The State of Social Marketing 2011 – 2012

Pivot Conference recently released a report on the state of social marketing, noting that board rooms are finally tipping their hats to the value driven by social networking and, consequently, are putting more budget behind it.

The results in the report are based on a survey conducted by Pivot with 181 brand managers, agency professionals and marketing experts. Half of the questions asked these marketers to define their (or their clients’) “social consumers,” and the remainder focused on the extent to which social marketing is being leveraged by their business. Here are some of the results we found most interesting:

The Social Consumer

Social consumers are defined as those who turn to their social networks to learn about products and services. They are undoubtedly some of the types of people you should consider targeting when advertising. So, who are they? Overall, they tend to be gender neutral, have higher incomes, be middle aged, and frequent Facebook by far and large more than any other social network.

Top Facebook Advertising Reports of 2011

For online marketers, 2011 was the year Facebook advertising became mainstream. Facebook accounted for nearly 1 in 3 online display ads in the United States in the first quarter of 2011. This endowed the social network with the title of largest online display ad publisher — by far exceeding the online display ad shares of traditional leaders like Yahoo!, Microsoft, AOL, Google, Turner, Fox, Glam Media and many others combined.

As 2011 ensued and Facebook’s membership steadily climbed to surpass 800 million active users, a range of reports and white papers were released to help marketers navigate this new online ad paradigm.

Here are our picks for the top seven reports on the Facebook advertising ecosystem in 2011:

comScore and Facebook

The Power of Like: How Brands Reach and Influence Fans Through Social Media Marketing

A joint effort between comScore and Facebook, this report examines the reach and frequency of a brand’s content on Facebook. The team behind the report focused on activity around three companies’ Facebook pages, concluding and providing weight behind the ripple and viral effects afforded by the social graph. Top findings include: