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Study Reveals: Venues and Relationships Affect How Social Media Users Perceive Advice

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One thing that makes social media marketing powerful is consumers’ trust in “people like them”—their friends, family and other online peers.

(c) Facebook

(c) Facebook

Marketers want to tap into that trust through the power of earned media or by engaging in a conversation with consumers, but where social conversations take place has an effect on their perceived trustworthiness as well as who is taking part in them.

A study of frequent social media users by market research firm Invoke Solutions found that the most trusted information was posted by people respondents knew. But blog posts were more likely to be trusted “completely” than posts on Facebook, and trust dropped off sharply when it came to Twitter, even among friends.

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Starbucks Cleared 10 Million-Fan Mark on Facebook

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About a year ago, Starbucks overtook Coca-Cola as the most popular corporate brand on Facebook, with its page drawing 3.7 million fans. Now the coffee brewery has become the first brand to hit the 10 million-fan mark on Facebook.

The nearest rivals, Coke and Skittles, are both trailing behind at about 6.5 million fans.

To put Starbucks’ success in perspective, the company is quite close to catching up to pop icon

Lady Gaga in Facebook fans, who has about 10.4 million fans, according to data compiled by the Inside Facebook blog. Only other celebrities like Michael Jackson and Vin Diesel, some games (“Texas Hold’em Poker,” “Mafia Wars”), “Family Guy,” Facebook, and the President of the United States, stand ahead of Starbucks in the number of Facebook fans.

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Nielsen Publishes World Statistics on Online Usage

According to a new study from Nielsen social media users grow steadily on a worldwide basis: in April 2010 22% of the internet usage time has been used to engage with social media.

22% sounds like not really big? You have to take into account this report is on a global scale. Here are a few more findings:

75% of Internet users worldwide visit a social network or blog when they go online — that’s a 24% increase over the same period last year. And the average international user spends 66% more time using these sites than a year ago – a growth from 3 and a half hours last year to 6 hours in April 2010. Read more

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