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Snap released a developer tool that lets brands and publishers share web content to its Snapchat image-messaging app. Creative Kit for Web extends functions that previously were only available for mobile apps, giving developers broader distribution within Snapchat and letting them boost web traffic outside the app, per press materials shared with Mobile Marketer.​

Creative Kit for Web lets brands add a "Share to Snapchat" button to a mobile or desktop website. Each of those shared Snaps will have a branded sticker or GIF, along with a link to help drive traffic to related content on a website. Desktop visitors to those sites will see a Snapcode that can be scanned with a smartphone camera while using Snapchat to share a web link with friends and followers.

consumers are more trusting of content they can find on their own terms, rather than that which is pushed out to them by brands.

Looking solely at US respondents, only 15% trust social media marketing, 12% information about companies on mobile applications, 10% ads on websites, and 9% text messages from companies or brands.

Consumers display far more trust in what Forrester tabs “self-selected digital pull content.”

Google’s controversial encrypted-search feature has had a chilling effect on B2B publishers’ ability to track organic search referral terms,

Encrypted search queries, which are enabled when a user signs into a Google account, now account for almost 40% of referring traffic data to B2B sites

“Eventually you’re not going to be able to measure SEO performance by keyword or understand the impact of organic search on your website traffic, engagement or conversions.”

Last April, Gamestop Corp. (GME) opened a store on Facebook to generate sales among the 3.5 million-plus customers who’d declared themselves “fans” of the video game retailer. Six months later, the store was quietly shuttered. Gamestop has company. Over the past year, Gap Inc., J.C. Penney (JCP) Co. and Nordstrom (JWN) Inc. have all opened and closed storefronts on Facebook Inc.’s (FB) social networking site.

“We just didn’t get the return on investment we needed from the Facebook market, so we shut it down pretty quickly,” Sheetz said in a telephone interview. “For us, it’s been a way we communicate with customers on deals, not a place to sell.”

“It was basically just another place to shop for all the stuff already available on the retailer websites,” Gerten said. “I give so-called F-commerce an ‘F.’”

A great example of a company removing registration friction for a business audience is the online media division of The Business Journals. Since deploying Janrain Engage Social Login in June, they have reported a 12% increase in site registrations across 40 online properties.

Will social media play an important role for B2B marketers in the near future? We believe so and are seeing a growing interest from technology solution providers and other organizations that want to add a social element to their B2B website and marketing efforts. In Forrester’s report: Market Overview: 2011 Social Media Platforms For B2B Tech Marketing, they indicate: Today, there is increased demand for social media platforms from B2B tech marketers that are using social media tactics to engage with business technology buyers.

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.

"Four out of five U.S. adults are involved in a social network," Band adds. The result: Businesses are increasingly trying to follow their customers' social networking updates. It's a logical extension of CRM, which is designed to help businesses broaden their understanding of customers' interests, needs, and concerns. Many business relationships today begin on the Internet, as customers increasingly find businesses from Google searches, Facebook fan pages, and Website visits, adds Brent Leary, a CRM and small-business technology analyst. So it makes perfect sense to track and build those relationships using cloud CRM services, especially if they offer social network monitoring.

• Highrise is a cloud CRM system that many small businesses like. Along with its CRM features, the system provides various third-party customer service applications, such as MailChimp, an e-mail marketing campaign service. Highrise offers a free plan for two users with up to 250 contacts. Beyond that ceiling, monthly plans start at $24 for up to six users.

Thursdays win out for the day with the most sharing. Social sharing in general is somewhat unpredictable pattern wise. But Thursday wins 10% more shares than all other days. In fact, 31% of the top 100 social share days in 2011 fell on Thursday.

“If you don’t publish daily, I’ve found that publishing on sequential days produces a signal multiplier effect on Twitter and via RSS.

27% of all content shares occur between 8am and 12pm EST. 

The question was fielded among consumers who have accessed a social networking website, asking them how likely they would be to make any type of purchase on such a site in the following 12 months. Overall, 18% of respondents said they would be very likely (9%) or likely (9%) to do so. Interestingly, only 15% were neutral on the subject, with a solid majority unlikely (12%) or very unlikely (55%) to do so.

While women appear to be the more active gender on social media, it’s men who are more interested in shopping on the platforms, according to the Javelin survey results. In fact, 23% of male respondents reported being at least likely to make a purchase directly through a social network this year, compared to 14% of female respondents.

LinkedIn’s Publisher Platform is the user-facing component to what has become a robust media arm at LinkedIn, largely propelled by its acquisition of news-reading app Pulse, and its content often feeds into daily news aggregator LinkedIn Today.  The platform, which allows users to connect and share content with others, is part of LinkedIn’s strategy to grow the frequency with which users interact on the website. The staged roll-out will provide access for roughly 25,000 users on LinkedIn, with the goal of a global roll-out within a few months.

Ignite analysts reviewed 689 posts across 21 brand pages (all of significant size, across a variety of industries) and found that, in the week since December 1, organic reach and organic reach percentage have each declined by 44% on average, with some pages seeing declines as high as 88%. Only one page in the analysis had improved reach, which came in at 5.6%.

As reach declined, the raw number of engaged users plunged as well, falling on average by 35%. Some pages saw engaged users fall as much as 76%. Only one page in the data set had an increase in the number of engaged users, coming in at 0.7%.

To add salt to an open wound, current research from Forrester and Wildfire shows that engaged users are a brand’s best customers.  They are more likely to purchase, recommend and prefer brands when they are socially engaged with that brand.  With fewer engaged users (-35%), brands bottom line are further penalized by the recent changes.