Social Media Strategies to be Presented at SearchFest 2010
Posted by Sean McMahon on 02.27.2010
Yesterday, posted on the social media press release site PitchEngine, our Chief Strategy Officer here at EngineWorks conveyed that the upcoming SEMpdx SearchFest will present invaluable insight into the latest developments in the burgeoning world of Social Media Marketing. In this press release, Kent Schnepp also touted the tremendous benefits that attendees will be able to gain during the day-long conference on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 at The Governor Hotel in downtown Portland, Oregon.
Mashable, the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and social media news, published a revealing piece pertaining to the recent successful push by destination resorts into social networking platforms and online communities. The article, titled ‘How the Resort Industry is Using Social Media’, astutely points out that these new strategies are being used to directly connect with individuals researching and booking family vacations and recreational trips, and to influence potential guests that may not be reached through traditional marketing channels.
“Engaging with customers is the yardstick by which we measure those brands that survive and those that don’t. Marketers now need to appeal to the individual and engage with customers on a one-to-one basis.”
A revealing study conducted in September 2009 by MarketingProfs discovered that, even though many professional marketers today are employing Social Media Marketing strategies in an attempt to connect with target audiences, they may not necessarily be implementing the tactics most likely to influence their customers.
As 2009 comes to a close, it is evident that Social Media Marketing is having a direct impact upon how brands interact with their target audience. Forward-thinking companies are beginning to spend a significant amount of advertising dollars on reaching-out to online communities and ‘influencers’ through various popular social networks. In fact, the digital research and analysis company, eMarketer, estimates in their report titled Social Network Ad Spending: 2010 Outlook that companies will spend more than $2.2 billion on Social Media Marketing efforts world-wide this year, with more than half of that amount coming from the United States.
Coincidently, on the day eMarketer released an article touting a substantial increase to their estimate in the current number of adults in the United States using Twitter.com, DM News reported that the micro-blogging site is now accepting advertisements on its platform. This announcement may seem somewhat uneventful, however it may have a significant impact upon online marketing strategies for reaching highly engaged, highly targeted audiences.
In an article released today titled ‘Who Uses Social Networks’, eMarketer published the very revealing results from a study performed by TNS Global that determined that the percentage of U.S. Internet users who visited social networking sites during the Second Quarter of 2009 increased almost sixty percent (+59.9%) compared to the percentage of users during the same quarter last year.
Blogs aren’t just for kids any more.
“Facebook is becoming the go-to social networking site for marketers,” said eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “While MySpace still has a huge quantity of visitors, they are becoming less relevant for advertisers.” This revealing statement was conveyed in an eMarketer article today titled ‘Facebook Overtakes MySpace’ which reported that for the first time ever, Facebook has become the most popular social networking site in the United States.
It’s not every day that one of the world’s leading resort and hospitality companies launches a new Web site. In fact, for luxury resort owner and operator, RockResorts, it has been more than two years.
