This may come as a surprise to many marketers, but remember what happened with banner ads. There was a steady loss in CTR. Despite Facebook’s efforts to approve ads and block out spam, the same will happen.

However, a lot of clicks may not be the end-goal for many marketers on Facebook

Key Takeaway: Online behavior changes. What once drove a lot of clicks may now be best for awareness. This has happened before and it will happen time and time again.

Read more about the findings at eMarketer.

Read the Introduction Here

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It’s one thing if you’re still building, but if the page is languishing, perhaps it’s time to examine another strategy.

See all the research findings at AllFacebook.com

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See the full infographic at DanZarrella.com

The report also found that 52% of marketers have used video in their email marketing. And a clear majority find it effective:

Key Takeaway: Email is an old dog who could use some new tricks. The same survey found that 76% of marketers saw higher click thru rates and 72% found consumers more likely to convert. Linking to videos creates a more rich and effective message.

Download the full report at WebVideoMarketing.org

Key Findings:

The lion’s share went to specifics about the product and product improvements. Both of these show how valuable online reviews can be for product development.

Key Takeaway: Online reviews can be a rising tide for all your ships (departments).

Get the full Conversation Index at Bazaarvoice

Brad Fay

Ed Keller

An interview with Brad Fay and Ed Keller, Co-founders of the Keller Fay Group, COO and CEO respectively; and co-authors of the forthcoming book, The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace.

Brad and Ed will Keynote at WOMM-U, May 7-9, about the research findings from their book that prove how all media are social.

How does the “social media is word of mouth on steroids” argument miss the mark?

In several ways.  First, there’s nothing more impactful than a face-to-face word of mouth conversation. When we compare the credibility of advice about brands, we find that face-to-face gets the highest scores, followed by phone and then online.  Face-to-face interaction has the benefit of emotion and facial expression that just doesn’t convey electronically, and this leads to more actions taken based on offline conversations.

Second, offline conversations enjoy greater scale, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary.  Nine times more conversations happen offline than online, and it’s possible for marketing activities to trigger enormous cascades of offline word of mouth.  For example, we find that the Monday Night Football advertisers enjoy some 3 billion conversations each year throughout the season based on advertising-triggered WOM.

Finally, the scale of social media is not quite as great as advertised.  We’ve seen research that shows typically less than 1% of the Facebook fans of brands engage with the brand following the initial decision to “like” the brand online.  Online social media has great potential, but it’s not “word of mouth on steroids” and it really needs to be integrated into a larger strategy that almost certainly includes traditional media or marketing approaches as well.

The term “Social Media” generally refers to digital media like Facebook and Twitter. How did this definition fare against your data?

Yes, that’s the definition most commonly used by marketers today.  But our research suggests that all media are social, in that all media have the chance to trigger or support consumer-to-consumer conversations and recommendations.

No medium sparks more brand conversations than television commercials.  Print media are better than just about any other in reaching influencers—the most active recommenders. And “traditional’ internet sites like brand websites, search engines, and online publishers are extremely effective at producing shareable content. We advise marketers to think socially with all their communications channels.

Considering how social media have become such a focal point for so many brands, how do you think media will change in the coming years?

More than 50 years ago, the Columbia academics Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld described a “two-step flow” for mass communications in which mass media sparks conversations, which then lead to purchasing. They said mass media almost never leads to purchasing without first passing through a social step.  They were right then, and we see a “back to the future” trend in marketing that will once again emphasize the two-step flow.

To be successful, marketers will need to have talkable messages, aimed at people who like to share, and using channels likely to reach them when they are best able to share.  It’s a huge opportunity for everyone, and WOMMA is at the center of that conversation.  We can’t wait to see everybody at WOMM-U in May, share the stories from our book, and learn what others think!

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Ed Keller and Brad Fay run the Keller Fay Group and are co-authors of the forthcoming book, The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace. The book explains how ALL media and marketing can be social, based on market research and case studies from companies like Pepsi, Dell, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, and Apple.

Read more about their research and how TV drives word of mouth at MediaPost.

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Marketers are salivating over more than just that. 80% of pins are repins – meaning a crazy level of sharing.

This is not to mention the highly sought after demographic – generally young, female, educated, and middle-class.

Key Takeaway: We’ve got a trifecta! Pinterest’s success accentuates a long-standing trend of the internet becoming more visual and instantly sharable. Brands should take note of this not only on their Pinterst pages, but also in their other media.

See the full infographic at TechCrunch

The idea rests on this: If a face-to-face conversation is one awesome word of mouth interaction, then a post on social media will equal the same quality interaction multiplied by the number of people in the network.

Ed Keller challenged this notion with data from brands with “tens of millions” of fans. A mere 0.45% are active fans. Further research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute found that less than 1% of fans ever engage with a brand after clicking Like.

What’s more, BuzzFeed and StumbleUpon conducted research that concluded:

“Put simply, the vast majority of sharing occurs in the normal fashion evidenced in real-world word-of- mouth.”

Key Takeaway: The best way to do “Word of Mouth on Steroids” is to create something amazing that people want to share. There are no shortcuts here. Create something talkable. That is all.

Read more at KellerFay’s blog

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Ed Keller will Keynote alongside Brad Fay at WOMM-U, May 7-9. They’ll introduce research from their forthcoming book, The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace.

KellerFay is a WOMMA member.

Several reports and studies have emerged in the last few months that indicate 2012 will be a big year for Content Marketing. New channels like online video, social media and blogging still rank very high in marketers’ minds.

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The difficult part isn’t producing, it’s curating. Like advertising, media form and message deeply affect outcomes. Success isn’t a matter of participation. Anyone can write a blog post or make a video. Brands need to think hard about why and how they’ll do blog posts or videos.

Key Takeaway: Creating content is more about being useful than anything else. Great content shows potential customers that you know your stuff and you’re happy to help. You can talk about strategies and ROI until you’re blue in the face, but never forget why you’re creating content.

Read more at Lumenatti, ComBlu’s blog