IT’S QUALITY NOT QUANTITY THAT DETERMINES

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING 

Always a source of worthwhile information, Media Post.com last week published a fascinating article by Max Kalehoff, Clickable’s VP of marketing. It capsulized some of the high points of a study conducted at the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell University and HP Labs. 

The study found that “the volume of social network connections a person has is a weak indicator of how prolific a poster someone is. What really matters are actual friends.”    (Friends are defined as recipients of at least two posts from you.) But the researchers caution, “This view should be tempered by our findings that a link between any two people does not necessarily imply an interaction between them.” 

Kalehoff translates this into marketing terms by explaining that he is the recipient of dozens of magazines and newspapers piling up on his coffee table that he will never have the chance to read. Yet he is counted as a subscriber and advertisers pay a rate based on the number of subscribers a publication reports, not the number of actual readers. 

Food for thought for all of us involved in promoting ourselves and our books whether on or offline. 

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TECHNORATI STUDY REVEALS INTERESTING FACTS

ABOUT THE BLOGOSPHERE 

As of this writing, Technorati has released part of the results or its “2008 State of the Blogosphere” study, revealing a profile of bloggers that should interest all of us. Here in the United States, 57% of bloggers are males, with 42% of them between the ages of 18 and 34 years. 70% of bloggers have college degrees. Four in ten enjoy an annual household income of more than $75,000. More than half (59%) have been blogging for at least two years. Female bloggers tend to be older than their male counterparts.  

Americans represent the highest proportion of bloggers world-wide at 48%. European bloggers come in at 27% and Asians at 13%, with the balance spread through several smaller regions. Four out of five bloggers world-wide produce personal blogs, but about half of them also blog about their fields of work at times, but only in an unofficial capacity. Just 12% blog officially for the companies that employ them. 

In one of the most recent evaluations, comScore Media Metrix estimated in August that blogs in the US enjoyed 77.7 million unique visitors. There have been some different assessments, but every analyst agrees that ”blogs are a global phenomenon that has become mainstream and is here to stay,” according to Technorati. 

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RATE OF OPENING E-MAIL MESSAGES

HAS FALLEN DRAMATICALLY 

eMARKETER reports that fewer consumers worldwide open the marketing e-mails they receive, according to a November study conducted by MailerMailer. Click rates also slipped during the first half of 2008.  

The firm found that openings toppled from 16.11% in the first half of last year to 13.20% in the comparable period in 2008. Clicks fell from3.18% to 2.73%. The study also revealed the fact that shorter subject lines were far more effective than longer ones.  E-mails with less than 35 characters in their subject lines produced an open rate of 19.6%. 

Despite all of this, marketers continue to favor e-mail over many other digital promotions. However, these findings are certainly worth considering for authors, especially during this key book-buying period. 

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GEN X STIRRING A GREAT DEAL OF INTEREST

ON THE PART OF ECONOMIC RESEARCHERS 

It’s interesting to take a look at what has become one of the most talked about age groups just as we enter the peak shopping season of the year. Ignored for quite a time, these men and women aged 28 to 39 are deeply in debt, in many cases because they pursued higher levels of education. Almost 30% of them hold a bachelors or higher degree. 

They are particularly sensitive to the crunch of credit card debt, car loans, college repayments and the subprime mortgage scandals. A study by Charles Schwab reports most almost half of the 2,000 Gen Xers surveyed claim they held too much debt.  

Those concerns, combined with the high level of education and intelligence, make these folks very sharp buyers. They actively and proudly use discounters for many of their purchases. For those of us who retail our own books, they represent a lucrative potential market, but we have to promote value and worth to capture their available dollars.

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SOME GOOD NEWS AT LAST FOR

HOLIDAY BOOK SELLING 

Welcome news for those of us who market our books on the Web.  

eMarketer, one of the most reliable digital info sources on the Web, predicts that “Online is expected to be one of the few bright spots for retail this holiday season.”  Its gurus estimate that retail e-commerce sales will grow by 10.1% in contrast to overall retail sales on and offline that will increase a mere 0.5% to 1%according to Archstone Consulting. Deloitte predicts overall growth at 2.5% to 3%. 

With sales during the holiday season representing almost 25%  of annual retail e-commerce volume and the faltering economy boosting books to the top categories of holiday gifts, this is awfully good news to those who take advantage. 

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BLOG SHOPPER READERSHIP HAS GROWN

300% OVER THE PAST FOUR YEARS 

Jupiter Research, a division of highly respected Forrester, recently completed a study of more than 2,000 online consumers that revealed some fascinating results. 

• The number of shoppers who read blogs at least once a month has grown by 300% over the past four years.
• 38% of frequent readers said blog links were their best tools to find new blog content.

34% listed web search and just 11% selected blog search engines.

• 50% of blog readers state they find blogs help them make purchasing decision.
• Frequent blog readers state they trust blog content more than content on social

networking sites when they make purchasing decisions. 

It’s reassuring to hear once again that blogging has assumed a respected and valued position in today’s communications and commerce worlds. We’ve come a long way, baby! 
 

The Publishing Industry 

Northeast Rep Firms  Merge 

Valuable news for authors and pubs in the Northeast. Publisher’s Weekly reports that on the first of the year, Billbooks & Associates, a rep firm covering New England, and Sirak & Sirak Associates covering the mid-Atlantic region, will join forces to service the book trade in 11 Northeastern  states and Washington, DC.  

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THE ECONOMY IS FORCING HOLIDAY SHOPPERS 

TO PLAN NEW WAYS TO PINCH THEIR PENNIES 

A number of studies indicate that books still loom as one of the preferred gifts for this economy-trashed holiday season, as this blog has reported before. Harris Interactive expands on that finding with a study in October on money-saving strategies planned by Internet shoppers. 

Cutting back on the number of gifts tops the list for 80% of respondents, with 63% planning to purchase less expensive items (hopefully books!).  Shopping online for better deals was picked by 32%. Another 24% stated they would save on gas costs by shopping online. (Watch oiut, B&N and Borders.) 13% of those shopping online say they plan to consolidate purchases to save shipping costs. 

The study found that that most hoped to cut costs by using Internet shopping tools like price comparison sites (Yahoo! Shopping and others) search engines, web sites offering coupon discounts and by responding to promotions that arrive by e-mail.  

Get your online promos geared up and don’t overlook promotional displays for bookstores.

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SETTLEMENT IS REACHED AT LAST BETWEEN

GOOGLE AND PUBLISHERS GROUPS 

The lengthy battle over Google’s Book Search Service has finally been settled with the digital giant paying $125 million to create a new Book Rights Registry in an effort to resolve existing claims by publishers and writers. 

You will recall that this service scanned out-of-print books and made them searchable on the Web. The plaintiffs claimed this was an unauthorized and unpaid dissemination of their work. As a result of the settlement, Google expects to expand its search base to 20 million titles. But authors and publishers will now be compensated. 

Google is now allowed to permit viewers to search up to 20% of a book online. It can also sell access to the complete book or to specific pages of the book directly to a consumer. While the overall pricing schedule hasn’t been establish, it is known that monies will be split by 63% to authors and publishers and 37% to Google.  

It seems to be a wise settlement for everyone involved. 

HAS BLOGGING REACHED

THE LEVEL OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA?  

In an interview with eMarketer, Richard Jalichandra, CEO of Technorati recently stated that “Blogs are now mainstream media.”  His conclusion was drawn from the results of a study done by Decipher for Technorati during the summer. 

A second report from comscore Media Metrix seems to confirm that opinion. It found that blogs recorded 77 million unique visitors just in the month of August. That compares, according to the article on eMarketer, to 75.1million visitors to MySpace and 41 million to Facebook during the same period. 

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GROWTH OF ONLINE VIDEO SENDING SHIVERS

THROUGHOUT THE DIGITAL WORLD 

PC online video today consumes 25.3% of every month’s worldwide consumer Internet traffic, according to Cisco Systems. That total is anticipated to grow almost five times larger by 2012, reaching a total of 6,216 viewers. 

Senior eMarketer analyst David Hallerman’s new report The Bandwidth Debate: Video and Net Neutrality predicts that “While the Internet is not about to collapse due to the video boom, nor slow down to an unbearable crawl, changes are coming…Video is set to become the preeminent online vehicle for entertainment, news and sports by early next decade.” 

There is a great concern that the increased demand for bandwidth will cause ISP’s to limit usage through monthly caps and different level of service needs. That may translate into higher charges, slowing consumer viewing of special video like movies and sports, all of which provide substantial income for sponsoring advertisers.   

The digital world is fast becoming the focus of life for many Americans, and all of us who use the Internet to promote our own books and businesses must remain vigilant and find ways to project our image in an increasingly cluttered medium. 

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