With social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook becoming more and more popular, many businesses have an easier path into getting their products and brands out there and getting one step closer to their consumers. As eMarketer puts it, social media marketing has gone from experimental to must-have, and that increases the importance of adopting an integrated social strategy.

Done well a social media campaign can result in increased brand exposure, a massive increase in website traffic and visitors, plus natural links to improve search engine rankings.

According to a research from Unica, leader in marketing software solutions, social media marketing is embraced by almost half of marketers, and adoption is healthy across most social tactics.

Mobile marketing, on the other hand, continues its march toward greater significance. One-third of marketers already conduct some type of mobile marketing, plus they’re providing richer interactivity on their mobile websites as well as mobile applications.

Just to get an idea of some of the numbers, 41% of marketers claim to use third-party social network sites as part of their social media marketing integrated campaigns, while 39% said they run a blog as part of their integrated online campaign.

Paul McNulty, CMO, Unica comments:

“2010 is shaping up to be an exciting year for marketers. Unprecedented change, brought on by a volatile economy, the rise of new channels, and the increased demand for financial accountability, are creating a new era in marketing. This new era is more immediate, more personal, more social, and more engaging.”

View the below graph for more statistics or visit Unica for the complete research results.

Can you try and guess who the winner social platform for Fortune 100 companies is?

You guessed right, Twitter it is.

65% of the world’s most poweful companies reported to have an active account on the leading microblogging platform. Facebook comes in second with 54% of companies having presence on Facebook Fan Pages and 50% of companies who have a YouTube channel. The study also found that only 33% have corporate blogs.

Only 20% of these international companies reported to be utilizing all four platforms (Facebook, Twitter,YouTube, blog) to engage with stakeholders.

There are also those who have multiple active accounts on Twitter and these include AT&T, Nokia and Samsung with 15 accounts each while the average number of accounts for the vast majority is 4.2.

The level of activity on social networking sites was also measured in the study. The total # of posts done on Twitter in the past week by 82% of companies was of 27 tweets, followed by 59% of companies who posted 3.6 Facebook posts in the past week, 68% who uploaded 10 videos on YouTube in the past month and 36% who submitted 7 new blog posts on their corporate blogs in the same time period.

You can find the complete analysis of the findings here.

Below is an infographic from Flowtown which helps visualize better the social media intake and engagement of these Fortune 100 companies:

The study also shows that advertisers are planning to allocate between 6 and 20% of their digital marketing budgets to social media this year, compared to just 14% in the previous year.

The main reason for this dedicated budget is to drive brand awareness and consideration, as declared by 77% of respondents, while another 75% said to use it to drive engagement and advocacy and 47% to drive product sales.

Though respondents didn’t exactly pinpoint which department should handle all social media initiatives and implementations, the vast majority, 73%, said that the marketing department should cover such activities, whilst another 33% declared it’s a job for the PR department, followed by 16% who said customer services should handle it.

The greatest challenge for the social media industry? 74% respondents declared that providing ROI was the hardest to attain, followed by 64% who made reference to seeing measurable results- a topic we covered on one of our previous articles.

The study revealed the following to be amongst the top social media activities mostly claimed by marketers:

* Twitter & brand monitoring= 51% of respondents

* Facebook Pages= 47% of respondents

* Branded communities= 39% of respondents

* Blogger outreach= 37% of respondents

* Video Distribution= 37% of respondents

* User Generate Content= 37% of respondents

More interesting data from the study includes the percentage of marketers who have not yet embraced social media at all, which made up 7% of respondents. In contrast, 22% of respondents have made it a core part of their communications strategy.

45.4% of respondents worldwide considered social networks and applications a ‘top priority’ for 2010, while 42.2% found it ‘important’. Following closely were digital infrastructure, search optimization and mobile with 44.5%, 27.0% and 26.8% of respondents who considered these as their biggest priorities for this year.

However, an important fact that ties along with these findings is that senior marketers are not only allocating their marketing budgets to social media, they also want to see measurable results from their social initiatives.

According to a study from MarketingProfs which interviewed almost 5,000 marketing pros, almost all CMOs declared they’d look to increase their social media activites to engage customers, measure ROI and reach new audiences.

Findings also reported these marketers will execute the following activites during this year:

* A 400% increase in use of Twitter comments to inform decisions about products and services
* A 59% increase in use of customer reviews and ratings
* A 24% increase in use of social media for pre-sales Q&A

Some predictions from CMOs say social media will have an impact on revenue in 2010 and these are:

* 80% say up to a 5% impact, and 15% say a 5-10% impact

* Most companies (81%) plan to link annual revenues to their social media investment in 2010

Of those companies that did tie social media investment to 2009 revenues here are some of the outcomes:

* Companies with 5% or less revenue tied to social media in 2009 foresee that the link between revenue and social media will increase 5% or more in 2010
* Those with 6-10% of revenue tied to social media in 2009 project that the link will increase more than 10%
* Those with higher than 6% of their revenue linked to social media in 2009 foresee that the link will increase more than 20% in 2010

More findings from to the study from eMarketer revealed that respondents (27.9%) considered time spent online as the most important performance metric, followed by unique page views with 23.7%.

Are you looking to engage with your customers and allocate more budget to the digital space? Discuss.

In 2008, the scenario that Nielsen painted for us with regards to the Internet industry in Italy was one which emphasized on the explosive phenomenon of communities, social networks, forums and blogs.

This past December, the results provided by the media research company were characterized instead by the continuing growth of online news, gaming sites, gambling and online videos.

However, this doesn’t mean social media sites have taken a secondary role within the Italian interactive landscape, on the contrary, Facebook, for instance, is amongst the first most visited websites with an annual growth rate of 55% from 2008 to Dec. 2009.

If we compare the most visited categories in the month of December 2009 with that of December 2008, we find that video and movie sites have earned a position, ranking in fifth place with a total of 14 million users and a growth annual rate of 18%. Online news sites rank seventh with 13.2 million visitors, experiencing an increase of 20% since Dec. 2008.

In terms of percentages, the categories with the highest growth in the last year were the online gambling and betting sites, which witnessed an explosion soon after their legalization early last year. Just over 10% of Italian internet users visited these types of sites in the beginning of 2008. The number has tripled since then.

E-commerce sites also witnessed a boom in total numbers of visits, (particularly during the holiday season), some of which can be attributed to 11.6 million Italian web users- 5% up from 2008.

2009 represented a very positive year for the Internet industry overall. The number of Internet users increased to a total of 23.6 million individuals (up 7% from the previous year) who go online at least once a day, spending a total of 29 hours a month surfing the net from their homes or offices- that’s about 3 hours more than December 2008.

These numbers should give marketers a clear understanding of the new competitive scenario within the online Italian market and help them decipher where to reach their qualified target audience in order to effectively plan their online marketing and promotional campaigns on specific channels.

To decipher the myth behind a company’s level of greenness and whether green marketing proofs to be efficient or not, Environmental Leader and MediaBuyerPlanner partnered to study Green Marketing through the audiences of a number of industry publications to determine if it really works or if it’s just playing pretend.

Numbers from the report revealed that 33% of respondents said green marketing was more effective than their normal marketing efforts, with just 7% saying it was less effective.

Some future predictions, 82% of marketers expect to spend more on green marketing while more than half of that declared they plan to invest in online marketing in upcoming months.

Other findings showed that the most popular medium for green marketing was the internet with 74.2% of respondents having allocated some budget for online activites, while only 49.8% invested on print, followed by 40% on direct marketing,7% on outdoor as well as Radio & TV and finally, 6% on mobile.

Amongst marketers with high budgets, 14% of those between the $10 million to $50 million budget category spent money on mobile, while those with a budget higher than $50 million only made up 16% of marketers.

A final observation from Executive Summary explains that what’s most important for decision-makers is to hold green-marketing in high regard, which makes up nearly half of respondents compared to only 15% who hold it in low regard. Usually those companies with a budget between $10 million to $50 million don’t take green marketing much into consideration, which is exactly the opposite for companies with low budgets, which are who seem to be benefiting the most from integrating green marketing into their communication strategy and philosophy.

Today, Bing’s CTR is 75% higher than Google’s.

Let’s head towards the social media network front instead. A recent study by comScore, reported that Facebook is the fourth largest website in the U.S. Numbers show that Facebook surpassed with 102.9 million unique visitors in the U.S., versus 99.7 million for Aol. Other interesting values revealed that although AOL grew millions in October 2009, while Facebook grew by more than 5 million.

Last summer Facebook has already become the fourth largest site worldwide last summer when it became more popular than Wikipedia. So, how long  do you think it will take for Facebook to catch up to Microsoft’s 136 million U.S. visitors? or Yahoo’s 160 million U.S. visitors? and for tha matter, Google’s 168 million visitors?

This information should be quite useful to 72% of 8,500 senior marketers who declared they will increase their spending on digital media in 2010, as presented by a study from Round2 Communications. Along similar lines, 33.9% of marketers said ROI for new media is “somewhat” better than traditional, and 28.2% said new media’s ROI is “significantly” better.

The downside to this- 86% of the respondents say they expect their spending on traditional media, including broadcast TV, radio, print newspapers and magazines, to suffer very little change or simply decline in 2010 as declared by 40.3% of respondents.

A recent survey from Razorfish “FEED: Digital Brand Experience Survey”, polled US Internet users who have ever ‘friended’ a brand on Facebook or MySpace- 40.1% said YES while the remaining 59.9% of respondents said NO.

Consumers reported that their primary motivation for following or friending a brand was to get access to exclusive deals and product discounts. As an example, there’s Dell who declares to have gained $3 million since 2007 thanks to its Twitter strategy.

What happens after you ‘friend’ a brand on Facebook or MySpace

According to the study, 96% of respondents either always (22.94%), usually (39.15%) or sometimes (33.9%) recommend the brand to others.

22.69% always consider the brand when in the market for the product or service, while 40.90% of respondents replied they usually consider the brand and 34.41% sometimes considers the brand, for a total of 98%. On the other hand, 21.45% of respondents recognized that engagement raises their awareness of the brand, followed by 38.65% who say it usually raises their awareness and 36.66% who say it sometimes raises their awareness. And finally, a total of 97.01% of respondents declared buying a product or service from the brand.

These findings explain the importance of building and monitoring a brand’s online presence as to be able to fully interact with prospects and customers through the different social media channels. Keeping a healthy, attention-grabbing and impacting online image that engages cosumers actively is critical for the success of any online marketing strategy.

In addition, the study also showed that nearly half (48%) of people who saw a brand mentioned on Twitter immediately went online and searched for the particular product. “Consumers are receptive to brand marketing messages,” Performics Marketing Senior Vice President Michael Kahn says. “Being in a social network is like going to someone’s barbecue. People are talking about the experiences of their lives. The sharing experience that happens in the physical world also happens in the social.”

So it’s almost like a natural effect when people mention brands on social media– the immediate reaction is to go find out what the person is talking about or referring to.

Other results amongst survey respondents include 30% admitting to learn about a product or service through a social network site. In relation to more specific social networks, 46% of respondents say they would talk about or recommend a product on Facebook, while 44% have recommended a product or service on microblogging site, Twitter.

More significant data from Performics includes:

*34% of respondents have used a search engine to find information on a product/service/brand after seeing an advertisement on a social networking site

*30% of respondents have learned about a new product, service or brand from a social networking site

*32% of respondents said messages about printable coupons on social sites resonate with them

*28% of respondents said messages about sales or special deal notifications resonate with them

These statistics give marketers a clear picture of how consumers behave and interact with the different social platforms, as well as, the types of communication messages that capture their attention and lead them to react upon a special offer, discount or coupon.

According to a study by email marketing solutions company Campaigner, higher growth small businesses are spending more on marketing, and favoring online tools such as email marketing over traditional marketing vehicles.

Despite the economic climate and the challenges it has posed to businesses of all sectors and sizes, many small business owners are beginning to see turnaround and are aiming to keep growing through the use of web-based marketing tools.

Some key findings from the study revealed that 65% of small businesses that expect revenue growth reported that they are spending more or are planning to spend more on marketing by year end. On the other hand, 32% of those that expect flat revenues, and 36% of those expecting declining revenues are spending more or are planning to spend more on marketing this coming year.

Overall, small businesses are shifting their marketing efforts from offline, traditional channels to online strategies via social networks, blogs, search engine marketing etc.

Small business owners are realizing that a small online investment using diverse Web-based marketing tools can lead to business success and help them meet business challenges such as:

Attracting and retaining customers – 50%

Revenue – 15%

Improving cash flow – 9%

Maintaining profitability – 8%

In addition the study also showed that a great number of businesses anticipating growth are already using (82%) or planning to use email marketing. Only 18% declared they have no intention in using email marketing.