Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

In the case of the abandoned shopping cart vs. mankind, we all plead guilty.

Noran El-Shinnawy is a marketing analyst at iPerceptions and can be reached at nelshinnawy@iperceptions.com or Twitter: @noranshinnawy

We’ve all done it before, both on and offline. We’ve all left her cold and lonely in the middle of an aisle, or simply quit in the middle of an online transaction. Shame on us? Well… not really.

As it turns out, online and offline shopping cart abandonment occur for pretty much the same reasons- long checkout processes, obscure prices, and insufficient information to name a few. In today’s fast paced world of your boss pinging your BlackBerry while tying your shoe laces without spilling your latté, no one sticks around long enough to get around these obstacles. Studies have shown that the average attention span of an Internet user is about 8 seconds. This means squirrels are more likely to stick around your website long enough to actually make a purchase.

There are so many reasons why we fill up online shopping carts without ever having the intention to purchase in the first place. For most shopping sites, this is actually the only way to add up prices of items, check shipping costs and taxes, or simply compile everything you like in one place. Once you’ve gathered whatever information you were looking for, that’s when you commit your abandonment crime. You might get that thrill of being a fugitive and think that the Internet police are after you. But all that really does is leaves analysts like me wondering.

For e-commerce websites, it has never been more important to measure 2 very important metrics- purpose of visit and task completion. A simple online survey software can help you answer questions about why visitors come to your website and if they were able to accomplish what they came for. These answers will not only provide you with actionable insight (yes, the most overused term in our industry), but will also help you pinpoint areas that may require change or improvement. Putting it in context, it might actually be okay to have a high abandonment rate if your visitors never intended to make a purchase.

Take 4Qsurvey.com as an example. (Did you just have a flashback of one of Avinash’s presentations? Sorry to disappoint you, but the next few lines will not contain politically incorrect words). Our primary goal for the website is user account sign-up. As a free tool, this is obviously not transactional, but just as well. According to Google Analytics, our conversion rate has fluctuated between 3% and 4%, which would appear as though between 96% and 97% of visitors are “abandoning.” (tip of the day: do NOT go see your boss with these numbers).

As terrible as they may appear, these numbers mean nothing unless I put them in context. I had to dig into my survey results to find out that 15% of visitors are onsite with the intention of creating an account, and that everyone else is “pre-transactional.” The task completion rate for those visitors intending to create an account averages out to about 84%. This means that the real abandonment figure stands at only 16% not 96%. NOW let’s go see your boss.

It’s starting to seem that looking at conversion as the only measure of success is a thing of the past. Be sure to put things in context and understand the real intent of your website visitors and their task completion rates. Looks like we marketers should stop obsessing about completed transactions and start shifting their focus to pre (and post) -transactional behavior…

In the case of the abandoned shopping cart vs. mankind, we all plead guilty.

Noran El-Shinnawy is a marketing analyst at iPerceptions and can be reached at nelshinnawy@iperceptions.com or Twitter: @noranshinnawy

We’ve all done it before, both on and offline. We’ve all left her cold and lonely in the middle of an aisle, or simply quit in the middle of an online transaction. Shame on us? Well… not really.

As it turns out, online and offline shopping cart abandonment occur for pretty much the same reasons- long checkout processes, obscure prices, and insufficient information to name a few. In today’s fast paced world of your boss pinging your BlackBerry while tying your shoe laces without spilling your latté, no one sticks around long enough to get around these obstacles. Studies have shown that the average attention span of an Internet user is about 8 seconds. This means squirrels are more likely to stick around your website long enough to actually make a purchase.

There are so many reasons why we fill up online shopping carts without ever having the intention to purchase in the first place. For most shopping sites, this is actually the only way to add up prices of items, check shipping costs and taxes, or simply compile everything you like in one place. Once you’ve gathered whatever information you were looking for, that’s when you commit your abandonment crime. You might get that thrill of being a fugitive and think that the Internet police are after you. But all that really does is leaves analysts like me wondering.

For e-commerce websites, it has never been more important to measure 2 very important metrics- purpose of visit and task completion. A simple online survey software can help you answer questions about why visitors come to your website and if they were able to accomplish what they came for. These answers will not only provide you with actionable insight (yes, the most overused term in our industry), but will also help you pinpoint areas that may require change or improvement. Putting it in context, it might actually be okay to have a high abandonment rate if your visitors never intended to make a purchase.

Take 4Qsurvey.com as an example. (Did you just have a flashback of one of Avinash’s presentations? Sorry to disappoint you, but the next few lines will not contain politically incorrect words). Our primary goal for the website is user account sign-up. As a free tool, this is obviously not transactional, but just as well. According to Google Analytics, our conversion rate has fluctuated between 3% and 4%, which would appear as though between 96% and 97% of visitors are “abandoning.” (tip of the day: do NOT go see your boss with these numbers).

As terrible as they may appear, these numbers mean nothing unless I put them in context. I had to dig into my survey results to find out that 15% of visitors are onsite with the intention of creating an account, and that everyone else is “pre-transactional.” The task completion rate for those visitors intending to create an account averages out to about 84%. This means that the real abandonment figure stands at only 16% not 96%. NOW let’s go see your boss.

It’s starting to seem that looking at conversion as the only measure of success is a thing of the past. Be sure to put things in context and understand the real intent of your website visitors and their task completion rates. Looks like we marketers should stop obsessing about completed transactions and start shifting their focus to pre (and post) -transactional behavior…

Vancouver, BC – The International Internet Marketing Association presents Darren Barefoot, Partner, Capulet Communications for an interview to share his unique perspective on social media.  On December 9th, 2009 Darren will be on a panel with two other experts to talk about social media and the return on investment it can generate.  This interview is part three of three regarding this topic.

Please find attached to this post a link to the PDF version of the interview.  This is an opportunity to learn and glean some strategic insight regarding social media.   Darren will be presenting his unique perspective,  follow this link for the details and registration to our event.

—————–

About Capulet Communications

Darren Barefoot, co-founder, Capulet Communications, is a writer, marketer and technologist. He has spent the last decade working for technology companies in Canada and Europe. He regularly speaks about marketing and Web 2.0, and has been quoted as an expert on social media and marketing on the CBC, BBC, The Wall Street Journal and dozens of other magazines, TV and radio programs. Hes the co-author, with Julie Szabo, of “Friends With Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook”, published by No Starch Press in November, 2009.

For more information about Capulet Communications, go to: www.capulet.com

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The International Internet Marketing Association started in 1998 to bring marketers, agencies and professionals together to discuss the capabilities and potential of Internet marketing. It’s been over 10 years since our first event and our association remains focused on its original mandate – education. Each year, IIMA delivers a series of networking and speaking events hosted by subject matter experts, thought leaders, experts and panels of marketing practitioners.

For more information contact:

James Laitinen – @jlate
Director – International Internet Marketing Association
e.            info(@)iimaonline.org
w.           www.iimaonline.org

by Charlene Brisson, MAPC
Marketing & Communication Specialist, @charlenebrisson

Vancouver, BC – December 15th – What an opportunity it was to attend the Dec 9th IIMA session Social Media: Where’s the ROI! Return on Investment is the holy grail of social media (SM) that marketers are seeking to produce immediately successful campaigns. Proof of time and money spent is critical to show clients and bosses that SM marketing efforts aren’t merely the exploits of fantasy, but will actually lead to customer acquisition.

The full house at the event followed up by an active Q&A provides further proof that the topic is hot and marketers want to know more. Presenters Darren Barefoot, (@dbarefoot) of Capulet Communications, Warren Sukernek, (@warrenss) of Lift9 and Stephen Smith (@Webnames) of Webnames.ca did an excellent job presenting their differing opinions on tracking SM ROI. All agreed that marketers should be very clear on objectives, desired outcomes and metrics before they start their campaigns. As Stephen Smith noted, “one prescription doesn’t suit everyone” and even social media may not be the tool for every company to engage in. Fans and followers fit the culture of some companies more than others.

The disagreement of social media ROI continues. Warren Sukernek and Darren Barefoot have differing opinions, like many others, on how social media should and can be tracked. While Warren presented some concrete examples of measurable success. Darren is more on the side of traditional marketers who recognize that marketing can often be an “an act of faith.” He posted a page of his notes on http://tinyurl.com/y8edbx3

Darren’s experience (and mine too) has shown that social media works much better as one component of an integrated campaign, rather than the only component. It’s advantageous for a prospect to see an ad on a bus and then see you on Facebook. Darren, author of Friends with Benefits, sees SM as providing a lot of the same results as PR – much of which cannot be measured. He cites Fresh Books as a good example. They sent a box of Triscuits to Fiji and got a lot of PR (http://tinyurl.com/y9mskq8). But can it be measured? No. “Some things just can’t be measured”, but that doesn’t mean they have no value. Darren’s hard metrics show that FB works well when trying to change minds; Twitter converts low at about the same rate as newsletters – same as Youtube. Stumbleupon and like social media sites convert really poorly.

His hierarchy of conversion falls out in this order …
1. Paid Search
2. Blogs and Articles
3. Media Coverage
4. YouTube
5. Facebook
6. Twitter
7. SEO – Organic Search
8. All others like Stumbleupon

Warren Sukernek used Twitter to find a job in early 2009 (http://tinyurl.com/ybnyjvs) . He suggests that “if you can’t measure your campaign, step back and find out why.” Here’s three examples he provided of how powerful Twitter can be:

1. Del has sold $6.5M in obsolete goods http://tinyurl.com/ye46qxv
2. Comcast has resolved 500,000 customer service calls http://tinyurl.com/ykw4y4q
3. Over a single weekend, moms forced Johnson & Johnson to pull millions of dollars in Motrin ads http://tinyurl.com/5mbyr
4. Here’s the ad they raged against http://tinyurl.com/5pa93n

Warren also shared a useful SM spreadsheet tracking tool posted on the IIMA membership site. The gist is to identify 10 keywords, give them each a dollar value, and count how many times they appear in your social media efforts. At least you’ll have something to show clients and the boss. Admittedly, the value of course, is no more concrete than the value you’re given for every time your logo shows up in a newspaper ad with 10 other logos. Warren did recommend that the most reliable means of tracking social media is to use salesforce.com on the front end and Web Trends from Radiant6 on the back end to do the analysis.

Through the Q&A, all presenters agreed that the tracking discussed is all primarily done using tools like Google analytics. All-in-all attendees walked away with some valuable insights and a few good tools … and still … the debate of social media ROI continues.

Best Event Tip: Make clever Google Maps – add photos and videos. Why: It’s a big secret. Provided by: Darren Barefoot.

by Charlene Brisson, MAPC
Marketing & Communication Specialist, @charlenebrisson

Vancouver, BC – December 15th – What an opportunity it was to attend the Dec 9th IIMA session Social Media: Where’s the ROI! Return on Investment is the holy grail of social media (SM) that marketers are seeking to produce immediately successful campaigns. Proof of time and money spent is critical to show clients and bosses that SM marketing efforts aren’t merely the exploits of fantasy, but will actually lead to customer acquisition.

The full house at the event followed up by an active Q&A provides further proof that the topic is hot and marketers want to know more. Presenters Darren Barefoot, (@dbarefoot) of Capulet Communications, Warren Sukernek, (@warrenss) of Lift9 and Stephen Smith (@Webnames) of Webnames.ca did an excellent job presenting their differing opinions on tracking SM ROI. All agreed that marketers should be very clear on objectives, desired outcomes and metrics before they start their campaigns. As Stephen Smith noted, “one prescription doesn’t suit everyone” and even social media may not be the tool for every company to engage in. Fans and followers fit the culture of some companies more than others.

The disagreement of social media ROI continues. Warren Sukernek and Darren Barefoot have differing opinions, like many others, on how social media should and can be tracked. While Warren presented some concrete examples of measurable success. Darren is more on the side of traditional marketers who recognize that marketing can often be an “an act of faith.” He posted a page of his notes on http://tinyurl.com/y8edbx3

Darren’s experience (and mine too) has shown that social media works much better as one component of an integrated campaign, rather than the only component. It’s advantageous for a prospect to see an ad on a bus and then see you on Facebook. Darren, author of Friends with Benefits, sees SM as providing a lot of the same results as PR – much of which cannot be measured. He cites Fresh Books as a good example. They sent a box of Triscuits to Fiji and got a lot of PR (http://tinyurl.com/y9mskq8). But can it be measured? No. “Some things just can’t be measured”, but that doesn’t mean they have no value. Darren’s hard metrics show that FB works well when trying to change minds; Twitter converts low at about the same rate as newsletters – same as Youtube. Stumbleupon and like social media sites convert really poorly.

His hierarchy of conversion falls out in this order …
1. Paid Search
2. Blogs and Articles
3. Media Coverage
4. YouTube
5. Facebook
6. Twitter
7. SEO – Organic Search
8. All others like Stumbleupon

Warren Sukernek used Twitter to find a job in early 2009 (http://tinyurl.com/ybnyjvs) . He suggests that “if you can’t measure your campaign, step back and find out why.” Here’s three examples he provided of how powerful Twitter can be:

1. Del has sold $6.5M in obsolete goods http://tinyurl.com/ye46qxv
2. Comcast has resolved 500,000 customer service calls http://tinyurl.com/ykw4y4q
3. Over a single weekend, moms forced Johnson & Johnson to pull millions of dollars in Motrin ads http://tinyurl.com/5mbyr
4. Here’s the ad they raged against http://tinyurl.com/5pa93n

Warren also shared a useful SM spreadsheet tracking tool posted on the IIMA membership site. The gist is to identify 10 keywords, give them each a dollar value, and count how many times they appear in your social media efforts. At least you’ll have something to show clients and the boss. Admittedly, the value of course, is no more concrete than the value you’re given for every time your logo shows up in a newspaper ad with 10 other logos. Warren did recommend that the most reliable means of tracking social media is to use salesforce.com on the front end and Web Trends from Radiant6 on the back end to do the analysis.

Through the Q&A, all presenters agreed that the tracking discussed is all primarily done using tools like Google analytics. All-in-all attendees walked away with some valuable insights and a few good tools … and still … the debate of social media ROI continues.

Best Event Tip: Make clever Google Maps – add photos and videos. Why: It’s a big secret. Provided by: Darren Barefoot.

Status updates on Facebook help people understand their friends and the people around them–how they’re feeling, what they’re doing and what they’re thinking. In the United States alone, people on Facebook are sharing hundreds of millions of words every day, thousands per second, in status updates.

When taken as a whole, these words offer a unique barometer into the issues, world events and thoughts that are connecting people. In the tradition of year-end lists, we’re introducing Facebook Memology. “Memology” refers to the study of how “memes,” or new ideas and trends, are spreading on Facebook.

For this year’s list, the Facebook Data Team mapped the top trending words and phrases in U.S. status updates for 2009. While significant news events and celebrities made the list, more personal topics like family, religion and even emerging digital slang were as common—no doubt reflecting the way people share their daily lives with friends on Facebook.

To generate the list, we started by looking at how many times each phrase with length from one-to-four words occurred in U.S. Facebook status updates, then we computed the rate at which each phrase occurred in 2009 compared to 2008. Using some data-mining methods detailed here, we analyzed important bursts in activity around words and series of words to find the key trends for the year. All personally identifiable information was removed from the status updates to conduct this analysis, and no one at Facebook read the individual status updates.

Because quite a few words and phrases were related to each other and correlated contextually, we grouped some of them together to form the final list that follows.

1 – Facebook Applications

Specific words: Farmville, Farm Town, Social Living
Facebook has provided a platform for developers to create a number of hugely popular applications, and it is no surprise that people are talking about them. You could almost say that 2009 was the year of the farm in status updates. Since its emergence in June 2009, Farmville became the most talked-about application in status updates and now boasts over 72 million monthly active users. It wasn’t alone. Farm Town also ranked highly, as did general discussions with the word “farm.”

2 – FML

Specific word: FML
This digital slang became the hottest acronym to enter the Facebook lexicon in 2009. It spread from relatively low usage to become a mainstream word in status updates. FML is used almost exclusively online and in text messages, and its meaning, once very specific, has broadened. People now use it simply to express some frustration with an aspect of their lives. We’ll leave the “F” open to your interpretation, but the “M” and L” stand for “My Life.”

The beginning of May appeared to be a seriously frustrating time for people, when students were busy with finals and the weather was rainy just before summer. We saw a lull in “FML” in the summer months and, as expected, there was strong weekly periodicity to this term with it appearing most often on Mondays and Tuesdays.

3 – Swine Flu

Specific words: Flu, Swine Flu, H1N1
Swine flu, or H1N1, was probably the biggest ongoing news story of the year. Discussion of H1N1 in status updates reached a peak in the spring—slong before the flu itself began affecting many people. When flu season began in the fall, people began discussing the term again, though never with the same frequency as when it first appeared. Another interesting trend is that no one called the virus H1N1 when it first appeared, but by September the effort to disassociate the term “swine” from the illness was fairly successful and “H1N1″ occurrences now roughly equal “swine.” Surprisingly, the use of the word “flu” over the year consistently peaked during the middle of the week and was at its lowest on Sundays. We’re not sure why.

4 – Celebrity Deaths

Specific words: Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Billy Mays
No celebrity death had as immediate of an impact on status updates as Michael Jackson’s. Mentions of his name were 10,000 times higher on June 25, the day he died, than the previous day, and no other unexpected news event can compare to the burst we saw on that day. Despite the huge impact of this story, mentions of his name lasted only about a week, with a resurgence during his memorial 12 days later. Rather surprisingly, Patrick Swayze’s death was almost as large with about two-thirds as many mentions as Michael Jackson’s on the peak day of status updates about Swayze.

5 – Family

Specific words: Family, Mom, Dad, Son, Daughter, Kids
As Facebook becomes more prevalent across demographics, people talk more about “mom,” “dad,” “son” and “daughter”. We saw significant increases in all sorts of family-related words during 2009. Perhaps the most dramatic increase was “kids,” a word whose occurrence went up by a factor of five.

6 – Movies

Specific words: New Moon, Transformers, Star Trek, The Hangover, Paranormal Activity and Harry Potter
Whenever a new movie comes out, it creates a big spike in discussion in Facebook status updates. The most-discussed of 2009 was “New Moon.” It narrowly edged out the big summer movies “Harry Potter” and “Transformers.” Other big movies on Facebook were “Star Trek,” “The Hangover” and “Paranormal Activity”.

7 – Sports

Specific words: Steelers, Yankees
In February of 2009, the Pittsburgh Steelers won the Super Bowl, and in October the New York Yankees won the World Series. The Steelers reached a higher peak in mentions, but largely because they only played a single football game to garner the top prize. The Yankees were discussed a bit less per day, but the discussion occurred over a longer period of time throughout the multiple games of baseball’s World Series. We’ll call this one a tie to avoid playing favorites or sparking sports-supremacy debates.

8 – Health Care

Specific words: Health Care, No one should have to…
Since President Barack Obama took office, the discussion of “health care” has risen steadily in status updates. This reached a peak in early September when millions of pro-reform users updated their status with the following message: “No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.” For two days, millions of people posted this to their profiles in support of health care reform. The meme continued to circulate, gradually declining over the weeks that followed. Even aside from that meme, health care mentions are up 10 times since a year ago.

9 – FB

Specific words: FB, FB Friends, News Feed
Whenever we make a change to the site a lot of people chime in with their opinions. For instance, we see spikes in mentions of “News Feed” on the order of 100-times increases whenever there is a change to the way that feature works or how the home page is laid out. “FB” and “FB Friends,” on the other hand, have nothing to do with product changes, but as Facebook has become more prevalent people are shortening our name for convenience. Usage of the word “FB” has increased about 7 fold since the beginning of 2009 and “FB Friends” increased about 10 times over the same period.

10 – Twitter

Specific words: Twitter, RT
Talk about Twitter took off at the beginning of the year. April showed a peak of activity and momentum, though mentions of the word “Twitter” decreased over the past few months. The acronym “RT,” standing for “retweet,” entered the lexicon along with the word “Twitter” in September of 2008 and has become a common acronym to describe reposting activity.

11 – Years

Specific words: 2008, 2009, 2010
Many status updates are about what people are going to do or have just done, so naturally they often contain dates. While the number of posts containing a date didn’t go up dramatically in 2009, the date itself changed to reflect the current and upcoming year.

12 – Lady Gaga

Specific words: Gaga, Poker Face
Lady Gaga was the biggest new performer of 2009 based on status updates from people in the U.S. She was virtually unmentioned until November of 2008 and spiked in mentions of her name in September of 2009 during the MTV Video Music Awards. At the end of September, Christopher Walken’s performance of the song “Poker Face” caused a spike in that term, but didn’t noticeably impact occurrences of “Lady Gaga.”

13 – Yard

Specific word: Yard
This is a trend that nobody would have guessed. The word “yard” seems fairly uncommon, and indeed it barely breaches a rate of five mentions in every 10,000 status updates. When we compare 2009 to 2008, however, we see a huge increase. Have all the hipsters turned to yard work as the latest fad? Probably not. A more likely explanation is that hipsters’ moms and dads are also on Facebook, and these folks have yards that require some tending.

14 – Religion

Specific words: Easter, Lord, God
Religious terms increased a significant amount in the last year. In the last 6 months, there was a noticeable upward trend in occurrences of “Lord” and “God.” While “Easter” occurs infrequently most of the time, the Easter Sunday spike from 2009 is about 30 percent higher than it was in 2008.

15 – I

Specific words: I, is
Until March of 2009, people updated their status in a box that appeared next to their name on the home page and, consequently, many updates started with the word “is.” Once that box no longer was shown next to people’s name, the usage of “is” dropped off dramatically and usage of “I” doubled almost overnight. Prior to March of 2009, “is” represented about 9 percent of all words in status updates. With the change in interface, it remained high in absolute terms, but dropped all the way to about 1.5 percent recently while “I” increased from 1 percent to about 2.5 percent.

Lars Backstrom, a data scientist at Facebook, is heading to Iowa to investigate some farms.

Email open and click rates experienced year-over-year increases in Q309 vs. Q308 as the industry headed into the traditionally busy holiday season, according to the latest email benchmark report from Epsilon.

Epsilon’s Q309 North America Email Trends and Benchmarks study revealed that email open rates increased from 19.8% in Q308 to 22.0% in Q309 (an 11% increase), while 12 of the 16 industries Epsilon tracks had an increase in open rates over Q308.

Click rates were 6.2%, an increase of 5.1% from the same time last year (5.9%), the analysis found.

Additional Q3 findings:

• The average volume per client increased 7.5% from Q308.
• The non-bounce rate dropped slightly from Q209 (93.5% compared with 94.1%), but was virtually unchanged from Q308 (93.6%).
• Six of the 16 industries measured saw an increase in all three metrics – opens, clicks and non-bounce rate – compared with last year.
• The retail landscape improved greatly compared with Q308. Of the four retail subcategories, 11 of the 12 metrics increased compared with Q3 of last year.
• Emails from financial services companies continued to enjoy the highest open rates among industries measured.

About the study: The quarterly analysis is compiled from more than 6 billion emails sent by Epsilon in July, August and September 2009, across multiple industries and approximately 200 clients. The analysis combines data from both of Epsilon’s proprietary platforms, DREAM and DREAMmail.

Generation-Y women discover new brands and get most of their style inspiration and product recommendations from blogs and social media, according to a recent research report from PopSugar Media and Radar Research.

The “Why Y Women” report (pdf),  which examined both the sphere of influence and generational differences between Gen X and Y women also revealed that two-thirds (67%) of Generation X women say that Generation Y women make up the most influential age group when it comes to defining trends in popular culture.

Y Women ‘Major’ Force

According to PopSugar Media, study results suggest that Generation Y women are a major force in determining cultural trends and setting the pace for style. An overwhelming 92% of Gen Y women consider their generation to be the trend leader.

Gen Y women are also influential brand advocates, the research found. When they discover a brand they love, 61% say they “share it with as many friends as possible,” and they are likely to share it across a spectrum of platforms, including email, social networks, online reviews, blog comments, SMS/MMS, phone, and face-to-face. They are twice as likely to use online social networking sites to share their recommendations than Gen X women (28% vs. 15%).Survey results also suggest that Gen Y women are more brand loyal than many may assume. The research found that Gen Y and Gen X on virtually on par in this area (79%  vs. 84%), though the level of brand loyalty varies by category.

Authentic Messages Resonate

Gen Y women acknowledge that today’s technology gives them more choices than were available to previous generations, though the study’s participants believe the infinite numbers of choices they have are both empowering as well as confusing. To break through the clutter, they rely heavily on “authentic” recommendations from their peers for product referrals, brand suggestions, and style cues.

While Gen Y women tend to be skeptical of obvious marketing messages, they do respond to brands and messages they perceive to be “authentic,” a concept which they continue to redefine, PopSugar said. While Gen X women tend to seek insight and brand approval from “experts,” Gen Y women rely more heavily on their peers because they believe their advice about brands to be more unbiased and honest. Gen Y women are more likely to turn to online user reviews, with almost two in five women (38%) trusting the postings of online users to learn more about a product or brand. Gen Y women tend to be slightly more skeptical of professional reviewers and need to be reassured the reviewer doesn’t have a stake in the results of the review.

Peer Group Redefined

How Gen-Y women define their peer group also is a significant change from previous generations. The study found that it not only includes their “real-life’ friends but also online friends, blog writers, anonymous reviewers, Twitter followers, and other participants in online communities – many whom they may have never met. As a result, this generation has a wider network of connections than Gen X women.

Blogs and Social Media as Cultural Influencers

Blogs and social media, rather than traditional media, have emerged as key trusted and inspirational sources for Gen Y to discover brands and products, the research found.  Nearly twice as many Gen-Y women than Gen-X women say they rely on blogs to influence their decisions to buy a product (28% vs. 16%). Twice as many Gen Y women than Gen X women report they discovered a new brand or product from a friend’s status update on a social networking site (42% vs. 22%).

Consumption of new media, such as blogs, reinforce Gen Y women’s perception of themselves as more individualistic than earlier generations. This generation of women cites blogs as being more accessible, more likely to be honest, on the cutting edge, and more likely to know about trends first. They also believe the “commentor community” on blogs is very important. Gen-Y women say they often find new ideas about websites and products from other readers’ comments on blogs.

Context is Vital

Not surprisingly, Gen-Y women are very media savvy and conscious of attempts to market to them and are not easily swayed to action by advertising, either offline or online. While they aren’t likely to click on an online ad, they are influenced by advertising messages and are highly aware of brand messages online, such as in online magazines, search engines, blogs, social networking sites, and even ads. When asked if they’ve ever discovered a new product via an online ad they saw but didn’t click on, almost two in five (38%) reported they did.

The study’s findings, according to PopSugar, demonstrate that context is vital when it comes to brand perception and advertising and largely determines trust in a brand.

“The results of this study underscore how much marketers must think and act differently when addressing this generation of women online. It shows they want to be addressed as individuals, they can be skeptical of marketing messages, and they are inundated by media and advertising,” said Brian Sugar, founder and CEO of Sugar, Inc. “As this study and our experience proves, it’s crucial for brands to create a trusted relationship and earn their loyalty through honest dialogue about their brand. Once they have a personal connection to a brand, Gen Y women will be passionate advocates and ambassadors. Our goal has been to work closely with brands to help facilitate that relationship.”

Sugar added that context matters a great deal to Gen Y women, and recommended that marketers be very selective about the sites they advertise on and avoid mass-reach network buys they cannot control.

Moreover, because Gen-Y women rarely click on online adds, using click-through as a metric of campaign success is not effective. Instead, Sugar suggests using multiple digital touch points that are interactive but non-intrusive, to offer opportunities to  engage with brands. These might be contests, games, custom integrated content, and discounts and incentives for attention.

About the research: The research was conducted by Radar Research on behalf of PopSugar Media. It comprised a two-tier study of 1,018 women ages 18-49 from a demographically representative sample who all had accessed the internet at least once a day. For the purposes of this study, Gen X were defined as ages 35-49 and Gen Y were defined as ages 18-34. In addition to the online survey, in-person focus groups were conducted in October 2009. Three sessions were held with four to six Gen Y women each.

Posted by Adam Singer in Opinions, Randomness, The Social Web

You have to love the wiki definition for buzzword:

“A buzzword is a term of art or technical jargon that has begun to see use in the wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context by nonspecialists who use the term vaguely or imprecisely. Labeling a term a “buzzword” often pejoratively implies that it is now used pretentiously and inappropriately by individuals with little understanding of its actual meaning who are most interested in impressing others by making their discourse sound more esoteric, obscure, and technical than it otherwise would be.”

This definition perfectly describes the largest buzzword of 2009 and 2010:  social media.

It’s a buzzword not just because it’s overused, but because it has become too generic to describe anything in a meaningful way.  When all websites and all media are social, social media as a term ceases to be relevant.  It’s too bland and undescriptive, and has come to describe the internet as a whole.

Buzzwords have a fatal flaw we’re quick to forget:  they are “throwaway” terms, in that they are doomed to be obsolete.  Not that they can’t be taken advantage of while popular, they certainly can.  But they’re buzzwords for a reason.  Any industry tires of them and with time they become considered a cliché and used mostly by the new or uninformed.  I’ve seen this happen repeatedly and cyclically in all of the industries I’m involved with:  technology, marketing and music.

Social media as a buzzword encourages articles like this one at Forbes.  Read the following graphs from the story, and mentally replace “social media” with “the internet” and it wouldn’t change the meaning.  In fact, it makes it more accurate:

“I primarily use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn, in addition to my blogging, but I have become less and less enamored with social media over time. Although I was never a rabid user of Twitter, I did initially use it on a regular basis but now will frequently go days between tweets or without even looking at it…

..The reason for this isn’t just the novelty of it all wearing off. It’s more that it’s become less pleasant due to the amount of spam that is permeating the social media space, coupled with the overbearing commercialization that is taking place. Layer on top of this the erosion of privacy and it doesn’t look good. Even my college-age daughter, a prime demographic for social media, complains about these same issues.”

Let me repeat this again:  this is not social media.  This is the internet. And the internet isn’t going away.  Whether the buzzword social media lasts is another story.

A quote from Steven Hodson crystallizes this nicely:

“Just because we slap a new term and some soothing pastel web pages together it doesn’t invalidate what came before it. It doesn’t change the fact that we have been socializing on the web long before someone invented the marketing term of social media. It sometimes seems though that the tech world has this inbreed need to proclaim something as new and totally different than what came before when in fact this isn’t the case.”

I’ll freely admit I’ve used the term social media in posts and in titles here for the simple reason it attracts traffic, links and attention.  As a marketing blogger, I consciously take advantage of that.  It was an obvious play for bloggers in the technology or marketing niche during the last three years (you should do the same thing for hot topics/terms your niche – taking advantage of trends is huge).  But in 2009 it reached a tipping point and was far too exploited, misused and misunderstood causing it essentially to become meaningless.

Would I name a blog or company with social media in the title?  Not a chance, and my personal opinion is sites like Social Media Explorer, Social Media Examiner, Social Media Rockstar and others (content 100% aside) take a huge risk by building brands on top of a buzzword.  They are tagging themselves to a term which – while popular today – is easily cast aside.  Mashable may be tagged as “the social media guide” right now – but they were previously “social networking news.”  Love him or hate him, Pete Cashmore is smart:  he’s riding the trend for attention.  But he’ll move on to another tagline to keep his site at the bleeding edge.  The strategy is simple and effective.

Unless it’s an actual brand term you are working to grow as an individual or company, if you use buzzwords in your name you’re banking a large part of your strategy on something you do not control.  Buzzwords can and do fall out of favor.

Many blindly share articles from major and obscure publications simply because they mention social media.  I see “thought leaders” do it all the time.  In many cases I know they are sharing the content blindly as I’ll actually read it the story and see it’s either inaccurate or a tired rehash of what’s already been said.  Especially in cases where the story shared is from people who obviously know better, it’s clear they only read the headline.

Businesses and media – including bloggers – will continue hyping the term well into the future.  But I’m noticing more and more it’s used by those who don’t have real social proofing or proven results themselves.  16,000 “social media experts?” Really?

I get the feeling many other seasoned digital marketers are not burned out on the internet, but burned out on the buzzword social media.  I’ve consciously minimized my use of it in on this blog in 2009, however in 2010 I’ll be using it even less.  How many of you feel the same?

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