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As might be expected in a difficult economy, lead generation topped all digital budget categories with almost 27% followed by display/banner at just under 20% and search at almost 19%.   As to what is driving digital media investments in 2012, audience composition, ROI and measurement capabilities, audience reach, and data targeting were selected by more than three-quarters of the respondents.By a wide margin, click through rate is the most important factor in campaign success with cost-per-engagement and interaction rate almost equal in importance.

Content marketing, which includes white papers, case studies, videos, custom websites, video and white papers, is among tech marketers’ top five spending priorities for 2012.  Led by collateral at 71%, followed by webcasts/virtual events at 61%, videos at 59%, research at 55%, and articles/features at 54%, marketers are investing in a wide variety of content marketing or custom programs.  Agencies are much mo

s for social media, YouTube and Facebook lead all platforms with LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter not as popular. Among BtoB respondents, 53% found social extremely/very valuable for finding relevant technology content on the Web, which is double the 2010 figure.  Not surprisingly, 18- to 34-year-olds are most active with social media.  According to all users in the IDG survey, 60% rely most on tech sites, 46% peers or colleagues, and 43% independent tech journalists/bloggers.

71% of senior-level execs were worried about risks associated with social media, with 13% saying they are “very concerned.”

listed the potential for negative comments about the company (36%), disclosure of proprietary information (32%), and out-of-date information (18%) as the most worrying. They were less worried about accidental exposure of personally identifiable information, fraud, and corporate executives (i.e., themselves) doing something embarrassing or incriminating on line.

Among public companies, the top concern was disclosure of proprietary information (50%), followed by negative comments, out-of-date information, and fraud, each at 17%.

It is a rare privilege to observe the rise of a new language. Instagram has always supported emoji, but they did not see wide adoption until the introduction of the emoji keyboard on iOS (October 2011) and on most Android platforms (July 2013). The graph below shows the percentage of text (comments and captions) containing emoji characters graphed over time

In the month following the introduction of the iOS emoji keyboard, 10% of text on Instagram contained emoji.

Usage continued to grow and in March of this year, nearly half of text contained emoji

Some of these were gaffes by clients, others were campaigns by PR and marketing teams that didn’t turn out as planned. The good news is, all these blunders left messes that somebody had to clean up, guaranteeing full employment for crisis response teams.

"The thing I've tried to do with any client opening up its customer service channels -- you have to have a crisis communications plan mixed with a customer service plan," he said.  "You have to anticipate what will happen. ... Companies that dive in without a plan of attack for those situations are finding it difficult."

"You have to have a lawyer on staff who can be on call and help your social media team craft communications in crisis situations," he said. "When you have a big publicity problem, you have your legal team working hand-in-hand with PR. Why wouldn't you do the same thing in the social media world?"

"Any industry that's heavily regulated will always have a layer of legal and compliance teams that have to be trained, and have to buy in," he said. "It can be done with the right legal team. But if you have a team that constantly says ‘no,’ it'll never work."

Fully 65 percent of organizations pile social media on top of other responsibilities, while only 27 percent focus exclusively on the emerging platforms. Sixty-nine percent are dissatisfied or only "somewhat satisfied" with how they measure their social media effort. Only 31 percent are "satisfied" or "very satisfied."

Just 13 percent of communicators agreed that their organization was "an advanced, well-run machine," while 64 percent said they use social media regularly, but have more to learn and accomplish. Another 23 percent outed themselves as "newbies."

The labor board’s rulings, which apply to virtually all private sector employers, generally tell companies that it is illegal to adopt broad social media policies — like bans on “disrespectful” comments or posts that criticize the employer — if those policies discourage workers from exercising their right to communicate with one another with the aim of improving wages, benefits or working conditions.

Employers often seek to discourage comments that paint them in a negative light. Don’t discuss company matters publicly, a typical social media policy will say, and don’t disparage managers, co-workers or the company itself. Violations can be a firing offense. But in a series of recent rulings and advisories, labor regulators have declared many such blanket restrictions illegal.

The National Labor Relations Board says workers have a right to discuss work conditions freely and without fear of retribution, whether the discussion takes place at the office or on Facebook.

Overall, the average viewer watched 21.7 hours of online video content in March 2012, according to comScore. On Google sites, people watched an average of 7.1 hours and on Hulu, 4.6 hours - the highest among the top 10 video content properties.

A comparison of comScore data for March 2011 versus March 2012 also showed that Yahoo's online video rankings had an 8 percent increase in unique viewers and a 72 percent increase in average minutes per viewer.

Want your link to get the most traction on Twitter? Post it on a Monday between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. ET.

he company revealed that posting links to Twitter between the hours of 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. ET (or 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. PT) will give you the highest click rank, especially on days earlier in the week. Meanwhile, sending a tweet with a link after 8:00 p.m. should be avoided — as should posting links after 3:00 p.m. on Fridays.

The half-life of a link posted to Twitter is about 2.8 hours, according to bit.ly.