What's Your Social Media Engagement Quotient ?

We saw substantive growth in social media usage in 2010 and accordingly product brands increased their marketing investments in platforms like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Foursquare. Based on a recent HubSpot report, advertisers spent more than $1.7 billion on social media marketing in the United States. More than $3.4 billion have been spent globally. These expenditures reflect a growing adoption by Rainmakers of the effectiveness of social media platforms. Not surprisingly, more than  53 percent of social media marketing investments are made in targeted text and click-through image ads on Facebook. More than half of those brands investing in social media have Facebook Fan pages and generate about 4 posts per week. Almost three-quarters (65 percent) of social media brand proponents have corporate or product Twitter accounts, generating more than 27 tweets weekly. And as Internet content becomes more and more visual, brands have not lagged behind. More than half of companies active in the social media realm have YouTube channels and are updating their channel's video content with about 10 new videos monthly. And while there's still a lot of progress to be made in the brand blogosphere, today more than one-third of companies have an active product or corporate blog where they interact with their customers and followers. Are you engaged in social media ? If not, you could be missing out on a rich exchange of valuable information to help you become more effective digital marketers.

It's All About Entertainment At Myspace

Myspace has a brand new look and user experience that goes beyond just the building of a social network of friends. With a new brand, Myspace has rolled out a beta website that offers Gen Y users (16-25) a rich, highly-personalized entertainment experience focused on music, celebrities, movies, television, and games available through multiple platforms, including online, mobile devices and offline events. Of course, one of the most exciting features of the new Myspace is that Gen Y users will be able to connect, share with others who have similar entertainment interests. With entertainment as one of the known cultural points to effectively reach Hispanic consumers, the redesign is expected to be particularly attractive to the fast-growing bicultural young Hispanic market segment who make up 18 percent of the U.S. Gen Y population. Hispanic youth are not only the country’s fastest-growing market segment, but are also early adopters to social media and characterized as being trend setters and technology savvy.