A quick look around and you will see Twitter spilling over into all types of media. In a new report, Tom Webster of Edison Research revealed that nearly 44% of US American adults see tweets on a daily basis. Yes, daily. These are people who may not necessarily be using Twitter, yet they are still being influenced by the messages.

Social media is going mainstream

The juicy new details show that “80% of Americans overall claim to have seen tweets in other media.” Anywhere you look, tweets are springing into the latest live TV spectacle, are quoted in newspaper articles and are seen in prominently displayed billboards.

If trends continue, 1.43 billion people will be on social networks by the end of the year. You can expect social media and traditional media outlets will continue to blend and tweets to proliferate through an ever broadening audience.

Tweets are newsworthy

You never know when a tweet or post will take off, but you can craft messages to have a greater chance of being read and shared. A recent Carnegie Mellon University survey reports that the best types of tweets are:

• Random Thoughts
• Self-Promotion
• Questions to Followers
• Information Sharing
  

Interestingly, the top three best types of tweets revolve around the personal side of a brand.

What do you think? Will tweets continue to enter mainstream media? What have you seen to be your best types of tweets?

Starting today, real-time insights will include Likes, People Talking About This, and all post metrics. These insights will be updated every 5 to 10 minutes, which is a significant improvement over the previous lagging insights many brands lamented.

Previously, many people had noticed insights delayed an average of 48 hours, spurring the creation of http://whyisfacebookinsightsnotworking.com/ by PageLever co-founders Jeff Widman and David Turner. Though real-time insights’ imminent release was announced in February, it’s now a reality.

Real-time data empowers brands to track content on a minute-by-minute basis. Why can that be powerful? Here are a few reasons we can think of:

1. The feedback loop is finally in real-time. These enhanced metrics will allow brands to be more nimble, change direction if needed, and ride organic waves of popularity before they end.
2. By tracking PTAT, brands can see what content has virality and shareability and replicate it. This will help brands more fully understand the oft-confused new metric, and in doing so, find more ways to optimize content.
3. The frame of reference for campaigns has just become much narrower. Rather than declaring “We received 290 Likes in 1 day”, marketers can now pinpoint the exact growth and decline of posts by the minute. That impressive campaign is even more so if 1 day shrinks to 13 hours!

We’ll go into more detail about what this means, how you can measure your impact in real-time, and more during next Tuesday’s Facebook Insights 201 webinar with Jeff Widman. Join us.

By now, you’ve probably heard that Facebook recently spent $1 billion to acquire the mobile photo-sharing application, Instagram. *Yawn* That’s old news.

What you probably haven’t heard is that your posts on Facebook only reach between 3% to 7.5% of your fans, according to PageLever. By understanding EdgeRank in a bit more detail, that number represents a billion reasons for you and your brand to pay attention to Instagram.

What is EdgeRank?

EdgeRank is the algorithmic ranking system Facebook uses to determine what posts will show in your fans news feed. From a brand perspective, you want your posts to be “news” so you can get more views for your content to ultimately feed that marketing funnel.

The Magnitude of Photo Sharing

What does all of this have to do with Instagram? Well, for starters, Facebook users post 250 million photos. Every. Single. Day. Concurrently, Instagram just surpassed one billion photos uploaded (nice timing, eh?).

More importantly, Facebook reports that over 425 million users access the social network from a mobile device every month and the number is expected to grow as smartphones continue to proliferate around the world.

Where Facebook is concerned (and why you should care as well), Instagram brings an active, mobile-centric base of 40 million photo-sharers. With Instagram only recently launching to the Android platform, a market that grew by over 300 million devices in 2011, the number of users, and photos, is likely to swell.

Why should your brand care?

Photos are a visceral and engaging form of content that are easy to capture and share. On a mobile device with a small screen, users are naturally scanning their feed for quick bites of interesting news or attention grabbing… photos.

As this all pertains to EdgeRank, there are a few things that are valuable to know from a brand’s perspective:

• Not all content is ranked equally: photos and videos are given greater importance
• Popular Facebook Pages have most of their engagement in the newsfeed
• Posting consistently and frequently helps
• Mobile users are active, posting ⅓ of all the content on Facebook

Would you like to learn more about how content consumption and timing play a role in your Facebook marketing? Join us this Thursday as we host Jeff Widman from PageLever for a free webinar: Facebook Insights 201.

Experian just published The 2012 Digital Marketer: Benchmark and Trend Report. The original report is 153 pages and chock full of insightful data about email, mobile, social, and search marketing. It’s definitely worth a read. My favorite section surfaces some fascinating insights on the performance of social visitors to corporate websites.

It turns out that social visitors to your company’s website are, on average, much more engaged than the average visitor. In particular, paid marketing on Facebook shows some truly off-the-charts conversion rates.

Let me just say: wow. Something is clearly working. In the world of email and PPC campaigns, conversion rates of 10-20% are generally considered pretty good. These conversion rates, hovering around 50%, are nigh or unheard of. Whether this is because of social proof points displayed along with Facebook ads, extreme demographic targeting capabilities, or some other Facebook magic conversion/fairy dust, the results speak for themselves.

These results seem to validate Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s claim that, “68 percent more people are likely to remember seeing the ad with their friend’s name … [and they are] 300 percent more likely to purchase.” It’s no wonder Sandberg describes Facebook’s ad targeting as “the elusive goal we’ve been searching for, for a long time; making your customers your marketers.”

Another set of fun facts from the report was a behavioral breakdown of consumers based on social media activity. It turns out that…

• People who use social media in general are more likely than the average online adult to: fly Virgin Atlantic airlines, eat at Chipotle, shop at Payless Shoe Source, snack on Terra Chips, own an iPhone, visit Starbucks, and drive a Saab.
• Those who visit professional networking sites, such as LinkedIn, are more likely to: fly United Airlines, eat at The Cheesecake Factory, shop at Nordstrom, own an iPhone, stay at Hilton hotels, and shop at Whole Foods.
• Those who visit photo sharing sites are more likely than the average online adult to: shop at Whole Foods, use Burt’s Bees, shop at Payless Shoe Source, buy Huggies, shop at Forever 21, and shop at Hobby Lobby stores.
• Those who visit video sharing site are more likely than the average to: eat at Long John Silver’s, drink Capri Sun, wear Puma sneakers, shop at Family Dollar Store, use AT&T, and use Downy sheets.

Do any of these findings surprise you?

Wide-eyed and eager, 2012 graduates will soon be making their way out into the real world. These socially savvy digital natives have got a pep in their step, a drive to learn and loyalty to boot. Oh, and they are using online paths to connect to you, prospective future employer!

A new study by Experience and Achievers surveyed nearly 8,000 soon-to-be graduates. The students’ responses suggest that they are loyal, looking for steady salaries, and looking in all the right places. Among the highlights are:

• 47.1% want to be with their company for 5-10+ years
• 54% of the respondents said that the most important qualifier is career advancement opportunities
• 51% (tied for the second most important) said they are looking for interesting, challenging work
• 40% of students are expecting a salary between $50,000-$74,999

As a business, it’s increasingly important to be online for your recruiting purposes as nearly half of the students plan on using social media to aid in the job search, according to Achievers.

At Argyle, we are a rapidly growing company and have made many new hires in the past year. Case in point, I learned of my current job with Argyle through Twitter. Just like the 87.6% of upcoming graduates plan to do, I reached out and applied directly.

So, how can you use social media as a recruiting tool?

1. Showcase your organization’s personality and company values: Be true to yourselves first and foremost, but have a little fun by sharing interesting or funny articles and give an inside look at your culture on Pinterest. Having values isn’t enough; it’s how you live them daily and how you share them with the world that matters.
2. Social media is social: Encourage prospective employees to reach out and then find ways to continue the conversation. Ensure you have the workflow and communication plans in place to handle incoming interest.
3. Be clear. Be direct: Be transparent and make it known you are recruiting!

How do you use social media in the recruiting process? Have you hired anyone you have met through social media?

As a local plug, we are thrilled to present alongside Bronto, Shoeboxed and others at The Tech Jobs under the Big Top event in Durham, coming up on April, 26th. Hope to see you there!

Full Infographic by Achievers Inc and Experience.com: