Retailers should pay attention to social media site Pinterest, after a survey found it is driving more traffic to sites than Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and Google+ combined.

The findings from Shareaholic showed, over the last 13 months, that Facebook accounted for 8.1% of social media traffic referrals to sites, while Pinterest came second with 3.24% of referrals. Twitter was in third place with 1.2% of site referrals.

Collectively, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter are dominating with 15.2% of overall ltraffic last month.

Shareaholic said “given their community and share-friendly nature, it’s no surprise that they top the list in traffic referrals and have grown more than 54% each in share of overall visits”.

Social traffic referrals from Facebook grew 58.81%, Pinterest by 66.5% and Twitter 54.1% in the last 12 months.

The internet is now able to reach a broader and younger audience than the high street ever was, with 69% of people aged between 12 and 17 reported to have a computer, many of whom will be strongly influenced by the rippling effect of their friends on social media.

The latest Mobile Youth report revealed that 50% of young people recommend a brand because they have had a positive experience with it, and that 88% of all positive recommendations for a brand are generated by fans who make up 10% of the brand's customers.

Young people have such a grasp of technology that it's natural to them – it's a gateway to exploring their interests and sharing their lives. So they're brand-aware and tech-literate, but how do you stay cool today with a young person whose trends and tastes are so fickle? Having helped companies do this for over 20 years, here are my top five tips for better engaging the youth of today.

1 It's all about big data and small data

The more people use the internet, the more brands can potentially learn about the activity of their consumers – and the more they can tailor their offer to suit them. When it comes to brands, it's all about big data and small data: being able to gather as much data as possible and filter it in such a way that the information becomes meaningful and valuable, so that we can learn from interactions with our customers and make improvements in the ways we service them.

We need to use this data to create an age-appropriate online presence. Just as data feeds a more bespoke marketing approach, you need to break your targeting at different levels. Many classify tweens and teens in one large cluster, but there is a lot of emotional, social and physical growing in these years. What is right for an 11-year-old girl is different from that for a 13-year-old boy.

2 Be in association with…

Celebrities set the pace for staying on top of the latest fashions. Brands piggyback on these fashionistas to get to the consumer and convince them they, too, can get the look. Use them to boost your brand's youth appeal.

But, if you don't have easy access to Lady GaGa, take a brand of the moment to achieve the same effect. Your brand might be a massive juggernaut in terms of size and market share, but has lost its coolness. Link with another brand to bring it back. This is how the brand licensing market has got so powerful and you only have to look at brand associations for festivals such as Coachella (H&M, Heineken, Red Bull and Fruttare) to see how cool associations can sell products.

3 Create the right digital channels but also look at offline

As James Withey, head of brand insight at Precise, says: "Make everyday online encounters entertaining for kids. So the launch of a new quirky toy in a cereal box might be more successful in generating online word-of-mouth mentions than major product launches or ad campaigns."

If you want to reach out to a younger audience, you need to remember that they are still kids at heart and as such give them something entertaining to do, such as creating their own online avatar, which they can use to try out their own fashion tastes and share with their friends.

4 Move your brand with your core customer base

If your customer base is 13 years old and you find it is becoming younger, create a brand extension aimed at older teens that allows you to keep your existing customer base but gives those who might be tiring of it a new dimension to be interested in.

We all know Mark Zuckerberg and fellow students created Facebook as a social network for them while at Harvard. The latest statistics claim that there are now 1.06 billion monthly users, which means that, far from a communication medium for young people, it has become a mainstream tool for those wanting to communicate. In fact, 65% of Facebook users are over 35. However, where Facebook has been clever is by introducing instant messaging, which young people are more likely to use.

5 Give young people a voice and make sure it matters

Brands that really listen to their customers tend to be the ones their customers want to buy from. Social media means people are used to having a voice and using it from a young age. They are used to airing their opinions not only to their friends, but their friends' friends and all their followers. They expect those opinions to be taken seriously and are often happy to have their opinions out in the air to be debated and discussed.

Brands that ask for and use these opinions –which flavour of Walkers Crisps to launch or what name to choose for the latest X Factor band, for example – are the ones that bring discussion out of the brand arena and make customers brand ambassadors.

Early adoption means we need to be more savvy as brand guardians. As our target audiences become more sophisticated at a younger age, we need to stay one step ahead of them, understanding what they like and don't like and what they interact with.

Written byMax Eaglen

DealerNet Services

In the web industry, we need to spend a lot of time researching and keeping up with the constant change in order to provide relevant and sound advice to our customers.

Our customers are typically small to medium businesses who often don’t have the time to engage on any social media, but one of the questions I’m being increasingly asked is what is Google Plus?

We’ve all seen the gradual change within Google towards better quality content being a key search factor, along with the growing influence of social media on search, but to put it bluntly, Google Plus has the potential to permanently change the search landscape.

If you and your business aren't actively engaged on Google Plus, you are placing your business at risk!

A study by SearchMetrics earlier this year (you will need to register to download thestudy) showed that social signals such as “Likes” etc correlated very closely to search rankings, and that Google +1s more so than Facebook and Twitter. Correlation isn’t necessarily causation, but recent comments by Matt Cutts and a Google blogannouncing “in depth” articles show that Google Plus participation is going to be vital to gain and maintain rankings.

So, what is Google Plus and how do I use it?

If I had to summarise my thoughts on Google Plus, it would be that I came for the SEO benefits, but stayed for the huge amount of valuable and relevant of information that is shared, the standard of discussion and the willingness of most members to help out and contribute.

Google Plus is different to other social media, in my experience it is less prone to bad behaviour, and experienced members give freely of their time. Discussion topics can we wide ranging, I've been caught up in discussions on music, poetry, westies (as in dogs, via one of the very many "communities"), as well as my core interests of web design, digital marketing and social media.

While I’ve had a Google Plus profile for quite some time I’ve only been actively engaging for the last few months. So instead of me trying to explain it all, I’ll link to some excellent articles by Martin Shirvington, an outstanding authority on Google Plus amongst many other things and someone who will engage with you and help you make the most of this platform. (Make sure your first connection on G+ is Martin)

“If you think Google Plus is just another social site, you are in for a big surprise. What has been created is, put simply, a phenomenal tool for human communication, and much more. But it takes you to experience it, embrace it and ‘get it’ before this realisation really comes.”- Martin Shirvington 


Martin Shervington

Marketing, Psychology & Google+ InsightsWhat is Google Plus? A Complete User Guide. (Videos and Blog)

Article resources (including additional videos)

1. The Ultimate Guide to Google Plus Posts
2. The Ultimate Guide to Google Circles
3. The Ultimate Guide to Google Hangouts
4. Complete Guide to Google Plus Pages for Brands and Businesses
5. Complete Guide to Google Plus Communities
6. Complete Guide to Google Local
7. How to use Google Plus with Google Adwords
8. Complete Guide to your YouTube Channel
9. Google Authorship and Social SEO
10. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), using Google Plus

Unless your organization watches its Facebook stats carefully, you may not have realized Facebook has become increasingly less accommodating to brands and companies over the course of the platform’s recent updates.  Some notable business owners, like billionaire Dallas Maverick’s owner Mark Cuban, have even spoken out against Facebook’s latest changes.

For example, in late 2012 TechCrunch noticed that posts made by brand pages were only being displayed to a tiny fraction of a page’s following, and were being hidden from the rest.  Facebook has been restricting how many of a page’s followers see a given post, a statistic known as “Reach,” for several years now.  However TechCrunch found that in late 2012 Facebook made changes to the newsfeed that caused the reach for brands to drop as much as 40% compared to what it was earlier in the year.

Posts for the average Facebook brand page are now being seen by less than 10% of their audience!  For example, if you spent time, money and effort to build your Facebook following to 4,000 people, that means now each post you make is going to be seen by less than 400 of them.

Facebook has a solution for this though…you can pay them money and then they will show your post to more people.  That doesn’t quite seem ethical though, does it?  First you spend money to build your following on Facebook, and then you spend even more money to reach the following you worked so hard to build?

It’s no wonder so many business owners, like Cuban, are upset and considering leaving the platform.  So, is it time for you to close your Facebook page?  Here are three important things to consider:

1. Does your business model allow for recurring purchases?  There is a rule in marketing and sales that says it’s always cheaper to sell more to an existing customer than it is to find a new customer.  If your business allows for customers to make repeat purchases, like an online store or clothing company with new items every season, then the chances are better that your company will get value from a Facebook page.  However, if your customers only need to buy your product once, like a video game or a book, then you will always have to be finding new customers because your product doesn’t lend itself to repeat purchases.  That will make it harder for you to come out with a positive return on your Facebook investment if you are continually having to find new customers instead of simply re-selling old ones.

2. Do you have other contact information for your Facebook followers?  Depending on your company’s approach to Facebook, you may know that most of the people on your Facebook page got there because they were already following your company on its website, email list, or elsewhere.  If that’s the case, there shouldn’t be much negative consequence to closing your Facebook page, because you can still reach those customers another way.  However this situation is probably rare, so what can you do if you don’t have other ways to contact your existing Facebook fans?

Start by going to your page and looking at the cost for promoted posts.  Figure out how much money you’d wind up spending to reach your desired number of fans each month.  This will let you know how much money you can potentially save by moving people to another platform like Twitter, Tumblr, or an email list.

From there, come up with a budget for a contest, and an ad campaign to promote it to your Facebook following, that encourages people to switch to your new platform of choice.  This will allow you to justify the expense of the contest and the promotional campaign because you can show that after a certain amount of time, say six months, you will have saved enough money in Facebook expenses to pay for the contest.  And every month after that those savings will be contributing to higher profits for your company.

3. How are you measuring the value of your Facebook fans?  This is the most important question to ask yourself about whether or not you should keep your Facebook page.  Do you know the average revenue generated per fan?  Or how many new fans you need to acquire in order for one to make a purchase?  Unless you have some way of proving that having a Facebook page is making your company money, you’re running the risk of wasting a substantial amount of time and resources.  It’s time for you to start making sure your Facebook page is creating a positive return on investment.

For example, if you know that for every 10 new fans you acquire on average one makes a $20 purchase, then you can look at how much it costs in advertising and administrative costs in order to get 10 new fans.  It’s important to factor in the labor and admin costs because those are resources that could be doing something else potentially more effective at generating money for your business if they weren’t tied up running the Facebook page.

So, if it costs you less than $20 to acquire 10 new fans on Facebook, then it’s worth it to keep your page and pay money to grow your following.  However, even if you’ve determined that your page is generating positive ROI now, that doesn’t mean that it will continue to do so.  Especially if your business doesn’t allow for repeat customers, like the first question pointed out, make sure that you check in on your Facebook ROI regularly.

First, there’s no guarantee that Facebook won’t make changes in the future that will further reduce your ROI.  You may also find that as you sell more of your product it will become harder to sustain the same volume of sales.  You may reach a point where all of the people who are most likely to buy from you have already done so, and the only people left to target aren’t as interested.  This would cause your sales to drop and require you to look at a new strategy to address the changed marketplace.

The bottom line is if you’re going to have a Facebook page, make sure you’ve got a justification for it.  And “I’m doing it because all my competitors are doing it” doesn’t count.  Just because they like to waste money doesn’t mean you should.

By Alon Popilskis

Most C-level Executives, CMO included, view “Social” as media—but they don’t know how to interact with consumers there in a meaningful way. They want to buy CPMs or Likes—but don’t know what to do with them afterward.

CMO’s also make the mistake of assuming that the social audience has the same pain and passion points as their face-to-face or store audience. Most often that is not the case.

In order to get the real value out of Social, you must connect emotionally to the people who are there and find out what they’re looking for. CMOs are used to ads and campaigns, so that’s the place they gravitate, but even Facebook ads are only media buys. Ads are good for building initial likes, but they really are targeted to demographics just like any other ad.

Your mission is to go beyond that initial like and really get people excited about your brand, engage with you, buy from you, become a social advocate and sell for you. To do that you need to get into the heads of your social buyers.

So assign that as a singular goal to appropriate personnel on your team. Make it their mission to follow or friend your followers (not only on Facebook and Twitter, but everywhere online) and listen to their conversations. Their sole mission should be to pay attention to your social consumers. Find out what they like to talk about, the other brands they like, what their problems are–what makes them tick. That’s not a one-and-done task either… it’s ongoing.