New research about digital marketing trends published today shows that social media engagement is rated as both the top priority and most exciting opportunity for companies this year.

But while the fourth Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing, published by Econsultancy in association with Adobe, shows a huge appetite for social media programmes, there is a worrying lack of commitment to investment in associated analytics and measurement. 

Research for this report found that, along with content optimisation, social media engagement is rated as the top priority for digital marketers out of a range of digital-related marketing activities and disciplines.

Asked to indicate their top three priorities for the year ahead, companies surveyed by Econsultancy and Adobe found that these areas will be more important in 2012 than other disciplines including conversion rate optimisation, mobile optimisation and content marketing.

Social media analytics lagged behind in ninth place. 

More than 600 companies surveyed for this report were also asked about the ‘most exciting’ digital-related opportunities for their organisations in 2012. 

More than half of client-side respondents (54%) said that social media engagement featured among the three most exciting opportunities, way ahead of mobile optimisation (38%) and content optimisation (37%). Again, social analytics is much further down the pecking order, this time in eighth place.

More at: http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8995-social-media-engagement-is-the-top-priority-for-digital-marketers?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

“The average Post Lifetime for a Facebook Brand Page Update is 3 hours and 7 minutes”

This nugget is baed on considering that each individual Post has a “lifetime”. A Post is considered dead when the growth in engagement is less than 10% of the largest growth of engagement between hourly snapshots.

This data was sampled for EdgeRankChecker customers for the month of December, 2011 across 500+ Pages and over 30,000 individual Posts. The average Page size was approximately 140,000. Page size was not found to effect this.

More at: http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/facebook-marketing/how-long-does-a-facebook-post-live/

Unilever is launching a consumer engagement programme that uses Facebook to encourage consumers to interact with 11 of its biggest brands, including PG Tips, Persil and Magnum.

The Unilever VIP application invites consumers to give the company feedback on brand initiatives such as advertising campaigns and promotions, branding and packaging.

In return, members will also be offered rewards and incentives such as access to new products, money-off coupons for their Unilever brands and invites to VIP events.

Unilever will use the feedback from consumers to inform its future decision making.

Consumers can join the Unilever VIP to give feedback on the latest TV ad for Surf or new packaging for Carte D’Or ice cream.

Rachel Bristow, Unilever UK media director says: “Unilever VIP is being piloted to help us get even closer to our consumers in the UK. To meet our challenging growth ambitions for the company, it’s imperative that we understand and engage with consumers in a new, interactive and relevant way.

The Facebook page includes surveys, prizes available and a scoreboard of members that have collected the most points by participating.

More at: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/sectors/fmcg/unilever-launches-facebook-rewards-programme/3029528.article

You can access the app here: http://www.facebook.com/UnileverVIP