The key to Wikipedia’s higher marks apparently lies in its ease of use and the completeness of information freely available to its users, who by the way only visit the site every week with some going to it monthly – nowhere near the 57% mark of FaceBook users that use it daily. Surprisingly enough, there are only two things that Americans see negatively for Wikipedia. One of these is the apparent user-generated content which can naturally be of questionable credibility. The rest when asked about what they don’t like about the site said they have nothing they think they don’t like about it.

FaceBook’s users on the other hand had a handful of nays with security and privacy concerns leading the way. This is then followed by news feeds, the presence of ads, never-ending interface tweaks, difficulty in navigation, less-than-lovable applications that can’t stop sending out notifications, overall functionality, and of course, spam.

Surprisingly, regardless of the faults that the American consumers see on FaceBook, it still remains too popular to ignore. Can you imagine 9% of the entire American website visits go to it? And among all the social networking sites out there, 55% of Americans use it. If you factor in nearly 500 million users, could it be that the unsatisfied users are only normal given such an overwhelming user base?

Enform believes this is exactly the case and no matter the downsides mentioned, at the right hands, FaceBook and other social media sites’ influence especially among the younger adults (50% of 18-34 year olds find social media recommendations to be most influential in their buying decision) should not be ignored. Give us a call and we’ll take care of sifting through all of the negatives social media sites has to offer to get directly to your target audience.

Source: http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/facebook-earns-poor-customer-satisfaction-marks-13614/

What exactly contributes to visitors leaving your site without bothering to check any other part of it? Aren’t your good looking high resolution images and out-of-this-world flash effects better than your competitor’s rather old-school-no-nonsense-html-dominated site? Not quite.

Although there are a number of factors that contribute to bounce rate (traffic quality, content, etc.), the size of your website and its effect – loading time – is something many web developers fail to consider these days. Why should they anyway? With all the endless list javascipts and flashy effects at their disposal, it’s hard to resist a few bling-blings here and there. However, this just might not be the best path to take especially if you consider the attention span (or lack of it) of internet users these days.

According to Google, the average (from 4.2 billion pages on the internet) page size is 320 kilobytes. How long does a 320 kb page load? It depends on the speed of your internet connection but given you are on 56k dialup, this will take at least 60 seconds.
You might say that isn’t all that bad and you might be right. However, take this example (among the many other possibilities), someone does a Google search and your site is luckily one of the 2 sites that the searcher opens (the other being your competitor). Now, if your site loads at 60 seconds and the other at 120, do you think the searcher will take the time to wait for the latter before browsing yours?

It’s no big secret really, smaller page size = lower load time = lower bounce rate = higher take up rate. Get in touch with Enform today and see what we can do to put this equation into It’s no big secret really, smaller page size = lower load time = lower bounce rate = higher take up rate. Get in touch with Enform today and see what we can do to put this equation into perspective for your websites.

While this myth might be true for some and not for others, getting into the subject is no doubt inevitable. For those starting out, there’s no denying social media management is hard work especially with the learning curve (varies greatly from person to person) that comes with it. Come to think of it, even for the most seasoned social media marketer, this is still “work” although how hard might depend on a number of factors including the brand or service to represent, competition, among others.

With that said, the chances of you having to do work and put in an ounce or two of perseverance in this unconventional yet highly effective marketing environment is almost guaranteed. However, if work – regardless of intensity – is something you shy away from, you should start asking yourself why you are in business in the first place.

On the brighter side, if you accept social media as an extension of sort to your real life store and treat every engagement like you were taking to your best customer, then in due time the social media Gods will start blessing your efforts with even more good business. For the chosen few, social media might even bring in more of the good thing than their offline presence.

Of course, all in due time as the effects of a good social media marketing campaign takes months to be felt unlike other marketing means. Enform knows this myth best as we have been in the business of taking the social media work and lessening the period of perseverance for businesses for over 12 years.

Coming in fourth on our list of misconceptions, “If I Engage on Social Media Sites, I’ll Get Loads of Negative Comments.”

Let’s face it, not even God can please every single one of his creations. And that’s God we’re talking about. There will always be a certain percentage of your customers that will end up complaining about the tiniest of flaws and regardless if it’s their fault or otherwise, your brand’s name is still at stake when this happens. Now, with advent of social media, this happens even easier and maybe for some, more frequent.

Luckily, for the keen eyed, situations like this – no matter how bleak and scary it may seem – is still a double-edged sword. In fact, in due time, you’ll even realize that these situations are actually diamonds in the rough and when mined in a careful and humane manner, it will eventually produce the finest of diamonds that will bring in positive light for your business for years to come.

So, how do you turn “flamers” into evangelists in the social media world anyway? The key lies in the transparency and voice that your company takes.

Gone are the days when your company treats these complaints as mere job orders that have to be dealt with in one way or another. To succeed in your social media presence, your company has to be a lot more personable and with over 400 million potential customers capable of not just listening, but jumping in on the conversation, you have to.

As long as you keep your cool and you sound sincere in correcting a customer’s complaint, then you’d even be surprised to see other users naturally taking the initiative in lifting your brand for you. At Enform, we call them “Mavins” and developing as many of them is part of our strategy for your business.

Source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/top-5-social-media-myths-debunked/

Third on our list of top social media misconceptions, “I Don’t Have Time to Manage Social Media.”

For the inexperienced, it is but natural to come up with such a misconception. Given such a relatively new form of marketing, it is no surprise that many marketers and business don’t even know how much time is needed to make social media marketing work. Further, most of us don’t even know such networks can even be used to get your message out in the open since most innocent users of such online services just take it for what it is, to socialize.

However, for those who are in the know, this misconception is probably the easiest to debunk. To start with, as mentioned in one of our previous Fact of the Week, it only takes less than an hour a day to feel the increase in traffic, subscribers, and opt-in list of any online business. According to a recently concluded survey, 67% have said that 6 hours a week spent on social media is all it takes to get results. And the best part, you don’t even need to be at your office to be able to get these results. You can achieve this while on your break or just at home checking your emails.

Although the results may vary given the same amount of time invested for social media, it is but natural since just like anything else new you encounter in life, there is a learning curve. And the more you get used to this, the better results you can naturally expect.

Luckily for those who’d rather be doing something else than dealing with the learning curve of social media marketing, Enform is just a call, a tweet, a message, or an email away. But on a serious note, marketing and promotions outsourcing is a traditional solution with agencies and designers contracted for their expertise, digital social media marketing is no different.

Source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/top-5-social-media-myths-debunked/

Unlike traditional marketing where you can simply give out flyers on the street and wait for potential customers to start making them calls and visits to measure your efforts, it takes more to measure social media. It might even be true to say it’s a tricky thing to do however, it definitely isn’t impossible.

So, how do you measure the returns of your social media efforts?

Some measure their efforts by the number of friends or contacts they amass – the better to get a word out on a promo, etc. Some go deeper by counting the number of actual interactions with these social media connections. Even deeper, others count the number of actual sales from these connections.

But, the old school business managers can take heart that there are more conventional tools and means available.  Below is one of the best resources and explanations I’ve seen on the topic and its quite entertaining too. Its by Olivier Blanchard of “The Brand Builder”

1^st Social Media Misconception: My Customers Don’t Do Social Media

On top of the list is probably the most shocking of them all, there are actually a lot of businesses who say, “My customers don’t do social media.” Such a revenue losing statement obviously has not seen the numbers behind this cultural sensation.

Facebook alone has over 400 million users worldwide and growing. The site’s user demographics? From ages 2-100 years old and that’s to say the least. And, let’s not forget there are a number of other notable social networking sites out there too, each with their own respected user base. In a word, it’s encompassing and there’s no reason your potential customers are not on it.

To boot, social media’s coverage doesn’t just end with Facebook or Twitter either. There are also a range of forums where people have been interacting even before the term “social media” has been coined. That’s at least another hundred million more informed consumers for your business to communicate with.

Enform believes there no denying that social media has become part of our daily lives just as the internet has and its potential as a marketing platform is becoming more of a necessity than an option.

Source: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/top-5-social-media-myths-debunked/

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Following on from last week’s post we can see further evidence that video or moving media is arguably the binder that keeps the growing mediums and users glued together. The losers are not really a surprise but television is actually growing alongside computer and video games with music also continuing to build.

However, we can also see from the report that overall media consumption is growing as multi-tasking see’s 8-18 year old Americans spending an extra hour plus a day consuming content. This is not to suggest that the overall time spent is growing as thanks to multi-tasking, we are seeing an increase in concurrent consumption with video game playing accompanied by music in the background with the occasional glance at a streaming video on the mobile phone.

It would seem that advertising is clearly following the media with the internet forecast to consolidate and even build on its pre-eminent position in advertising spend. However, Enform also believes that it supports the importance of moving media of all kinds as a medium for delivering product and brand messages to the usomer .

The internet delivers the lowest production and distribution cost per broadcast minute to a specific audience or customer segment. At the same time TV viewers, through the use of PVR’s (personal video recorders) or other time shifting strategies are increasingly skipping traditional advertising on all but the most popular or socially topical shows.

So, though our marketing budgets may preclude some from TV advertising, we can see that online video should be a significant focus for advertising and promotional campaigns. But, these campaigns need to integrate the product and message into the story to be effective.

*Source The Economist special report -”Changing the channel”  May 1st, 2010

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