook now thought to have over 1 billion members worldwide; while
micro-blogging site Twitter has approximately 500 million accounts and
LinkedIn has around 259 million users.
The wide-spanning global reach and high penetration of such sites is of course
extremely appealing to marketers, many of which have begun to step up their
activities across social media in recent years. Indeed, the majority of large
advertising and public relations (PR) agencies invest in social SMM on a regular
basis, with many operating specialist divisions that provide expertise in this
particular channel. As a result of the increased attention being paid to social
media by marketers, social networking sites have also begun to develop more
accurate and efficient platforms in order to help advertisers monitor and
analyse key audiences that have a presence on such sites. Indeed, both
Facebook and Twitter have been extremely keen to develop their advertising
platforms, particularly those designed for mobile, in an attempt to monetise
their operations, with both sites going up for an initial public offering (IPO)
during the past couple of years.
Advertising on social media can have a number of benefits for brands; for
example, it can increase online exposure, drive traffic to core websites, improve
search engine rankings, gather marketplace intelligence, develop brand
loyalty, improve customer engagement and generate sales leads. Developing
a presence on such sites can also represent an affordable marketing
opportunity for brands and can help small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
to stay engaged and connected with their consumer base; although additional
investment is usually needed if a social media campaign is to succeed.

The increasing popularity of social media has resulted in a number of new

players entering the market in recent years, with a number of new sites, such
as Pinterest and Google+, being launched in a bid to take a slice of the growing
market. However, while both Pinterest and Google+ have seen strong growth
over the past couple of years, the market has continued to be dominated by
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube (also owned by Google). The highly
competitive market has also meant that acquisition activity has remained high,
with Facebook continuing to expand its offering through a number of
purchases, such as photo-sharing application (app) Instagram in 2012 and
messaging app, WhatsApp, in 2014. Meanwhile, Twitter has concentrated its
efforts on developing its social television and video offering, first through the
acquisition of video clip site Vine in 2012 and more recently through the
purchase of SecondSync in Britain and Mesagraph in France, in a bid to
compete with video streaming leader YouTube.
The widespread use of social media has also had a significant impact on
customer relationship management (CRM) tools in recent years, which are used
by businesses to streamline operations and provide customer engagement
solutions. Many CRM products now offer full integration with social media
sites, to enable organisations to improve customer engagement via social
networks and to monitor interactions in the online social space using social
media monitoring tools. Social enterprise tools have also begun to gain ground
in recent years, with many larger businesses now investing in their own internal
social networks in order to encourage collaboration and improve productivity.
Salesforce and SAP remain two of the largest enterprise software solutions
companies, while Microsoft has recently made inroads into this particular
market sector following its acquisition of social enterprise service Yammer in
2012. Other social enterprise networks such as Tibbr, Salesforce’s Chatter and
IBM Connections have also continued to see relatively strong uptake across the
business community in recent years.
While SMM has presented a number of problems to marketers in the past,

particularly in terms of measuring return on investment (ROI), increased
investment in the development of more accurate social media monitoring tools
by sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as heightened demand for ‘big
data’ analysis, is thought to have gone some way towards improving the
efficiency of social media measuring systems used by marketers. Indeed,
according to Adobe’s recently released Q4 2013 Social Media Intelligence
Report, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr all drove an unprecedented
amount of qualified traffic to retail sites during the final quarter of 2013, with
revenue per visit (RPV) increasing across all channels. Despite this, social media
can be one of the most challenging platforms for brands to measure in terms
of ROI, namely because the metrics used to analyse such channels differ
significantly from those used by traditional advertising formats. Marketing via
such channels also includes activities that go beyond simple pay-per-click (PPC)
advertising, such as building customer relations via online interactions (e.g.
customer service, online troubleshooting, etc.), which are much more difficult
to measure in terms of ROI. As a result, quantifying an SMM impact and proving
the value of such activities to a client can prove particularly difficult for
marketers. As a result, SMM often forms part of a much wider marketing
strategy and is used alongside other more traditional advertising channels,
such as television, outdoor and print media, thus ensuring as wide a reach as
possible and improving audience targeting.

Since the publication of the previous edition of this assessment, SMM has
moved on significantly, with a much wider base of marketers now using such
channels on a regular basis. Indeed, according to a study published by
eMarketer in July 2013, nearly four-fifths (78%) of UK marketers now use social
media for marketing purposes; with further data compiled by the IAB in early
2014 revealing that SMM budgets are expected to continue to grow over the
next year, with 46% of companies aiming to raise awareness of their brand by
engaging with customers via online platforms more frequently during 2014.
Despite this, SMM has continued to remain a relatively small sector of the wider
digital marketing mix, although such activities are likely to see strong growth
going forwards.
This Key Note Market Assessment examines how social media is utilised by
marketers for promotion purposes, and the potential benefits and pitfalls
faced of advertising in this way. All of the major social networking sites are
discussed in detail and an analysis has been provided of each network’s reach,
in terms of site membership and unique users. The reach of such sites among
marketers will also be discussed, as will the different methods employed by
marketing agencies in promoting brands via social networks. This assessment
also provides a virtual roundtable of opinion from industry experts and
professionals, which discussed key issues and trends currently impacting the
SMM sector in the UK. The findings of the roundtable can be found in Chapter
8 — Industry Dynamics.
DEFINITION
The primary focus of this report is on third-party social networking sites which
are used for marketing purposes. This does not include dating, gaming or
gambling sites (although many of these are used as part of larger social
networking sites and do include a networking or ‘chat’ element). The report’s
analysis also excludes proprietorial sites for brands or companies that include
a social or chat element.
Social networking sites are web platforms that are centred around
user-generated content, and refer to online forums where people go to
connect and share information with each other. Social networking sites
represent just one aspect of social media, which can include a range of other
platforms, such as blogs, forums and discussion boards, and social gaming,
among others (as listed below). For the purposes of this report, such aspects of
social media are discussed in terms of marketing.

This report’s analysis will cover a number of different social media platforms,
alongside the core social networking sites, including the following:
• Aggregators — refers to sites that collect content from a number of different

social networking services and pull such information together for delivery to
one single location; or help users to consolidate multiple social networking
profiles into one profile. Some aggregators provide widgets (desktop apps
that provide a single interaction point which is changeable by the user) that
allow users to consolidate messages; track friends; combine bookmarks;
search multiple social networking sites; read Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds;
search brand or company name mentions online; and access social
networking profiles from a single desktop interface. Examples of
aggregators include HootSuite, Flipboard, FriendFeed (part of Facebook),
TweetDeck (part of Twitter) and Stackla, among others.
• Blogs — a web page or website on which users can post information about
personal experiences, advice, tips and/or reviews which can then be read for
free by other users. A number of blogs are hosted on dedicated blogging
sites, such as Blogger and Technorati, or can be created as a blog page for
free by users on sites such as WordPress.
• Citizen journalism — the publication of articles, usually relating to current

news items, which are posted by public citizens on content-sharing sites, such
as YouTube or Blogger. Citizen journalism can be presented in a variety of
forms; for example, as a video, a blog or a podcast. Dedicated sites for citizen
journalism include Blottr, Poynter, GuardianWitness (part of The Guardian
newspaper group), and Your Anon News (from online activist group
Anonymous).
• Content sharing — the sharing of content online, including articles, photos,

videos and music between users. Content sharing sites include Flickr,
YouTube, eHow, Photobucket, Scoop.it and Squidoo.
• Forums and discussion boards — an Internet forum or message board which

facilitates online discussions in the form of posted messages from users. There
are a number of special interest forums and messaging sites, such as
Mumsnet.com for parents, as well as more general message boards and
online chatrooms which are often operated by mainstream media
companies, Internet service providers (ISPs) or gaming sites.
• Link sharing — also known as ‘social bookmarking’, link sharing refers to the
sharing of links between online users. Examples of link-sharing sites include
Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, delicious.com, StumbleUpon and Digg.
• Social gaming — sites that offer free online games that enable social
interaction, including card games; board games; multiplayer video games or
role-playing games (RPGs), e.g. World of Warcraft, Minecraft, etc.; and
alternate reality games. Examples of social gaming sites include Raptr,
Duxter, Playfire and Social Gaming Network (SGN).

• Virtual reality sites — these include online virtual reality games, such as
Second Life, There or Smeet, where users can create avatars of themselves
and interact with other users’ avatars in a customisable online virtual world.
There are also a number of online virtual worlds designed for children, such
as Disney’s Club Penguin, moshimonsters.com and online dress-up game,
Stardoll. These sites can be particularly useful to marketers, with many
well-known brands having established their own presence in virtual worlds
such as Second Life, e.g. Coca-Cola, Dell, Disney, Toyota, etc.
• Wikis — a website or webpage that is developed collaboratively by a

community of online users and which allows users to edit or add content.
Wikipedia is the largest and most well-known example of an online wiki;
other examples include Webopedia and Wikispaces.

Social Media Marketing Strategic Overview
2. Strategic Overview
MARKET DYNAMICS AND SEGMENTATION
Market Sectors
Social media marketing (SMM) can be split into three main sectors, as follows:
• Paid — positive publicity gained through paid advertising. This usually

encompasses traditional advertising, such as banner advertisements, paid
search marketing, sponsorships and content syndication. Paid media is
usually much more targeted in order to drive brand awareness and new
customer acquisition. While paid marketing can be expensive, it often
represents the most effective type of marketing in disseminating brand
messages to the mass market; it also enables brands to have complete control
over their creative, content and marketing expenditures.
• Owned — this refers to content that a brand has complete control over, such
as corporate websites, blogs, communities, e-mail newspapers and social
media channels, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Owned media
initiatives usually target a brand’s existing customers. Although this type of
SMM is generally thought of as free, the time and labour invested in
developing a corporate identity through owned media channels is not; and
it can often take a specialist in SMM to produce a highly successful online
presence across such channels.
• Earned — publicity gained through promotional efforts other than

advertising; for example, public relations (PR) efforts, events and content
that is created through a brand’s own media channels. It can also encompass
influencers who are part of the social media space, such as bloggers; with
many brands requesting independent bloggers to review new products and
services in order to create online ‘buzz’. Earned media can also include online
mentions on Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels that are
independent of a particular brand. Other types of earned media can include
consumers’ social media posts, tweets, product reviews, videos, photos and
open dialogue within online communities.
Although a brand can chose to focus on one of the channels listed above,
success is generally achieved through the integration of two or more such
channels. This is referred to as ‘converged media’, which is focused on
combining the power of all media channels in order to produce a targeted,
content-driven campaign. In this way, brand messages can be delivered across
a range of platforms and can be linked to other more traditional advertising
activities, thus enabling brands to reach customers when, how and where they
want, regardless of channel, media format or device. This type of
multi-channel/multi-device marketing strategy has become increasingly
necessary to the marketers of today, particularly given the increasingly
fragmented way in which customers now consume media, both online and
offline.

Total Market Value and Growth

As it is difficult to quantify the social networking industry in terms of value,
social media properties are generally measured in terms of size, i.e. by the
number of users/members that they have. It is also complicated to assess the
profitability of a social networking site, although recent initial public offerings
(IPOs) held by Facebook and Twitter have given some idea as to the value of
such companies. Recent market valuations estimate leading social networking
site Facebook to be worth approximately $135bn (as of January 2014); while
micro-blogging platform Twitter is currently thought to be worth around
$27bn and LinkedIn approximately $23bn, according to Forbes.com. All three
of the main social networking sites — Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn — offer
free membership to consumers; with the majority of revenue being derived by
advertisers or premium membership services. Following the IPOs of such sites
in recent years, all three have stepped up their efforts to monetise their
operations, primarily by investing heavily in their advertising platforms.
In terms of membership, Facebook retains the leadership position within the

global social networking arena, with the site attracting 1.23 billion monthly
active users worldwide as of December 2013, up by 16% year-over-year; while
daily active users stood at 757 million, up by 22% year-on-year. The social
media giant also revealed that its mobile audience had increased significantly
since 2012, with mobile daily active users rising by 49% year-on-year to 566
million on average for December 2013; while mobile monthly active visitors to
the site rose by 39% to 945 million during the same period; reflecting the
increased uptake of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers,
across the globe in recent years. In comparison, video streaming site YouTube
had 1 billion monthly unique users worldwide during 2013, while Google+ had
around 540 million and Twitter had approximately 241 million as of December
2013.
Table 1.1 displays the top ten social media networking sites in the UK as of
2013. According to the ranking, compiled by comScore, Facebook continued
to heavily dominate the social media arena, with total unique visitors to the
site numbering 31.8 million in the UK during 2013. Twitter retained its position
as the second-largest social networking site in 2013, despite only attracting a
third of the total unique visitors registered by Facebook; and reporting an
average daily visitor rate of just 1.8 million — compared to 14.1 million for
Facebook. Professional networking site LinkedIn meanwhile registered total
unique visitors of 7.6 million; followed by link-sharing site Tumblr.com with a
total audience of 6.7 million and online art community DeviantART.com, which
attracted 2.7 million unique visitors during 2013.

Table 2.1: Top Ten Social Media Networking Sites in the UK

by Total Unique Visitors and Average Daily Visitors (000), 2013
Total Unique Average Daily

Visitors (000) Visitors (000)
Facebook.com 31,790 14,090

Twitter.com 10,894 1,763
LinkedIn 7,644 968
Tumblr.com 6,697 830
Deviantart.com 2,677 368
Pinterest.com 2,415 143
Ask.fm 2,052 358
Myspace 2,005 75
Goodreads.com 1,313 77
Streamcommunity.com 1,086 136
Source: UK Digital Future in Focus 2013 © comScore
Figure 2.1: Top Ten Social Media Networking Sites in the UK

by Total Unique Visitors (000), 2013
30,000
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
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Source: UK Digital Future in Focus 2013 © comScore/Key Note

Internet Advertising Expenditure

Spending on Internet advertising has continued to increase at a faster pace
than any other media format over the past 5 years, with double-digit growth
in digital adspend recorded year-on-year between 2009 and 2013. Overall,
Internet advertising expenditure rose by 75% during the 5-year review period,
with spending increasing from £3.54bn in 2009 to £6.2bn in 2013. Paid-for
search continues to account for the majority of Internet advertising
expenditure, with the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) estimating this
particular category to represent approximately 59% of total Internet adspend
for the first half of 2013 (H1 2013), followed by online display advertising
(24%), online classifieds (15%) and other online advertising (1%). Although
social media advertising still only represents a relatively small proportion of
digital adspend — approximately 8% as of H1 2013 according to the IAB —
investment in this particular Web-based channel has continued to observe
significant growth in recent years, with further figures compiled by the IAB
revealing that social media adspend had increased by 53% to £242.5m in H1
2013, and had risen almost three-fold (by 285%) over the past 3 years. This
growth has been driven significantly by the roll out of a number of
sophisticated advertising targeting tools by leading social media sites, such as
Twitter and Facebook; as well as the introduction of new advertising platforms
by emerging sites such as Tumblr and Pinterest over the past year.
Table 2.2: Total UK Internet Advertising Expenditure

(£m), 2009-2013
2009 2010 2011 2012 e2013
Internet advertising
expenditure (£m) 3,541.1 4,097.5 4,784.1 5,416.1 6,198.3
% change year-on-year - 15.7 16.8 13.2 14.4
e — Key Note estimates based on figures from The Advertising Association/Warc

Expenditure Report 2013
Source: The Advertising Association/Warc Expenditure Report 2013/Key Note

Figure 2.2: Total UK Internet Advertising Expenditure

(£m), 2009-2013
6,000
5,500
5,000
4,500
4,000
3,500
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Note: 2013 figure is Key Note estimate based on figures from The Advertising
Association/Warc Expenditure Report 2013
Source: The Advertising Association/Warc Expenditure Report 2013/Key Note
The emergence of mobile platforms, such as smartphone and tablet, in recent

years has presented a key growth channel for social media networks and within
the wider digital advertising sector. According to data compiled by Ofcom for
its Communications Market Report 2013, mobile is now the most popular
device to access social networks on, with 61% of UK adults aged 16 to 24 years
old logging on to social media sites on a daily basis (as of Q1 2013), compared
to 49% that were found to use a computer to access such sites and 39% that
used both. The growing mobile audience has meant that mobile platforms now
hold huge potential for brands seeking to engage with their target audiences.
In response, larger social networking sites, such as Facebook, YouTube and
Twitter, have begun to invest heavily in developing their mobile advertising
platforms. Overall, mobile marketing is now estimated to represent around
14.1% of total Internet advertising expenditure (as of H1 2013), according to
the IAB, with this particular segment of the digital marketing mix likely to
continue to gain market share as mobile technologies become more
commonplace in both consumer and business environments in the UK.

COMPETITIVE STRUCTURE
According to comScore’s latest UK Digital Market Overview, published in
February 2014, Google sites — which include social video streaming site
YouTube — ranked as the highest Web property in December 2013, with total
unique visitors of 45.4 million; followed by Amazon sites, with total unique
users of 37.4 million and Yahoo! sites with a unique audience of 36.2 million.
Meanwhile, leading social network Facebook was ranked fifth by comScore in
terms of unique visitors, with 33.8 million people visiting the site as of
December 2013; and leading wiki sites owned by the Wikimedia Foundation,
such as Wikipedia, ranked ninth with total unique visitors to such Web
properties numbering 26.2 million.
Despite the sharp growth in mobile uptake in the UK, the majority of traffic
achieved by the top ten Web properties was via PC only, with mobile/tablet
traffic still relatively low in comparison. Indeed, the only Web property to
observe higher mobile/tablet traffic than PC was Yahoo!, which registered 11.7
million unique visitors on mobile/tablet, compared to 8.7 million PC-only
unique users.
Table 2.3: Top Ten Web Properties by Total Unique Visitors

by Channel (000), December 2013
PC/ Mobile/
Mobile/ Tablet
PC Only Tablet Only Total
Google sites 18,472 22,866 4,105 45,443

Amazon sites 16,399 13,802 7,184 37,385
Yahoo! sites 8,650 15,838 11,663 36,151
Microsoft sites 25,653 7,668 2,190 †35,510
Facebook 16,021 13,840 3,953 33,814

BBC sites 11,709 9,203 8,805 29,717
eBay 15,491 8,003 4,565 28,059
Glam Media 13,241 7,470 6,662 †27,372
Wikimedia Foundation
sites 11,475 6,820 7,870 26,165
Apple Inc 10,400 5,068 8,838 24,306
† — does not sum due to rounding at source
Source: UK Digital Market Overview, February 2014 © comScore

The competitive structure of the social media landscape has changed

significantly over the past 20 years, with the first social networking sites, such
as GeoCities and classmates.com, appearing in the mid-1990s. However, the
first major online social network to achieve prominence was UK-owned Friends
Reunited, which was first founded in 1999 and was aimed at helping people
to relocate former school friends. Although the dotcom bubble burst of 2000
hindered growth within the social media sector somewhat during the turn of
the century, the introduction of several new sites in the early to mid-2000s,
including current market leader Facebook as well as LinkedIn and Twitter,
began to revolutionise the digital social media space across the world — with
the continued popularity of these three sites seeing them surpass many of the
original successful social networks, such as Friendster and Myspace. A decade
since the original launch of Facebook, back in 2004, and the site now has over
1 billion users worldwide, with a reach representing approximately 12.9% of
the global population.
While the sharp growth achieved by Facebook over the past 10 years has
indeed seen the site become the leading digital social media property across
the world, the site’s dominance has left little room for new competitors
entering the market. Although other sites, such as Twitter, YouTube and
LinkedIn, do have a growing membership, the share of online visitors attracted
by such sites is generally much lower than that achieved by market leader
Facebook. The highly competitive nature of the social media industry has also
seen a number of competitors come and go over the past few years, such as
Apple’s iTunes Ping, originally launched as a social network for music in 2010
but later shut down in 2012 after failing to catch on. Other sites which have
undergone similar closures have included Yahoo! Kickstart (closed in 2008);
Google Buzz (closed in 2011); European site Bahu (closed in 2009); Canadian
network Capazoo (closed in 2008); UK-based fitness network FitFinder (closed
in 2010); Friendster (closed in 2011); and Sixdegrees.com (closed in 2001).
Despite this, there have been a number of newcomers to the online social
media space in recent years, some of which have already seen strong growth
in membership. Pinterest, for example, which was originally launched in 2010,
had 53.3 million unique visitors as of March 2013, roughly double its traffic a
year earlier, with recent market valuations putting the company’s worth at
approximately $2.5bn. Google’s relatively new social network venture, Google
+, has also achieved relatively strong growth since its initial launch back in
2012, with Google announcing that its social venture had 300 million monthly
active users as of October 2013, up from 190 million in May of the same year.
The continued rise in mobile device ownership in recent years has also seen
several sites invest significant funds into developing their own
mobile-optimised sites and downloadable applications (apps); with all of the
key leading competitors within the market offering mobile access to their sites.
There have also been a number of mobile-only competitors that have entered
the market in recent years, such as location-based mobile app, Foursquare,
which is now thought to have an estimated 45 million users; and photo-sharing
and messaging social network Path, which was first launched back in 2010. The
rising popularity of mobile-only social networks has also seen existing
competitors such as Facebook and Twitter expand their own mobile offering
through acquisitions.

In 2012, for example, Facebook revealed that it had purchased mobile-only

photo and video-sharing social network, Instagram, which has since become
one of the fastest-growing social platforms. During the same year, Twitter
revealed that it had acquired online mobile video app Vine, which represented
the fastest-growing app during 2013 and is now thought to have over 40
million users. Photo messaging app Snapchat, initially released back in 2011,
has also continued to perform well, with 350 million photos being shared via
the service per day in September 2013, up from 200 million in June. The rising
popularity of Snapchat has recently garnered interest from Facebook and
Google, both of which offered to buy the company during 2013, although
these offers were later turned down by independent owner Evan Spiegel.
The majority of the leading social media sites — Facebook, Twitter and
LinkedIn — are US-owned; although there remain a number of smaller social
networking sites that are UK-based, such as Friends Reunited, which was
originally launched in 2000 and is now owned by DC Thomson’s subsidiary firm,
Brightsolid. The once-popular social network, which hit a peak of 15 million
members in 2005, has continued to see its share of the market decline after
being overtaken by Bebo, Myspace and finally Facebook. Despite being sold to
DC Thomson in 2009 for £25m, a recent valuation by the current owners
estimated the value of the site to have fallen to just $5m as of 2011. More
recently, DC Thomson revealed that it was considering strategic options for the
social media site, including bringing in additional investors or ‘re-incubating’
the site as a standalone business. Other UK-based social media sites include
parenting community, Mumsnet; social networking and forum site, Faceparty;
social game and review property, Snowglo; and social networking site
Faces.com.
THE CONSUMER
Use of the Internet

In 2013, 36 million adults (73% of the total population) in Great Britain
accessed the Internet every day — up by 20 million from 2006. According to
data compiled by National Statistics, 21 million households in Great Britain had
Internet access as of 2013, equating to 83% of all households; up from 70% in
2009. The increase in household Internet penetration observed in recent years
has been fuelled by the ongoing roll out of superfast broadband across the
country, with current Government plans in place to deliver better broadband
to 95% of the UK by 2017. Improvements in mobile Internet connectivity, which
has been jettisoned by the introduction of the fourth-generation (4G) mobile
service in the UK, along with the increased uptake of smartphone and tablet
devices by consumers, has also seen Internet use on mobile phones more than
double between 2010 and 2013, rising from 24% to 53% over the review
period.

Table 2.4: Household Internet Access in Great Britain

(%), 2009-2013
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Households with Internet access
(%) 70 73 77 80 83
Source: Internet Access — Households and Individuals, 2013, National Statistics

© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller
of HMSO (and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland)
According to National Statistics’ most recent report on Internet Access —

Household and Individuals, published in 2013, social networking on sites such
as Facebook or Twitter was ranked as the fourth-most popular Internet activity,
with over half (53%) of respondents found to use social media. However,
among younger respondents, aged 16 to 24 years old, social networking was
ranked as the most popular Internet activity, with over nine in ten (93%) of
those belonging to this particular age group logging in to social media sites
during 2013. A downwards trend in penetration was noticeable as age
increased, with just 11% of those aged 65 and over participating in social
networking activities online.
Table 2.5: Internet Activities by Age (%), 2013
16 25 35 45 55 All
-24 -34 -44 -54 -64 65+ Adults
Sending/receiving emails 87 89 86 81 72 44 75
Finding information about
goods and services 65 77 77 74 69 41 66
Reading or downloading
online news, newspapers or
magazines 69 72 66 57 49 23 55
Social networking, e.g.
Facebook or Twitter 93 84 66 50 29 11 53
Using services related to travel
or travel-related
accommodation 46 65 58 56 51 29 50
Internet banking 55 76 62 50 43 23 50
Seeking health-related
information 46 59 56 41 41 21 43
Table continues...

Table 2.5: Internet Activities by Age (%), 2013
...table continued
16 25 35 45 55 All
-24 -34 -44 -54 -64 65+ Adults
Consulting wikis 60 55 52 44 40 18 43
Looking for information about
education, training or course
offers 62 40 38 31 17 8 31
Downloading software (other
than games software) 55 47 35 27 18 10 31
Selling goods or services over
the Internet 33 45 34 31 19 10 28
Telephoning or making video
calls over the Internet via a
webcam 40 39 28 22 18 9 25
Looking for a job or sending a
job application 45 39 30 23 12 1 24
Participating in professional
networks 16 23 23 17 13 3 15
Posting opinions on civic or
political issues 13 15 12 8 8 5 10
Doing an online course 18 9 14 8 6 1 9
Taking part in online
consultations or voting on civic
or political issues 6 8 10 7 8 6 7
Base: adults aged 16+ in Great Britain
Source: Internet Access — Households and Individuals, 2013, National Statistics

© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller
of HMSO (and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland)
Reach of Social Networking by Device

Facebook was the most popular social networking sites across both laptop/
desktop and mobile users, with a penetration of 69% and 57%, respectively,
as of April 2013. However, Twitter was found to be equally popular among
laptop/desktop and mobile users, with a slightly higher penetration registered
for mobile (24%) compared to desktop/laptops (23%), with the micro-blogging
site continuing to expand its mobile offering for both consumers and
advertisers over the past couple of years. LinkedIn, meanwhile reported 20%
penetration among laptop/desktop users; but only 7% penetration for mobile.

Table 2.6: Proportion of Adults That Access Social Networking

by Device (% of adults), April 2013
Laptop/Desktop Mobile
Facebook 69 57
Twitter 23 24
LinkedIn 20 7
Google+ 12 8
Myspace 4 1
Friends Reunited 2 1
Source: comScore/Communications Market Report 2013 © Ofcom
Social Media Marketing

Exclusive consumer research commissioned by Key Note in March 2014 found
that one in ten people (10.5%) had purchased goods and/or services as a direct
result of advertising on social media channels over the last 12 months.
Penetration was found to be slightly higher among men (12.7%) than women
(8.4%) and was noticeably higher among younger age groups, peaking at
27.1% for those aged 16 to 19 years old and dropping to just 1.3% for those
aged 65 and over. In terms of social grade, respondents that were more
affluent were generally more likely than those with lower household income
to purchase goods and/or services after seeing social media advertising, with
22.4% of respondents belonging to grade A agreeing that this was the case
compared to just 5% of those belonging to grade E, a figure shared with those
in grade B. Other demographics to report higher than average penetration
levels included respondents not working excluding retired/invalid [14.9%]);
those living in Wales (17.2%); those living in households of five or more people
(15.8%); respondents that were single (18.1%); those with children aged
between 0 and 4 years old (19.8%); and those that were residing in rent-free
accommodation (23.7%).
A survey undertaken by Nielsen in 2013 which assessed consumer trust in

advertising and brand messages also found that advertising on social networks
garnered a relatively high level of trust among consumers, with 48% agreeing
that this was the case. In addition, an even higher proportion of respondents
(55%) stated that they had taken further action after being exposed to
advertisements on social networking sites, suggesting that this particular
media format remains an effective channel of communication between brand
and consumer.


Media in the Last 12 Months (% of respondents), March 2014
Penetration (%)
All adults 10.5

Sex
Male 12.7
Female 8.4
Age
16-19 27.1
20-24 18.5
25-34 13.9
35-44 11.4
45-54 9.5
55-64 6.1
65+ 1.3
Social Grade
A 22.4
B 5.0
C1 13.9
C2 12.3
D 9.3
E 5.0
Working Status
Full time (30+ hours a week) 13.6
Part time 10.5
Not working (excluding retired/invalid)† 14.9
Not working (retired/invalid) 2.2
Standard Region
North 12.0
Yorkshire and Humberside 12.3
East Midlands 13.3
West Midlands 7.5
East Anglia 7.4
Table continues...


...table continued
Penetration (%)
Standard Region (cont.)
South East 12.4
Greater London 13.2
South West 3.6
North West 11.5
Wales 17.2
Scotland 5.5
Size of Household
One person 5.4
Two person 8.3
Three person 14.4
Four person 15.4
Five person or more 15.8
Marital Status
Married/living as married 9.1
Single 18.1
Divorced 4.6
Widowed 2.6
Separated 0.0
Presence of Children
Aged 0-4 19.8
Aged 5-9 14.3
Aged 10-15 13.7
No children 8.3
Table continues...


...table continued
Penetration (%)
Tenure
Own home outright 11.9
Buying home 7.1
Rent from the council 6.1
Rent privately 12.9
Rent-free occupancy 23.7
† — e.g. full-time student, not looking for work or unemployed

Weighted sample: 1,000
Base: all adults aged 16+
Source: Key Note
BUSINESS USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

According to National Statistics’ E-Commerce Survey of UK Businesses, which
surveyed approximately 7,700 businesses with ten or more employees in 2012,
the vast majority (96%) were found to have Internet access and over four out
of ten (44.5%) used social media.
Most enterprises (42.9%) were found to use social networks such as Facebook
and Twitter, with an additional 23.8% found to have a presence on business
blogs/microblogs. A further 15% of businesses utilised multimedia
content-sharing websites, while only 6.4% used wiki-based knowledge sharing
tools. In general, an increase in penetration was observed for all types of social
media alongside business employment size, with larger organisations generally
more likely to have access to the resources needed to ensure a significant
following on social media.

Table 2.8: Proportion of Businesses Using Social Media by Type

and Size of Business (number and %), 2012
Content Sharing
Blog/Microblog
Social Network
Sharing Tools
Social Media
Multimedia
Knowledge
Wiki-Based
Business
Website
Any
Number of Employees
10-49 40.3 21.6 13.1 5.8 41.8
50-249 53.3 32.3 21.7 7.1 54.9
250-999 63.2 42.9 33.5 17.1 66.2
1,000+ 79.4 61.9 49.7 26.4 81.2
All sizebands 42.9 23.8 15.0 6.4 44.5
Source: ICT Activity of UK Business, 2012, National Statistics © Crown copyright

material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO (and the
Queen’s Printer for Scotland)
Businesses operating within the information and communication sector were

the most likely to utilise social media, with 77% using such channels during
2012. Information and communication businesses also reported the highest
usage across all social media channels covered by the survey. Companies in the
accommodation and food sector also registered a high level of social media
usage, at 57.5%; and were followed by those operating in the retail sector
(44.8%), wholesale (42.9%) and manufacturing (32.9%). At the other end,
construction companies were the least likely to utilise social media, with a
penetration of 19.9%.

Table 2.9: Proportion of Businesses Using Social Media

by Industry Sector (%), 2012
Blogs/Microblogs
Content Sharing
Social Networks
Sharing Tools
Social Media
Multimedia
Knowledge
Wiki-based
Websites
Business
Any
Information and
communication 76.0 53.1 43.6 25.8 77.0
Accommodation and
foodservices 57.5 29.0 10.0 6.9 57.5
Retail 44.3 26.7 14.0 3.4 44.8
Wholesale 40.6 22.1 18.1 4.9 42.9
Manufacturing 30.4 12.4 14.1 4.3 32.9
Utilities 26.3 17.6 7.3 3.4 27.0
Transport and storage 25.5 4.6 3.6 1.7 26.5
Construction 18.6 9.9 6.8 2.6 19.9
Other services 49.2 31.0 17.0 7.9 51.5
All 42.9 23.8 15.0 6.4 44.5

The most popular reason for using social media among businesses was to
develop the brand image or market products, with 33.1% of companies
surveyed agreeing that this was the case. Obtaining or responding to customer
opinions, reviews or questions was also cited as a popular reason for using
social media, with nearly a quarter (23.4%) of respondents using such sites for
this purpose. Other reasons cited by businesses for using social media included
involving customers in the development or innovation of goods and services
(11.6%); collaborating with business partners or other organisations (12.9%);
recruiting employees (11.8%); and exchanging views, opinions or knowledge
within the business (15.9%).
Larger businesses generally posted a much higher penetration rate across all
reasons analysed by the survey; for example, businesses with over 1,000
employees were four times more likely than the average business to recruit
employees via social media and were almost three times as likely to use social
media to involve customers in the development or innovation of goods or
services.

Table 2.10: Reasons for Using Social Media by Employment

Sizeband (number and %), 2012
Development or Innovation
Exchange Views, Opinions
Collaborate with Business

Image or Market Products
or Knowledge Within
Develop the Business
Reviews or Questions
Obtain or Respond to
Involve Customers in
of Goods or Services
Customer Opinions,
Recruit Employees
Partners or Other
Organisations
the Business
Number of Employees
10-49 30.2 21.5 14.6 12.0 9.9 10.7
50-249 45.2 29.6 20.2 15.6 18.7 14.2
250-999 54.7 41.3 31.3 24.5 28.3 22.2
1,000+ 67.1 58.2 41.9 30.7 44.0 29.6
All sizebands 33.1 23.4 15.9 12.9 11.8 11.6

Businesses operating within the information and communication sector were

once again the most likely to undertake social media for all reasons surveyed,
with 64.7% doing so to develop the business image or market products. In
contrast, construction companies registered the lowest penetration across all
categories, with the exception of employee recruitment, which saw utilities
firms reporting the lowest response rate, at 3.2%.

Table 2.11: Reasons for Using Social Media

by Industry Sector (%), 2013
Partners or Other Organisations
Development or Innovation
Exchange Views, Opinions
Collaborate with Business

Image or Market Products
Reviews or Questions
Obtain or Respond to
or Knowledge Within
Develop the Business
Involve Customers in
of Goods or Services
Customer Opinions,
Recruit Employees
the Business
Information and
communication 64.7 39.3 37.6 34.7 35.0 21.7
Accommodation
and foodservices 33.8 38.9 16.2 10.1 11.4 19.6
Retail 38.1 29.3 12.8 9.2 8.6 11.6
Wholesale 33.7 23.9 13.7 14.3 7.8 9.3
Manufacturing 24.3 14.3 9.8 9.5 5.1 7.4
Utilities 15.3 15.4 10.4 10.5 3.2 7.5
Transport and
storage 15.2 13.3 13.4 8.1 5.6 6.9
Construction 13.6 8.3 6.6 5.5 3.8 4.7
Other services 41.0 22.3 21.8 16.8 19.3 12.5
All 33.1 23.4 15.9 12.9 11.8 11.6


Further data compiled by corporate communications firm, The Group, which

analyses social media activity across companies belonging to the FTSE 100,
showed that there had been a 50% increase in the number of corporate blogs
published by the top 100 companies during 2012, as well as a 36% rise in
YouTube channels and a 27% increase in companies with pages on Facebook
since 2011. The Group’s research also showed that the number of people
connecting with companies through social media channels had increased
notably over the 12-month period, with over 2.7 million people now following
FTSE 100 corporate Twitter accounts — up by 131% on 2011. The number of
fans following the top 100 companies’ Facebook pages also increased by 98%
over the year to 27.4 million; while the number of users viewing corporate
YouTube videos rose by 105% to 82 million during the same period.
Over the next few years, business use of social media is only likely to increase,
fuelled by the ongoing development of advertising platforms provided by
leading social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter; with a recent survey
undertaken by StrongView in early 2014 revealing that approximately 46% of
‘business leaders’ planned to increase their social media budgets over the next
year.
EDUCATING THE MARKET

The heightened interest in SMM among businesses has resulted in the
proliferation of numerous advice blogs, ‘how to’ books and specialist
conferences and seminars dedicated to the topic; with marketers ever-keen to
stay ahead of trends within the fast-paced social media arena.
Books
A number of books tailored to provide advice and commentary on current
trends in SMM are published every year. The following provides a small
selection of the most recent books published on the topic:
• How to Twitter For Business Success: Everything Business Owners Need to

Know About Twitter Made Easy! by Nicky Kriel (published by The Other
Publishing Company, March 2013)
• The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Kabani (published by BenBella

Books Inc, January 2013)
• Instagram Power: Build Your Brand and Reach More Customers with the
Power of Pictures by Jason Miles (published by McGraw-Hill Professional,
October 2013)
• Social Media Engagement for Dummies by Aliza Sherman (published by John

Wiley & Sons, June 2013)
• Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by
Gary Vaynerchuk (published by HarperBusiness, December 2013)

• The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Online Video,
Mobile Applications, Blogs, News Releases, and Viral Marketing to Reach
Buyers Directly by David Meerman Scott (published by John Wiley & Sons,
August 2013)
• The Business of Being Social: A Practical Guide to Harnessing the Power of

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & YouTube for All Businesses by Michelle Carvill
and David Taylor (published by Crimson Publishing, May 2013).
Conferences and Seminars

There are several key business events held in the UK which focus solely on the
topic of SMM, including the following:
• Social Media Week London — since debuting in 2010 this event has brought
together thousands of people working for the biggest brands, agencies,
publishers, media companies and emerging technology start-ups. For 2014,
London will join 11 other cities to celebrate social media week, which
together will explore the global theme ‘The Future of Now: Always On,
Always Connected’. The next scheduled event is due to take place in London
between 22nd and 26th September 2014 and will include panel discussions,
presentations and networking opportunities for those operating within the
social media industry.
• Social Media World Forum — a leading social media and digital marketing
event which connects marketers, digital brand managers, agencies and social
tools and platforms. The event showcases the latest social media strategies
and is held in London and New York every year. The next UK-based event is
due to be held between 31st March and 1st April 2014, at The Brewery in
London.
• Technology for Marketing & Advertising (TFM&A) — the UK’s largest

multi-channel marketing, media and advertising event. The exhibition
provides professional development opportunities and an industry-leading
education programme, as well as showcasing the latest technology and
innovation within the marketing arena. The next event is scheduled to take
place between 25th and 26th February 2015.
• The Digital Marketing Show — provides insight and solutions into digital
marketing, with specific focus on affiliate marketing, Internet advertising,
Web analytics, social media, search marketing, mobile, e-mail marketing,
e-commerce, customer experience and content. The next exhibition is due to
held between 19th and 20th November 2014 at the Excel Campus in London.
• Internet World — provides advice and insight into digital strategy, from
online technology, business fulfilment and infrastructure to connectivity,
legislation and information security. Internet World also includes the Big
Data Show and Interop London. The next event is scheduled to take place
between 17th and 19th June 2014 at the ExCeL Centre in London.

Awards
A number of awards ceremonies are held in the UK every year which have a
specific focus on SMM. These awards are highly prestigious and sought after
by those operating within social media agencies, and celebrate excellence
across the field.
Social Buzz Awards

The Social Buzz Awards are held by marketing and media trade publication
The Drum every year to celebrate and reward the best in social media
communications in the UK. The Awards recognise individuals, companies and
organisations that are transforming the way in which consumers communicate
with online media. They are judged by a panel of individuals who have
extensive knowledge and experience in the field of social media from both the
agency and client side. Winners of the 2013 Awards are listed below:
• Grand Prix — Surrey Police for ‘Oh, So the Police are Human After All’
• Chairman’s Award — 383 for Brian: The Social Pigeon
• Best Social Media Individual/Team of the Year — Paddy Power
• Community Manager of the Year — Adam Deal at Costa Coffee
• In-House Client Team — Paddy Power
• Social Media Agency of the Year — AKQA
• Best Use of Twitter — Surrey Police for ‘Oh, So the Police are Human After
All’
• Best Use of Facebook — AKQA for Nike Academy
• Best Use of Group/Community — AKQA for Nike Academy
• Best Use of Check In/Location-Based Services — R/GA London for O2 Priority

Moments for Independent Business (O2)
• Best Use of Photo-Sharing — AKQA for Nike PHOTOiD (Nike)
• Best Use of Video — Carat UK for Bodyform Responds: The Truth (Bodyform)
• Largest ROI — The Crocodile for Growing Online Business Through Social
(Ellisons)
• Low Budget — R/GA London for The Feed, by Getty Images (Getty Images)
• Best Use of Pinterest — Weapon7 for ‘Pinning Their Hopes’ (UNICEF)
• Best Use of Google+ — Mondelez International for Live from the

#CadburyKitchen (Mondelez International)
• Best Use of Social Media Advertising — OMD for Pepsi Max Dynamo
#livefornow (PepsiCo)

• Best Blog — Paddy Power Blog (Paddy Power)
• Best Innovation — R/GA London for The Feed, by Getty Images (Getty Images)
• Best Use of Mobile Campaign — R/GA London for O2 Priority Moments for
Independent Business (O2)
• Best Social Media Customer Service Strategy/Campaign — Just Eat
• Best Social Responsible Initiative — Poke for Global Rich List re-launch
• Best Consumer/FMCG Social Media Strategy/Campaign — Elvis for Have A

Fling With A Creme Egg (Cadbury — Mondelez)
• Best Travel/Leisure/Sports Social Media Strategy/Campaign — Tourism

Australia for The Best Jobs in the World (Tourism Australia)
• Best Public Sector Social Media Strategy/Campaign — twentysix (Naional

Health Service [NHS} Blood and Transport)
• Best Retail/E-Commerce Social Media Strategy/Campaign — Initiative for

Putting the Kids in Charge of Christmas (Tesco)
• Best Charity/Not-for-Profit Social Media Strategy/Campaign — AMV BBDO

for MAKE IT STOP (Kids Company)
• Best Financial Sector Social Media Strategy/Campaign — Equator for Leading

the Way to Better Health (AXA PPP Healthcare)
• Best Professional Sector Social Media Strategy/Campaign — Berwin Leighton

Paisner for Do Amazing Things: Winning The War for Talent (Berwin
Leighton Paisner)
• Best Integrated Campaign — Hope & Glory for True Brew of London aka Hops
in a Box (Meantime Brewing Company)
• Best User-Generated Content — AKQA for Nike Academy (Nike)
• Best Use of Insight/Monitoring — Initiative for Forget Me Not (Tesco)
• Best B2B Sector Social Media Strategy/Campaign — Modern Media for

LinkedIn Lead Generation (EKA).
The UK Social Media Communications Awards

The UK Social Media Communications Awards (previously known as the Some
Comms Awards) celebrate excellence across social media communications. The
2013 Awards were held in association with headline sponsor, UK Fast and
media partner, PRmoment; and were once again supported by the Chartered
Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and the Public Relations Consultants
Association (PRCA). The winners of the 2013 Awards were as follows:
• Best Use of Twitter — News and External Communications Team, Department

for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)

• Best Use of Facebook — NHS Blood and Transplant for 100,000 donors in 100
days
• Best Use of YouTube — NHS Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support

Unit for Hand-Washing Gangnam Style
• Best Business Blog — TopLine Communications for B2B PR Blog
• Best Community Engagement — We Are Social for Heinz: Grow Your Own
• Best Use of Social Media to Research and Evaluate — MEC for Next
Generation Social Insight Initiative
• Best Use of Social Media in a Crisis — O2 for O2 Network Outage
• Innovation — Greater Manchester Police for ‘GMPolice’ Smartphone app
• Low Budget Campaign — The University of Nottingham for A Fresh Start
• Public Sector — East Sussex County Council and Cobb PR for Go e-Sussex
• Best Viral Campaign — Manning Gottlieb OMD for Should’ve Gone to

Specsavers & the Ball Boy
• Charity/Not-for-Profit — Cancer Research UK for Research Kills Cancer

campaign
• Best Social Media Campaign — Hope & Glory for Meantime’s True Brew of
London aka Hops in a Box
• Mark Hanson Award — Joanne Halton, McCann Manchester
• Best In-House Team — MTV Marketing Department
• Best Small Agency — Hope & Glory
• Best Large Agency — We Are Social
• Grand Prix Award — NHS Blood and Transplant for 100,000 donors in 100
days
• Outstanding Contribution to Social Media — Stuart Bruce.
British Interactive Media Association Awards, 2013

• Social Media — Mariachi, AMVBBDO
The Digitals 2013

• Social Media — Interactive Twitter, ASOS.
Brand Republic Digital Awards 2013 (formerly Revolution Awards)

• Social — ‘Get Well’ Soup (Heinz), We Are Social.

The Drum Marketing Awards 2013

• Social Media Strategy of the Year — Bodyform Responds: The Truth
(SCA-Bodyform), Carat UK and Rubber Republic.
Digital Impact Awards 2013

• Best Corporate Viral Campaign — Gold Beats by Dr Dre (R/GA London); and
Silver Turkcell (Wanda Digital)
• Best Use of Existing Social Media Platforms — Gold Nike (AKQA); Silver
Debenhams Spring (STEEL London); Bronze Doritos Mariachi (AMV BBDO);
and Bronze Turkcell (Wanda Digital).
• Best Development of Proprietary Social Media Tools/Platforms — Gold Getty

Images (R/GA London)
• Best Community Development — Gold Nike (AKQA); Silver Digital Unite

(Slingshot Sponsorship); and Bronze O2 (Hope & Glory).
MARKET FORECASTS
The continued recovery of the UK economy is expected to fuel business
confidence over the next 5 years, with the majority of marketers predicting an
upwards revision to budgets as a result. According to the latest quarterly
Bellwether Report, which is produced by the Institute of Practitioners in
Advertising (IPA) and Markit Economics, around 27% of marketing executives
registered an upwards revision to budgets in Q4 2013, while a net balance of
+47% was reported for firms that have become more optimistic and around
43% of the survey panel stated that they had grown more confident about
industry and financial prospects. Digital advertising is likely to continue to
represent the fastest-growing sector within the wider marketing mix, with Key
Note forecasting Internet advertising expenditure to rise by 51% over the next
5 years to reach £10.43bn in 2018. This growth in digital marketing budgets is
only expected to see further investment directed towards social media
marketing activities, with the majority of big brands now considering a
presence on social media channels to be an essential component of their wider
marketing strategies. SMM activities are also likely to become more integrated
with other content marketing initiatives in the future as brands seek to deliver
more cohesive, relevant and targeted campaigns.

According to the 2014 Marketing Budgets Report from Econsultancy, which

surveyed over 600 companies (mainly from the UK) on spending trends
concerning both traditional and digital advertising channels, 61% of
respondents revealed that they planned to increase social media investment
for consumer acquisition, while 60% stated that they would do so for
engagement/retention reasons. The results of the survey reflect the increasing
importance now being placed on social media by brands, particularly those
with a global following, with social networks providing fast and easy access to
a worldwide, multinational audience. Small- to medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) have also begun to increase their utilisation of social media for
marketing purposes in recent years and are likely to continue to do so in the
future, with a recent survey undertaken by LinkedIn showing that 81% of SMEs
were now using social media, of which 94% were doing so for marketing
purposes. Investment in social media marketing by SMEs is only expected to
increase over the next few years, aided by the development of new advertising
products tailored specifically to small business needs from leading sites such as
Facebook, Twitter, Google and LinkedIn.
Image-based advertising and mobile are expected to constitute key areas of

growth within the SMM arena over the next few years. Mobile is expected to
observe the sharpest growth in adspend during 2014, with several of the
leading social networking platforms already investing heavily in developing
their mobile advertising products and services. Meanwhile, the success of video
viral campaigns during 2013 is only expected to drive further growth within
this particular area of the digital marketing mix in the future, with both
Facebook and Twitter extending their video offering through services such as
Premium Video Ads and Vine, respectively.
SMM still represents an emerging sector within the wider digital marketing
mix and, as such, Key Note predicts expenditure on such marketing activities
will continue to observe relatively strong growth over the next 5 years. The
ongoing development of social media advertising platforms by leading
competitors such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube is likely to
stimulate future growth, and will further improve the accuracy and efficiency
of SMM methods. The sophistication of metrics tools within this field should
also help to ensure a more accurate return on investment (ROI) can be proven
to clients — an issue which has caused some problems for marketers
specialising in SMM in the past — with heightened interest in big data serving
to boost social media monitoring skills across the industry. Although a positive
outlook for the SMM industry is the most likely of options, recent media reports
have suggested that a second dotcom bubble could be about to burst,
following a global sell-off of technology shares in early April 2014, with the
value of Internet companies in both the US and UK, including Facebook and
Twitter, falling as a result. If this were to occur, the social media market could
potentially collapse, an event that would have severe consequences for
marketers operating within this particular area of the advertising industry.

Social Media Marketing Social Media
3. Social Media
BACKGROUND
The development of social networking technologies over the past few decades
has dramatically changed the way in which people interact with each other
and the way in which the Web is now used. The popularisation of social
networks has been facilitated by the concept of Web 2.0, which surfaced in the
wake of the dotcom crash of 2001 and represented a shift away from software
companies that locked people into their products and traditional ‘static’ media,
and towards a digital culture built on public participation, user-generated
content and collaboration.
Although many social networks have come and gone since sites such as
GeoCities.com and sixdegrees.com first appeared back in the mid-1990s, the
sharp growth of current market leaders, such as Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube, which now count users in their millions (and, in the case of Facebook,
billions), underlines the fact that social media can no longer be considered —
as some critics have suggested in the past — a passing fad. According to an
eMarketer report published in June 2013, social networks have around 1.73
billion users worldwide — that’s just under a quarter (24.2%) of the global
population.
From the point of view of news organisations and marketers, the prolific
growth of social media and its vast reach has drastically altered the way in
which content is now published and shared on the Web, with online material
now being published ‘tailor-made’ in response to the current demands of the
Web-based audience. As digital analyst Brian Solis puts it:
“Social media is the democratisation of information,

transforming people from content readers into publishers. It is
the shift from a broadcast mechanism, one-to-many, to a
many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between
authors, people and peers.”
The migration of consumers onto mobile devices in recent years has only served
to increase the power and reach of social media across the globe, with the
sharp increase in smartphones and tablet computers resulting in the inception
of an audience that is effectively ‘always on’. As a result, news updates and
brand messages can now be disseminated instantly and to the masses 24/7. Not
only this, but such devices have fuelled the utilisation of location-based
application (apps), allowing news organisations and marketers to target their
audiences more efficiently.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA LANDSCAPE

This chapter does not attempt to quantify the social media market in terms of
value, as doing so can be problematic given that, ultimately, the industry is
fuelled primarily by advertising expenditure. However, the recent initial public
offerings (IPOs) of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter give some idea
of the current worth of such sites. Recent market valuations of Facebook
estimate the company to be worth approximately $135bn (as of January 2014);
while micro-blogging platform Twitter is currently thought to be worth around
£27bn. Meanwhile, LinkedIn is estimated to be valued at around $23bn at
present and video streaming site YouTube at between $15.6bn and $21.3bn —
up significantly from the $1.65bn that Google paid for the site back in 2006.
This section of the chapter will provide a brief overview of the main social
networking sites used by marketers and brands to engage with their customers.
Such sites are also generally the most popular among consumers. The chapter
will also focus on areas of social media other than social networking —
although generally such sites are the most popular in terms of marketing
activity — including micro-publication sites, niche social networking sites,
aggregators, blogs and bookmarking sites.
Social Networking Sites

The following includes brief profiles of the leading social networking sites in
the UK, as ranked by Alexa Internet Inc (part of Amazon). Alexa ranks sites
based on a combination of average daily visitors to the site and pageviews on
the sites from users in the UK over the past month. The companies profiled
below are ranked in order of traffic to the site, as defined by Alexa Internet
Inc, with the rankings having been accessed by Key Note in May 2014.
Facebook
A full company profile of Facebook has been provided in Chapter 9 —
Competitor Analysis.
Alexa ranking: 3 (Global ranking: 2).
YouTube
Video-sharing service YouTube is owned by search engine giant Google, which
also operates the social networking site Google+. A full company profile of
Google, detailing its range of social media services, can be found in Chapter 9
— Competitor Analysis.
Alexa ranking: 4 (Global ranking: 3)

Pinterest
Photo-sharing site Pinterest was originally launched in 2010. The site is
marketed as a ‘visual discovery’ tool, which allows users to organise and share
interest-specific content found on the Web using a ‘pinboard’ template. Users
are also able to browse other members’ pinboards and can view or locate
pinboards based on a particular subject, topic or theme. A ‘pin’, which can
include an image added to Pinterest, can also include captions and can be
‘repinned’ by other users.
Pinterest has continued to gain traction since its launch 4 years ago, and is now
thought to be the fastest-growing content-sharing social media platform in
the world. According to a new quarterly report published by ShareThis in
January 2014, sharing on Pinterest rose by 58% in 2013, ahead of Facebook’s
57% growth and far outpacing Twitter’s 15% growth. The site is estimated to
have around 50 million monthly active users worldwide, with a recent Pew
survey even going so far as to suggest the site has now become more popular
than Twitter. A recent market valuation of the site held in October 2013
estimated it to be valued at approximately $3.8bn, with this figure only likely
to increase over the coming years following the launch of various new
advertising products from the social network.
In late 2013, Pinterest announced the launch of its first advertising business
and began charging businesses to place content that is integrated with photos
already shown on users’ pinboards. The next year is likely to see further
advertising product launches from the company, with rumours already
circulating that the site is gearing up to launch an image-based ‘Promoted Pins’
service during 2014; as well as an application programming interface (API),
which will allow advertisers to create their own advertisements and plug them
directly into the company’s platform using targeting data towards the end of
the year. The image-based site has already garnered significant interest from
online retail firms, as it provides a perfect opportunity for e-commerce
businesses to showcase their goods online and engage with consumers directly.
This could see the site becoming an e-commerce portal for businesses in the
future, with brand pages acting as mini shop-fronts for online sellers.
Instagram
Instagram is an online photo- and video-sharing social networking service,
which enables users to upload pictures and videos onto the site and share them
on a variety of other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr
and Flickr. Instagram was originally founded by Kevin Systrom and Mike
Krieger and launched in October 2010 before being acquired by social
networking giant Facebook in April 2012 for a consideration of approximately
$1bn. Since the acquisition, the mobile photo-sharing app has observed strong
growth, with a recent report published by GlobalWebIndex revealing that it
had seen 23% growth in active users during 2013 — compared to a 3% fall in
active users as registered by its sister site Facebook.

Altogether, Instagram is estimated to have around 200 million monthly active

users — all of whom are on mobile — with 60 million photos being uploaded
to the site every day. The site has only just begun to capitalise on its growing
success, after announcing the launch of its first advertising platform during
late 2013. Further advertising product launches are expected to be introduced
by the company over the next year, with the photo-sharing network already
in the test phase of a ‘promoted posts’ service, which has so far encompassed
only select brands, such as Levi’s, Michael Kors and Lexus. The company also
recently agreed a deal with global advertising agency Omnicom, which was
signed in March 2014 and is rumoured to be worth around $40m. The new deal
will see Instagram work closely with Omnicom’s creative team, which develops
campaigns for a number of big brands including Nissan, Pepsi and Bud Light.
Similar deals could also be on the cards in the near future, with rival advertising
agency WPP also showing interest in a similar deal with the photo-sharing site.
Vimeo
Video-sharing site Vimeo was originally founded in 2004 by Jake Lodwick and
Zach Klein, before being sold to InterActiveCorp (IAC) in 2006 as part of the
latter’s acquisition of Connected Ventures. Although the company has
struggled to compete with its much larger rival, YouTube, the site has a
relatively strong global following, with 102 million monthly viewers
worldwide. The company has also observed strong global growth after the past
year, and posted year-over-year global increases of 26.3% during 2013. Despite
this, the company has been reticent about offering interruptive advertising
services such as that provided by YouTube, and instead generates the majority
of its revenue through subscription-based products, with the company now
estimated to have around 400,000 paying subscribers in total. Instead, Vimeo
has channelled funds into developing the work submitted to the site by
filmmakers, with the company announcing that it would be providing funding
of $10m to allow filmmakers to sell their advertisement-free videos directly to
consumers. This positions the company somewhere between online social
media video-sharing services, such as YouTube, and on-demand content
platforms like Netflix.
Nevertheless, Vimeo remains a popular online video-sharing service, after

seeing its audience almost double over the past year while rival YouTube only
observed modest increases. Furthermore, despite the site’s lack of interruptive
advertising, it still generates income through brand-friendly channels, with
brands such as Airbnb and Lincoln, having a presence on Vimeo.

Flickr
Flickr also operates as a photo- and video-sharing site on mobile platforms,
similar to Instagram. The company was originally founded in 2004 by Ludicorp,
a Canadian firm founded by Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, before
being sold to Yahoo in 2005. Since then, Flickr has continued to grow its reach
and now has approximately 92 million users spread across 63 countries, who
contribute to almost 2 million groups and share around 1 million photos every
day. A recent report published by GlobalWebIndex also revealed that it was
the second-fastest growing global app for smartphone and tablet users during
2013 behind Twitter’s Vine, after seeing app downloads rise by 146% between
Q1 and Q3 2013.
Others
• Photobucket.com
Photobucket is a free image-hosting, photo-sharing and photo-editing online

community. The company now has around 23 million monthly unique users in
the US, who upload over 4 million images and videos per day through the Web.
• Badoo
Badoo is a dating-focused social network that enables users to meet other

people in their local areas. The site was originally founded by Russian
entrepreneur Andrey Andreev and first launched in 2006. Russian investment
firm Finam Capital also owns a 20% stake in the company. Altogether, Badoo
has around 207.2 million users worldwide and is currently available in 46
languages across 190 countries. The site has a particularly strong uptake among
young adults aged between 25 and 35 years old, and offers a range of services
to advertisers, such as affiliate pages. The social network also operates the
geo-location-based ‘hot or not’-style game, Encounters, which was launched
in 2007 and is designed to help users find people in their local area.
• Tagged
Tagged is a social discovery network which enables users to meet and socialise
with new people by using enhanced browsing features and matching shared
interests. The site also allows users to browse the profiles of other members,
share tags and virtual gifts, and play games online. Tagged, which is based in
San Francisco, was originally founded in 2004 and claims to have been
profitable since 2008. Altogether, the site has over 300 million registered
members in 220 countries. The company also offers a range of advertising
products using the Google Display Network (GDN), which enables advertisers
to target their advertisements on Tagged by demographics and location.

• Foursquare
Foursquare, originally founded in 2007, is a location-based social networking

site for mobile devices. The service allows users to ‘check-in’ at events and
locations that they visit, and share such places with other users. It also provides
users with personalised recommendations and deals based on where they or
their friends are located. The site currently has a community of over 45 million
people worldwide, with 5 billion check-ins made in total. In recent years, the
company has intensified its efforts towards generating advertising revenue by
opening up its home screen to brands that do not have a physical location to
advertise, such as Mastercard. However, the majority of advertising on the site
is to alert users to the presence of relevant businesses based in their local
vicinity. Despite some suggestions from market analysts that Foursquare will
fall out of favour significantly during 2014, a recent announcement from
company investor Ben Horowitz in March revealed that the startup saw
revenue rise by 600% in 2013. The company is also likely to continue to benefit
from increased investment into the site, with technology giant Microsoft
announcing in February 2014 that it had provided Foursquare with $15m in
funding as a result of a partnership between the two firms. The new deal will
also see Foursquare contributing to the Bing platform’s location and context
layers on both Windows 8 and Windows Phone.
Alexa ranking: 1,147 (Global ranking: 558).
• Myspace
Music-centric social networking site Myspace, which originally became popular

during the 2000s, has continued to decline in recent years, both in terms of
users and advertising revenue. At its peak, in 2007, the company was valued at
approximately $12bn; however, issues relating to spam on the site and the
continued rise and eventual dominance of Facebook have seen the site struggle
to compete within the social media arena. Despite a high profile re-launch of
the site in 2013, the number of users visiting the site has stayed around the 36
million mark.
Professional/Niche Social Networks

Professional/niche social networks can hold greater potential for
business-to-business (B2B) marketers as they enable access to a vast, and often
global, business community. Niche social networks are also often more useful
to brands that operate in a very specific field by providing such companies
access to their relevant audiences, thus ensuring that any advertising
undertaken through such channels is highly targeted.
LinkedIn
A full company profile of LinkedIn has been provided in Chapter 9 —
Competitor Analysis.

DeviantART
DeviantART represents the largest online social network dedicated to the work
of artists and art enthusiasts, with over 30 million registered members
attracting 65 million visitors per month. The site allows emerging and
established artists to exhibit, promote and share their works within a peer
community dedicated to the arts. The site currently receives over 160,000
uploads of original art works, ranging from traditional paintings and sculpture
to digital art, films and anime. The site offers a range of advertising services to
brands seeking to engage with DeviantART’s community and also offers
discounted rates to users to help promote art-related topics.
XING
XING is a social networking site through which professionals can network, find
jobs, engage with colleagues, develop new assignments, meet up with new
co-operation partners and field experts, and generate business ideas and new
sales leads. The site is currently home to around 14 million members worldwide
— 7 million of which are based in German-speaking countries.
The company has continued to expand in recent years, with the company
posting total revenues of €84.8m in 2013, representing a 16% increase over
2012. The company’s e-recruiting division performed particularly well over the
past year, reporting growth of 42%; while its network/premium division
increased by 6% and its events division grew by 26%.
Spiceworks
Spiceworks was originally founded in 2006 as a specialist social networking site
for those working within the technology sector. The site enables users to
connect with other IT professionals, share content and access reviews and news
stories relating to the technology industry. Altogether, 5 million IT
professionals and 3,000 tech vendors use the site, which has a presence in over
200 countries. Spiceworks has benefitted from increased investment in recent
months, with the company announcing in February 2014 that it had closed a
$57m Series E round of funding led by Goldman Sachs, with participation from
existing investors. The new round of funding is expected to help drive future
growth for the professional social network in the near future.
Alexa ranking: 1,833 (Global ranking: 2,843).

SunZu
SunZu (formerly Ecademy) is a social network for the business community
which allows users to meet, share, learn and trade with other business owners.
The company was founded by Lyndon Wood and is based in Dublin in the
Republic of Ireland. During 2012, Sunzu acquired professional social network
Ecademy, which had 500,000 members and re-launched the business as Sunzu,
with the aim of growing the site’s customer base to 1 million by the end of
2013.
Biznik
Biznik is an online community specifically designed for independent business
people. The site offers support, referrals and advice to professionals across a
range of business sectors. Biznik was originally founded in 2005 by
husband-and-wife team Lara and Dan Feltin in response to growing demand
from entrepreneurs. Although users were originally given free access to the
site, in 2012 the company revealed that it would start charging for
membership.
Micro-Publication Networks
Twitter
A full company profile is provided for Twitter in Chapter 9 — Competitor
Analysis.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking platform, originally
established in 2007 by founders David Karp and Marco Arment. The site allows
users to post texts, quotes, links, music and videos from a range of devices; it
is also fully customisable to members. According to Tumblr’s homepage it now
hosts 180.7 million blogs, and has 82.7 billion posts in total.

In May 2013, it was announced that Internet corporation Yahoo! Inc had
agreed a deal to acquire the New York-based micro-blogging service for a cash
consideration of $1.1bn (£723m). Original founder David Karp will continue as
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the firm and will retain a 25% share in the
company. Over the past few years, Tumblr has continued to develop its
advertising service, introducing a number of different products since May 2012,
including Radar (a small promoted post space shown on the dashboard of every
user), Sponsored Radar, Sponsored Spotlight, Sponsored Web Post and
Sponsored Mobile Posts. The latter unit, introduced in April 2013, was Tumblr’s
first advertising product for mobile. The site also introduced Trending Blogs in
July, which is a selection of curated blogs from Tumblr editors which appear
on users’ dashboards. Placements for Trending Blogs are targeted
geographically (by country), but not demographically. In December 2013, Lee
Brown, Global Head of Brand Partnerships at Tumblr, revealed that the site
would now be offering a low, unspecified introductory flat fee, with a view to
introducing a charge on cost-per-engagement basis later in the future.
Advertisers for the beta program so far include Delta Airlines, 20th Century
Fox, Calvin Klein and Turner Broadcasting.
Aggregators
HootSuite
Hootsuite is a social media management tool for businesses and organisations
which allows integrations for a number of social networking sites, including
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, Myspace, WordPress,
TrendSpottr and Mixi. Additional integrations are also available via Hootsuite’s
App Directory, including MailChimp, Instagram, Reddit, Tumblr, Storify, Vimeo
and YouTube. The company was first established in 2008 by founder Ryan
Holmes and now has over 9 million users worldwide.
Hootsuite allows users to manage brands online by monitoring and

disseminating messages across various social media services using a single
dashboard. The service enables users to launch marketing campaigns, identify
and grow audiences, and distribute targeted messages using the Hootsuite
social media dashboard. In addition, users are able to streamline team
workflow with scheduling and assignment tools, and reach audiences with
geo-targeting functionality.
FriendFeed (Facebook)
FriendFeed was originally founded by Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit
and Sanjeev Singh in 2007. The company is currently based in California and
had around 2 million unique visitors as of March 2011, according to data
compiled by comScore. In August 2009, the company was acquired by social
networking giant Facebook Inc for a consideration of $15m in cash and $32.5m
in Facebook stock.

FriendFeed allows users to share content across multiple social networks using
a single user interface, and view what their friends are doing on various
platforms. Users can also subscribe to updates from individuals and groups,
such as family or work colleagues, allowing everyone within a specific network
to comment on a shared stream of information.
TweetDeck (Twitter)
TweetDeck was originally conceived by founder Iain Dodworth in 2008, who
then went on to sell the company to micro-blogging site Twitter in 2011 for an
estimated consideration of between $40m and $50m. Following the acquisition
the service was renamed TweetDeck for Twitter. The app allows users to
undertake real-time tracking, organising and engagement across their Twitter
accounts. It also enables users to monitor multiple timelines; schedule future
tweets; turn on alerts; filter searches based on criteria such as engagement,
users and content type; build and export custom timelines; use shortcuts; mute
specific users or terms; and manage multiple accounts and tweets, all from a
single dashboard.
Despite the growth in mobile audiences, in May 2013 Twitter announced that
it would be closing down multiple TweetDeck apps in order to focus on the
product’s web-based version. Twitter revealed that Facebook integration
would also be removed from the service. The move saw the removal of
TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for iPhone and TweetDeck for Android from their
respective app stores during May 2013. However, TweetDeck’s Web and
Chrome apps will undergo several enhancements, while Mac and PC apps will
continue to evolve as well.
Alexa global ranking: 317,283
Flipboard
Flipboard is a social network aggregation service which allows users to browse
topic-related content from a range of social media sites and other Web
properties. This information is then aggregated into a magazine format, which
users can then ‘flip’ through and share with other users. The company is owned
by US-based start-up Flipboard Inc, which was originally founded in 2010 by
Mike McCure and Evan Doll. Since its inception, the company has continued to
grow, with recent announcements from the founders claiming that it had
received a $50m round of funding in October 2013. The company is now
estimated to have around 90 million users, with users ‘flipping’ a total of 7
billion pages per month. Although traditional publishers, such as The New York
Times and Vanity Fair number among the company’s top publishers, several
brands, such as Lexus, Levis, Samsung and Cisco, have also been cited by the
service to be among its most engaging brands, producing up to 40 flips from
a user visit. Such brands are integral to the growth of Flipboard, not only
through the publication of branded content, but also because they promote
their content within the site’s ecosystem.

Stackla
Stackla is a social network aggregator which aggregates content from sites
such as Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, Pinterest and Twitter based on
specific user-generated criteria, such as an event, hashtag or topic. The service
allows users to moderate, publish, categorise and feature content in real time.
In addition, Stackla can be integrated with users’ own Web domains, enabling
them to drop in their own analytics codes and thus ensuring that all customer
interactions are captured. The service is also offered as a customisable widget,
which is powered by the Stackla moderation and curation engine to ensure
that only relevant content is provided.
Stackla, based in Australia, was first established by founders Damien Mahoney

and Peter Cassidy, and has so far created pages for local clients including
Telstra, News Corp Australia, Fairfax, Fox Sports, Vogue, Brisbane City Council
and Qantas, among others. The company recently announced plans to expand
overseas, with roll-outs to the UK and US expected to be undertaken during
2014.
Alexa global ranking: 253,315.
Blogging Sites
WordPress
WordPress is the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, which allows
users to publish their own customisable blogs. The site was originally launched
in 2003 by founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. The service first began
as a simple blogging tool but has since evolved into a full content management
system (CMS), with publishers now creating various sites beyond simple blogs,
such as company sites, magazines, social networks and sports sites. Users are
also able to monitor the success of their own blogging pages by using the site’s
integrated statistics systems.
WordPress blogs are available in over 120 languages, although the majority
(66%) are provided in English. As of March 2014, over 409 million were viewing
more than 14.7 billion pages on the WordPress site; with users producing more
than 44.5 million new posts and 56.7 million new comments each month.

Blogger
Blogger was originally setup by US-based startup Pyra Labs in August 1999
before being acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum in 2003. Blogger
allows users to create a customised blog, which is hosted by Google at a
subdomain of blogspot.com. The site is also integrated with Google’s social
network, Google+, which enables users to reach new readers and participate
in more conversations. Users are also able to generate income through various
Blogger tools, which enable them to show advertisements that are relevant to
specific followers and earn money with Google AdSense, which can be
integrated into users’ accounts. Blogger is currently available in 60 languages
and in countries across the world. As of October 2011, Blogger had more than
46 million unique US visitors.
HubPages
HubPages is an open online community designed for content sharing and
interaction. Users (also known as ‘hubbers’) can use the site to build audiences,
create articles and generate income through advertising revenue. According
to the site, over 35 million people explore HubPages every month and there
are now an estimated 864,474 published Hubs across the world, as well as
63,371 published users.
HubPages was originally launched in 2006 by three founders: Paul Edmonson,

Paul Deeds and Jay Reitz, all of whom were former employees of tech giant,
Microsoft. The company is headquartered in San Francisco in the US.
LiveJournal
LiveJournal was originally established in 1999 by US-based programmer Brad
Fitzpatrick as a way to keep in contact with his high-school friends. Since then,
the company has changed hands a number of times and is currently owned by
Russian media company SUP Media, which acquired the company in 2007. In
2009, the company also moved its operations to Russia, despite previously
being based in San Francisco in the US.
LiveJournal is an online blogging community and social network which

facilitates content-sharing among its users. Users are able to keep a blog,
journal or diary on the site, with an emphasis on user interaction. Although
basic accounts are free, the site also offers a premium service to members for
a fee. Users are also able to participate in communities on the site, which are
group journals, in which multiple users can post entries. Altogether,
LiveJournal has around 35.8 million accounts (as of February 2012), with a
particularly large proportion of its following based in Russia, where it is known
as ZheZhe.

Medium
In 2012, it was announced that two of Twitter’s co-founders, Evan Williams and
Biz Stone, had launched a new self-publishing platform called Medium. The
aim of the site is to produce a blogging platform that is truly content-centric,
and which facilitates the publication of relevant user-generated writing. In
order to achieve this, Medium automatically curates a stream of posts that are
most relevant to its members, which also means that the authors of such posts
are reaching their target audience. Medium also separates the best content on
the site using a combination of algorithms and human guidance, which is then
promoted via official collections, such as ‘Front Page Picks’.
After undergoing much development, Medium was finally released to the

general public in October 2013, although users are only able to post
information from Chrome, Safari or Firefox browsers, and must have a Twitter
account to participate on the site. In early 2014, it was announced that the
startup had raised $25m in venture capital, which it plans to use to grow the
business. Up until the investment was announced, Twitter founder Evan
Williams was thought to be the sole source of money for Medium through his
company, Obvious Corp.
Bookmarking Sites
Reddit
Reddit is a social bookmarking service which enables users (also known as
‘redditers’ to vote on which current news stories and discussions are the most
important, thus allowing the biggest and most relevant content to rise to the
top. Users are also able to create a community (called ‘subreddits’), which is
independent and moderated by a team of volunteers.
Reddit was originally founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian in 2005
before being acquired by Condé Nast Publications in October 2006. However,
as of September 2011, Condé Nast has spun out Reddit as an independent
company, although its’ holding firm — Advanced Publications — will still own
the firm. The move followed a period of significant growth for Reddit, which
now has around 115 million unique visitors every month, hailing from over 190
countries across the world. Since its inception, Reddit has shied away from
typical Internet advertising, instead allowing brands to sponsor links on both
the homepage and subreddit pages (topic-specific pages). The site is not
generally used by big brands for advertising purposes, but sells mainly to niche
marketers.

StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon was first established in 2002 by founders Garrett Camp, Geoff
Smith, Justin LaFrance and Eric Boyd. In 2007, the company was acquired by
eBay for approximately $75m, before being sold back to original founders
Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith and several other investors in early 2009.
StumbleUpon uses collaborative filtering to provide users with relevant

content dependent on specific search terms, including web pages, videos and
photos. Users are then able to Like or Dislike recommendations, thus improving
any feedback provided by the website. Altogether, the website has around 25
million users, and over 80,000 brands, publishers and marketers have used the
StumbleUpon Paid Discovery platform to tell their stories and promote their
products and services.
Delicious
Delicious is a free social bookmarking service, which allows users to save and
share content via the Web. Users are able to build up a collection of links
relevant to them, essentially creating their own personal search engine, which
they can then organise.
Delicious was originally founded in 2003 before being acquired by Yahoo! in

2005, changing hands once again in 2011, when it was sold to AVOS Systems,
which is owned by YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. Delicious
currently serves over 1 billion links every day and has a presence in over 200
countries worldwide.
WIDGETS, ADD-ONS, AFFILIATE ADS AND APPS

A widget is a small third-party app which can be embedded directly onto a
webpage or a user’s desktop. Widgets (which are also referred to as gadgets,
modules, badges or ‘blog bling’) usually occupy only a small portion of a
webpage and display information from their source e.g. news, weather, etc.
Some widgets also provide users with limited functionality, such as pull-down
menus, buttons, selection boxes, progress indicators, on-off checkmarks, scroll
bars, windows, window edges, toggle buttons and forms, which enable users
to customise the information shown by their widget. Although basic widgets
usually take the form of a clock or calendar, in recent years several brands have
developed and launched their own widgets in order to help market their
products and services. Widgets can represent a particularly useful form of
marketing, as they can be branded with a specific company’s logo, thus
keeping the brand in front of users for long periods of time and ensuring that
a brand’s website is only a click away. If successfully distributed, widgets can
therefore help to extend the reach of the brand, drive customer acquisition at
minimal cost, reduce a brand’s dependence on search engine optimisation
(SEO) and leverage a branded website’s existing content to increase Web
traffic.

Similar to widgets, apps can also help brands get closer to their customers by
providing immediate visibility and accessibility to branded websites. However,
it is necessary to distinguish between apps and widgets — the former is short
for application programme (but is often simply referred to as an app) and
indicates any software programme that has been designed for users, while the
latter is only one kind of application and generally refers to a stand-alone set
of code that can be posted independently in a variety of places.
Widgets are often used as part of wider affiliate marketing strategies, a

marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each
visitor or customer acquired by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. Bloggers
often participate in affiliate marketing by advertising certain products or
services relevant to their blog post, either by a display advertisement or
through a widget, which users can then copy and paste onto their own
desktop. Any sales made via affiliate advertising will earn the third-party
website a small commission. Businesses seeking to develop and distribute their
own websites can also utilise widget distribution platforms, such as AddThis,
Google, MuseStorm, Widgipedia and Gigya, all of which provide a range of
tools including widget customisation and real-time analytics. Widgets can also
be distributed and shared via e-mails or through downloadable apps. The
majority of widgets also provide an ‘add this’ or ‘share this’ function, which
allows users to drag and drop the widget from a particular website to their
own social media profile or to their desktop, thus broadening brand coverage
and driving customer engagement. A number of social media networks already
have their own social plugins or widgets, including Facebook and Twitter,
which allow users immediate access to real-time social media activity on their
profile.
In recent years, activity from brands has featured heavily on app development
rather than widgets, although the latter is still considered extremely useful by
marketers as a direct engagement tool. The rapid uptake of mobile devices
such as smartphones and tablet computers has driven the growth of branded
apps in recent year; with some marketers suggesting that brands should now
‘think apps, not ads’. Retailer-branded apps have achieved particular success,
and have increasingly been used by consumers to shop for goods directly.
According to an article published by mobilecommercedaily.com in January
2014, 34% of consumers made a purchase using a retailer-branded app during
the 2013 Christmas period, up from 23% in 2012.
The following includes examples of recent widget and app launches:
Bitcoin News Widget

In March 2014, Bitcoin announced the launch of new Bitcoin News Widget from
ForexMinute, which has been designed to generate more interest in the
brand’s main website from visitors and traders. The new widget is mainly
expected to be distributed among brokerage firms, which can now install the
Bitcoin News Widget directly onto their website using the code. The widget
will represent a reliable source for Bitcoin broker reviews, the latest Bitcoin
news and trading tools. The launch of the app comes following an
unprecedented period of growth for Bitcoin during 2013, with the price of the
digital currency increasing over 6,000% that year.

Facebook Paper
In February 2014, Facebook announced that it had launched a new social
magazine app for iPhone devices called Paper. The app curates stories from a
user’s Facebook News Feed, as well as personalised content from across the
Web encompassing a range of topics (e.g. science, technology, food, sports,
etc.). Users are also able to compose their own ‘stories’ for the app. Although
the app has originally been launched without advertising, formats are likely to
be integrated into the programme at a future date. Paper represents the first
product created by Facebook’s Creative Labs team, which was set up to build
standalone mobile products.
Official FIFA App

In December 2013, football governing body Fédération Internationale de
Football Association (FIFA) announced that it had launched its first-ever mobile
app ahead of the World Cup 2014 in Brazil. The Official FIFA app brings
together data on more than 200 football teams worldwide, along with a
number of different football tournaments in its World Match Centre; and
enables users to personalise the information that they receive. Fans were also
able to use the app to follow the draw for the World Cup in Brazil, which was
undertaken in December 2013; users are also able to track the official ranking
of their national team across both men’s and women’s football using the FIFA/
Coca-Cola World Ranking. In addition, the app has been integrated with social
media, including Facebook, Twitter and FIFA.com Club, the organisation’s own
online community. The Official FIFA app has been pegged as possibly the most
sought-after sports app in history, with the football organisation predicting 70
million downloads in the first few months following release.
Greggs Rewards Mobile App

In February 2014, high-street bakery chain Greggs announced the launch of its
new Greggs Rewards mobile payment app across its 1,700 store estate. The app
works by allowing customers to generate a Quick Response (QR) code which
can then either be scanned or entered into a chip and pin machine while
in-store. The app, which uses PayPal, also allows customers to pay for items
quickly using their smartphone and offers rewards such as a free Greggs
breakfast and a birthday treat once an account is opened. Customers can top
up their Rewards account from £5 to £50 using their credit or debit card.

Idealo Flight Finder Widget

In May 2013, flight price comparison website Idealo announced that it had
launched a free flight finder widget for businesses to add to their websites.
The widget is also integrated with the main website’s ‘how to find us’ and
‘contact us’ webpages, thus providing potential users with the opportunity to
find the nearest airports to their location and providing them with access to
information about the airlines that Idealo is served by. The widget also
provides customisable search fields which can be used by clients to find specific
locations and departure times according to their needs. In addition, the widget
is highly customisable, allowing colours, fonts and other aspects to be adjusted
to suit third-party website’s corporate identities.
Spotify Play Button Widget

In April 2012, online music-streaming service Spotify announced the launch of
its new Play Button widget, which can be embedded directly into third-party
websites. The new widget was designed in order to make it easier for bloggers
and Web editors to add songs without the threat of ‘legal takedowns’ and to
extend the music service’s reach. However, in order to take advantage of the
songs offered on the widget, users must have signed up to the Spotify service.
Following the announcement, Timeout, Huffington Post, Vogue and Tumblr
revealed that they had committed to using the widget.
CONSUMER RESEARCH
Penetration of Social Networking

According to research conducted by Ofcom, two in three adults (64%) in the
UK are now thought to have a social network profile, up from just one in five
(22%) in 2007. The data published by Ofcom illustrates growth in social
network reach across all gender, age and social grade demographics assessed
by the survey, with uptake generally found to be highest among female
respondents (67%), those aged between 16 and 24 years old (92%) and those
belonging to social grade DE (66%), although penetration is similar
throughout all grades. The growing penetration of social networks among
consumers within the UK has not gone unnoticed by marketers, with a social
media presence now often viewed as an essential part of wider brand
marketing strategies.

Table 3.1: Penetration of Users That Have Set Up Their Own

Social Networking Profile by Gender, Age and Social Grade
(% of respondents), 2007, 2009-2012
2007 2009 2010 2011 2012
All adults 22 44 54 59 64
Sex
Male 21 40 51 55 61
Female 22 48 56 63 67
Age
16-24 54 77 86 90 92
25-34 27 65 70 81 84
35-44 12 40 58 58 67
45-54 7 30 32 48 47
55-64 8 11 27 24 35
65+ 3 7 11 19 25
Social Grade
AB 19 40 54 57 64
C1 24 46 52 62 65
C2 23 45 51 59 62
DE 20 46 58 59 66
Source: Adults Media Use and Attitudes Report 2013 © Ofcom
Frequency of Visiting Social Networking Sites

Further data compiled by Ofcom revealed that consumers were also visiting
social networking sites on a more frequent basis, with half (50%) of adults
surveyed visiting such sites more than once a day during 2012, up from 35% in
2011. Conversely, the proportion of respondents that visited social networking
sites once a day or less often than daily actually fell between 2007 and 2012,
by 8 and 43 percentage points, respectively.
Increases in the frequency of visitations to social networking sites among users

is likely to have been driven by the proliferation of mobile technology, with
many consumers now logging in to their social media profiles through their
phone as a matter of course throughout the day. This has provided marketers
with access to an ‘always online’ and easily reachable audience, although
brands need to ensure that content published via their own social networking
profiles is updated more regularly in order to appeal to this growing ‘on the
go’ consumer base.

Table 3.2: Frequency of Visiting Any Social Networking Sites

(% of respondents), 2007, 2009-2012
2007 2009 2010 2011 2012
More than once a day† - - - 35 50

Once a day/every day 30 41 51 31 22
Less often than daily 70 59 49 33 27
† — question was added to the Ofcom survey in 2011
Uses of Social Networking Sites

The majority of people using social networking sites did so to connect with
friends and family, with four fifths (80%) visiting such sites to talk to friends
and family that they saw a lot and 76% doing so to connect with friends and
family that they rarely saw. In terms of marketing purposes, a relatively high
proportion of respondents connected with branded pages, with a quarter
(25%) clicking on the ‘like’ button for products and services posted on social
networks, while 15% used such sites to network with business or professional
contacts and 10% doing so to advertise or promote their own business
ventures.
Information sharing was also found to be a popular use of social networking

sites, with 22% going on such sites to find out about breaking news stories,
while 21% went on social networks to listen to music/find out about bands or
for entertainment/sporting news/information; an additional 17% did so to
share video clips/content.
Table 3.3: Uses of Social Networking Sites

(% of respondents), 2012
Talk to friends/family I see a lot 80

Talk to friends/family I rarely see 76
Look at other people’s pages without leaving a
message 45
Look for old friends/people I’ve lost touch with 44
Talk to people who are friends of friends 28
Table continues...

Table 3.3: Uses of Social Networking Sites

...table continued
Organise social events/invite people to events, e.g.

parties 25
Click on the ’like’ button for products or services 25
Find out about local events happening in the
neighbourhood 23
Find out about breaking news stories 22
Listen to music/find out about bands 21
For entertainment/sporting news/information 21
Talk to people I don’t known/never met in person 19
Share video clips/content 17
Network with business or professional contacts 15
Find out about issues affecting my local community 13
Post location online/’checking into’ a location 12
Look at campaigns and petitions 11
Advertise or promote a business 10
For dating purposes 3
HOW TO ENGAGE ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social media has continued to remain an important part of most big brands’
wider marketing campaigns; a trend which has also begun to gain traction
among small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in recent years, with many
smaller companies benefitting significantly from the wide reach that social
media provides at a relatively small cost. If leveraged successfully, social media
marketing can help brands to engage with audiences, improve customer
service, enhance reputation, undertake market research, build brand
awareness and drive sales generation.

A number of ‘How To’ guides are available online to help businesses of all sizes
take advantage of the opportunities that social media marketing has to offer.
The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) publishes several guides and resources
regarding social media marketing for its members, as well as the free
publication Social Media & B2B Marketing: New Opportunities, which details
the uses of various social media sites for both business-to-consumer (B2C) and
B2B organisations. A number of organisations, such as the Chartered Institute
of Marketing (CIM), the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and
Econsultancy, offer courses and other training in social media marketing; there
is also a range of free online resources on the subject available from
marketingdonut.co.uk and smallbusiness.co.uk, as well as new
Government-funded organisation Enterprise Nation Marketplace. Trade
publications such as Marketing Week and The Marketer also provide news and
advice regarding current issues affecting the industry.
Online advice and resources provider Marketing Donut sets out a number of
key steps for businesses to follow in achieving a cohesive and effective social
media strategy, a brief overview of which has been provided below:
1. Focus on what you want your social media strategy to achieve — e.g.
strengthening communication with existing customers, reaching new
customers, raising the brand/company’s profile, improving reputation,
networking with peers, etc.
2. Choose the right social media platform — understand where your

customers are and what platform best suits your business needs. For
example, micro-blogging is best used for immediacy, blogging can raise
profile, social networking can be used to connect with customers and
peers, and forums can enhance reputation. A mixture of social media
platforms can also be used to ensure a wider reach, although channels
should be cross-promoted if this method is undertaken.
3. Assess costs, resources and benefits — bear in mind the time commitment
needed to manage and update social media profiles and give staff
responsibility to manage such profiles. However, businesses should keep
social media activities in perspective, as they generally constitute only one
aspect of wider marketing strategies.
4. Integrate social media into wider marketing plans — use social media as
an additional channel to existing activities and consider the unique
strengths of social media as part of the business’ wider marketing
planning.
5. Measure, review, revise — set targets and be patient, watch for trends and
do not be afraid to change the business’ social media activities to refine
its approach.
6. Essential points to make social media work — do not sell persistently or

aggressively; remember that having a presence on social media is about
conversation and connection; be patient, as rewards from social media are
often due to investment in time; and ensure that your business’ social
media activities and messages are consistent with your wider marketing
initiatives.

Social Media Marketing Social Networking Tools for Enterprises
4. Social Networking Tools for Enterprises
BACKGROUND
The continued growth and expansion of consumer-centric social media has also
led to the development of a range of social software tools designed for
enterprises, with a number of leading technology firms including SAP,
Salesforce, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle now offering a range of social enterprise
solutions. The development of such tools has been fuelled by the emergence
of a more mobile workforce, which has in turn been driven by the increased
uptake of mobile technologies by businesses. As such, demand for new tools
that ensure businesses remain connected and work collaboratively across their
operations has continued to increase, particularly among multinational
corporations. Social enterprise software is often referred to as social
networking and intranet designed for the corporation. Although the main
purpose of such tools is to facilitate collaboration among employees, social
enterprise solutions can also provide rich site summary (RSS) feeds to keep
employees informed of company events and activities; allow employees to
develop wikis collaboratively; provide measuring and monitoring tools for
sales and marketing departments to better analyse customer interactions; and
simplify integration with new business partners. Not only this, but social
enterprise tools have been applauded by many businesses for introducing a
more open culture and flat structure across company operations.
Just as consumer-centric social platforms were built around the concept of Web
2.0, social enterprise solutions have been constructed around the concept of
Enterprise 2.0 — which refers to a system of Web-based technologies that
provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and
integration capabilities in the extended, mobile enterprise. The heightened
demand for such tools has also seen them become more integrated with wider
customer relationship management (CRM) platforms leading to the
development of social CRM (or sCRM) in recent years, expenditure on which
has continued to observe substantial growth during the past 5 years. CRM
solutions are utilised by organisations to help streamline operations, while also
providing expansive cost efficiencies — a factor that has become increasingly
important to businesses in recent years following the global financial crises,
which hit developed markets during 2008/2009.
Although CRM platforms were traditionally offered as installed solutions that

were kept in-house; technological advances, increased uptake of the Internet
and the emergence of the mobile workforce has led to the proliferation of
software-as-a-service (SaaS) products, which are hosted off-site by the vendor.
More recent developments in cloud-based storage solutions have served to
boost the hosted CRM sector in recent years, with a number of CRM vendors
expanding their cloud-based solutions through new product development
(NPD) or acquisition activity. The emergence of SaaS CRM services has also
opened the doors for small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the world
of CRM, with hosted solutions often providing a cheaper and more scalable
CRM alternative to traditional in-house products.

Despite the ongoing development of social enterprise solutions in recent years,

some critics have begun to voice concerns that the industry has not yet lived
up to its potential and, worst yet, may not ever do so. Indeed, according to CB
Insights, venture capital funding to enterprise social software has taken a
nosedive over the past year, with activity winding down following the surge
brought about in the wake of Microsoft’s acquisition of social enterprise
solutions provider Yammer in 2012. US research firm IDC has also reviewed its
market growth estimations downwards significantly from previous forecasts,
with worldwide enterprise social software applications now expected to rise
from $1bn in 2012 to $2.7bn in 2017, representing a compound annual growth
rate (CAGR) of 22.3%. This compares with previous estimates from IDC which
pegged market value to reach $4.5bn by 2016. According to IDC, the
downgrade in its market estimations follows a slowdown in the deployment
of standalone enterprise social software, as companies seek to integrate and
embed social into other primary enterprise solutions to support
business-critical decisions and greater social workflow.
Meanwhile, in a quarterly conference held by Salesforce’s Chief Executive

Officer (CEO) and Chairman Marc Benoiff in November 2013, it was revealed
that the company’s ‘social enterprise’ pitch had not resonated well with clients,
with many company executives beginning to question the return on
investment (ROI) and tangibility of such systems and their uses. Other problems
that have been identified with social enterprise solutions is the lack of
customised systems offered by the large tech vendors, with Salesforce the only
major CRM provider to offer tools that are highly configurable to clients.
However, the major barrier to further growth within the social enterprise
sector identified by industry analysts has been a lack of understanding among
corporations as to the merits of such systems, as voiced by social enterprise
expert Chris Heuer in an article published in October 2013:
“The problem is that the deeper meaning and richer context is

being lost on executives who still think the word ‘social’
indicates a frivolous, time-wasting pursuit... Despite the Arab
Spring, the customer revolution and an increasingly connected
society which turns to Twitter with every earthquake or news
event, the idea of being a Social Business has failed to break
through the care barrier in most C-Suites.”
Although Heuer argues that such problems are unlikely to be overcome and
that, in fact, the ‘Social Business’ time has come and is now gone’, others have
posited that the industry is only just getting off the ground and that what is
instead needed is better clarification from vendors as to the uses and payoffs
that social enterprise solutions can provide. Indeed, there has been a recent
flurry of activity around new social software startups and a shift towards niche
products that better suit the specific demands of organisations. The recent
launch of Google+ for enterprises and the ongoing expansion of Google’s
cloud-based productivity suite, Google Apps for Businesses, could also signal a
shift towards a more granular approach within the social enterprise services
sector, with around 5 million businesses now thought to be using Google Apps.

SOCIAL ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS — COMPETITOR ACTIVITY

The emergence of social enterprise solutions and social media marketing
(SMM) in recent years has led to heightened acquisition NPD activity among
tech vendors, such as Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft, Oracle and IBM, in recent
years. In 2012, Salesforce announced that it had acquired SMM platform Buddy
Media, after purchasing social media monitoring firm Radian6 in 2011. These
platforms have since been integrated into social.com, Salesforce’s new social
marketing platform which enables marketers to ‘buy into the moment’.
Salesforce also offers leading enterprise social network service, Chatter, which
was launched in 2010 with a mobile-optimised version introduced in 2013.
Competitor Microsoft has also made significant in-roads into the social
enterprise sector in recent years after announcing that it had entered into a
deal to buy out business-centric social networking firm Yammer in June 2012,
which sits as a standalone product alongside Microsoft’s existing social office
suite, Office 365.
Oracle has also continued to expand its social offering through a number of
acquisitions including SaaS CRM firm Right Now (October 2011), social
management company Virtue (May 2012), cloud-based social intelligence
provider Collective Intellect (June 2012), social media management provider
Involver (July 2012) and cloud-based marketing automation firm, Eloqua
(December 2012), all of which have now become part of Oracle’s Social
Relationship Management (SRM) suite, which unifies social monitoring,
marketing and engagement. Meanwhile, SAP launched its own enterprise
social software, SAP Jam, in late 2012; IBM has also continued to develop and
enhance its social software provision through the acquisition recruitment and
talent management solutions provider Kenexa in December 2012, which has
further complemented IBM’s social business and HR business services
leadership and sits alongside the company’s main social enterprise product,
IBM Connections.
Several tech firms also offer open platform collaboration software tools, the
largest of which is Microsoft’s Sharepoint, which developers can use to set up
websites in order to share information with each other, collaborate with
colleagues and manage/publish documents. Several smaller firms, such as
Zimbra (formerly Telligent), Jive and Saba Software, also offer social
collaboration tools for enterprises; while search engine giant, Google, has
recently begun to expand its presence within the social enterprise market after
launching Google+ for enterprises during 2012, which has been facilitated
through the development of Google Apps for Business, a cloud-based
productivity suite aimed specifically at enterprises.
Brief company profiles of the leading vendors operating within the social
enterprise software solutions sector and the products and services that they
offer within this specific area have been provided below:

IBM
US-based multinational technology and consulting corporation IBM is currently
estimated by IDC to be the leading vendor of enterprise social software in the
world through its social software platform IBM Connections, the first version
of which was originally launched back in 2007. The IBM Connections platform
helps organisations to engage with clients and colleagues, integrates social
into business processes, and provides social analytics and metrics. It can also be
delivered across a range of mobile devices including tablets, and can be
extended using other IBM software and third-party applications (apps). In
addition, IBM Connections offers integration capabilities with Microsoft apps,
including Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Windows Explorer, Microsoft
Outlook and Microsoft Office.
The most recent edition of IBM’s social enterprise platform — IBM Connections
4.5 — was launched in September 2013, which featured a new content
manager add-on that can combine with social tools. In December 2013, IBM
also revealed that it had teamed up with social media management firm
HootSuite, which will enable users of IBM Connections to integrate content
from the platform into the HootSuite dashboard so that it can be viewed and
auctioned alongside social data from social networks, such as Twitter,
Facebook and LinkedIn.
Jive Software
Jive software is a leading provider of social business solutions and provides a
range of products that are designed to improve employee productivity,
alignment and innovation. The company, which is based in Palo Alto in
California, was originally founded in 2001 and currently has around 645
employees. Jive’s flagship product is also named Jive; the company also
provides social community software Jivex, as well as social task management
app Producteev, which the company acquired in November 2012. The same
month saw Jive purchase real-time communications platform, meetings.io,
which the company has since integrated into its social platform, further
enhancing its unified communications solution.
More recently, Jive announced that it had acquired community analytics firm
CLARA, and StreamOnce, which pulls information streams from various
platforms, including e-mail, CRM and content management systems (CMS).
Since the two acquisitions were completed, their business activities have been
integrated into the Jive platform, thus expanding its range of capabilities.
Despite rumours that the company had entered talks with software giant SAP
regarding a possible takeover, the latter has since decided not to buy the
company following a review which found that Jive’s products overlapped too
much with SAP’s range of services and would not add sufficient market share.

Microsoft
US multinational corporation Microsoft is a leading developer, manufacturer
and licensee of computer software, consumer electronics and personal
computers. The company is best known for its suite of office products,
including Windows, Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. The company was
originally founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and is now considered
to be the second-largest technology firm in the world, behind Apple.
In recent years, Microsoft has continued to gain market share within the social
enterprise software sector following its acquisition of enterprise social
networking company Yammer in July 2012, which it purchased for an
estimated $1.2bn. Yammer is a private social network designed to help
employees collaborate across departments, locations and business apps; it is
estimated to be used by over 200,000 companies worldwide. In addition to
Yammer, Microsoft offers a wide range of social enterprise tools, including its
collaboration and content management service SharePoint; hosted online
service Office 365; and CRM and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution,
Microsoft Dynamics. A number of popular Microsoft services have also been
integrated into cloud-based unified communications service Office 365, such
as corporate instant messaging clients Microsoft Lync (formerly Microsoft
Office Communicator), Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and SharePoint.
Oracle
Oracle Corp is a multinational computer technology firm headquartered in
California in the US. The company was first founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison,
Bob Miner and Ed Oates as Software Development Laboratories. Oracle
provides a range of hardware and software solutions — in the cloud and in the
data centre — to customers located around the world. Altogether, the
company has over 400,000 customers based in more than 145 countries across
the globe.
Oracle first entered the social enterprise market in 2011 following the launch
of its own social networking tool, Oracle Social Network, which is offered as
part of the Oracle Social Cloud service. The Oracle Social Network enables
collaboration across the enterprise; enables real-time interactive
communication between participants; offers live stream updates from across
the enterprise; and provides Web-based document viewing and real-time
annotation. The product can also be integrated with other Oracle Applications,
such as Oracle Sales, Fusion CRM and Oracle Human Capital Management
(HCM), as well as existing infrastructure. The company also offers a range of
SRM tools through the Oracle Social Cloud, which integrates a number of SRM
components, including social listening, social engagement, social publishing,
social content and apps, and social analytics.

Salesforce
Salesforce is a leader in enterprise cloud computing solutions and provides a
range of social and mobile cloud technologies to approximately 100,000 clients
across the world. Alongside the company’s range of CRM solutions, Salesforce
also offers the social enterprise network, Salesforce Chatter, which is built on
the customer-centric service — Salesforce1 Platform — and was first released
in 2010. Salesforce Chatter enables employees to connect across their
organisation and provides an easy-to-use social feed which can be accessed
from every desktop and device. In July 2013, Salesforce announced the launch
of the fourth generation of Chatter Mobile, which allows employees to edit
records, view dashboards and take business actions using any mobile device.
New actions in Chatter Mobile are also fully customisable, and enable
companies to extend custom business processes, thus improving the
productivity of mobile workers. In addition, the company offers a range of
SMM apps through its Marketing Cloud service, which it has continued to
expand through acquisition activity in recent years. Recent purchases
undertaken by the company have included social media monitoring firm
Radian6 (March 2011) and social media marketing company Buddy Media
(October 2012); these sit alongside a number of other social media marketing
tools, including SocialPages, Social.com and SocialEngage.
Salesforce, which is headquartered in San Francisco in California, was originally

established in 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff, Parker Harris,
Dave Moellenhoff and Frank Dominguez, as a specialist SaaS vendor. The
company has 28 offices based across the Americas, Europe, Middle East and
Africa (EMEA) and Asia/Pacific, and employs over 12,000 employees globally.
SAP
SAP was first founded in 1972 in Weinheim, Germany, as an enterprise software
developer and vendor. The company is now a world leader in enterprise
software and software-related services, with over 235,500 customers in more
than 180 countries. SAP provides its range of software and services both
on-premise and in the cloud, via the SAP HANA platform.
SAP offers a range of content and collaboration solutions, including its flagship
social collaboration product, SAP Jam, which was first launched in October
2012. SAP Jam provides a range of tools for social collaboration across the
extended business network of customers, partners and employees; it includes
document sharing and annotation, link-sharing, and news feeds. The product
also allows users to streamline business processes across key departments such
as human resources (HR), learning and knowledge management; sales;
marketing; customer services; and IT. In addition, SAP Jam can also be
integrated with other third-party apps, such as Microsoft SharePoint, Google
Calendar, Twitter, YouTube and SlideShare.

Zimbra
In July 2013 leading enterprise social software firm Telligent revealed that it
had acquired the global assets of collaboration software provider Zimbra from
VMware. The two companies have since merged under the Zimbra brand to
form an enterprise software company offering a unified social collaboration
suite across multiple devices. Zimbra offers three main social enterprise
products which include:
• Zimbra Collaboration — an open source messaging and collaboration

solution used by over 5,000 companies and public-sector customers, with over
140 million end users based across 140 countries
• Zimbra Community — an online community and private social networking

solution designed to enhance customer support and increase employee
productivity
• Zimbra Desktop — provides a rich user experience for offline collaboration,

supporting more flexible work environments that utilise a mobile workforce.
Telligent was originally founded in 2004 by Rob Howard, a former founding

member of Microsoft’s ASP.NET team. The first social collaboration tool
launched by the company was Community Server, which was introduced in
2004 and was designed to provide an integrated community platform that
unified blogs, wikis, forums and user profiles. During 2013, the company
merged with Zimbra, which was first founded in 2005 and later sold to Yahoo!
in September 2007, before going on to be sold to VMware in 2010.
CONSUMER RESEARCH
In April 2013, business technology solutions provider Avanade undertook a
survey which aimed to assess the impact of social technologies on enterprise
collaboration. The survey, which questioned 1,000 business and IT leaders and
4,000 employees, found that a large number of enterprises had not yet fully
adopted social technologies for collaboration at work. Currently, the majority
of IT decision-makers (87%), business leaders (67%) and end users (68%)
reported using social networking technologies, but most lacked true enterprise
collaboration capabilities.

Nevertheless, the study found that social collaboration is on the corporate

agenda for most businesses, with 77% of business and IT leaders revealing that
their companies are already utilising social collaboration tools; 82% of
businesses currently using such tools stated that they wanted to use more of
them in the future. In addition, the majority of businesses were found to be
using popular consumer-focused social networks, such as Facebook and
Twitter, rather than business-centric tools from specialist software vendors,
such as Salesforce, IBM and Microsoft. According to the survey, of those
businesses that have adopted social networking technologies, 74% were found
to be using Facebook for collaboration — twice the proportion using Microsoft
SharePoint (39%), four times that using IBM Open Connections (17%) and six
times that using Salesforce Chatter (12%). This is despite the fact that the
majority of consumer-driven social technologies, such as Facebook and Twitter,
lack the enterprise collaboration capabilities that social enterprise tools
provide, such as document storage, business collaboration tools, sharing and
group editing, search knowledge and integration with enterprise
communications systems.
Altogether, around eight in ten decision-makers (77%) and seven in ten end
users (68%) were found to be using enterprise social networking technologies.
Time savings (55%), productivity (54%) and employee happiness (54%) were
rated as the top benefits of such tools by users; internal collaboration (47%),
external collaboration (47%) and employee engagement (41%), were also
found to be important advantages. Nevertheless, a significant proportion of
businesses remain sceptical about the uses of social enterprise solutions, with
nearly a quarter of business and IT decision-makers (23%) stating that they had
not adopted social collaboration tools in the enterprise. In addition, of those
decision-makers that had adopted such tools, just short of a quarter (24%)
believed that their social collaboration tools wasted time or distracted
employees from their core jobs.
Although currently consumer-based social networks, such as Facebook and

Twitter, top the list of collaboration tools being used by enterprises, uptake of
purpose-built enterprise collaboration technologies is expected to increase in
popularity over the coming year, with 23% of those surveyed by Avanade
revealing that they planned to adopt Microsoft SharePoint and a similar
proportion expected to adopt Salesforce Chatter. This compares to just 8% of
businesses that plan to use Facebook for social collaboration purposes.
Nevertheless, the study by Avanade underlined that there remain a number of
barriers to implementation across the enterprises surveyed, with over a quarter
(26%) of decision-makers stating that there is a lack of training available to
explain how to use social collaboration tools, and a similar proportion (26%)
reporting a lack of IT department resources to implement them. Furthermore,
of those yet to adopt social collaboration tools, the majority (61%) stated that
they believed such tools would not help their company, and more than half
(51%) claimed that it did not fit their corporate needs.

SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOLS FOR MARKETERS
Link Name/URL Shortening

Link or uniform resource locator (URL) shortening can enable marketers to do
more with the links and content that they post via social media. In addition to
compacting lengthy URLs — which can be of particular importance given the
character limits imposed by social networks such as Twitter — utilising link
shortening tools can enable marketers to better track how many clicks such
links may attract.
There are a number of services available that help marketers to shorten the
length of URLs, including Ow.ly, which is operated by social media
management firm hootsuite; Google-operated URL shortening service goo.gl;
and bitly. According to bitly, it now shortens over 1 billion links per month as
an integral part of social short messaging service (SMS) and e-mail efforts from
publishers, brands, government organisations, educational institutions,
non-profits and individual users; and processes more than 6 billion clicks on
those links every month.
In recent years, link shortening tools have become increasingly sophisticated,

and now offer a range of services to marketers beyond simple URL shortening,
such as branded short domains; custom links; and measurement, reporting and
analytics. Tracking link-sharing using URL shortening services, such as goo.gl,
bitly and Ow.ly, can be of vital importance to marketers, as it enables brands
to determine how effective posts are at driving customer engagement with
linked content, thus helping marketers to better assess correlations between
their social media actions and content engagement.
Social Media Optimisation Tools

Social media optimisation (SMO) is similar to search engine optimisation (SEO),
in that it is designed to drive traffic from social media sites, such as social
networking and link-sharing web properties, to a brand’s main website. SMO
has become increasingly important to marketers in recent years, with many
core search engines such as Google and Bing now looking to social signals to
rank content. Indeed, data from social sites can often help to deliver more
accurate search results, with search engines now able to utilise
recommendations and likes from social networks to deliver more relevant, local
data to end users. Indeed, according to a recent article published by Google
OS specialist Dan Graziano in July 2013, real search results only account for
approximately 13% of organic search results published by Google, with the rest
represented by advertising. In addition, a recent report published by Forrester
Research showed that social media is now catching up with search, accounting
for 32% of new discoveries in 2012, versus 54% for search — up from 25% in
2011. Ultimately, the more social shares, recommendations, blog posts and
comments that a website generates across social media, the higher it will rank
in search engine results, thus underlining the importance of SMO to marketers.

A number of companies operating within the UK provide specialist SMO

services, such as SMO strategy and measurement. These have been profiled
below:
• HowSociable — allows brands to measure their impact across the social Web
through the HowSociable magnitude score, which provides an indication of
the level of activity around a brand during a given week using a score from
zero to ten. The magnitude score is calculated by taking a sample of 1 week’s
activity across the social Web and analysing it to determine what portion of
activity references a brand. The company also offers a premium service called
HowSociable Pro, which was launched in 2011 and enables users to learn
more about their brand’s impact on the social Web by comparing brands,
viewing high-impact mentions, measuring metrics across 36 social sites and
loading historical data. Since being established in 2008, HowSociable claims
to have measured over 250,000 brands across the social Web.
• Klout — measures and tracks a brand’s influence online using a Klout Score,
which is based on a unique algorithm and ranges from one to 100
representing online influence. The score is calculated using multiple pieces
of data from several social networks, as well as data from other Web
properties, such as Bing and Wikipedia. In 2013, Klout introduced Klout for
Business, which provides users with analytics services, allowing companies to
see where their brands are being engaged across social media. The company
also provides influence-building solutions and offers several ways to bring
influencers and brands together, to help increase Klout Scores.
• Brandwatch — monitors social media conversations and engagements

focusing on brands, products, competitors, industry and other related topics.
The service monitors over 70 millions sources, including blogs, news sites and
major social networks; it is also a Twitter-certified product, which means that
it has full Twitter coverage in real-time. Brandwatch can also identify and
deliver conversations in over 27 languages and provides sentiment analysis,
which is based on collections of pre-defined rules and bespoke classifiers.
Social Media Marketing Tools

There are a wide range of SMM tools available to marketers which allow users
to monitor, analyse, automate and measure brand messages and brand
engagement across social media channels. Such tools also help marketers to
assess the ROI of a particular social media campaign; for example by analysing
click-through rates, link sharing, comments, likes, shares and other consumer
engagement with branded content. Social media aggregation tools can be
particularly helpful to marketers, as they pull content, conversations and
messages distributed across various social media channels into one unified
location. Social analytics tools, which encompass social media listening, can also
be useful to marketers by enabling brands to track customer sentiment and
identify trends in order to better respond to current customer demands.

Nowadays, the number of SMM tools available to businesses, brands and

marketers can be overwhelming, with hundreds to choose from. The rapidly
changing social media environment has also meant that new tools for SMM
are constantly being developed and launched to meet the current demands of
marketers and brands seeking to engage with consumers via social media. The
following list provides a brief profile of current SMM tools available to
marketers:
• Mention — helps to monitor brand presence across the Web, by analysing

mentions of a particular brand or related keyword across social networks,
forums and blogs, etc. The tool is offered as a downloadable app, which
allows marketers to monitor brand engagement from anywhere and from
any device. Users can also connect to their social accounts through the app
and respond to any mentions that they receive.
• Buffer — a social media management tool which allows marketers and

brands to schedule content for release across social media sites 24/7. The app
also provides custom scheduling, multiple accounts, team member access and
detailed analytics; it is currently used by over 1.2 million people worldwide.
• Twitter Counter — a third-party app for Twitter which provides statistics

relating to Twitter usage and tracks over 94 million users. Twitter Counter
also offers a variety of widgets and buttons that users can add to their blogs,
websites or social network profiles to show recent Twitter visitors and
number of followers.
• Followerwonk — provides a range of Twitter analytics which focus on

follower information, e.g. location, level of engagement, etc. Followerwonk
can also help users to find and connect with relevant influencers and provides
analytics reports.
• Quintly — provides a range of social media analytics tools that enable users
to track and benchmark their social media performance. Quintly also
produces automated reports using social media data and can be integrated
with Facebook Insights data.
Another tool that can be particularly useful to marketers and brands are social
media application programming interfaces (APIs), which essentially allow
companies to integrate the services of major social media services into their
websites or applications. All of the major social networks provide their own
APIs: Facebook, for example, provides the Facebook Graph API — the primary
way that data is retrieved or posted to the site — which enables users to like
and share pages using Facebook while on a brand’s website or app. It also
provides site registration features and a Facebook-based commenting system.
Twitter offers a similar API, called Twitter Embedded Tweets, which allows
branded websites to take any tweet from their Twitter account and embed it
directly into the content of their site or on a particular webpage. These
embedded Tweets can also display with expanded media, such as photos or
videos, and real-time re-tweets; they are interactive on the webpage on which
they appear, allowing visitors to follow the author, reply or re-tweet the
message themselves, without have to leave the page. In this way, marketers
can further expand the reach of their brand messages across the Web.

THE VALUE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

According to a recent study undertaken by the Direct Marketing Association
(DMA) which surveyed 171 UK social marketers and was conducted in
September 2013, Facebook was found to be the preferred social platform for
campaign development and evaluation among marketers.
The DMA Social Media Scorecard asked respondents to mark each social
networking site out of ten across three key areas — campaign performance,
campaign executive and campaign optimisation. While Facebook came top
across all categories, LinkedIn was found to be best for specific activities, such
as providing tools targeting individual users (5.2) and for tracking campaign
ROI (3.7), while Twitter also scored highly for campaign execution. The
scorecard also found that only a handful of marketers surveyed — fewer than
25 — were using image and video-based platforms, such as Pinterest,
Instagram, Vimeo and Snapchat, although the utilisation of these platforms is
expected to increase in the future.
Table 4.1: DMA Social Media Scorecard (rating out of 10),

September 2013
Campaign Campaign Campaign Overall

Planning Execution Optimisation Performance
Facebook 4.8 4.5 3.9 4.39

LinkedIn 4.7 4.1 3.5 4.10
Twitter 4.4 4.5 3.1 4.02
YouTube 3.7 3.7 3.1 3.50
Google+ 3.5 3.0 2.6 3.05
DMA — Direct Marketing Association
Source: Social Media Scorecard, September 2013 © Direct Marketing Association

A different study undertaken by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) in July

2013 assessed the ROI of SMM — an issue which has been problematic for
marketers in the past, many of which have found it increasingly difficult to
measure the success of social media campaigns, particularly in terms of
financial gain. According to the study by the IAB, which measured the impact
of social media at various stages in the purchase funnel, for every £1 spent in
social media a potential value of £3.34 could be generated. The study also
revealed that social media is particularly effective in positively shifting
attributes like sentiment, recommendation, propensity to trial new products
and brand loyalty; 90% of consumers surveyed stating that they would
recommend a brand after interacting with it on social media. Furthermore,
four out of five consumers agreed that they would be more inclined to buy a
brand more often in the future after being exposed to it on social media, while
83% would trial a brand’s product after seeing it on social media sites.
However, despite research from Socialbakers revealing that the majority of

marketers (86.2%) considered competitive social analysis to be important —
this figure covers those that considered it very important, somewhat important
and fairly important — only one in three (31.2%) were found to actually be
investing in paid tools to conduct such analysis, with the remaining 68.8% of
respondents utilising other tools to analyse their social media performance.
Table 4.2: Proportion of Marketers That Consider Social

Analysis to be Important (% of marketers), 2014
% of Marketers
Very important 56.6

Somewhat important 25.8
Fairly important 3.8
Other 13.8
Source: The State of Social Marketing 2014 © Socialbakers
Further research published by Socialbakers revealed that 62% of marketers

surveyed cited customer acquisition via social marketing as a ‘very important’
goal for 2014; however, only 29% said the same about social customer care,
suggesting that, currently, the majority of brands are interested in growing
their presence across social media sites rather than engaging with audiences
through such channels. However, it is likely that as brands mature on social
media, so will their goals, with customer engagement via social sites largely
touted as one of the most important components of successful social media
marketing campaigns.

Unsurprisingly, when questioned about priorities for 2014, the vast majority
(81.2%) of marketers stated that they would be giving high priority to activities
on Facebook — the largest social networking site in the world. In contrast,
43.7% stated that activity on Twitter was of high priority, while 29.7% said the
same of YouTube. In contrast, the social sites that were found to be of the least
priority among marketers included Tumblr (60.9%), Pinterest (34.8%),
Instagram (23.3%) and Google+ (22.8%).
Table 4.3: Priorities of Social Media Marketers for 2014

by Social Networking Site (% of respondents), 2014
No Priority High Priority
Facebook 0.9 81.2

Twitter 10.8 43.7
YouTube 6.1 29.7
Instagram 23.3 19.1
LinkedIn 19.6 16.7
Google+ 22.8 14.1
Pinterest 34.8 7.4
Tumblr 60.9 3.5
Further findings compiled by Socialbakers’ study found that management

support for SMM was generally more diverse in larger companies compared to
smaller enterprises, due in principal to the larger management structure of big
businesses. In small companies, the greatest support for social media marketing
activities was generally found among CEOs (39%), while in larger
organisations, which can afford heftier digital departments, support was most
likely to be generated by the Head of Digital (30%).

Table 4.4: Active Support of Social Media Marketing

by Management Level (% of respondents), 2014
Small Companies Large Companies
Chief Executive Officer 39 19

Chief Marketing Officer 19 23
Head of Digital 17 30
Head of Social 18 15
No support 8 11
Other 0 3
THE TIME FACTOR

The amount of time and energy that marketers should spend on social media
activities is highly debatable: while larger organisations tend to have dedicated
teams that focus on their digital marketing activities, encompassing SEO, SMO
and other SMM endeavours, smaller organisations generally have limited
resources and time available to commit to such activities. However, this is not
necessarily a problem, with most strategists in agreement that it is not the time
spent that matters, it is how that time is used. Nevertheless, in order to
maintain a strong position on social networks, marketers are generally
encouraged to update their online profiles at least once a day. The
proliferation of aggregator services, which allow users to access multiple social
networks from a centralised ‘dashboard’ and distribute messages across a
number of sites at pre-organised times, have become essential tools for most
businesses that undertake SMM in managing the time spent on such activities
effectively and efficiently.
Time spent on SMM is also highly dependent on how the brand utilises social
networking sites. For example, if such sites are being used for customer service,
then it is important that such accounts are managed and monitored
throughout the day; however, if they are used for more general marketing
purposes, such as content distribution and offer promotions, then daily
engagement is generally recommended.

Real-Time Social Engagement

In recent years, demand for real-time responses across social networks has
begun to increase, fuelled by the proliferation of mobile devices and the
subsequent emergence of the ‘always connected’ consumer. A recent study
undertaken by Immediate Future in early 2014 revealed that the majority of
brands are now either practicing real-time social engagement or are planning
to in the future. According to the research, two-thirds of brands manage social
media in-house, although only 50% do so in a dedicated role, while one in six
brands now outsource real-time social engagement to an agency. In addition,
73% of brands stated that they planned for spontaneity, including both
advance planning posts and posting on a daily basis.
The study by Immediate Future also analysed the value that real-time social
engagement has to brands, the most notable being increased audience
engagement (76%), increased customer satisfaction, positive brand sentiment
(58%) and greater social media effectiveness (44%). Over a third (36%) of
respondents also stated that real-time social engagement had helped to
increase their brand’s reach and number of followers (36%), with a similar
proportion (35%) stating that it had increased customer retention and loyalty.
In addition, a quarter (25%) revealed that real-time social engagement had
resulted in better conversion and ROI, and one in five (22%) agreed that it had
increased their brand’s competitive advantage.
Table 4.5: Benefits of Real-Time Social Engagement

Increased audience engagement 76

Increased customer satisfaction and positive brand
sentiment 58
Greater social media effectiveness 44
Increased social media reach and followers 36
Increased customer retention and loyalty 35
Better conversion and ROI 25
Increased competitive advantage 22
ROI — return on investment
Source: In the Social Moment: Real-Time Social Engagement, Benchmarking

Brands in Social Media, 2014 © Immediate Future

However, real-time social engagement can pose a number of challenges to

brands, as it requires an ‘always-on’ environment, where marketers are
available to react to events quickly and skilfully. For example, Oreo’s
now-famous ‘Dunk in the Dark’ campaign during the power-cut at the 2013
Super Bowl. In order to manage a real-time social media presence, some brands
have created social engagement control centres during key events, such as the
Super Bowl, Olympics or The Brits. Nonetheless, for most brands consistent
real-time engagement is unattainable and most do not yet have the resources
to undertake such activities on a full-time basis. Many businesses are still
relying on free social media monitoring and engagement tools; however, while
using such tools keeps budgets low, it can often make analysis harder, as brands
tend to integrate a variety of different metrics, often from different sources,
thus resulting in an inconsistent approach.
The biggest challenge faced by most marketers in managing real-time social

engagement was the coverage of out-of-hours engagement, with 62% of
respondents agreeing that this was the case. Over half (51%) of those surveyed
also identified obtaining real-time data and insight as a major challenge, while
45% found it problematic to find the skills and resources needed to manage
real-time social engagement. In addition, 38% stated that creating content on
the fly was one of their main challenges, with the same proportion citing
personalising content as problematic, and 31% citing gaining post approvals.
Table 4.6: Biggest Challenges in Managing Real-Time Social

Engagement (% of respondents), 2014
Managing out-of-hours engagement 62

Getting real-time data and insight 51
Finding the skills and resource 45
Creating content on the fly 38
Personalising content 38
Gaining post approvals 31
Source: In the Social Moment: Real-Time Social Engagement, Benchmarking

Brands in Social Media, 2014 © Immediate Future

Social Media Marketing Social Brands
5. Social Brands
INTRODUCTION
This chapter examines the way in which established brands are using social
media channels and how effectively they are doing so. The majority of
well-known, global brands such as Coca-Cola, McDonalds and Nike now view
social media engagement as an essential component of their wider marketing
strategies, and many such brands invest heavily in maintaining their presence
across social networking channels. As a result, several social media campaigns
launched by top level brands have won awards in recent years for innovation
and effectiveness, with these brands tending to lead the way in terms of new
social media marketing (SMM) trends.
Social media engagement has become increasingly important to brands in

recent years due to the extensive and global reach of social networking
platforms — Facebook, for example, now has over 1 billion users worldwide.
The emergence of the ‘always connected’ consumer, which has been driven by
the migration of consumers onto mobile devices, has also fuelled the need for
a consistent and creative approach to social media engagement across brands,
with global, multinational corporations now spending an increasing amount
of time engaging via social networking sites.
Social media engagement can be beneficial to brands in a number of ways; for

example, by increasing brand loyalty, brand engagement, brand reach and,
most importantly, driving sales generation. According to research published by
Nielsen in early 2014, 59% of UK Twitter users follow at least one brand on the
social network, while 50% read about what others were buying on Twitter and
31% re-tweet about their own purchases. It is obvious from these statistics that
social media holds huge potential for brands, particularly in terms of
generating online word-of-mouth and disseminating brand messages, all of
which serves to extend a brand’s reach online.
TOP 20 BRANDS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

In 2013, specialist social marketing agency Headstream published its annual
rundown of the top 100 social brands operating in the UK. The ranking was
calculated in conjunction with social media analytics provider Socialbakers in
order to monitor nominated brands and measure their engagement on social
platforms.

Brands nominated for Headstream’s top 100 ranking must adhere to three
main principles in order to be considered a social brand, as detailed below:
• Create win-win relationships — brands that strive for equitable relationships

with their customers and supply chain.
• Active listening — brands must monitor the social web, seeking out relevant
conversations and joining them in a timely and appropriate manner. Active
listening requires the capability and resource for activities such as community
management, customer service, employee engagement, product
development and business planning.
• Appropriate social behaviour — successful social brands must maintain a

consistent presence in social spaces, behaving in a compelling, truthful,
authentic and transparent manner within the social community.
Altogether, Headstream analysed 715 brands for its 2013 report, which were
sourced from three main areas including brands nominated during January’s
crowdsourcing period; past nominees for the Social Brands 100; and UK brands
already being monitored by Socialbakers. Interactions with these brands were
then monitored by Socialbakers across three main social networking platforms
(Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) during a 6-week period in March
and April 2013 to calculate a Data Score. Social key performance indicators
(KPIs) assigned to interactions between brands and individuals for each
platform were also measured to estimate the degree to which each brand has
adopted the three social brand principles listed above.
According to Social Brands 2013, video game Battlefield achieved the highest
ranking during the year, after maintaining a solid and consistent social media
presence across Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. During 2013, the brand’s
social media activities centred around a video-based campaign launched by
owner Electronic Arts (EA), called the ‘Only in Battlefield’ challenge, which
encouraged fans to produce their own video content based on in-game action
which summed up moments that could only be found in the game. Overall, the
campaign generated over 1,200 entries from fans. EA also rewarded fans
participating in the campaign with additional content and invited some of the
best community people into its studio.
American Airlines also earned a high-ranking position in the rundown of

Headstream’s top 100 social brands, coming in at second place with an overall
score of 78.15. American Airlines’ approach to social media strategy has
undergone a significant period of transition in recent years, with the travel
brand continuing to invest in and develop social as an efficient customer service
channel. The airline’s success on social media has also been driven by its
decision to bring its social activities in-house, with the brand previously utilising
external public relations (PR) firms for its social media requirements. In
addition, the brand’s presence on social media channels has continued to grow
and, in 2013, it introduced 24/7 customer service on social channels, after
previously only offering such services during business hours. American Airlines
now has 17 people employed in its social team — up from just two back in 2011
— with the brand now having 817,000 followers on Twitter and over 1.4 million
likes on Facebook (as of April 2014).

Third place in Headstream’s Social Brands 100 was taken by another travel
company — German brand Lufthansa — which is also estimated to be the
largest airline in Europe. Lufthansa currently has 1.2 million Facebook fans and
updates its page on almost daily basis. The brand has gained success on social
media by ensuring that it posts a wide variety of content, including
competitions, images and advertisements. Recent competitions launched by
Lufthansa have included the chance to win a business class flight to Europe,
which followers entered by submitting photos of themselves lying down in
awkward positions. The competition aimed to promote Lufthansa’s business
class service, which provides beds that lie totally flat. Another campaign run
by the airline on Facebook was undertaken in conjunction with Nivea and
aimed to highlight the romantic and amusing long-distance love stories of
followers, who were tasked with uploading their story plus a photo to
Lufthansa’s Facebook page to access a promotion code for their next flight. In
addition, Lufthansa uses both Facebook and Twitter as a customer service tool
to respond to customer queries.
Table 5.1: Top 20 Social Brands by Social Brand Score, 2013
Industry Social Brand Score

Rank Brand
1 Battlefield Entertainment 81.16
2 American Airlines Travel 78.15
3 Lufthansa Travel 75.52
4 Thomson Holidays Travel 74.86
5 Thomas Cook UK Travel 74.57
6 Innocent FMCG 74.40
7 Argos Retail 73.85
8 SEAT Mexico Automotive 73.70
9 Tesco Retail 73.10
10 Dr Martens Retail 72.67
11 EE Telecommunications 72.64
12 Guess 2 Give Entertainment 72.61
13 Aldi UK Retail 71.44
14 Walkers FMCG 71.34
15 Dogs Trust Charity 71.31
16 Waitrose Retail 71.03
Table continues...

Table 5.1: Top 20 Social Brands by Social Brand Score, 2013
...table continued
Industry Social Brand Score

Rank Brand
17 Met Office Public Sector 70.65
18 WestJet Travel 70.49
19 Rekorderlig Cider FMCG 70.37
20 Selfridges Retail 70.33
FMCG — fast-moving consumer goods
Source: Social Brands, 2013 © Headstream
By Sector
Table 5.2 displays the top-ranking social brands by sector, as ranked by
Headstream for its Social Brands 2013 report. According to Headstream, the
top five industries in the 2013 ranking were retail, charity, travel, fast-moving
consumer goods (FMCG) and publishing and media — the same industry sectors
that dominated the previous year’s ranking. Publishing and media brands
accounted for 11% of Headsream’s analysis, but only 5% of the top 100. Heart
radio (one of only two radio stations to appear in the ranking) achieved the
highest datascore within the sector. The retail sector was the top scoring
industry within the ranking, outperforming other brands to make up 25% of
the list, despite representing only 16% of the original sample of brands
analysed by Headstream.
Three retail brands — Argos, Tesco and Dr Martens appear in the top ten —
with Argos ranking highest after achieving a datascore of 73.85 overall. Argos
has invested heavily in its digital marketing and sales strategy in recent years,
as part of a concerted effort to grow its e-commerce activities following weak
high-street sales. During 2013, Argos announced that it had entered into a trial
partnership with social commerce technology company, Buyapowa, which will
allow the retailer’s Facebook and Twitter followers to shop together to earn
better deals and discounts on favourite products. Further research from
Socialbakers, published in December 2012, revealed that Argos was the most
socially-devoted Facebook brand, replying to 94% of questions, with an
average response time of 127 minutes.

Elsewhere, FMCG brands were found to have underperformed overall, despite

making up 17% of Headstream’s social brand ranking during 2013. Food and
drink brand Innocent — which topped the ranking in 2012 — continued to
dominate the FMCG industry, but was ranked in sixth place overall. Despite the
poor performance of FMCG brands during 2013, Innocent has continued to
develop its social media presence over the past year after seeing its fan base
increase and quadrupling its engagement levels. Travel was one of the highest
performing industries in the Social Brands 100 ranking for 2013, with travel
brands representing 15% of the ranking, but only 10% of the original brand
nominations. Four travel brands were featured in the top ten, including
American Airlines, Lufthansa, Thomson Holidays and Thomas Cook UK.
Meanwhile, charities accounted for 15% of the ranking, although dog welfare
charity, Dogs Trust, was the only charity brand to appear in the top 15.
Table 5.2: Top Social Brands in Each Sector by Social

Brand Score, 2013
Brand Social Brand Score

Industry
Entertainment Battlefield 81.16
Travel American Airlines 78.15
FMCG Innocent 74.40
Retail Argos 73.85
Telecommunications EE 72.64
Charity Dogs Trust 71.31
Consumer Electronics GoPro 68.88
Publishing & Media Heart 68.13
Automotive SEAT Mexico 67.68
Leisure British Museum 67.68
Financial Services Petplan UK 65.37
Cosmetics Rimmel London 64.06
Utilities EDF Energy 63.45
Hospitality Butlins 62.66
Education University of Southampton 58.98
Technology Lenovo UK 58.90
FMCG — fast-moving consumer goods

Social Networking Sites by Adoption Rates

Facebook was the only social media platform that was used by 100% of the
brands analysed by Headstream for its 2013 Social Brands 100 ranking. This is
unsurprising given the social network’s reach, as well as the ongoing
improvements that Facebook has introduced across its marketing and
advertising product portfolio in recent years. Meanwhile, 99% of brands
utilised Twitter, with this particular platform continuing to gain traction
among brands as a customer service channel. Brand engagement via Twitter is
only expected to gain momentum in the future, with the platform continuing
to launch new services such as Vine, Twitter Cards and Twitter Music, all of
which should provide new creative opportunities for brands seeking to engage
with consumers via the micro-blogging site. Although 94% of brands analysed
by Headstream were found to have a YouTube channel, this still seems
relatively low considering the sharp growth that has been observed within
video- and image-based SMM activities over the past couple of years.
Newer social media platforms Google+ and Pinterest both observed growth in
adoption rates between 2012 and 2013, with the former now being utilised by
69% of social brands analysed by Headstream (compared to 49% in 2012);
while the latter saw adoption rates increase from 49% to 66% over the 2-year
period. These channels are also expected to observe further growth in the
future, with 70% of nominated brands revealing that they were planning to
increase activity on Pinterest and Google+ during 2013. Almost 70% of brands
surveyed by Headstream also revealed that they were planning to increase
activity on image-based social network site Instagram in the future, with the
platform’s popularity continuing to increase among marketers following its
acquisition by Facebook in 2012. Geo-location social network Foursquare has
also observed an uplift in adoption by brands, with 23% of brands surveyed by
Headstream now utilising the platform, up from 18% in 2012. However, it is
unlikely that the site will see any further significant growth in the future, with
only 10% of brands expressing an intention to increase their activity on
Foursquare in 2013, with the rest planning to decrease or maintain current
levels of activity on the platform.

Table 5.3: Social Brand Adoption of Social Platforms

(%), 2011-2013
2011 2012 2013
Facebook 94 100 100

Twitter 99 100 99
YouTube 83 96 94
Google+ - 49 69
Pinterest - 49 66
Foursquare 22 18 23
Marketing Budgets
As part of its analysis, Headstream also questioned social brands on how funds
were allocated to social media activities. Although most brands reported an
intention to increase their activity on social media platforms, the majority
(66.1%) stated that social media budgets would remain at 10% or less of their
total marketing budgets for 2013. According to Headstream, this could mean
that social media teams could become increasingly stretched for resources,
which could in turn have a negative effect on engagement via social platforms.
In contrast, just 0.8% of brands surveyed indicated that they would be
allocating between 91% and 100% of their marketing budget to social media
activities.

to Social Media Activities (% of brands), 2013
% of Brands
Marketing Budget Committed to Social
0-10% 66.1
11-15% 17.7
16-30% 8.1
31-45% 1.6
Table continues...


to Social Media Activities (% of brands), 2013
...table continued
% of Brands
Marketing Budget Committed to Social (cont.)
46-60% 0.0
61-75% 1.6
76-90% 4.0
91-100% 0.8
Note: total may not sum due to rounding at source.
WHAT MAKES A BRAND WORK ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

Although SMM budgets generally remain low, brands have become
increasingly savvy at utilising social media platforms to their full effect in order
to drive brand awareness and customer engagement. According to
Headstream, brands have achieved success on social networks as a result of
engaging in common activities, such as listening for brand mentions, providing
customer support via social channels and building an engaged community.
Despite the increasingly creative and innovative ways in which marketers are
now using social platforms, however, measuring the impact of social
campaigns and, ultimately, their return on investment (ROI) remains broadly
immature, according to Headstream, with brands tending to turn to free online
tools and applications (apps) to monitor and measure their social media
impacts. Nonetheless, the increasing number of brands now committing both
budgets and dedicated teams to social media has meant that the quality of
such activities has improved in recent years, with many such brands benefitting
as a result.
Global brands, such as Oreo and Dove (further details of which have been
provided later in this chapter), have leveraged social media to their advantage
particularly successfully. While Oreo has achieved success by remaining agile
and responding quickly and creatively to current trends and events, Dove has
performed well by investing in high-quality online video advertising, resulting
in it topping the video viral charts during 2013. Other brands have achieved
success by utilising such channels to deliver customer service or by running
creative competitions via social platforms, in order to drive brand engagement
and customer loyalty.

A recent survey undertaken by London-based technology company Disruptive

Communications in September 2013, which questioned 1,010 UK consumers on
their reaction to social brands, found that providing offers and discounts on
social sites was the most likely method to help brands gain followers, with
44.5% of women and 36.5% of men agreeing that this was the case. Funny,
entertaining posts and content was also cited as a popular reason for following
a brand on Twitter or Facebook, achieving a penetration of 25.6% among
women and 22.6% among men. Reasons for following a brand on social media
that were found to be more popular among men included brand/product news
(penetration of 16.9%); practical help and product information (15.7%); and
the ability to give the brand feedback (8.3%).
Table 5.5: Reasons for Following Brands on Social Media

(% of respondents), September 2013
Men Women
Offers and discounts 36.5 44.5

Funny/entertaining posts and content 22.6 25.6
Brand/product news 16.9 11.5
Practical help and product information 15.7 11.7
Ability to give the brand feedback 8.3 6.7
Source: Disruptive Communications
Case Studies: Social Media Successes and Epic Fails

The following case studies explore the reasons behind a number of brands’
social media successes and failures, and the subsequent outcomes of such
campaigns, in order to better understand what it is that makes a brand a hit
on social media.

Social Media Successes
• Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Sketches’
Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ is a series of short films produced by Dove as part
of its wider marketing campaign promoting Real Beauty. The video first
debuted in April 2013 and has since become the most-viewed video ad
campaign ever, garnering nearly 135 million views in total. In the video series
a US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sketch artist asked individual women
participating in a study to describe themselves, which was then compared to a
sketch drawn using a stranger’s description of the woman in question. The
results showed very different images of the women, with self-descriptions
often revealing the women’s body insecurities. Such was the success of the
campaign, Unilever (which owns the Dove brand) won the Cannes Lions
International Festival of Creativity’s highest honour — the titanium Grand Prix
Award.
• Oreo
Cookie brand Oreo has continued to leverage social media to its benefit in
recent years, with the brand observing a massive 49% increase in online chatter
during 2012 compared to the previous year. The cookie brand has a strong
presence across a variety of social media sites, including Twitter, Instagram,
Pinterest and Vine. The brand has been lauded for its innovative and humorous
use of social media, from recipe ideas to fun videos that feature the Oreo
cookie. The success of Oreo’s SMM campaigns has also been driven by the time
dedicated by the brand to such activities, with Oreo launching a couple of
Instagrams a week — a move that has paid off, with the brand gaining around
107,997 followers on the site as a result.
One of the brand’s biggest successes was its ‘Daily Twist’ campaign which was
featured on Facebook, where Oreo has around 34 million followers. The
campaign was undertaken in honour of Oreo’s 100th birthday and saw the
brand publish a brand new picture for 100 successive days in 2012 to celebrate
a specific milestone of the day; for example, the Mars Rover landing, Elvis
Week, etc. The success of the Daily Twist campaign, which achieved 433 million
Facebook views and 231 million media impressions, won Oreo two Cyber Grand
Prix awards at the 2013 Cannes International Festival of Creativity.
The brand also achieved widespread success with a real-time marketing effort
which was launched during the 2013 US Superbowl following a blackout at the
football tournament, which led to Oreo tweeting ‘You Can Still Dunk in the
Dark’. The post garnered immediate reaction from fans, and was re-tweeted
almost 15,000 times and achieved nearly 20,000 likes on Facebook. The success
of Oreo’s quick thinking saw the brand gain an estimated 8,000 new followers
on Twitter and saw its Instagram following shoot up to 36,000, from just 2,000
prior to the game.

• Three Mobile UK’s Dancing Pony
Mobile network Three — the fastest-growing mobile network in the UK —

achieved video viral success in early 2013 with the launch of its Dance Pony
Dance campaign. The advertisement, which featured a Shetland pony
moon-walking to Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere with the tagline ‘silly stuff, it
matters’, initially gained attention through a television commercial before
going viral with the hashtag #danceponydance, which was tweeted over
140,000 times in the first 5 days of the campaign launch. The video now has
over nearly 9 million views on YouTube and 13,000 Facebook shares.
Epic Fails
• HMV Twitter Takedown
In January 2013, HMV’s Twitter feed was temporarily taken over by a number
of disgruntled employees following the music retailer’s announcement that it
had called in the administrators, putting 4,500 jobs at risk. The Twitter takeover
saw a number of angry employees voicing their discontent with the company
and ‘tweet live from HR’ after being told that a number of people would be
losing their job. One such tweet stated that ‘There are over 60 of us being fired
at once! Mass execution of loyal employees who love the brand.
#hmvXFactorFiring’; while another explained, ‘Under usual circumstances,
we’d never dare do such a thing as this. However, when the company you
dearly love is being ruined...’. The angry Tweeters managed to send several
subversive Tweets before company bosses once again regained control of the
account and deleted the posts.
• British Gas Hashtag Hijacked
British Gas have suffered a number of SMM fails over the past year, with the
company continuing to receive a barrage of negative comments on social
networking sites following the announcement in October that it would be
raising its residential energy prices by nearly 10%. The company’s first mistake
came after it revealed that it would be hosting a question and answer (Q&A)
session on Twitter with its Customer Service Director Bert Pijls using the
hashtag #askBG. Angry customers were quick to hit out at the company, with
hundreds of negative tweets being posted using the hashtag #askBG, many of
which protested against the energy giant’s price increases, which were brought
in just ahead of winter. Although British Gas initially attempted to respond to
some of the comments, the conversation was quickly shut down after just an
hour. Only days after the Twitter debacle, British Gas met with social media
vitriol once again after one of its Sponsored Posts on Facebook received more
than 20,000 negative comments and over 2,700 shares, with a number of
damning outcries from customers calling the energy provider ‘thieves’ and
‘shysters’.

• Epicurious Leaves a Bad Taste
In April 2013 food and recipe website Epicurious got into trouble after sending
out a number of insensitive tweets regarding the Boston Bombings. One of the
tweets read ‘Boston, our hearts are with you. Here’s a bowl of breakfast energy
we could all use to start the day’, while another stated ‘In honor of Boston and
New England, may we suggest: whole-grain cranberry scones!’ — many Twitter
users voiced their anger and discontent with the website’s flagrant attempt to
cash in on trending keywords to do with the Boston bombing, with a number
of users sending a barrage of negative comments to the recipe site as a result.
Epicurious was soon forced to issue an apology to users via Twitter, which
stated: ‘Our food tweets this morning were, frankly, insensitive. Our deepest,
sincere apologies’; and removed the tweet from their social media feed.
Despite the negative backlash, Epicurious did not seem to lose any of its
385,000 Twitter followers, many of whom posted their satisfaction with the
site’s apology.

Social Media Marketing An International Perspective
6. An International Perspective
OVERVIEW
The adoption of social networking sites has continued to increase across the
world in recent years, with recent data compiled by eMarketer suggesting that
nearly one-in-four people worldwide used social networks during 2013.
Furthermore, uptake of social networks is only expected to continue to grow
in the coming years, with eMarketer forecasting the number of social media
users around the world to rise from 1.73 billion in 2013 to 2.55 billion in 2017,
equating to an increase of 47.4% overall. The expansion of social networks
across the globe has and will continue to be driven by increased Internet
penetration and the migration of consumers onto mobile platforms, with the
majority of growth being driven by emerging markets such as Asia/Pacific, the
Middle East, Latin America and Africa.
In line with the continued rise in Internet connections across the globe, digital
advertising revenues have also increased, with figures compiled by Magna
Global estimating total digital adspend to have risen by 16% from $101bn in
2012 to $118bn in 2013, with Internet advertising now representing a 24%
share of total global adspend. Social media has remained a key growth channel
within the wider digital marketing mix, with social networks estimated to have
generated over $9bn in spend in 2013, after rising by 58% over the year. Social
media has also represented one of the main drivers in mobile advertising
revenues, which almost doubled in size after increasing by 85% in 2013 to reach
$16bn, equating to a market share of 14% within the digital advertising sector.
In terms of platform, Facebook has continued to remain the world leader in

the social networking sphere, with the site reaching 1.23 billion monthly active
users worldwide by the end of 2013. According to Facebook, 757 million people
login to Facebook every day, with the site generating 4.5 billion likes on a daily
basis. Despite this, the social network’s lead position could soon change, with
video sharing site YouTube continuing to close the gap on Facebook, with the
site now attracting over 1 billion unique users every month. Further statistics
published by YouTube reveal that over 6 billion hours of video are now
watched by users across the world, with 80% of the site’s traffic coming from
outside its domestic market in the US. Although both Facebook and YouTube
lead in terms of global penetration, a number of sites have a significant
regional influence. Social networking site Qzone and micro-blogging portal
Sina Weibo, for example, have a significant following in the People’s Republic
of China (PRC) — where Facebook and Twitter are currently banned — with
total monthly active users of over 600 million and 129.1 million, respectively,
as of 2013; while instant messaging application (app) LINE is the leading social
network in Japan with 275 monthly active users as of 2013. Dating-focused
social networking service Badoo, meanwhile, has a significant following in
several European countries, such as Spain, Italy and France, as well as in Latin
America; vkontakte is the most popular social media property in Russia, where
it has over 100 million users.

Use of Social Networking Sites by Region

Although the majority of leading social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter
and YouTube, are US-based, the largest regional user base of social media is in
Asia/Pacific, with a total audience of 777 million, representing 44.8% of total
social network users worldwide. This is more than triple the size of the
second-largest regional user base in Latin America, where there are currently
216.9 million social network users, accounting for 12.5% of global social
network penetration. However, continued growth in social network usage in
the Middle East and Africa, which currently has a share of 12.1% of social media
users, is expected to see this region overtake Latin America to become the
second-largest market in terms of social network audience by 2014. Elsewhere,
North America accounted for 10.5% of total social network users worldwide,
while Western Europe registered a 10.1% share and Central and Eastern
Europe a 10% share.
Table 6.1: Total Social Network Users Worldwide by Region

(number and %), 2011-2013
2011 2012 2013

Number % of Number % of Number % of
of Users Total of Users Total of Users Total
Asia/Pacific 501.6 41.1 632.6 43.1 777.0 44.8

Latin America 151.6 12.4 182.7 12.4 216.9 12.5
Middle East and
Africa 123.2 10.1 164.3 11.2 209.8 12.1
North America 163.6 13.4 174.2 11.9 181.2 10.5
Western Europe 142.5 11.7 159.7 10.9 174.2 10.1
Central and Eastern
Europe 137.2 11.2 154.7 10.5 173.6 10.0
Total 1,219.6 100.0 1,468.1 100.0 1,732.7 100.0
Note: totals may not sum due to rounding at source.
Source: eMarketer, April 2013

Table 6.2 shows the leading social networking sites in the world by monthly
active users, as of November 2013. Facebook currently leads in terms of
audience, with total monthly active users numbering 1.15 billion, although
video-based social network YouTube followed closely behind with a total
monthly audience of 1 billion. Qzone and Sina Weibo, which have a heavy
following in the PRC, where Facebook is currently banned, were ranked as the
third- and fourth-largest social networks in the world, with total monthly
audiences of 712 million and 500 million, respectively. In line with data
produced by eMarketer, statistics compiled by BI Intelligence revealed that
Asia/Pacific had more active social media users than any other region, with
South Asian markets showing particularly high penetrations in mobile social
media usage.

by Monthly Active Users (million), November 2013
Monthly Active Users (million)
Facebook 1,150
YouTube 1,000
Qzone† 712
Sina Weibo† 500
WhatsApp 350
Google+ 327
Tumblr 300
LINE‡ 275
Twitter 240
WeChat† 236
Tencent Weibo† 220
LinkedIn 184
Youku† 175
Instagram 150
Tudou† 114
RenRen† 54
Pinterest 50
Badoo 45
Orkut 44
Foursquare 40
Table continues...


by Monthly Active Users (million), November 2013
...table continued
Monthly Active Users (million)
Vine 40
vkontakte§ 31
Myspace 30
Snapchat†† 20
† — People’s Republic of China only

‡ — Japan-based
§ — Russia only
†† — US only
Source: BI Intelligence
The Social Consumer

Despite the sharp growth observed in mobile device uptake in recent years,
the majority of those accessing social networking sites did so via a desktop
computer, with those in Europe (96%) and Latin America (96%) reporting the
highest penetration in this category. However, respondents in Asia/Pacific were
the most likely to use a mobile phone and tablet to access such sites (29% and
28%, respectively), while those in the Middle East and Asia/Pacific were most
likely to use an Internet-connected television (9% each). Accessing social
networking sites via a games console or handheld music player was also more
prevalent among respondents living in the Asia/Pacific region.

Table 6.3: Method of Accessing Social Networking Sites

Internet-Enabled
Handheld Music
Game Console
Mobile Phone
Television
Computer
Tablet
Player
Asia/Pacific 93 59 28 9 5 5
Europe 96 33 8 4 3 2
Middle East/Africa 91 48 10 9 2 2
Latin America 96 33 6 4 3 2
Note: results are based on a Nielsen survey of more than 28,000 global consumers with
Internet access.
Source: State of the Media: The Social Media Report, 2012 © Nielsen
Further data compiled by Nielsen analysed the impact of social media

advertising and online product reviews on consumer purchasing habits. The
research found that, in general, consumers based in Asia/Pacific were the most
responsive to social media marketing (SMM) across the board, registering the
highest penetration in almost all product categories analysed in the study. By
product type, home electronics and entertainment items tended to be the most
popular items purchased by consumers based on SMM and online product
reviews.

Table 6.4: Likelihood of Purchase Based on Social Media

Websites/Online Product Reviews by Product Type
Financial Products/Banking
Jewellery/Accessories
Travel and Leisure
Beauty/Cosmetics
Home Electronics
Clothing/Fashion
Food/Beverages
Entertainment
Restaurants
Appliances
Babycare
Toys
Asia/Pacific 74 72 72 75 69 74 69 63 48 62 48 43
Europe 46 48 38 48 47 39 37 29 25 33 20 18
Middle East/
Africa 67 57 59 63 57 58 56 52 41 43 41 42
Latin America 69 61 56 67 62 56 55 46 38 48 29 28
Note: results are based on a Nielsen survey of more than 28,000 global consumers with
Internet access.
Source: State of the Media: The Social Media Report, 2012 © Nielsen
EUROPE
Internet penetration in Europe remains relatively high, with approximately
three-quarters (77%) of Europeans accessing the Internet in 2013, according
to data compiled by Eurostat. Internet usage over the past 12 months was
found to be the highest in Iceland (97%) and lowest in Turkey (46%). Despite
this, the number of social media users in Iceland numbered just 220,000 as of
February 2014, according to statistics compiled by We Are Social. In contrast,
Russia reported the largest social media audience in Europe, with 47 million
users in total. However, it should be noted that the platform of choice across
Europe differs significantly. Facebook tends to dominate social media usage in
Western European nations, with 37 countries based in this region accounting
for a total of 232.2 million active users on the site, equating to approximately
19% of the platform’s total global user base. Eastern European users favoured
sites such as VKontakte, with users in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus accounting
for over 60 million active accounts on the site.


by Country (000), February 2014
Number of Users (000)
Russia 47,000
UK 36,000
France 28,000
Germany 28,000
Italy 26,000
Spain 20,000
Poland 12,000
Ukraine 12,000
Netherlands 8,800
Romania 7,000
Belgium 5,400
Portugal 5,200
Sweden 5,200
Hungary 4,800
Greece 4,400
Czech Republic 4,200
Serbia 3,800
Switzerland 3,400
Austria 3,200
Denmark 3,200
Bulgaria 3,000
Norway 3,000
Republic of Ireland 2,400
Finland 2,400
Belarus 2,200
Albania 1,400
Lithuania 1,200
Cyprus 560
Estonia 540
Table continues...


by Country (000), February 2014
...table continued
Latvia 500
Iceland 220
Total 285,020
Source: US Census Bureau/Facebook/VKontakte/We Are Social
According to data compiled by Eurostat, around 30% of EU enterprises now

use social media, such as social networks, blogs, content-sharing sites and wikis,
for business purposes (as of 2013). In terms of platform, social networks were
generally favoured by EU businesses, with 28% utilising such channels for
business purposes. This compared to 11% using multimedia content-sharing
websites, 10% using enterprise blogs or microblogs and 6% using wiki-based
knowledge sharing tools.
The most popular reason EU enterprises cited for using social media was for
the development of the enterprise’s image or to market products, with nearly
three quarters (73%) agreeing that this was the case; 50% stated that they
utilised such platforms as a customer service channel, i.e. to respond to
customers’ opinions, reviews or questions. A further 29% revealed that they
used social media to involve customers in the development or innovation of
goods and services. The findings from Eurostat also suggested that social
enterprise tools were relatively widespread across EU enterprises, with 29%
revealing that they used social media to collaborate with business partners or
other organisations, while 30% stated that they did so to recruit employees
and a further 30% agreed that they used such platforms to exchange views,
opinions or knowledge within the enterprise.

by Purpose of Use (%), 2013
Develop the enterprise’s image or to market products 73

Obtain or respond to customers’ opinions, reviews,
questions, etc. 50
Table continues...


by Purpose of Use (%), 2013
...table continued
Recruit employees 30
Exchange views, opinions or knowledge within the
enterprise 30
Involve customers in the development or innovation
of goods and services 29
Collaborate with business partners or other
organisations 29
Source: Eurostat
NORTH AMERICA
According to the Pew Research Center’s Social Media Update 2013, 73% of
online adults in the US now use a social networking site of some kind, while
42% use multiple social media sites. Facebook remained the dominant social
networking site in the US, with 71% of online adults accessing the site during
2013 — up from 61% the year before. Professional social network LinkedIn
reported the second-highest penetration at 22% in 2013; followed by Pinterest
(21%), Twitter (18%) and Instagram (17%). Despite Facebook’s continued
dominance within the US social media space, other social networks have begun
to develop their own unique user profiles. For example, Pinterest is particular
popular among female users, while LinkedIn is generally more widely used by
college graduates and Internet users belonging to higher income households.
Meanwhile, Twitter and Instagram tend to have more appeal among younger
adults and urban dwellers, with a significant overlap noticeable between the
Twitter and Instagram user bases.
Table 6.7: Penetration of Social Media Sites in the US

(% of online adults), 2012 and 2013
2012 2013
Facebook 61 71
LinkedIn 20 22
Pinterest 15 21
Table continues...

Table 6.7: Penetration of Social Media Sites in the US

(% of online adults), 2012 and 2013
...table continued
2012 2013
Twitter 16 18
Instagram 13 17
Source: Social Media Update, 2013 © Pew Research Center
Spending on SMM activities within North America has benefitted significantly

from the highly established and mature advertising industry apparent within
the region, which represents the largest advertising market in the world. The
US in particular has continued to remain the biggest spender on digital
advertising, with nearly two in five digital advertising dollars estimated to
come from advertisers based in North America during 2013. Unsurprisingly
then, social media adspend across the region continues to outstrip that of other
regions, with recent statistics compiled by eMarketer estimating that
advertisers in North America will invest approximately $32.82 for every social
network user during 2014 — more than double that spent by advertisers in
Western Europe, the second-largest advertising market in the world.
ASIA/PACIFIC
Table 6.8 displays the number of social media users in Asia/Pacific by country.
According to the data, the PRC currently has the largest social media audience
in the Asia/Pacific region, with localised sites such as Qzone and Sina Weibo
accounting for the majority of the 623 million social networking accounts
active in the country, as global networks such as Facebook and Twitter remain
banned. The second-largest country in terms of social media usage was India,
with an audience of 90 million; followed by Indonesia with 62 million and the
Philippines with 34 million.
Social media usage has continued to rise at a rapid rate across the Asia/Pacific
region over the past year, fuelled by the continued uptake of mobile
technology across countries such as Japan, the PRC, South Korea, Indonesia and
the Philippines, with an estimated 97.3% of active social media users in the
region accessing such sites through mobile devices. Chat apps, in particular,
remain popular across countries based in the Asia/Pacific region, with platforms
such as WeChat (Weixin), LINE and Kakaotalk reporting relatively high
penetration levels.

Table 6.8: Number of Social Media Users in Asia/Pacific

by Country (000), January 2014
PRC 623,000
India 90,000
Indonesia 62,000
Philippines 34,000
Thailand 24,000
Japan 22,000
Vietnam 20,000
Malaysia 16,000
Taiwan 15,000
South Korea 13,000
Australia 13,000
Pakistan 11,000
Bangladesh 5,800
Hong Kong 4,400
Singapore 3,200
New Zealand 2,400
Sri Lanka 2,000
Mongolia 720
Papua New Guinea 260
Fiji 260
Maldives 174
Timor-Leste 76
Total 962,290
PRC — People’s Republic of China
Source: US Census Bureau/CNNIC/Tencent/Facebook/We Are Social

Despite the rapid growth in social media usage in Asia/Pacific — fuelled by an

emerging middle class, strong economic growth and sharp uptake in mobile
devices — social media adspend across the region remains below that of North
America and Western Europe, with eMarketer estimating that advertisers will
spend just $3.36 per social network user during 2014. However, the high social
media adoption rates across the region — and, in particular, in the PRC —
suggest that the market holds significant opportunity and growth potential
for marketers. Although any agencies that do enter the market will need to
ensure that they have a thorough understanding of the unique challenges that
the region presents, such as its reliance on home-grown social networks such
as Qzone, Sina Weibo and WeChat, with access to leading global competitors
such as Facebook and Twitter continuing to remain restricted for the majority
of the Chinese population.
Recent activity within the area suggests a growing interest in SMM, with a
number of multinational agency networks extending activities across
territories such as the PRC, Singapore, India and the Philippines. For example,
in March 2013, Publicis revealed that it had acquired Indian digital consultancy
Convonix, which provides a range of digital services including SMM and search
engine optimisation (SEO); before going on to acquire Chinese social media
services provider Net@lk, which specialises in delivering bespoke social
influence marketing campaigns and building brands in a social context.
Meanwhile, leading global advertising agency WPP announced in 2013 that it
had entered a deal to acquire a majority stake in Vocanic Ptd Ltd, a leading
SMM firm based in Asia which has offices located in Singapore, Malaysia,
Indonesia and Thailand. The same year saw WPP acquire Vietnamese social
media agency ClickMedia in line with wider Group strategies to grow the
agency’s presence within the Asia/Pacific SMM sphere.
LATIN AMERICA
Similar to Asia/Pacific, Latin America has represented a significant growth
market for social media over the past couple of years, with the number of
monthly active Facebook users in Latin America and the Caribbean rising by
47% in 2012 to reach 168 million. According to statistics compiled by
Socialbakers, South America is now the fastest-growing Facebook continent,
with Brazil, Argentina, Columbia and Venezuela leading the way in terms of
uptake. The growth in social media usage within the region has been fuelled
by a sharp rise in Latin America’s Internet population, which rose by 12%
during 2013 — making it the fastest-growing region in terms of Internet
uptake. Not only this, but the Latin American social media audience is one of
the most engaged in the world, with consumers spending 10 hours browsing
social networking sites every month, double the global average time spent,
with five of the top ten most-engaged markets with social content worldwide
now located in the region, according to data published by comScore in 2013.

Unsurprisingly, the sharp growth in both online and social media usage in Latin
America has resulted in increased digital marketing expenditure within the
region in recent years, with Brazil in particular observing significant rises after
seeing online advertising increase by 97% in 2013 to 130 billion display
advertising impressions (as of March 2013). The number of enterprises based
in Latin America now investing in social media has also increased, with 65% of
businesses located in the region now estimated to be using at least one social
media platform, up from 49% in 2010, according to figures compiled by
Burson-Marsteller. Brazilian companies were the most likely to utilise social
media platforms for business purposes, with 88% doing so in 2012 — up from
63% in 2010; companies based in Venezuala (84%), Chile (76%), Colombia
(76%) and Mexico (76%) also showed high penetration rates during 2012.
Table 6.9: Proportion of Companies in Latin America Using

Social Media Platforms by Country (%), 2010 and 2012
2010 2012
Brazil 63 88
Venezuela 75 84
Chile 57 76
Colombia 48 76
Mexico 80 76
Argentina 25 64
Peru 40 60
Uruguay - 36
Puerto Rico 5 28
Source: Latin America Social Media Check-up 2013 © Burson-Marsteller
Over the past couple of years, Twitter has emerged as the social network of
choice among business users in Latin America, with 53% of companies based
in this region now using the micro-blogging platform for business purposes,
compared to 50% for Facebook. Video-sharing site YouTube has also seen
uptake among businesses increase over the past few years, with penetration
rising from 25% in 2010 to 31% in 2012. A fifth (20%) of Latin American
companies were also found to utilise Google+, while 12% used blogging sites
for business purposes.

Table 6.10: Proportion of Companies in Latin America Using

Social Media by Platform (%), 2010 and 2012
2010 2012
Twitter 32 53
Facebook 39 50
YouTube 25 31
Google+ - 20
Blogs 11 12
Source: Latin America Social Media Check-up 2013 © Burson-Marsteller
MIDDLE EAST/AFRICA
The Middle East and Africa has represented the fastest growth region in the
world in terms of social media usage in recent years, with statistics compiled
by eMarketer in 2012 estimating the number of social network users in the
region to have increased by 31.8% in 2012, before rising by a further 23.6% —
outstripping growth in all other geographical regions. One of the key drivers
in social media uptake within the region has been the sharp uptake in mobile
technology, particularly within Africa, where mobile penetration is now
thought to be around 80% (as of December 2013), equating to approximately
802.4 million people. The continent has continued to represent the
fastest-growing region in terms of mobile uptake in the world, leading some
critics to dub the region a ‘mobile-only’ zone, with landline penetration and
household Internet infrastructure remaining relatively immature across the
majority of African countries.
Despite the growth in mobile connectivity across both Africa and the Middle
East, time spent online in the region is still well below the worldwide average.
According to figures compiled by comScore, Internet users in the Middle East
and Africa spent an average of 17.6 hours online in July 2013, trailing the
worldwide average by almost 7 hours. Nonetheless, online activity across the
region has been heavily skewed towards social channels, with further statistics
published by comScore revealing that Internet users in the Middle East and
Africa spent 29% of their time on social networks, compared to the global
average of 18%.

An emergent middle class in countries such as South Africa, Nairobi, Qatar,

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as the popularisation
of such channels following the Arab Spring, has also served to intensify SMM
activity in the region; many big name brands, such as Samsung and Adidas,
utilise Twitter to reach out to consumers in Africa and the Middle East. For
example, Samsung South Africa’s Twitter page now has more than 100,000
followers, while sneaker brand Converse has over 18,900 followers.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, marketing on the video-based platform
YouTube has continued to gain traction, with recent figures released by
Google revealing that the average Saudi Arabian viewer watched three times
as many online videos as consumers based in the US, while the Arab world
watches over 14.5 million hours of YouTube each day — second only to
Americans. Each month, YouTube reaches approximately 85% of the
population in Saudi Arabia — the region’s biggest advertising market in terms
of expenditure, according to Google, with the UAE and Egypt representing the
two next largest markets, reaching 83% and 74%, respectively. Unsurprisingly,
the proliferation of such channels across the Middle East has not gone
unnoticed by marketers, with digital advertising agencies such as JWT and
Omnicom Media Group predicting adspend to grow by 40% each year across
international brands that have a presence on digital platforms, such as
YouTube.

Social Media Marketing PEST Analysis
7. PEST Analysis
POLITICAL
EU Proposes Data Protection Laws be Updated

In January 2012, the European Commission put forward a number of new
proposals to reform data protection across Europe. Among the new proposals
was a ‘right to be forgotten’ clause, which would allow people to request that
their personal information be removed from primary websites, as well as any
other sites that link to or republish such information. However, this right would
be restricted by a number exemptions including where an individual’s data is
needed to exercise freedom of expression; for public interest in public health;
for historical, statistical and scientific research purposes; for legal reasons; or
for other purposes, such as where the use of data is restricted to verifying the
accuracy of disputed data and proof purposes. According to the European
Commission, the new proposals have been designed to further strengthen
citizens’ rights and trust when it comes to the management of their personal
data, particularly online. Other proposals put forward by the European
Commission included:
• Easier access to personal data — a right to data portability, which will make
it easier for people to transfer their personal data between service providers.
• More freedom to decide how personal data is used — this will ensure that
an individual’s consent will be explicitly required before any of their data is
processed. It will also mean that businesses and organisations will need to
inform people about any data breaches that might adversely affect them.
• A right to know when personal data has been hacked — this proposal will
require companies and organisations to notify the national supervisory
authority of any serious data breaches as soon as possible so that users can
take appropriate measures.
• Privacy by Design/Privacy by Default — will become essential principles of the

EU data protection regulations, and will help to ensure that data protection
safeguards are built into products and services from the earlier stage of
development. This proposal will also ensure that privacy-friendly default
settings will be the norm; for example, on social networks or mobile
applications (apps).

Despite this, in May 2014, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), backed the EU’s
drive to introduce a ‘right to be forgotten’ on the Internet, after judges stated
that Internet search engine operators should be responsible for processing
personal data appearing on web pages published by third parties, such as
newspapers and magazines, and that this ruling must now be taken into
account by national courts across the EU. This means that, even if the
publication of information on webpages is legal, the search engines could still
be compelled by national regulators to remove links if published data breaches
EU privacy law. Although the proposals regarding the ‘right to be forgotten’
have now been adopted by the European Parliament, they will still need to be
scrutinised further by the European Council and its Member States.
Latest Snowdon Leaks Show GCHQ Spied on Social Media

In 2013, former National Security Agency (NSA) computer analyst Edward
Snowden released a number of document leaks to media organisations
documenting a lengthy period of online spying on public citizens by US
intelligence agency the NSA and UK’s Government Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ). In some of the most recent leaks from the former NSA
contractor it was established that GCHQ had monitored real-time interactions
on a number of leading social networks, including YouTube, Facebook and
Blogger. A leak detailing the GCHQ programme, codenamed Squeaky Dolphin,
were first published by NBC News on 27th January 2014, and claimed that the
Government agency was spying on social network users without the
knowledge or consent of the platforms involved. It also revealed that an earlier
GCHQ operation dubbed Blackhole had involved exploiting unencrypted data
from Twitter in order to identify users and target them with propaganda. Since
the leak was published, Facebook has begun to encrypt its data, although
Google’s YouTube and Blogger services remain unencrypted, with both
companies confirming that consent was never given to GCHQ to monitor
accounts on the social networks in question. Earlier reports leaked by Snowden,
which were first published by The Guardian newspaper during 2013, revealed
that GCHQ had been tapping large fibre-optic cables that carry massive
amounts of Internet and telephone traffic to create a ‘buffer’ of information
that it could search through since at least 2011. The reports showed that, by
2012, the British intelligence agency had tapped more than 200 cables
(including transatlantic lines) and was able to process phone and Internet data
taken from up to 46 of them at a time.
Although both the UK and US Governments have continued to support the

work of GCHQ and the NSA, claiming that such efforts are vital to the nation’s
security, several leading global Web properties including Google, Apple,
Facebook, Twitter, AOL, Microsoft, LinkedIn and Yahoo have continued to
protest against both of the countries’ widespread surveillance programmes,
with all eight firms calling for new changes to be made to such programmes
immediately. In December 2013, it was revealed that the eight leading
technology firms had formed an alliance called Reform Government
Surveillance, and had written a joint letter to the US President, Barack Obama,
and Congress arguing that current surveillance practices in the country was
undermining the freedom of its people. Since the spate of leaks from Edward
Snowden, the former computer contractor has fled to Russia where he has
been given 1-year temporary renewable asylum.

Communications Data Bill Delayed

In May 2013, it was revealed that the controversial Communications Data Bill,
which was originally drafted in 2012 and would allow the Government to
monitor all UK citizens’ Internet use, had been dropped following a split in
opinion within the Coalition Government between the Liberal Democrats and
Conservatives. Despite being dropped, however, a similar new proposal
dubbed the ‘Snoopers Charter’ by critics, which would allow unparalleled
interception of data regarding UK citizens’ online communications and voice
calls, made it into the 2013 Queen’s Speech. The new Charter was described as
‘vital’ by Home Secretary Theresa May in helping to put a stop to new age
cybercrime as it would allow security agencies and the police access to online
communications, with such organisations currently only able to identify
telephone calls and text messages.
Despite the proposals, however, Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime
Minister (PM) Nick Clegg has continued to oppose the new regulations, after
stating that the Snoopers Charter was ‘not going to happen’ while his party
was still in Government. Although Mr Clegg has stated that he would support
changes to legislation that take into account the growth of new technology,
such as ensuring each mobile device has its own unique Internet Protocol (IP)
address, he has continued to challenge the proposals put forward regarding
the monitoring of digital communications. No doubt, Edward Snowden’s
revelations regarding the NSA and GCHQ’s undercover surveillance of digital
communications across the world has also served to build opposition against
the new Bill, with both the UK and US Government’s coming under heavy fire
from the public and other governments since the Snowden files were first
published during the summer of 2013; updates regarding the so-called
Snoopers Charter have been largely absent in the media since May of last year.
Defamation Act to Provide Protection for Social Media Companies

On 1st January 2014, the Defamation Act 2013 finally came into force following
a lengthy campaign to change outdated legislation regarding defamation
cases in the UK, which have long been criticised for being antiquated, costly
and unfair. The new Act has been amended to provide better protection for
people expressing their opinions and will mean that claimants will have to
show that they have suffered ‘serious harm’ before suing for libel. One of the
most significant changes to the Act will provide additional defences for website
operators hosting user-generated content, such as social networking
platforms. This will be mean that such platforms will not be liable if they can
show that they did not post the offending statement, thus providing a certain
level of protection for sites such as Twitter and Facebook where some users, in
the past, have posted defamatory statements. Despite this, such sites may be
forced to remove any offending material, even in cases where they have
avoided liability for defamation.

ECONOMIC
Is the Tech Bubble About to Burst... Again?

Over the past couple of years a succession of social network initial public
offerings (IPOs) and acquisition activity within the market has led some analysts
to question whether the technology industry is on its way to another collapse,
similar in style to the dotcom bubble burst that occurred during 1999 to 2001.
The surprisingly high valuations now being put on social media firms — which
some critics have labelled as excessive — has continued to satiate the industry’s
concerns, with Twitter’s flotation in November 2013 resulting in a valuation of
$24bn; leading social platform Facebook has also continued to shell out hefty
sums for a number of free-to-use apps in recent years, after purchasing
photo-sharing service Instagram for $1bn in April 2012 and messaging service
WhatsApp for $19bn in early 2014. Continued efforts to monetise the activities
of sites such as Facebook and Twitter, i.e. through advertising, is also thought
to have stimulated further investment spending in the social media space in
recent years, with a number of other social media startups such as Yammer,
Tumblr, Waze and, more recently, Viber, all subject to $1bn acquisition deals
over the past couple of years.
While the heightened acquisition activity currently being observed across the
technology industry is a sign that healthy growth is being achieved, the
valuations of such startups following billion-dollar acquisition deals are
generally thought to be overly optimistic when compared to actual balance
sheets. A recent downturn in tech stock prices has reflected this growing
uncertainty in the market, with Facebook observing a 16% fall in share prices
over the past month, while LinkedIn is down by 20% and Twitter by 27%. Even
search giant Google is estimated by Bloomberg to have fallen by 11% since the
end of February, following a complex stock split in early April. As such, several
technology companies coming to the market for the first time with IPOs have
been received with mixed reactions. King Digital, for example, which produces
the popular mobile game Candy Crush Saga, floated at just $22.50 and slipped
by 16% on its first day, with stock now thought to be down to just $17.61.
Meanwhile, in the UK, online takeaway service Just Eat saw its IPO price fall
from 260 pence (p) to 23 3p.
There have, however, been some exceptions to the seemingly torrential

downturn being observed across tech shares; for example, Chinese social
networking site Weibo was recently successfully floated on the NASDAQ and
gave investors a 19% gain in just 1 day. Although this renewed optimism may
have been down to the cheap pricing of Weibo stocks, the company has seen
healthy revenue growth in recent years and is projected to continue to do well
over the coming years. The fact that Weibo is also a service company has also
helped to encourage confidence among investors. The outlook has also
remained positive in specific areas of the wider technology industry, such as
the mobile and automotive sectors.

Nonetheless, when it comes to the bigger picture, concerns have continued to

mount that a collapse similar to that observed in 1999 is on its way for the tech
industry, with ten out of the 19 technology companies that went public in the
US since the start of 2014 now thought to be trading below their offering price.
Indeed, according a recent survey undertaken by Bloomberg, which
questioned investors, analysts and traders in Internet and social media stock,
only 14% said that they did not see a bubble. However, despite the seemingly
heightened activity across the stock market, relatively few technology
companies have actually gone public during this boom period — unlike the run
up to the 1990s collapse — and investors have become increasingly wary, with
many market traders opting to ditch high-growth but volatile biotech, social
media and cloud computing stock as a result. If trends continue in this way and
a bubble burst does occur in the US, it could severely hamper growth across
the tech markets in both the UK and Asia, and is likely to lead to dampened
investor activity in startups over the next few years.
SOCIAL
Social Counterfeiting: A Danger to Brands

A recent study undertaken by Marketing Week in early 2014 revealed that
several high-end consumer brands, such as Ugg Australia, Mulberry, Ray-Ban
and Louis Vuitton, were being targeted by unauthorised websites that use
social media to promote fake goods. The investigation by the trade publication
uncovered a number of sites that were not listed in these brands’ published
networks of resellers, which were using links and paid-for advertising space on
social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest to attract web
traffic. According to the Intellectual Property Office, social networks represent
the biggest cause of consumer complaints regarding fake products, with
January in particular being the most prolific month of the year for these types
of complaints. Facebook appears to be the most preferred site among
counterfeiters, with the Trading Standards Institute (TSI) revealing that the
majority of social media complaints that they received are from people who
have unknowingly joined a group that has been set up to sell fake online goods
via the social network.

Overall, online counterfeiting is estimated to be worth around £10bn annually

in the UK, according to data produced by brand protection firm MarkMonitor.
Although the sale of fake goods online has remained a problem in recent years,
it is only recently that counterfeiters have begun to utilise social media in this
way, with Chrissie Florczyk, Director General (Designate) at the
Anti-Counterfeiting Group (ACG) acknowledging that ‘it has grown
exponentially in the past year’ and ‘has hit the tipping point and we can’t keep
turning a blind eye to it’. While the leading social networking sites are
attempting to clamp down on counterfeiting on their platforms, many brands
could struggle to ensure effective anti-counterfeiting, as counterfeiters could
easily abandon a social media account once discovered and set up a new one
in its place on the same site. The TSI is reported to have been in talks with
Facebook for 18 months regarding counterfeiting on the site and has stated
that it intends to hold further talks with the company in the future to ‘iron out
the creases’ during 2014. The ACG has also sought talks with the social
networking site in the future, in order to set out ‘the issues our members have
as rights owners’. In addition, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA)
has led a separate campaign alongside other creative industry bodies and the
UK’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) to cut off revenues to
counterfeiters. The campaign sought to prevent reputable companies’
advertisements from being placed on websites that make unauthorised use of
copyright content.
The Rise of the Fake Social Media Follower

The past couple of years have seen the emergence of a black market for social
media followers on leading sites such as Facebook and Twitter. With brands
increasingly keen to extend their following across such sites in order to drive
their marketing activities and expand their brand reach online, the purchase
and use of fake followers (also known colloquially as ‘zombie followers’) by
small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is thought to have become a
growing problem across social networking sites. Indeed, it is even thought that
a number of marketing agencies have even substituted natural audience
building altogether in favour of brokering cheap fake followers to buyers at
high prices. As a result, there has been a sharp increase in vendors of fake ‘likes’
and followers, known as ‘click farms’, where low-paid workers in poor
countries are paid to repeatedly click the like button, view videos or re-tweet
links. Online vendors, such as boostgenius.co.uk, offer companies the chance
to purchase Twitter followers from as little as £29.99, with a host of other
online sellers such as twitterwind.com and twitteraddicts.com providing similar
packages.
According to figures published by Facebook, as many as 11.2% of its 1.23 billion

monthly active users could be represented by false or duplicated accounts,
while YouTube recently announced that it would be auditing clips in an
attempt to remove fraudulent views on the site. Fake accounts are actually
banned on Twitter, according to its terms of service, and purchasing fake
Twitter followers can actually lead to an account being shut down by the
service. In response to the growing penchant for buying followers on social
media platforms, a number of social media management firms, such as
London-based company Status People, have also begun to create tools which
can help to determine what percentage of followers are fake, real or inactive.

According to an article published by Huffington Post in July 2013, a typical

Twitter account with real followers is estimated to average between 1% to 4%
fake followers, although for larger accounts this can go up to 10%, with
anything above 10% likely to indicate that fake followers have been
purchased. Although the acquisition of fake followers and ‘likes’ does serve to
boost the appearance of a particular company or brand on social media sites,
marketers warn that expanding social networking audiences in this way will
not necessarily boost the success of social media marketing (SMM) activities
and in fact defeats the purpose of using social media to grow brand awareness.
Security Breach: Heartbleed

In April 2014, it became apparent that a security bug nicknamed Heartbleed
had affected OpenSSL, which is used for security on a number of popular
Internet servers used around the world. OpenSSL is used to provide encrypted
information to visitors so that data transferred, such as usernames, passwords
and cookies, cannot be seen by other parties. The Heartbleed bug exploited a
built-in feature of OpenSSL called heartbeat — a call and response mechanism
which allows websites to link to users’ computers and exchange data — thus
potentially exposing any websites affected to hackers by allowing them to
request data from a server’s memory. Although original estimates suggested
that as much as 60% of the Web’s servers were affected by the Heartbleed bug,
the specificity of the software exploit has led some organisations, such as
Netcraft, to downgrade this estimation to under 17.5%. Nonetheless, the bug
is thought to have affected a number of popular Web properties, including
Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr and Facebook; with users
of such sites urged to change their passwords in order to prevent any security
risk.
Following the discovery of the bug, the OpenSSL software has been rapidly
patched by those affected and the problem is now thought to have been
resolved. In addition, over a dozen tech companies, including Facebook,
Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM, have joined forces in order to prevent
any similar security breaches in the future. Each of the tech companies has
agreed to commit $100,000 per year to a new a programme entitled the Core
Infrastructure Initiative, which has been designed to fund open source projects
that are critical for core computing functions. The Initiative will also work
alongside an advisory board of open source developers in order to identify and
fund any open source projects identified as in need.

TECHNOLOGICAL
Superfast Broadband UK Roll Out

Since 2011, the Government has continued to invest in developing the UK’s
broadband access, with the aim of creating up to 22 ‘super-connected’ cities in
order to ensure that all residents in the UK have access to broadband speeds
of at least 2 megabits per second (Mbit/s) and 95% receive greater speeds (at
least 24 Mbit/s) by 2017. In order to achieve these aims the Government has:
• invested £530m into stimulating commercial investment and rolling out

high-speed broadband to rural communities reaching 90% of UK homes and
businesses
• invested a further £250m into extending the benefits of superfast broadband

to 95% of the UK’s population and exploring approaches to delivering
superfast broadband to harder to reach areas, initially through a new £10m
competitive fund
• invested £150m into developing several ‘super-connected cities’ across the

UK
• removed red tape to make it easier to develop broadband infrastructure
• invested up to £150m into improving the quality and coverage of mobile

phone voice and data services as part of the Government’s Mobile
Infrastructure Project (MIP).
By investing in broadband and mobile data services, the UK Government aims

to reinforce the country’s position as a leading digital economy, which in turn
should help to create local jobs and stimulate national growth. So far, the
number of properties able to access superfast broadband has hit 273,731 as a
result of the roll out (as of 31st December 2013), almost triple the number of
homes with access in September 2013. UK coverage of superfast broadband is
now thought to be higher than in Germany, Italy and Spain, and more than
double that of France. A number of further projects have also already been
scheduled for 2014, with around 10,000 premises per week now estimated to
be gaining access, a figure that is expected to increase to 25,000 per week in
the spring of 2014 and up to 40,000 by the summer. No doubt, improved access
to superfast broadband will help facilitate the delivery of a range of Web
services including social media, which in turn should help to stimulate further
spending on SMM activities in the future.

The Power of Video Advertising

Digital video advertising has observed significant growth in recent years, with
video advertising platform BrightRoll claiming that the ‘UK advertising
industry has officially entered the digital video age’ in 2013. According to
figures compiled by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), online video
advertising represents one of the fastest-growing advertising formats in the
world, with video adspend rising by a formidable 86% to reach £135m for the
6-month period ending June 2013. Furthermore, the format is only expected
to continue to observe explosive growth in the coming years, with eMarketer
forecasting digital video adspend to rise by 70.8% during 2014, with growth
likely to continue to outpace other advertising formats. YouTube — the
leading social video platform in the world — recently crossed the 1 billion users
mark and is estimated to have recorded $5.6bn in gross revenue during 2013,
up by 51% on 2012.
However, the pole position of YouTube could soon be challenged following a

number of video platform launches by social media sites such as Facebook,
Instagram (also owned by Facebook) and Twitter (with Vine). Instagram, for
example, recently undertook a $100m advertisement-buying deal with Publicis
Omnicom Group; while Vine became the fastest-growing app of 2013. The
growth in both platforms could herald a new age within the video advertising
space centring around short-form video advertisements, with Instagram videos
running for 15 seconds, while Vine shows video clips lasting just 6 seconds. The
popularity of such platforms is already soaring, with over 40 million people
using Twitter-owned Vine, and a further 150 million accounts thought to be
active on Instagram. A number of major brands, such as Dunkin’ Donuts,
Trident, Oreo, Virgin Mobile and Mountain Dew have already begun to
dedicate more time, talent and strategy to the short-form video format; the
new technique offers advertisers the chance to show easily-digestible
advertisements in a creative, interactive and direct way.
The rapid growth of video advertising has been underpinned by sharp increases
in digital content uptake, with UK Internet users spending over 37 hours per
month consuming online digital media — more than those in any other
European country — according to a report published by BrightRoll in 2013.
Further findings from the report revealed that 37.5 million UK consumers had
watched videos on their computers in December 2013. ‘On-the-go’ viewing, in
particular, has continued to rise, with 11.2 million UK users watching videos on
their mobile devices in 2012 — up by 262% from 2011.

Digital video advertising has continued to gain traction among advertisers

because of its ability to deliver highly accurate messages that can be targeted
at scale across large audiences. In addition, the format is easily measurable,
and provides an innovative and entertaining advertising medium through
which brands are able to communicate with consumers. The success of a
number of online video advertising campaigns which have ‘gone viral’ in recent
years is only testament to the high return on investment (ROI) that digital video
advertising is able to deliver. For example, Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ online
video marketing campaign became the most popular video viral of all time just
1 month after being launched, with the online advertisement attracting over
133 million views in total and encompassing viewers in over 110 countries.
Another successful video campaign that went viral during the past year was
the Carrie ‘prankvert’ promoting the new US move remake, which set up
unsuspecting members of the public in a New York coffee shop and led them
to believe that an angry customer was able to move things with her mind. The
video advertisement, created by Thinkmodo, was shared 1.2 million times in its
first week of being uploaded and is estimated to have been viewed over 4
million times in total.
Mobile Advertising Continues to Soar

Mobile advertising expenditure has continued to observe sharp growth in
recent years, rising by an overwhelming 95% in 2013 according to the
Advertising Association/Warc Expenditure Report for Q4 2013, with further
growth of 73% and 46% predicted for 2014 and 2015, respectively, taking total
mobile adspend to in excess of £2.5bn. The rapid growth in mobile advertising
has been underpinned by the increased penetration of connected mobile
devices in recent years; over half (51%) of all UK residents are now thought to
own a smartphone, along with 24% that own a tablet computer. The
proliferation of smartphone and tablet technology has also opened up a
number of significant new opportunities for advertising, with
Internet-connected mobile devices allowing marketers to reach consumers
anytime and anywhere. In addition, the roll out of fourth-generation (4G)
networks by mobile telecommunications firms such as Everything Everywhere
(EE), Three, O2 and Vodafone in recent years is also expected to have driven
growth in mobile communications; while the continued development and
launch of new wearable mobile technology, such as Google Glass and virtual
reality headsets, should help to stimulate further activity within the mobile
marketing sector in the coming years.

In response to the growing demand for mobile advertising solutions, a number

of leading digital properties such as Google, Facebook and Twitter have begun
to invest heavily in developing their own mobile advertising platforms.
Facebook, for example, has continued to expand its portfolio of mobile
advertising products and is rumoured to be on the brink of launching a new
mobile advertising network, which, if true, could provide improved
advertisement targeting to brands by using the data gathered on the site. The
social network has also expanded its reach on mobile through a number of
mobile-based acquisitions, including photo-sharing app Instagram which it
purchased in April 2012 for $1bn and, more recently, messaging app
WhatsApp, which it acquired for $19bn in February 2014. Facebook’s continued
expansion activities within the mobile sector appear to have paid off heavily,
with the social networking site revealing that an upsurge in mobile advertising
had helped to push revenues 72% higher to $2.5bn during the first quarter of
2014. Mobile is now estimated to represent 59% of the company’s total
advertising revenue, up significantly from 30% just 1 year ago.
Its competitor, Twitter, has also ramped up its mobile advertising services in
recent years and recently announced the launch of its own mobile advertising
network — ahead of the unconfirmed launch of a similar product by Facebook,
which is expected to be announced towards the end of April or the beginning
of May. The development of these mobile advertising networks by the social
media giants have been undertaken in a bid to lure advertisers by promoting
the social platforms as one-stop shops to buy space across mobile and are
expected to help marketers target advertisements to users even when they are
not on social media apps. Twitter also recently announced that it had acquired
mobile startup MoPub, which helps mobile publishers manage their
advertising inventory, adding another dimension to the social network’s
existing advertising business, particularly across mobile platforms. Although
Twitter is much smaller than Facebook in terms of reach, the platform is much
more mobile-focused, with approximately 75% of its total advertising revenue
accounted for by mobile. Overall, however, it is Google that dominates in terms
of mobile advertising spend, with the search engine currently leading the
mobile display advertising space with its AdMob service, which it acquired back
in 2010 and has continued to update and integrate with its other advertising
services, such as Google Analytics.

Social Media Marketing Industry Dynamics
8. Industry Dynamics
INTRODUCTION
As part of this Market Assessment, Key Note contacted a number of industry
professionals in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of current
attitudes, trends and opinions relating to the social media marketing (SMM)
landscape in the UK. As part of this undertaking, contributors were asked a
number of questions relating to current market conditions, which aimed in
particular to assess the market’s strengths and weaknesses, current trends and
key issues, favoured social networking sites, SMM strategies, and analytics. The
opinions received have been collated within this chapter to form a virtual
roundtable.
Those that contributed were:
Leanne Rinning, Head of Marketing and Communication, StormID

Leanne Rinning has 15 years of marketing experience and has been working
at Edinburgh-based specialist digital communications agency StormID since
2013. The company first began life back in 2001 and now employs over 45
digital specialists. In the past, StormID has worked on several innovative
projects, which have covered a range of digital disciplines, including mobile,
social, web design, web development, digital marketing, search engine
optimisation (SEO) and per-per-click (PPC) campaigns. The company’s current
client roster includes the National Galleries of Scotland, Menzies Distribution,
The City of Edinburgh Council and Airdrie Savings Bank, among many others.
Dominic Sparkes, CEO & Founder, Tempero

Dominic Sparkes originally founded Tempero along with former colleague
Jasmine Malik back in 2002. The company has since grown to become the
world’s largest full-service social media management agency; it provides
integrated strategy, insight, moderation and engagement for several of the
world’s largest brands, including the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC),
Disney, Orange, Cadbury and Sony. The company also provides insight and
analysis on social media campaigns, and specialises in social media engagement
services and reputation management.

VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLE
Which Social Networking Sites Do You Think PR and Marketing

Companies Participate With the Most for Business Purposes? Any
Reason Why?
Leanne Rinning, Storm ID

Twitter is an exceptional tool for those working within marketing and public
relations (PR). The business of marketing and PR is to help influence behaviour
and preferences towards certain products and services, therefore it is essential
to keep up to speed with the latest technology and communication platforms.
Twitter offers news and opinion from a variety of different sources in the ‘here
and now’ format. A genuinely brilliant source of information not only for
broadcast but research too. For those who wish to cut through the noise,
LinkedIn offers a great platform to share opinion-led pieces of content.
Dominic Sparkes, Tempero

Each platform has its own advantages and disadvantages, and the use of the
‘key five’ (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Google+) very much
depends on the requirements of the marketing activity. For
business-to-business (B2B) activity, Twitter and LinkedIn lend themselves to
being used as platforms for knowledge sharing, whereas many feel Facebook
is a more personal environment. That changes for business-to-consumer (B2C),
with Facebook almost essential for certain audiences. The jury is out on Google
+ — its membership is still huge compared to many traditional media
properties, but Google’s commitment to the platform seems to be fading.
YouTube, fairly obviously, comes into its own for video (and audio) but Twitter
and Facebook will lead the way in being the top choices for some time to come.

What Do You Think Are the Main Advantages/Disadvantages of

Social Media Marketing?

SMM is about the here and the now. It is a catalyst and an amplifier. Consumers
expect instant responses from brands and organisations; with this approach
there are positives and negatives. The positives are that this new way of
communicating ensures direct (and more often than not instant) engagement
and transparency. As a society we are now conversing with brands directly on
an open playing field which means everyone can see how and when consumers
are being engaged with. The negatives may be that because everything is
expected to be so instant (and the pressure is on as everyone is watching)
marketers are not given the time to plan and respond strategically as they
would have done pre-social media channel days, they need to be ad-hoc,
nimble, agile. This means a new mind set and approach to marketing and PR.
It is a double-edged sword. If things are good (products, services, experiences)
then the online community will become fabulous brand advocates and
ambassadors and the marketing and PR is that little bit easier. However, if
things have been bad, then things can be extremely challenging for marketing
and PR — comments are instant and 100,000 times louder through social
media.

The main advantages:
• You can interact directly with your audience and when I say interact, I don’t
mean tweet/post/comment at them, you need to interact with them.
Opening a social media channel opens up the opportunity to create genuine
dialogue.
• You can gain previously unheard of levels of customer insight if you know
how to look properly.
The main disadvantages:
• It can be a black hole. Once you go down the social route, it is difficult to see
how you can get out. If it is working for you however, that is not a concern
but if it is not, extracting yourself is difficult.
• If it is not working for you it is highly likely it is because you have fallen foul
of the second disadvantage. It is not a cheap channel to manage properly
and treating it as such will only lead to disappointment.
• You can gain previously unheard of levels of customer insight if you know
how to look properly. If you do not look properly or misinterpret the data
however, you are heading for a fall.

How Does Your Organisation Monitor and Measure the Success of

Social Media Marketing Activities/Campaigns? What Challenges
Have You Encountered in Doing So?

We use a number of tools to measure the success of social media. We use social
media monitoring tools to ensure we know who, where, when and why people
are talking about products, services and/or experiences. Social media
monitoring tools give us an indication of whether or not our target audience
have picked up the correct key messages. They also give a sense of how people
feel about particular products and services through the language/tone of voice
that they are using. We also look at social media channel insights; for example,
Facebook Insights, which can help drive targeted social media campaigns.
Finally, we use analytics packages such as Google Analytics to determine
customer journeys and examine how we can help change that user journey for
a better desired outcome (whether that is making a purchase or sharing a piece
of content, etc.).

This is a key part of what we do for our clients and the process is tailored to
the activity being analysed. For global clients, monitoring tools such as
Brandwatch and Sentiment are critical in bringing together disparate sources
of data quickly and effectively. Due to the volumes of data now available,
manual collection is only possible for very small campaigns. That said, even the
market-leading tools need to have their data cleansed and you need human
expertise to do this properly. ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ applies with insight.
Key metrics should always be created up-front and then the data needs to be
parsed in such a way that genuinely useful insight can be created, not just
pretty charts and graphs.
Challenges include data accuracy, volumes of data, and reporting turnaround

times.
To What Extent Do You Integrate Social Media Marketing Activities

With Wider Marketing Strategies? How Are They Integrated?

SMM strategies are blended into overall marketing strategies right from the
word go. We start considering social media activity when we are looking into
user experience (UX) research. It makes sense when identifying and defining
user needs and personas that we look into what communication channels they
will respond to or like to use, in order for us to target or work with them better.

What Percentage of Your Working Day is Spent Interacting on

Social Networking Sites for Business Purposes?

25% of my day is spent interacting and engaging on social media channels for
business purposes — especially from a new business/generating awareness
perspective.

Not enough!
Do You Believe That Social Media Marketing Has a Clear and Direct
Impact on Sales? To What Extent?

I think social media has a huge impact on sales. Social media leverages the
power of persuasion and popularity. Recommendations and referrals are a
huge part of social media and also the consumer purchase/decision process —
if everyone is raving about something it must be good right?
The same happens on the opposite foot — if the majority of comments are
negative, sales tend to plummet as no one wants to be associated with
something negative. It may be fickle, but as social media allow us to be more
transparent we see this happening more readily.

Social has without doubt had an impact on sales, but we are a social media
company so I would be disappointed if it didn’t. How crystal clear is more
difficult to ascertain though, as its impact may not only be direct — through a
tweet for example — but how tweets and posts impact our back links, search
score and general viability.
Do You Intend to Increase/Decrease (or Continue at the Same Level)

Your Social Media Marketing Activities Over the Next 12 Months?
What Are Your Predictions for the Future in Terms of Social Media?

We do not see social media as a separate marketing activity. We, as a company,
build digital things, from websites to intranets and social media applications
(apps). Our ethos is to ensure remarkable user experiences, therefore it is
essential that we understand how people interact with these digital products,
services and things. It is our job and our passion to keep up to speed with new
technology which ultimately has a knock on effect on how we interact and
communicate across the board — B2C, B2B and not-for-profit (NFP).

Therefore, we will not be increasing or decreasing our SMM activities, but

encouraging all staff members to approach projects and campaigns from a UX
standpoint, which allows us to think from a social perspective.
Future predictions: social media is the by-product of the digital technology

revolution, which has required a new way of thinking and communicating.
Subsequently, the future of social media really boils down to how we, as a
society, continue to embrace those changes. Nevertheless, there is an elephant
in the room with regard to data protection and how and who is using the
personal data being gathered by the social media giants (e.g. Facebook,
LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc.). Just how much more personal information
are we prepared to give openly, and what — if any — may the repercussions
be?

We will increase our activity for sure. We are a social media management
company so the future for us will focus on how we can best service our clients’
needs. Customer service, for example, will take place within social channels
more than any other medium within 10 years, and that sort of driver will pull
in more and more companies and brands into the social sphere. The choice for
social media is no longer, ‘should you do it?’; it is ‘how well?’

Social Media Marketing Competitor Analysis
9. Competitor Analysis
INTRODUCTION
This chapter provides profiles of the leading competitors operating within the
social media sphere that are used by marketers for promotional activities,
including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Search engine Google has also been
profiled due to its ownership of several social media properties such as
YouTube, Google+ and Blogger.
FACEBOOK INC
Company Structure
Facebook was originally founded in 2004 by entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg,
along with his college roommate and fellow Harvard University students
Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The
website was originally accessible to only Harvard students, before being
expanded to other universities across the US as well as high-school networks
and international school networks; it was not until 2006 that Facebook was
released to the general public. During the same year, the company also
launched its first version of the Facebook Application Programming Interface
(API), which allowed users to share their information with third-party websites
and other applications (apps). The following year saw the company add
‘Business Pages’ — its first advertising product — which allows companies to
set up their own profiles on the site and promote their activities to customers.
The site’s other advertising facilities were also expanded, with the launch of
Facebook’s Marketplace app for classified listings, as well as a self-service
advertising platform. 2007 saw the launch of the social network’s first mobile
platform, while in 2008 the company introduced its first app for Apple’s mobile
operating system (iOS).
In 2010, the company launched its now-iconic ‘Like’ button, which allows users
to vote on whether they liked any posts, videos and other content shared via
the site. The following year saw the launch of the Facebook Timeline, which
categorised people’s activities from the time that they originally signed up to
the social network. The same year saw the release of the company’s first app
for the Apple iPad. During May 2012, the company held its initial public
offering (IPO) — one of the biggest IPOs in Internet history — with a peak
market capitalisation of around $104bn, with share prices initially offered at
$38 apiece, making it the most valuable US company at the time of its stock
market debut. Despite the initial promise of the IPO, however, the company’s
stock fell soon after it opened, with share prices crashing more than 50% over
the months following its entry on the stock market. Since then, however, share
prices in the company have begun to increase once again, following sharp
increases in the firm’s mobile advertising revenues.

Facebook is currently headquartered in California in the US and, as of March

2014, has 6,818 employees. Since it was first established in 2004, Facebook has
continued to expand its reach across the globe and is now the largest social
network in the world, with approximately 1.23 billion users altogether. The
company also owns and operates mobile photo-sharing app Instagram, which
it acquired in April 2012 in a deal worth $1bn. Instagram currently has around
200 million monthly active users, with 60 million photos being shared on the
site every day.
Profitability
In the year ending 31st December 2013, Facebook Inc recorded total revenue
of $7.87bn, up by 54.7% from $5.09bn in 2012. The company also observed a
sharp increase in net income during the 2-year period, with figures rising from
$53m in 2012 to $1.5bn in 2013.
Table 9.1: Financial Results for Facebook Inc ($m),

Years Ending 31st December 2011-2013
2011 2012 2013
Revenue ($m) 3,711 5,089 7,872

% change year-on-year - 37.1 54.7
Net income ($m) 1,000 53 1,500

% change year-on-year - -94.7 2,730.2
Source: Annual Report 2013, Facebook Inc
Current and Future Developments

In February 2013, Facebook announced that it had acquired the leading
marketing campaign management and measurement business Atlas Advertiser
Suite from Microsoft. The company also announced that it planned to improve
Atlas’ capabilities following the acquisition, by investing in scaling its back-end
measurement systems and enhancing its current suite of advertiser tools on
desktop and mobile. In addition, Facebook plans to improve the interface and
functionality of Atlas, and integrate it with other platforms such as Nielsen and
Datalogix, to help advertisers compare their Facebook campaigns to other
advertising expenditures across the Web on desktop and mobile.

April of the same year saw Facebook launch a new Android home screen called
Facebook Home, which provides an immersive Facebook experience to mobile
users, featuring full-screen photos, status updates and notifications. The
company also revealed that a special version of Home would come pre-installed
on the new HTC First phone from AT&T. In October 2013, Facebook Home was
further expanded to include posts and content from several other social
networking sites, including Flickr, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram.
In June 2013, Facebook announced that it would be streamlining its advertising

product portfolio following feedback from marketers. The move will see
Facebook reduce the number of advertising units that it has from 27 to fewer
than half of that, and the company will map advertising products to the specific
business objectives of marketers, e.g. in-store sales, online conversions, apps,
installs, etc. As part of the changes, Facebook also announced that it would be
removing the Questions product, as well as its online Offer product. The same
month saw the social network introduce clickable hashtags on the site for the
first time, which will allow users to add context to a post or indicate that it is
part of a larger discussion. Users will also be able to search for a specific hashtag
from the search bar; click on hashtags that originate on other services, such as
Instagram; and compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search
results.
In July 2013, the social network began to roll out Embedded Posts across the
site, as well as additional enhancements including an improved mobile
experience and in-line video playback. Embedded Posts allow users to add
public posts from Facebook to their blog or website and can include content
such as pictures, videos, hashtags and other content. People can also like and
share posts directly from the embedded data.
In January 2014, Facebook announced the launch of a new product, named

Trending, which is designed to help users locate relevant conversations and
improve the quality of content being searched for. The new product will also
provide users with a list of topics currently ‘trending’ on the site, according to
personalised preference. The same month saw the company announce the
launch of Facebook Paper, a new app which helps users to explore and share
stories from their friend group. Paper comprises stories and themed sections,
allowing users to follow conversations based around their specific interests.
The tool is also fully customisable and enables users to choose from a dozen
sections regarding various themes and topics, such as photography, sports,
food, science and design.

In February 2014, the company revealed that it had acquired popular mobile
messaging app WhatsApp for a total consideration of approximately $16bn.
Over 450 million people across the world are currently thought to use
WhatsApp every month, around 70% of whom use the service every day. The
acquisition is expected to help accelerate the company’s growth and user
engagement across both platforms. The following month saw Facebook
further diversify its activities through the acquisition of virtual reality
technology startup Oculus Rift, which it purchased for a consideration of $2bn.
The acquisition will see Facebook enter the virtual reality technology market
for the first time, with the company also announcing future plans to extend
Oculus’ existing position in the gaming world to new vertical markets,
including communications, media and entertainment, education, and others.
Following the acquisition, Oculus is expected to retain its headquarters in
Irvine, California, and will continue to develop the Oculus Rift virtual reality
platform.
In April 2014, Facebook announced the launch of a new optional feature called
Nearby Friends, which allows users to see which of their friends are nearby or
on the go. The new feature will be available on Android and iPhone in the US
initially, before being rolled out to other territories in the coming months.
During the same month the company introduced a new newswire service to
the social network platform called FB Newswire, which is designed to help
journalists and newsrooms find, share and embed newsworthy content from
Facebook into their own stories. The newswire will be powered by leading
social content discovery and verification newsroom service, Storyful — it will
provide aggregated newsworthy content to journalists across the world,
including photos, videos and status updates from users on the frontlines of
major global events.
Over the past year, Facebook has also continued to update and upgrade its
photo-sharing platform Instagram, which it first acquired back in April 2012.
In June, it was announced that Video had been added on Instagram, allowing
users to upload 15-second clips to the site through the Instagram camera
option. The following month saw the launch of Web Embeds on the Instagram
site, which enables users to embed content from Instagram and publish onto
other platforms, such as blogs, websites or articles. In December 2013,
Instagram further expanded its service with new communications tool
Instagram Direct, which allows users to send photos or videos to specific
contacts directly.
In May 2014, Facebook announced the launch of its new advertising network,
which has been dubbed the Audience Network. The new product will allow
Facebook to begin serving advertisements to third-party mobile apps, and will
utilise the site’s vast reservoir of user-generated data in order to ensure
accurate and direct targeting. At the launch, Facebook claimed that the new
network would deliver better click-through rates than its rivals, because it was
more able to provide ‘relevant and interesting’ material to the public. The
move sees Facebook enter an extremely competitive market, in which Google’s
AdMob and Apple’s iAds platforms dominate and compete to provide the
advertisements shown on tablets and mobile phones. It also follows similar
moves by Twitter, which acquired the mobile advertising exchange MoPub last
year.

GOOGLE INC
Company Structure
Google was originally established in 1998 by founders Larry Page and Sergey
Brin, who met at Stanford University back in 1995. By 1996, the pair had built
a search engine which they initially called BackRub, which used links to
determine the importance of individual web pages. This service later became
Google — a play on the word ‘googol’, the mathematical term for a 1 followed
by 100 zeros.
In 2000, the company introduced its first advertising product, Google AdWords
— a self-service programme for creating online advertising campaigns. Since
then, the search giant has continued to develop its advertising product
portfolio to include display, mobile and video advertisements, as well as simple
text advertisements. The company’s first e-mail service, Gmail, was later
launched in 2004. During the same year, Google held its first IPO, which raised
$1.67bn and gave the company a market capitalisation of $23bn. During the
rest of the decade, Google continued to diversify and expand its service,
launching Google Maps and Google Earth in 2005, before going on to launch
its own open source net browser Google Chrome in 2008.
Goggle owns and operates a number of social networking sites including

Google+ and YouTube, which it acquired in 2006; as well as Orkut, which was
launched by the technology firm back in 2004 and has a significant following
in India and Brazil. Over the past decade Google has experimented with a
number of social media projects, including mobile geo-location service
Dodgeball, which the company acquired in 2005 before closing it down in 2009;
micro-blogging network Jaiku, which also closed in 2009; Google Wave, which
combined elements of e-mail, instant messaging, photo-sharing services and
groupware, and was discontinued in 2012; and Google Buzz, which formed
part of Gmail and has since become part of the Google+ service.
Despite the failure of these enterprises, Google’s current social networking

offering, Google+, has continued to gain traction since first being established
back in 2011. An announcement by the company in October 2013 revealed that
Google+ had seen a 58% rise in users in recent months, with the service now
estimated to have around 300 million monthly active users — up from 190
million in May 2013. Google’s video-sharing site, YouTube, which it acquired
from the latter’s co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen in 2006, has also
continued to perform well, with over 1 billion unique users visiting the site
each month. The site also has a significant global reach, with localised YouTube
sites provided in 73 countries and across 61 different languages. In addition,
the site has observed significant increases in revenue over the past year, with
estimates from eMarketer revealing that the Google-owned service had
reached $5.6bn in terms of gross revenue during 2013, up by 51% from the
previous year and equating to 11% of Google’s total advertising revenues.

Profitability
In the year ending 31st December 2013, Google Inc posted total revenue of
$55.55bn, with 67.4% accounted for by Google-owned websites such as Google
and YouTube; 23.6% accounted for by Google Network Members’ websites;
and 9% represented by other revenues. Overall, the search company observed
a 20.6% rise in total revenue between 2012 and 2013, with figures rising from
$46.04bn to $55.55bn over the 2-year period.
Table 9.2: Financial Results for Google Inc ($m),

2011 2012 2013
Google websites 26,145 31,221 37,453

Google Network Members’
websites 10,386 12,465 13,125
Other revenues 1,374 2,353 4,972
Total revenue 37,905 46,039 55,550

Source: Google Inc

In February 2013, Google announced that it had acquired online retail sales
tracker Channel Intelligence. The deal, worth $125m, is expected to further
expand and enhance Google’s e-commerce business. The service is now offered
as part of Google’s advertising package and is designed to help e-commerce
businesses optimise their product data feeds and manage their product
campaigns in order to boost their shopping engine rankings. In June of the
same year, Google revealed that it had purchased social mapping location data
startup Waze, for a rumoured consideration of around $1bn. The acquisition
is expected to boost Google’s existing Maps service and will enhance the
company’s search capabilities.
In September 2013, Google unveiled its new display advertising creation

solution, Ready Creatives, which comprises two tools called Ready Image Ads
and Ready Ad Gallery. The new service enables advertisers to add their own
uniform resource locators (URLs) and automatically constructs display
advertisements using the images from specified websites. The creation can
then be customised by users by adjusting text, font, colour, images, headlines
and URLs, etc.

In October 2013, Google announced that it had acquired gesture recognition

firm Flutter for an undisclosed sum. Flutter has developed a number of apps
for Mac OS X and Windows which use a webcam to detect hand gestures and
let users control apps such as Spotify, Netflix and iTunes without having to use
a mouse.
In January 2014, Google announced the launch of AdSense Direct, a new tool
for publishers that want to sell advertisements directly. The new tool will
directly compete with alternative services such as iSocket and BuySellAds,
which are designed to make it easier for smaller publishers to sell advertising
directly. The move marks Google’s first foray into this particular area of
advertising. During the same month, the search engine firm revealed that it
had purchased London-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm, DeepMind, for a
rumoured consideration of $650m (£400m). The acquisition marks one of the
company’s largest European acquisitions to date and follows a number of AI
acquisitions by Google, such as smart fire alarm company Nest, which it
purchased earlier in January 2014. Google also acquired a string of robotics
firms in 2013, with eight out of its past 12 acquisitions involved in robotics
technologies, including Japanese firm Schaft Inc and military robotics firm
Boston Dynamics. These acquisitions have since been combined to form
Google’s new robotics division, called Google X — a semi-secret facility run by
the company that is dedicated to developing major technical advancements.
January also saw the company enter into a deal to sell off its Motorola Mobility
smartphone business to Lenovo. According to Google, the purchase price for
the deal was approximately $2.91bn. Following the deal, Google will maintain
ownership of the vast majority of the Motorola Mobility patent portfolio,
including current patent applications and invention disclosures. However, as
part of its ongoing relationship with Google, Lenovo will also receive a licence
to the search giant’s vast portfolio of patents and other intellectual property,
as well as an additional 2,000 patent assets, and the Motorola Mobility brand
and trademark portfolio.
The following month saw the company further expand its advertising offering
through the launch of a new Global Exchange — an advertising exchange
designed in conjunction with Time Inc, which provides marketers with access
to the latter’s global digital footprint of 116 million. With the inclusion of IPC
Media (Time Inc’s UK publishing business), the company will, for the first time,
merge its worldwide digital properties into a single global exchange that will
launch on Google’s programmatic platform, powered by the DoubleClick Ad
Exchange.
In March 2014, it was announced that Google had purchased gaming company
Green Throttle, which manufactures an Android-based gaming system and
controller. The acquisition has led to growing speculation that the search
engine giant could be gearing up to develop its own console or set-top box.
Two of the three founders of Green Throttle Gaming — Matt Crowley and Karl
Townsend — have joined the search engine as part of the deal as well.

Since 2012, Google’s technological advancement division Google X has

continued to invest and develop the new wearable computer technology,
Google Glass, which features an optical head-mounted display (OHMD),
allowing users to access the Internet, e-mail and text messages completely
hands free. Wearers are able to interact with the technology via language voice
commands. However, although Google Glass went on sale for a limited period
of time only in the US in early 2014 as part of Google’s product testing efforts,
the product has yet to be launched on the general marketplace and no official
launch date has been announced.
LINKEDIN CORP
Company Structure
LinkedIn was first founded in 2003 by Reid Hoffman and several founding team
members from PayPal and socialnet.com as a business-orientated social
networking site designed for professionals. The company has also continued
to diversify its business model since being established, with revenue generated
from a range of services including talent solutions, marketing solutions and
premium subscriptions. Other specific services offered by LinkedIn include
online professional networking, job search, people search, company search,
address book, professional identity and group collaboration. In 2010, the
company opened its first international headquarters in Dublin in the Republic
of Ireland and announced its first major acquisition, Mspoke, a small startup
that aimed to make content more relevant through recommendation
technology. The following year saw the company file for an IPO, with stocks
originally priced at $45 per share, equating to an overall market valuation of
approximately $4.3bn; more recent estimations have put the company’s
current value at around $24bn (as of July 2013).
LinkedIn is currently headquartered in Mountain View in California, with other

US offices including locations in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Omaha and
San Francisco. The company also operates 21 international offices around the
world. The professional networking site is currently available in 22 languages
and the company employs more than 5,000 employees across 27 cities located
around the world. It is now thought to be the world’s largest professional social
network, with over 200 million members in over 200 countries and territories,
with 67% of its member base now thought to be located outside of the US. In
addition, the site’s membership includes executives from all 2013 Fortune 500
companies, and its corporate talent solutions are utilised by 90 of the Fortune
100 firms. According to LinkedIn, its members carried out over 5.7 billion
professionally-orientated searches on the platform during 2012; and over 3
million companies now have their own Company Pages on the professional
network.
Profitability
For the year ending 31st December 2013, LinkedIn Corp registered a turnover
of $1.53bn, up by 57.4% from $972m in the previous year. Net income also
increased over the 2-year period, rising by 22.7% from $22m to $27m.

Table 9.3: Financial Results for LinkedIn Corp ($m),

2011 2012 2013
Revenue ($m) 522 972 1,530

Net income ($m) 12 22 27

Source: LinkedIn Corp

In April 2013, LinkedIn announced that it had acquired news and mobile
content distribution platform Pulse in a deal worth a rumoured $90m. At the
time of purchase, Pulse had over 30 million users on the iOS and Android
platforms and was distributed in more than 190 countries. The acquisition was
undertaken to strengthen LinkedIn’s multi-platform content offering and
deliver better insights to members of the professional social network. July of
the same year saw the company expand its global operations further with the
opening of a new office in São Paulo, a year and a half after the social network
established a local presence in Brazil. Currently, there are around 15 million
people utilising LinkedIn in Brazil, positioning it as the third-largest market for
LinkedIn, in terms of membership, behind the US and India.
In February 2014, LinkedIn revealed that it had undertaken a deal to purchase

data insights and hiring solutions firm, Bright, for a consideration of
approximately $120m. The new acquisition is expected to further enhance the
professional network’s data insights and professional networking capabilities.
TWITTER INC
Company Structure
Twitter was first established as an internal micro-blogging service by the board
members of podcasting company Odeo, which included Jack Dorsey, Evan
Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass, in 2006. It was then rolled out as a full
service to the general public later that same year. The founders of the service
went on to acquire both Odeo and Twitter after forming Obvious Corporation
in October 2006, following which Twitter was spun-off as a separate company
in April 2007. The now popular social media tagging character — the hashtag
(#) — was first introduced on Twitter in August 2007, and allowed messages
to be grouped into conversations on the site according to topic.

During 2010, Twitter began to monetise the micro-blogging platform through

the launch of various advertising products, including Promoted Tweets,
Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts. In May 2011, the company further
expanded its service through the acquisition of TweetDeck, a dashboard which
allowed brands, publishers and marketers to monitor interactions on the site
in real-time. 2012 saw the launch of Twitter’s self-service advertising platform
for small businesses, which was launched in partnership with American Express.
More recently, in 2013, Twitter held an IPO, opening its shares at $26 and
closing at $44.90, giving the company a valuation of approximately $31bn and
raising $2.1bn in funding, which is expected to be dedicated towards the
company’s international expansion activities, operating costs and deal making
in the future.
Twitter also owns and operates the short-form video service Vine, which was
first launched in 2013, and currently has around 40 million users worldwide.
Altogether, Twitter has approximately 241 million monthly active users, with
500 million Tweets sent every day. The social networking platform is primarily
mobile, with 76% of its active users accessing the site through a mobile device,
and supports more than 35 languages. The company is headquartered in San
Francisco in California and currently employs around 2,700 people in offices
across the world. It has ten offices based in the US in total, as well as 14 offices
located internationally.
Profitability
In the year ending 31st December 2013, Twitter Inc reported revenues of
$664.9m, double the $316.9m registered in the previous year. However, the
company also posted a net loss of $645.3m in 2013, down from a loss of $79.4m
in the previous year. According to the company’s quarterly financial results
referring to the 3-month period ending 31st March 2014, Q1 revenue was up
by 119% year-over-year to $250m, although a net loss of $132m was also
registered.
Table 9.4: Financial Results or Twitter Inc ($m),

Years Ending December 2011-2013
2011 2012 2013
Revenue ($m) 106.3 316.9 664.9

Net income ($m) -128.3 -79.4 -645.3

% change year-on-year - † †
Source: Twitter Inc


In January 2013, Twitter announced the launch of mobile short-form video
service Vine, which allows users to share short looping video clips (lasting 6
seconds or less). Vine is currently available on the iPhone and iPod touch and
is free to download as an app from Apple’s App Store. The same year saw the
company enter its first IPO, with shares in the micro-blogging site closing the
day at $44.90 a share, up by 73% from the initial offering of $26 per share,
giving the company a market valuation of approximately $31bn. More
recently, however, it has been reported that share prices have fallen slightly,
with stock dropping nearly 11% after-hours in April 2014 — the lowest levels
seen since Twitter became public in November — and down significantly from
the spike of $74.73 registered in December 2013. It is thought that the fall in
stock is down to a slowdown in user growth for the micro-blogging site, which
has continued to post net profit losses in recent years.
In February 2013, the micro-blogging site revealed that it had launched an

advertising API that will allow brands and advertisers to run campaigns
through the company’s API partners, rather than having to purchase them
through Twitter directly. It is thought that the development and launch of an
API by Twitter will create the opportunity for more sophisticated advertising
targeting and tools. Initial partners using the program included Adobe,
Hootsuite, Salesforce, SHIFT and TBG Digital.
In October 2013, Twitter announced the launch of Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings,

a joint venture that has been setup in conjunction with global information and
measurement company Nielsen. The new service has been designed to measure
the total activity and reach of television-related conversations on Twitter and
will monitor ‘authors’ (i.e. the number of people tweeting about television
programmes), as well as the larger audience viewing such Tweets. The service
has been developed in response to the growing number of Twitter users
utilising the site to talk about live television programming; it will provide
television networks, advertisers and agencies with greater insight into the true
reach and influence of television-related activity on the micro-blogging
platform.

More recently, in April 2014, Twitter announced that it had acquired Gnip, a
leading provider of social data and a long-standing Twitter partner. In the past,
Gnip has played a crucial role in collecting and measuring Twitter’s public data
and delivering essential Tweets to the site’s partners. Following the acquisition,
Twitter is expected to continue to develop the services offered by Gnip to
provide more sophisticated data sets and improved data enrichments. Twitter
is expected to continue to make its data available to Gnip’s growing customer
base, and will work in conjunction with the company’s existing team to extend
its data platform in the future. The same month saw the micro-blogging
platform unveil its new mobile advertising network, just weeks after the
rumoured launch of a similar service by social network giant Facebook. The
launch follows Twitters recent acquisition of advertising management service
MoPub, which it acquired in October 2013 in a deal worth $350m. Since then,
Twitter has continued to develop the advertising platform, which is now called
the MoPub Marketplace. The new mobile advertising network from Twitter
will enable marketers to display the same advertisements as a Promoted Tweet
on the social network site to people that do not use Twitter, on over 1,000
other apps available in the new Twitter publishing network. According to a
blog post published by Twitter at the time of the launch, the new advertising
network will give advertisers ‘unparalleled scale’ across mobile, with the
MoPub Marketplace estimated to reach over 1 billion unique devices, handling
more than 130 billion advertisements requests inside Android and iOS apps
every month, making it one of the largest mobile advertisment exchanges in
the world.
April also saw Twitter announce the debut of a number of new advertising
products, which are due to be released by the company over the next 6 months.
Altogether, Twitter is expected to introduce 15 types of new advertising
products and improved ways to target consumers, according to sources within
the company. The new launches are thought to have been developed with
mobile gaming and e-commerce companies in mind, with the current suite of
‘Promoted’ advertising products offered by Twitter generally not resonating
well with such brands as of yet. The micro-blogging site is already rumoured
to be beta-testing a mobile-app-install advertisement unit to rival similar
products offered by Facebook. It is thought that the app-install advertisement
unit will be delivered using Twitter’s ‘card’ technology — an expandable Tweet
that enables advertisers to include a button that lets users perform a certain
action, e.g. downloading apps directly from app stores, such as those offered
by Apple and Google. Twitter is also thought to be experimenting with other
uses of the ‘card’ technology, such as a ‘click-to-call’ button, which would allow
users to telephone businesses directly from the Twitter website. In addition,
rumours have circulated that the social networking platform has been in talks
with payments processor Stripe Inc to help users to purchase goods directly
through Twitter.
Twitter has also invested heavily in developing its other advertising services by
improving methods of targeting users based on its vast data store. In December
2013, Twitter revealed that it had signed expanded partnerships with large
third-party data marketers, such as Datalogix Inc and Acxiom Corp, which will
help advertisers to more effectively target users based on their consumer
behaviour outside of their activities on Twitter.

Social Media Marketing The Future
10. The Future
OVERVIEW
The outlook for social media paints a mixed picture, with forecasts from both
eMarketer and Forrester Research suggesting relatively strong growth in
global usage and advertising revenue over the next few years, despite some
analysts’ recent predictions that the technology market could be on the brink
of another collapse — similar to the dotcom bubble burst of 1999. According
to estimates published by Forrester Research, total social media advertising
expenditure in the EU is expected to continue to rise over the next 5 years,
boosted by increased mobile internet connectivity and a rise in the uptake of
mobile devices, as well continued consolidation within the social media
landscape in Europe and growth in the number of Western Europeans utilising
social networks. Forrester predicts social media marketing (SMM) expenditure
in Europe will observe a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.6%
between 2012 and 2017, with total expenditure on such activities in the region
expected to reach €3.2bn by 2017. An improved economic outlook across
Europe, particularly in Western countries such as the UK, France and Germany,
should also help to boost marketing budgets across the EU; these in turn will
serve to boost investment in SMM activities.
Further growth in SMM should be attainable in Europe given that social media
adoption has not yet reached saturation levels, with around 64.3% of the
online population currently thought to be using social networking sites — a
figure that Forrester expects to grow to 70% by 2017. However, the research
firm also warns that its predicted market growth could be under threat of new
European privacy legislation, which is expected to take effect from 2016
onwards and could result in total cuts of €880m being made to SMM budgets
in the future. In recent years, consumers have become increasingly aware of
the data about them being held by social networks and other online sites, a
situation that has worsened following the reports leaked by ex-National
Security Agency (NSA) computer contractor Edward Snowden during 2013
which shined a light on the mass online spying of public citizens by both the
UK and US governments. Continued problems surrounding the accuracy of
proving return on investment (ROI) of social media campaigns by agencies may
also serve to hamper growth in the future; as a result, marketers will need to
develop new methods and metrics in order to more efficiently define and
measure the success of such activities.

FORECAST GROWTH
According to figures compiled by eMarketer in December 2013, the number of
social network users in the UK is expected to continue to increase year-on-year
between 2013 and 2017, although growth is likely to slow slightly during the
5-year period. Overall, the number of social networking users in the UK is
forecast to rise by 14.3% between 2013 and 2017 to reach 36.7 million. This
growth in domestic social network membership should help to drive
expenditure on SMM, with advertisers keen to tap into the ever-widening
consumer base present on social networking sites. Social media still holds
significant potential for future growth, with the Internet Advertising Bureau
(IAB) estimating that social media advertising will represent just 8% of total
digital adspend as of the first half of 2013 (H1 2013).
Table 10.1: Forecast Number of UK Social Network Users

(millions of users), 2013-2017
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Number of social network

users 32.1 33.9 35.0 36.0 36.7
Source: eMarketer
Figure 10.1: Forecast Number of UK Social Network Users

(millions of users), 2013-2017
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Source: eMarketer/Key Note

Spending on digital advertising is expected to continue to observe sharp

growth over the next 5 years, with Key Note projecting digital adspend will
rise by 51% between 2014 and 2018 to reach £10.43bn — equating to a 42.8%
share of total UK advertising expenditure. The projected growth in digital
advertising should in turn serve to boost SMM expenditure, with eMarketer
predicting the digital revenues of the top three social network operators in the
UK — Google, Facebook and Twitter — will continue to observe double-digit
and, in the case of the latter, triple-digit growth up to 2015. Mobile is likely to
represent a key driver across SMM in the future, with uptake of mobile devices
in the UK expected to continue to increase significantly over the next few years.
Continued investment and development in multi-device advertising platforms
by the leading social networks should also help to drive social media adspend
in the future, with both Twitter and Facebook expected to significantly benefit
from the recent launch of new mobile advertising networks. The introduction
of advertising products across newer social networking sites — for example
Pinterest, Instagram and Google+ all launching a range of paid-for advertising
services in recent years — should also help to drive spending on SMM activities
over the next few years, particularly if such sites’ user bases continue to grow.
According to figures compiled by eMarketer, Google — which owns a number

of social media properties including YouTube and Google+ — is expected to
continue to represent the leading digital channel in terms of online adspend
and will represent over two-fifths (44%) of total digital advertising
expenditure come 2015. Facebook, meanwhile, is forecast to see digital
advertising revenue rise to £516m by 2015, equating to a 6.6% share of total
digital adspend; micro-blogging site Twitter is predicted to observe the
strongest growth out of the three leading platforms, with its advertising
revenue forecast to rise by 120.5% in 2014, before increasing once again in
2015 by 76.3% to reach £171m — equating to a 2.2% share of total digital
adspend.
Table 10.2: Forecast UK Digital Advertising Revenues at Google,

Facebook and Twitter (£m and %), 2011-2015
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Google 1,891 2,231 2,637 3,033 3,427

% of total digital adspend 39.3 41.2 42.0 42.8 44.0
Facebook 181 223 333 429 516

% of total digital adspend 3.8 4.1 5.3 6.1 6.6
Table continues...

Table 10.2: Forecast UK Digital Advertising Revenues at Google,

Facebook and Twitter (£m and %), 2011-2015
...table continued
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Twitter 1 14 44 97 171
% change year-on-year - 1,300.0 214.3 120.5 76.3
% of total digital adspend neg. 0.3 0.7 1.4 2.2
Total 4,809 5,416 6,273 7,088 7,797

neg. — negligible
Note: totals may not sum due to rounding.
Source: eMarketer
FUTURE TRENDS
Mobile Technology
Mobile will represent one of the key growth areas within SMM over the next
few years, with recent data produced by the IAB revealing that social media
advertising expenditure on mobile had increased to £221.8m in 2013. As a
result, it is estimated that mobile now accounts for over a third (35%) of total
digital social media advertising. The continued uptake of ‘connected’ mobile
devices, such as smartphones and tablets, along with further roll outs of
fourth-generation (4G) mobile standards across the UK, is expected to help
drive mobile social media spending over the next few years. Consequently,
platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn are all investing
heavily in developing and improving their mobile advertising products and
services in anticipation of heightened demand from advertisers in the future.
Facebook, for example, has continued to develop its mobile services through
the acquisition of image-centric social network Instagram and mobile
messaging application (app) WhatsApp; Twitter has continued to remain a
mobile-focused channel, with approximately 76% of the micro-blogging
platform’s active users accessing the site via mobile devices.

New product development (NPD) in areas such as wearable tech (e.g.

smartwatches and virtual reality headsets) could also constitute new areas of
growth within the wider mobile market and, if successful, such devices could
offer significant opportunities for social media marketers, although this trend
is likely to become more pronounced in the longer term. The long-awaited
Google Glass, announced as a concept by Google in 2012, has been at the
forefront of this movement, although the project is still in development stages
with a wider consumer launch expected to be set for late 2014. Samsung was
actually the first of the technology giants to enter the new ‘wearable’ mobile
device market with the Galaxy Gear Smartwatch, which was launched in 2013
and provides all the functionalities of a smartphone, without consumers having
to hold anything. A similar device was launched by Sony during the same year,
called the SmartWatch, which was followed closely by the Sony Smartband
fitness tracker (released in March 2014). More recently, Facebook announced
that it had acquired virtual reality headset manufacturer Oculus Rift for $2bn
in March 2014, which provides users with a totally immersive
computer-generated experience, reflecting the company’s continued efforts
towards diversification.
New Competitors to Enter The Market

While social networking giant Facebook’s lead position within the social media
sphere is unlikely to be challenged over the next few years, a number of new
and recent entries to the market are expected to shake things up slightly.
Image-centric sites Instagram and Pinterest, for example, have already begun
to attract attention, with the former representing the fastest-growing app
during 2013 while Pinterest became the fastest-growing content-sharing
platform on the Web during 2013, ahead of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, Google’s most recent social network platform, Google+, has
continued to observe growth, with recent statistics published by Google in
October 2013 revealing that its monthly active users had increased by 58%
from 190 million in May to 300 million — putting it just ahead of
micro-blogging site Twitter. Other new entries to the social media arena have
included:
• We Heart It — an image-based network aimed mainly at younger users aged

24 and under. Although the site currently has a relatively small membership
of around 25 million monthly active users, it has a strong following among
the younger generations, with 80% of its user base aged 24 and under,
according to an article published by Marketing Magazine in January 2014.
We Heart It also recently secured $800m in funding from investors and has
been quick to develop its advertising services, including a new partnering
programme which allows established brands to sign up for verified accounts
on the site.

• Branch and Potluck — originally created by the people behind Twitter, both
platforms were recently acquired by Facebook following its purchase of
holding company Branch Media for $15m in January 2014. Although both
Branch, a hosting and publishing platform dedicated to invite-only
conversations, and Potluck, a mobile app specialising in link-sharing, are
expected to continue to exist as separate entities following the Facebook
deal, it is thought that Branch Media will be integrated into the company to
form a new group called Conversations, which is intended to help people
connect with others on interest-based topics.
• Jelly — a social photo-sharing question-and-answer (Q&A)-style app, Jelly

was launched in January 2014 by Jelly Industries, a company set up in 2012
by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone. The app has been developed using backing
from a number of high-profile investors including Al Gore and Bono. The app
has been fully integrated with Facebook and Twitter so far, allowing friends
and followers to reply to questions posted by users on the site.
The growing profiles of these new social networking sites has led many
advertisers to look beyond existing leaders within the field, with many new
platforms offering opportunities to target campaigns at a more specific online
audience; for example, Pinterest and We Heart It, both of which have a strong
female user base. This trend is only expected to continue to gain traction over
the coming years, particularly as SMM budgets grow. The development of new
and innovative advertising products and platforms by such sites should also
help to generate interest from marketers seeking to invest in social media
advertising activities.
LinkedIn to Become a Major Player in B2B Services

LinkedIn is set to become one of the major players within the
business-to-business (B2B) services industry, not only in terms of B2B marketing
but also across various other sectors, such as online recruitment and talent
management. According to an article published by Forbes magazine in March
2014, LinkedIn’s corporate customer base has grown from 900 in 2008 to
approximately 24,444 in 2013, resulting in a CAGR of 119% for its talent
solutions revenue, which stood at a little over $1.5bn last year. However, with
the global recruitment solutions market estimated to be worth around $27m,
there is significant opportunity for the professional social networking site to
continue to grow within this particular area in the future.

The recent launch of the site’s Influencers programme, which has continued to
be enhanced since 2012, is also expected to help position the site as the leading
content creation and curation platform for professionals. The Influencer
blogging site was originally launched in 2012, with its prime focus revolving
around having industry thought leaders share their expertise. However, in
early 2014, LinkedIn announced that the publishing platform had been
extended to regular users as well, thus allowing any original content posted
by professional members to be shared across the site. According to a LinkedIn
spokesperson at the time of the roll out, the average Influencer post drives
more than 31,000 views and receives over 250 likes and 80 comments, with key
LinkedIn Influencers currently including entrepreneur Richard Branson, Prime
Minister (PM) David Cameron and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. More recently,
the professional networking site announced the launch of Showcase Pages —
an extension of Company Pages — which allows brands to develop content
marketing strategies on the platform. Showcase will enable companies to
create dedicated pages for their range of brands, businesses and initiatives,
and has been developed to instigate greater interaction with brands and
elements of the company.
Currently, the site has around 3 million Company Pages, suggesting that its
marketing potential remains vast. In addition, LinkedIn’s marketing solutions
division now accounts for around a quarter of revenue, while recruitment
represents over half and subscriptions make up about a fifth. According to Josh
Graff, Head of LinkedIn Marketing Solutions in Europe, the continued
development of the site’s professional services reflects that it is finally making
an impact in the B2B services market:
“The platform has changed. People used to think of it just as a

place to secure a new job. But six times more impressions flow
from people seeking information about companies than those
specifically looking for a job.”
Several brands, such as Vodafone and Hewlett Packard (HP) have already
begun to use the products and services offered by LinkedIn to support B2B
marketing initiatives. For example, HP uses the site to target small businesses
through its Business Answers pages where firms can discuss areas of interest
such as tax, while Vodafone’s business division uses LinkedIn to promote its
Your Better Business website, which provides information and advice to
business people. As LinkedIn continues to grow and develop both its user base
and its portfolio of professional and marketing services, so will the potential
advantages offered by the site to B2B marketers increase. Although leading
social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter will remain important in
terms of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, it is likely that LinkedIn will
fast become the first port of call for those seeking to promote their products
and services across the business community.

Big Data
The vast number of people now interacting and sharing content via social
networks means that there is an overwhelming amount of user-centric data
being stored by such channels which could hold huge potential for marketers
seeking to access information on audiences in real-time; for example, browsing
behaviour, social media interactions, mobile device usage, geo-location,
click-through rates, online purchasing patterns, etc. According to an article
published by Business Insider in March 2014, Facebook now ingests
approximately 500 times more data each day than the New York Stock
Exchange (NYSE), while Twitter stores at least 12 times more data. The
generation and analysis of such information by marketers in recent years has
led to the coinage of a new buzzword in the industry — ‘big data’.
However, despite many industry insiders continuing to tout the importance of

big data in more effectively targeting advertising and improving customer
engagement online, a large number of marketers are still unsure on how best
to dismantle and organise such vast amounts of data into workable models. As
such, the next few years are likely to see a huge amount of money being
invested into developing analytical models that can make sense of big data, as
advertisers continue to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their online
campaigns, particularly through social media. Utilising and analysing big data
is also expected to help improve the ability to assess the ROI delivered by online
campaigns — something that has become increasingly important to agencies
specialising in social media as they attempt to prove to clients the benefits of
advertising via such channels.
A number of leading social networks have already begun to develop more

sophisticated tools to help compile and analyse particular sets of data
generated by their platforms to assist marketers seeking to advertise on their
site. Facebook, for example, began rolling out an analytics tool, Graph Search,
in the UK in November 2013. The feature combines the big data acquired from
its 1.23 billion users with external data into a search engine to provider
user-specific search results which show data points (e.g. status updates, likes,
photos, check-ins and comments) regarding a particular topic or brand. The
tool could open up a slew of new opportunities for marketers such as
monitoring Facebook posts regarding particular campaigns, researching
product usage, identifying content opportunities, and tracking brand
mentions and interactions. Facebook has also continued to improve the way
in which it utilises big data within targeted advertising campaigns — a move
which is already resulting in big payoffs for the site. Indeed, according to a
recent article published by the Wall Street Journal in February 2014, a surge in
advertising revenue posted by Facebook for Q4 2013 — which saw overall
revenue rise by 63% to $2.59bn, above the $2.33bn predicted by analysts —
was thought to reflect the huge increase in the amount of user data that the
company can now store and analyse. This comes after a recent article published
by CIO Journal in October 2013 revealed that Facebook was continuing to
experiment with technology that can record everything that users do on the
site, including how much time a users’ cursor hovers over a particular spot on
a page.

A number of social media sites have also begun to investigate the possibilities
of big data in providing more accurate and effective targeted solutions to
advertisers using such platforms. For example, in 2013, Twitter announced that
it had entered into a partnership with Datalogix to help cross reference brand
interactions on the site with buying behaviour. This information is then
aggregated and offered to advertisers to how the efficacy of promotions on
the site, such as Promoted Tweets, for example. LinkedIn also offers a range of
analytics through its online tool LinkedIn Maps, which can be used to map
users’ professional networks to help better understand the relationships
between connections on the site. The growing interest in big data among
advertisers has also seen a number of software companies develop new tools
and strategies aimed at breaking down such data and deriving knowledge
from it; with vendors such as Oracle, SAS and IBM all offering a suite of big
data solutions and services.
Despite this, big data has remained a relatively new phenomenon for the
majority of advertisers, with many industry insiders still attempting to get to
grips with the sheer level of data available to them. A number of challenges
still remain for both advertisers and big data providers, such as social networks,
regarding the utilisation of such vast amounts of user-generated information,
particularly in regard to growing concerns over online user privacy as well as
the continued tightening of digital privacy regulations in Europe, which could
see a recently introduced ‘right to be forgotten’ being enforced across the EU
for the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, the vast proportion of the world’s
population now using and interacting across social networks means that the
data potentials being offered to marketers by such sites is becoming harder to
ignore, as are the huge possibilities that could be provided by successfully
harnessing such data to create more effective, targeted social media
campaigns.

Social Media Marketing Further Sources
11. Further Sources
Associations
Advertising Association Direct Marketing Association
http://www.adassoc.org.uk http://www.dma.org.uk
Chartered Institute of Marketing Internet Advertising Bureau

http://www.cim.co.uk http://www.iabuk.ne
Chartered Institute of Public Relations

http://www.cipr.co.uk
Publications
• Adults Media Use and Attitudes Forbes
Report, 2013 http://www.forbes.com
• Communications Market Report
2013 The Guardian
Ofcom http://www.theguardian.com
http://www.ofcom.org.uk
Huffington Post
• Bellwether Report Q4 2013 http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Institute of Practitioners in
Advertising
• In the Social Moment: Real-Time
http://www.ipa.co.uk Social Engagement, Benchmarking
Brands in Social Media 2014
Markit Economics Immediate Future
http://www.markiteconomics.com http://immediatefuture.co.uk
Business Insider • Latin America Social Media

http://www.businessinsider.com Check-Up 2013
Burson-Marsteller
• CIO Journal http://www.burson-marsteller.com
Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/public/page/ • Marketing Budgets Report 2014
cio-journal.html eConsultancy
https://econsultancy.com
The Drum
http://www.thedrum.com The Marketer
http://www.themarketer.co.uk

Marketing Week • State of the Media: The Social Media

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk Report 2012
Nielsen
Mobilecommercedaily.com http://www.nielsen.com
http://
www.mobilecommercedaily.com • The State of Social Marketing 2014
Socialbakers
• Social Brands 2013 http://www.socialbakers.com
Headstream
http://www.headstream.com • UK Digital Future in Focus 2013
• UK Digital Market Overview,
• Q4 2013 Social Media Intelligence February 2014
Report comScore
Adobe http://www.comscore.com
http://www.adobe.com
Wall Street Journal
• Social Media Scorecard, September http://online.wsj.com
2013
Direct Marketing Association • Warc Expenditure Report 2013
http://dma.org.uk Advertising Association
http://www.adassoc.org.uk
• Social Media Update 2013 Warc
Pew Research Center http://www.warc.com
http://www.pewresearch.org
General Sources
NEMS Market Research Nielsen
http://www.nemsmr.co.uk http://www.nielsen.com
Government Publications
National Statistics
http://www.statistics.gov.uk
• ICT Activity of UK Business, 2013
• Internet Access — Households and
Individuals 2013

Other Sources
Addison Group Immediate Future
http://www.addison-group.net http://immediatefuture.co.uk
Alexa Inc Intellectual Property Office

http://www.alexa.com http://www.ipo.gov.uk
Anti-Counterfeiting Group JWT

http://www.a-cg.org http://www.jwt.com
Avanade LinkedIn
http://www.avanade.com https://www.linkedin.com
BrightRoll Magna Global

http://www.brightroll.co.uk http://www.magnaglobal.com
CBInsights Marketing Donut

http://www.cbinsights.com http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk
Disruptive Communications MarkMonitor

http:// https://www.markmonitor.com
disruptive-communications.com
NBC News
EMarketer http://www.nbcnews.com
http://www.emarketer.com
Omnicom Media Group
Eurostat http://
http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu www.omnicommediagroup.com
Facebook Pew Research Center

https://www.facebook.com http://www.pewresearch.org
Forrester Research Salesforce

http://www.forrester.com http://www.salesforce.com
GlobalWebIndex Socialbakers
https://www.globalwebindex.net http://www.socialbakers.com
Google Trading Standards Institute

https://www.google.com http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk
IDC US Census Bureau

https://www.idc.com https://www.census.gov

Warc We Are Social

http://www.warc.com http://wearesocial.net

Social Media Marketing Understanding Consumer Survey Data
Understanding Consumer Survey Data

TGI tables, produced by Kantar Media, are generally based on one of the following groups:
households — consisting of either one person living alone or a group of people, usually
members of one family, who live together and whose food and other household expenses are
managed as one unit; adults — aged 15 or over; housewives — a member of a private
household who is solely or mainly responsible for the household duties.
NEMS Market Research is often commissioned by Key Note to conduct exclusive consumer
surveys among a representative sample of adults aged 16 and over in Great Britain.
Number, Profile, Penetration

Tables used in Key Note reports may give figures for the Number, Profile, and/or Penetration.

Social Media Marketing Understanding Consumer Survey Data
Social Grade
This is normally based on the occupation of the Head of the Household, or if the Head of the
Household is retired, their former occupation. If this information is not available, social grade
is based on environmental factors such as type of dwelling, amenities in the home, presence of
domestic help, etc.
The following table broadly defines the six social grades used. The relationship between social
grade and net income of the Head of the Household is a complex one and readers should note
that income is not determinant of social grade.
Head of Household’s
Social Grade Social Status Occupation
A Upper middle class Higher managerial,
administrative or professional
B Middle class Intermediate managerial,
C1 Lower middle class Supervisory or clerical and
junior managerial,
C2 Skilled working class Skilled manual workers
D Working class Semi and unskilled workers
E Those at lowest levels of State pensioners or widows
subsistence (no other earner)
Standard Region
This is as defined by the Registrar-General.

Social Media Marketing Key Note Research
Key Note Research

Key Note is a leading supplier of market information, publishing an extensive range of
consumer, industrial, business-to-business and services titles. With over 30 years’ experience,
Key Note represents clear, concise, quality market information.
For all reports, Key Note undertakes various types of research:
Online searching is carried out by product code or free search method, and covers the period
from the last edition of the report to the current day.
Trade sources, such as trade associations, trade journals and specific company contacts, are
invaluable to the Key Note research process.
Secondary data are provided by Kantar Media (TGI) and Nielsen for consumer/demographic
information and advertising expenditure, respectively. In addition, various official publications
published by National Statistics, etc. are used for essential background data and market trends.
Interviews are undertaken by Key Note for various reports, either face-to-face or by telephone.
This provides qualitative data (‘industry comment’) to enhance the statistics in reports;
questionnaires may also be used.
Field research is commissioned for various consumer reports and market reviews, and is carried
out by NEMS Market Research.
Key Note estimates are derived from statistical analysis and trade research carried out by
experienced research analysts. Up-to-date figures are inserted where possible, although there
will be some instances where a realistic estimate cannot be made or external sources request
that we do not update their figures.
Key Note Editorial, 2014

Social Media Marketing The Key Note Range of Reports
The Key Note Range of Reports

Key Note publishes over 180 titles each year, across both the Key Note and Market Assessment
product ranges. The total range covers consumer, lifestyle, financial services and industrial
sectors.
Title Edition Published Title Edition Published
Key Note Current Reports C

C2DE Consumer 8 2014
A
Canned Foods 20 2014
ABC1 Consumer 8 2014
Car Dealers 2 2014
Access Control 13 2013
Care Homes 3 2014
Accountancy 17 2014
Carpets & Floorcoverings 18 2014
Activity Holidays 6 2014
Catering Equipment 15 2012
Advertising Agencies 6 2014
Catering Market 21 2009
Airlines 23 2013
Charity Funding 5 2013
Airports 16 2013
Chemical Industry 16 2014
All-Inclusive Holidays 2 2012
Childcare 7 2012
Alternative Healthcare 8 2013
Children’s Publishing 4 2012
Arts & Media Sponsorship 5 2014
Childrenswear 10 2013
Automatic Vending 27 2014
Chilled Foods 18 2014
Automotive Services 9 2014
China & Earthenware 30 2014
Autoparts 20 2012
Cigarettes & Tobacco 27 2013
B
Closed-Circuit Television 14 2013
B2B Marketing 3 2014
Clothing & Footwear Industry 13 2010
Baby Products 7 2013
Clothing Manufacturing 17 2013
Baths & Sanitaryware 16 2013
Clothing Retailing 10 2013
Betting & Gaming 26 2013
Coffee & Sandwich Shops 8 2013
Biscuits & Cakes 21 2014
Commercial Dynamics in
Book Publishing 22 2012 Financial Services 4 2010
Book Retailing on the Internet 6 2014 Commercial Insurance for Small
Bookselling 18 2012 Businesses 4 2012
Bread & Bakery Products 29 2014 Commercial Vehicles 17 2014
Breakfast Cereals 17 2013 Computer Hardware 11 2013
Breweries & the Beer Market 30 2013 Computer Services 11 2014
Bricks & Tiles 18 2013 Computer Software 9 2013
Bridalwear 6 2013 Condiments & Sauces 5 2008
Builders’ Merchants 18 2013 Confectionery 32 2014
Building Contracting 12 2013 Construction Industry 11 2009
Building Materials 15 2013 Consumer Credit & Debt 7 2012
Bus & Coach Operators 12 2014 Consumer Magazines 19 2014
Business Postal Services 3 2013 Contact Centres 9 2013
Business Press 16 2014 Contraception 6 2013
Business Travel 8 2014 Contract Catering & Foodservice
Management 22 2013
Contract Cleaning 23 2013
Cooking & Eating Habits 7 2012
Cooking Sauces & Food
Seasonings 6 2013

Corporate Hospitality 8 2014 European Trends in Food

Corporate & Promotional Shopping 4 2009
Giftware 5 2013 Exhibitions & Conferences 13 2013
Cosmetic Surgery 11 2014 F
Cosmetics & Fragrances 26 2013 Fast-Food & Home-Delivery
Courier & Express Services 18 2013 Outlets 27 2013
Cruise Market 3 2012 Film Market 2 2009
Customer Magazines 6 2014 Financial Services Marketing to
Customer Relationship BCs 1 2009
Management 5 2013 Financial Services Marketing to
Customer Services in Financial DEs 2009
Organisations 5 2010 Financial Services Marketing to
Start-Up Businesses & the Self-
D
Employed 3 2010
Debt Services (Commercial &
Financial Services Marketing to
Consumer) 8 2014
the Affluent 1 2009
Defence Equipment 12 2014
Financial Services Organisations
Diet Foods 5 2013 on the Internet 5 2013
Digital Broadcasting 7 2014 Fire Protection Equipment 10 2013
Digital Communications 2 2012 Fish & Fish Products 15 2012
Direct Insurance 6 2010 Fitted Kitchens 12 2013
Direct Marketing 21 2014 Food Industry 20 2010
Direct Mortgages 9 2013 Football Clubs & Finance 6 2014
Discount Retailing 10 2014 Footwear 18 2013
Disposable Paper Products 14 2013 Forecourt Retailing 9 2012
Distribution Industry 10 2009 Franchising 13 2012
DIY & Home Improvements Freight Forwarding 18 2011
Industry 11 2009
Frozen Foods 27 2014
Domestic Heating 15 2013
Fruit & Vegetables 24 2014
Drinks Market 19 2009
Fruit Juices, Energy & Juice
E Drinks 16 2014
E-Commerce: The Internet Functional Foods 6 2010
Grocery Market 8 2014 Further & Higher Education 9 2014
E-Commerce: The Internet
G
Leisure & Entertainment Market 5 2008
Garden Equipment 15 2013
Electrical Contracting 11 2014
Gas Industry 8 2014
Electrical Wholesale 6 2013
General Insurance 13 2010
Electricity Industry 9 2013
Giftware 20 2011
Electronic Banking 4 2008
Glassware 17 2013
Energy Industry 8 2010
Green & Ethical Consumer 6 2013
Equipment for the Disabled 7 2014
Greetings Cards 28 2014
E-Recruitment 4 2012
Grey Consumer 6 2013
Estate Agents 18 2011
Estate Agents & Services 6 2012 H
Ethnic Foods 18 2013 Hand Luggage & Leather Goods 17 2013

European Long-Term Insurance 4 2008 Health Clubs & Leisure Centres 12 2013
European Renewable Energy 2 2008 Healthy Eating 6 2008
European Short Breaks 2 2008 Holiday Purchasing Patterns 7 2014
European Telecommunications 3 2010 Home Entertainment 4 2012
European Tourist Attractions 3 2010 Home Entertainment
(Audiovisual) 1 2013

Home Entertainment Milk & Dairy Products 27 2013

(Computing & Gaming) 1 2013 Mobile Marketing 1 2009
Home Furnishings 22 2014 Mobile Phones 9 2013
Home Insurance 1 2014 Motor Finance 5 2013
Home Shopping 16 2014 Motor Industry 12 2008
Horticultural Retailing 18 2013 Motor Insurance (Consumer) 1 2014
Hot Beverages 8 2014 Music Industry 3 2014
Hotels 27 2013
N
Housebuilding 21 2013
Natural Products 3 2012
Household Appliances (Brown
Newspapers 20 2014
Goods) 13 2013
Non-Food Sales in Supermarkets 6 2013
Household Appliances (White
Goods) 19 2013 Non-Metal Recycling 5 2014
Household Detergents & Nutraceuticals 3 2008
Cleaners 18 2014 O
Household Furniture 21 2014 Office Equipment Industry 9 2010
I Office Furniture 23 2013
Ice Creams & Frozen Desserts 17 2014 Offshore Oil & Gas Industry 7 2013
Independent Financial Advisers 5 2013 Ophthalmic Goods & Services 19 2013
Insurance Companies 12 2009 Opticians & Optical Goods 5 2010
Insurance Industry 10 2009 Organic Food & Drink 8 2012
Insurance Market 13 2012 OTC Pharmaceuticals 17 2014
Insurance Prospects 2 2008 Over-50s Consumer 1 2009
Internet & Telephone Banking 2 2013 Own Brands 15 2013
Internet Advertising 8 2013 P
IT Recruitment 6 2012 Packaging (Food & Drink) 6 2010
IT Security 11 2013 Packaging (Glass) 13 2008
IT Training 15 2014 Packaging (Metals & Aerosols) 13 2012
J Packaging (Paper & Board) 16 2012
Jewellery & Watches 28 2014 Packaging (Plastics) 16 2012
K Pensions 7 2013
Kitchenware 9 2013 Personal Banking 2 2012
Personal Lines Insurance 5 2012
L
Laboratory Equipment 11 2013 Personal Loans 4 2008
Legal Services to Consumers 1 2013 Pet Market 5 2013
Leisure in the Home 3 2010 Pharmaceuticals Industry 6 2008
Leisure Outside the Home 3 2010 Planning for Retirement 1 2008
Lifestyle Magazines 6 2013 Plus-Size Fashion 3 2009
Lingerie 12 2014 Poultry 6 2014
Local Government Services 3 2010 Power Tools 7 2013
Low-Fat & Reduced-Sugar Foods 5 2008 Premium Lagers, Beers & Ciders 11 2013
Printing 18 2014
M
Private Healthcare 23 2014
Marketing in the Digital Age 4 2012
Protective Clothing & Equipment 9 2014
Meat & Meat Products 24 2014
Public Houses 29 2013
Medical Equipment 18 2012
Public Relations Industry 4 2012
Medical & Health Insurance 4 2012
Publishing Industry 13 2010
Men & Women’s Buying Habits 6 2012
Men’s Toiletries & Fragrances 7 2013
Metal Recycling 8 2014

R Trends in Leisure Activities 6 2014

Rail Travel 8 2011 Tyre Industry 7 2014
Ready Meals 14 2013 U
Recruitment Agencies UK Internet Market 1 2009
(Permanent) 13 2014 Utilities 5 2013
Recruitment Agencies
V
(Temporary & Contract) 13 2014
Vegetarian Foods 7 2012
Renewable Energy 6 2013
Vehicle Breakdown Services 7 2012
Restaurants 27 2013
Vehicle Security 11 2014
Retail Pharmacies 19 2014
Video Gaming 2 2013
Road Haulage 23 2012
Vitamins, Minerals &
Rural Economy 2 2009
Supplements 8 2013
S
W
Sauces & Spreads 13 2012
Wallcoverings & Ceramic Tiles 20 2014
Savings & Investments 7 2013
Waste Management 13 2014
Security Industry 13 2010
Water Industry 8 2013
Shopfitting 16 2014
Windows & Doors 22 2013
Shopping Centres 4 2013
Wine 24 2014
Singles Market 5 2012
Women's Plus-Size Fashion 5 2013
Slimming Market 5 2013
Working Women 5 2009
Small Businesses & Banks 2 2010
Y
Small Domestic Electrical
Youth Fashionwear 5 2014
Appliances 14 2013
Snack Foods 22 2013 Key Note Archive Reports
Social Media Marketing 3 2014 A
Soft Drinks (Carbonated & Aerospace 12 2003
Concentrated) 20 2013
Agrochemicals & Fertilisers 3 2002
Soup Market 5 2013
Air Freight 2 2005
Spirits & Liqueurs 3 2014
Air Transport Logistics 1 2003
Sports Clothing & Footwear 15 2013
Animal Feedstuffs 11 2001
Sports Equipment 18 2013
Audio Visual Retailing 1 2000
Sports Market 13 2010
B
Sports Sponsorship 9 2013
Baby Foods 3 2006
Stationery (Personal & Office) 27 2013
Baths & Showers 1 2000
Supermarket Own Labels 5 2013
Bearings 2 2007
Supermarket Services 4 2013
Beds, Bedrooms & Upholstered
Sweet & Salty Snacks 16 2010 Furniture 2 2000
T Bottled Water 2 2001
Take-Home Trade 18 2011 C
Teenage & Pre-Teen Magazines 6 2013 Cable & Satellite TV 10 2004
Timber & Joinery 21 2013 Call Centres 6 2006
Toiletries 26 2014 Cash & Carry Outlets 16 2001
Tourist Attractions 6 2013 Cinemas & Theatres 9 2001
Toys & Games 26 2013 Clothing Retailers 1 2000
Training 22 2014 Commercial Radio 8 2004
Travel Insurance 1 2014 Consumer Borrowing in Europe 1 2004
Travel & Tourism Market 17 2010 Consumer Internet Usage 4 2000
Travel Agents & Overseas Tour Contracted-Out Services 3 2007
Operators 26 2014
Convenience Retailing 12 2002
Trends in Food Shopping 5 2008

Cross-Border Shopping 1 2000 G

Customer Loyalty in the Financial Generation Y 1 2007
Services 1 2000
Global Positioning Systems 1 2002
D Global Waste Management 2 2070
Dark Spirits & Liqueurs 3 2004
H
Defence Industry 7 2003
Health Foods 22 2003
Design Consultancies 3 2000
Healthcare Market 10 2005
Digital TV 2 2003
Heating, Ventilating & Air
DINKY Market 3 2007 Conditioning 9 2002
Document Imaging Systems 1 2007 I
Domestic Telecommunications 4 2006 In-Car Entertainment 1 2000
Dry Cleaning & Laundry Services 5 2005 Individual Savings Accounts 2 2005
E Industrial Fasteners 8 2001
Electronic Component Industrial Pumps 5 2000
Distribution 12 2002
Industrial Valves 8 2001
Electronic Component
Internet Service Providers 2 2005
Manufacturing 11 2002
Internet Usage in Business 8 2005
Electronic Games 4 2003
Issues & Challenges in the UK Life
Equipment Leasing 12 2003
Assurance Market 2 2002
E-Shopping 1 2002
Issues in Higher Education
European Electricity Industry 3 2007 Funding 2 2006
European Gas Industry 3 2007 L
European Oil & Gas Industry 2 2007 Leisure & Recreation Market 15 2005
European Water Industry 3 2007 Lighting Equipment 14 2002
Extended Financial Families 1 2005
M
F Management Consultants 10 2003
Factoring & Invoice Discounting 2 2003 Marketing to Children 4-11 3 2003
Finance Houses 11 2000 Mechanical Handling 9 2001
Financial Services Marketing to Millenium Youth 2 2002
ABC1s 1 2000
Mobile Telecommunications 2 2007
ABs 4 2006 N
Financial Services Marketing to New Media Marketing 3 2002
C1C2DEs 1 2004 O
Financial Services Marketing to Off-Trade Spirits 3 2004
Over-60s 1 2004
Organic Baby & Toddler Care 1 2007
Over-40s Consumer 2 2005
the Retired & Elderly 3 2007
Free-To-Air TV 8 2004 P
Paper & Board Manufacturers 14 2002
Passenger Travel in the UK 5 2007
Pay TV 2 2004
Pension Extenders 1 2002
Photocopiers & Fax Machines 14 2005
Plant Hire 13 2007
Plastic Cards in Europe 2 2005
Plastics Processing 10 2003
Pre-School Childcare 1 2001
Private-Sector Opportunities in
Education 2 2001

Process Plant Industry 1 2000 The Fish Industry 1 2001

Public Transport 1 2001 The Legal Services Market 1 2005
R The Luggage Market 1 2000
Rail Transport Logistics 1 2003 The Newspaper Industry 3 2005
Railway Industry 2 2006 Tweenagers 1 2001
Recycling & the Environment 1 2000 V
Retail Credit 2 2000 Video & DVD Retail & Hire 8 2005
Retail Development 1 2001 Videoconferencing 4 2007
Road Transport Logistics 1 2003 W
S Water Transport Logistics 1 2003
Saving Trends in Eurozone 2 2002 White Goods 2 2000
Short Break Holidays 4 2001 White Spirits 1 2005
Short Breaks 2 2004 Women Over 45 3 2007
Small Office Home Office
Consumer 1 2001
Small Office Home Office
Products 1 2001
Sponsorship 2 2000
Supermarkets & Superstores 20 2003
T
Teenage Magazines 3 2007
Telecommunications 21 2007
Teleworking 2 2003
The Computer Market 11 2004
The Film Industry 4 2002
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in an electronic retrieval system or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
Published by Key Note Ltd, 5th Floor, Harlequin House, 7 High Street, Teddington, Richmond Upon Thames,
TW11 8EE. Telephone: 0845-504 0452
Stringent efforts have been made by Key Note to ensure accuracy. However, due principally to the fact that
data cannot always be verified, it is possible that some errors or omissions may occur; Key Note cannot accept
responsibility for such errors or omissions. Details supplied by Key Note should only be used as an aid, to assist
the making of business decisions, not as the sole basis for taking such decisions.
Under the new Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2004, it is unlawful for a business to make
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Market Assessment 2014

Third Edition May 2014

Social Media Marketing

In today’s competitive business environment, knowledge and understanding of your

The Chartered Institute of Marketing

University of Cambridge, Judge Business School

Jack Mears, Knowledge and Information Partner, Department for Business,

Jim Clark, Head of Insight, IPA

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Table 2.10: Reasons for Using Social Media by Employment Sizeband

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4. Social Networking Tools for Enterprises 54

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SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOLS FOR MARKETERS............................................................62

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Table 6.2: Leading Social Networking Sites in the World

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8. Industry Dynamics 109

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9. Competitor Analysis 115

10. The Future 127

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LinkedIn to Become a Major Player in B2B Services...........................................................132

11. Further Sources 136

Understanding Consumer Survey Data 140

Key Note Research 142

The Key Note Range of Reports 143

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Looking towards the future, however, expenditure on SMM is likely to

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Although social media marketing (SMM) remains a relatively small sector

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The increasing popularity of social media has resulted in a number of new

While SMM has presented a number of problems to marketers in the past,

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• Aggregators — refers to sites that collect content from a number of different

• Citizen journalism — the publication of articles, usually relating to current

• Content sharing — the sharing of content online, including articles, photos,

• Forums and discussion boards — an Internet forum or message board which

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• Wikis — a website or webpage that is developed collaboratively by a

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MARKET DYNAMICS AND SEGMENTATION

• Paid — positive publicity gained through paid advertising. This usually

• Earned — publicity gained through promotional efforts other than

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Total Market Value and Growth

In terms of membership, Facebook retains the leadership position within the

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Table 2.1: Top Ten Social Media Networking Sites in the UK

Total Unique Average Daily

Facebook.com 31,790 14,090

Source: UK Digital Future in Focus 2013 © comScore

Figure 2.1: Top Ten Social Media Networking Sites in the UK

Source: UK Digital Future in Focus 2013 © comScore/Key Note

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Internet Advertising Expenditure