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Hi
3 Fresh, Juicy Bites this week
- Marketers shifting their spend to advertising on digital channels
- Report shows social channel effectiveness … maybe
- Complete guide to social media images
And on that third item I share my experience of adjusting the image on my Twitter profile - and the resultant displays on different devices.
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Browse previous issues of Social Business Bites at this link
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This Week's Bites
According to the 53 page report of this Salesforce study, involving 5,000 marketers worldwide, the top three business challenges for 2015 are:
- New business development
- Quality
of leads
- Remaining up to date with current marketing technology and trends
38% of marketers plan to shift spend from traditional mass advertising to advertising on digital channels. Eighty-four percent of
marketers plan to increase or maintain their overall marketing spend in 2015.
There is a lot of "noise" about marketing and the responses indicate a high degree of need for focus. The top three technology areas identified for marketers' focus were:
- Mobile applications
- Marketing analytics
- CRM tools
So much more in this report. Do yourself a favor and get the PDF as a free download. Just follow the links from the article.
Report shows social channel effectiveness … maybe Jason Falls
One of the reasons I like to read Jason Falls' posts on his Social Media Explorer site is that he is always up to date with his information and observations.
Another is that he is not easily convinced about everything in the latest report or pundit statement.
As here in his commentary on the very same Salesforce report I
have recommended above.
His focus is on the report's listing of the perceived marketing effectiveness of various networks in the social channel. Very interesting about Pinterest.
He notes:
As expected, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn dominate the channel usage. Google+ and YouTube are hanging in there, but then there’s a huge drop-off in usage of blogging. Instagram, Pinterest and even podcasts are used by
less than 34 percent of the total.
Pinterest, surprisingly, is only used by 24 percent and 15 percent of those say it’s not very or not at all effective.
Then the questioning. Jason is not convinced by the claim he sees in the chart about the various networks that most marketers are mostly satisfied with the channels they are using. He doesn't think that lines up with reality as he experiences it in talking with brand, agencies and business owners.
Which leads me to ask, are you satisfied with the results you or clients are getting from the various social channels (networks) you are using?
This is one for those of us who like to get the best use of the images we use for various social media sites, whether we are doing it ourselves or delegating someone else to do so.
Especially given the importance of mobile.
It's crucially important to see how your lovely web site shows up on mobile devices. And how your social profiles on Twitter and LinkedIn and Google+ and Facebook and others show up.
For example, the other day I spent some time on refurbishing the image on my Twitter profile. I was fairly happy with the result, then decided to see how it showed up on my Android tablet and Android phone.
Very different.
The mobile devices each displayed the information and images quite differently.
Back to the drawing board. Or rather, Photoshop Elements. And as I am by no means a designer,
there was a lot of adjusting and testing before I had something that worked on all three devices.
I'm ok with the result. At least there is not information being covered up or chopped off.
As you will see from the three "after" images below or if you visit the account on a laptop or desktop device, the first of the three, the header image on the web, is a bit sparse and would definitely not do well in a design competition. But I decided that as more and more people are going to be accessing Twitter via mobile devices, that was where the priority was to get it as right as
possible.
Of course, I could have commissioned a graphic designer to do all this, and much better, but I did not actually realize at the outset what I was getting into.
And the image is a bit squashed here. Another challenge for me in managing the way AWeber displays images in newsletters. But you get the basic idea of the quite dramatic difference in the different displays.
Don't have an iPhone or iPad to test these on. If you do and would like to take a screenshot of http://twitter.com/deswalsh and email it to me or Dropbox it, I would be most grateful. deswalsh@webartsco.com will do it.
