After all “interactivity” and “expressing oneself” are the key phrases in the world of new media. These all lead to the bigger picture: behaviour which comes from nowhere but the brain.

Here is a very interesting post on marketing presenting results from three fields; advertising, social media, and neuroscience.

In this unique study, the neuromarketing company NeuroFocus analyzed consumers’ responses by using its own brain measurement technology to VISA’s “Trip for Life” commercial related to Winter Olympics 2010 Games on different media platforms i.e. TV commercial, website, and Facebook page.

• Overall effectiveness for the ad, especially with women: highest on Facebook

• Purchase intent generated by the ad: highest on both Facebook and TV

• Messaging carried by the ad: strongest on the Internet, with Facebook stronger than the Web site

• Attention-getting: highest on the Internet

• VISA brand perception: lifted most strongly TV

You can reach  the entire post by clicking on the image below:

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Center for Marketing Research

Objective

To compare the organizational adoption of social media of the largest 200 US charities in 2007, 2008 and 2009.These 200 charities were chosen from the list of  Forbes Magazine.

Data depend on the detailed interviews with executives of 76 charities (that responded) from that list.

Highlights

Charities still outpacing other sectors in adoption of social media (See the graphs in the  manuscript below).

97% of charities are using some form of social media.

65% of the organizations are blogging. Most improvement when comparing the data from 2007, 2008 and 2009.

42% report that social media is very important for their fund-raising  strategy.

The study online

The teacher reminds the homework on Twitter, posts updates about the class in his Facebook page.One student says using social media for class is not a good idea, as it threatens its privacy.

It is a hot topic, and we will wait and see what is going to happen in the classrooms of the world…

You can read the article at the Hamilton Spectator by clicking on the image below:

The author lists his favourite 35 articles on social media and internet marketing.

The better part is that he classifies them into categories which makes the list smooth as follows:

Strategy

Stumble on

Digg

Fark

Linkbait

Analytics

Content Development

Professional Services

Tools/Resources

General Social Media

My Top3 from this list are below:

50 Ways to Use Social Media, Listed by Objective

5 Steps to Become a Better Social Media Marketer

How to Have a Constant Flow of Ideas

Enjoy this post by clicking on the image below:

Susan Barnes,  Department of Communication, Liberal Arts; Associate director of the Lab for Social Computing, Rochester Institute of Technology

Susan.Barnes@rit.edu

May 2010

The research, conducted as part of a course on social media tools, examined the use of course management systems and discussion groups to enhance classroom instruction, improve communication and connections between students and translate the benefits of social media interaction to the classroom. The results indicate that the educational use of social media may not counteract poor social connections that are seen in face-to-face communication or elicit the same impacts seen in the use of social media sites such as MySpace and FaceBook.

Of course, this is one study only. On the other hand, it is exciting how this group of researchers are planning to find a good of way to use social media channels for the use of better interaction in the classroom (please see the news release of the university on the study where you will see the “future plans”). This line of studies might have more than one single implication; anti-bullying, increased emotional intelligence, more social employees in the future are only some of them.

¹Rijeka University School of Medicine, Croatia
²Department of Medical Informatics, Rijeka University School of Medicine, Croatia

ikovic [at] medri.hr

Journal of Medical Internet Research 2008

ABSTRACT

Background: Blogs are the major contributors to the large increase of new websites created each year. Most blogs allow readers to leave comments and, in this way, generate both conversation and encourage collaboration. Despite their popularity, however, little is known about blogs or their creators.
Objectives: To contribute to a better understanding of the medical blogosphere by investigating the characteristics of medical bloggers and their blogs, including bloggers’ Internet and blogging habits, their motivations for blogging, and whether or not they follow practices associated with journalism.
Methods: We approached 197 medical bloggers of English-language medical blogs which provided direct contact information, with posts published within the past month. The survey included 37 items designed to evaluate data about Internet and blogging habits, blog characteristics, blogging motivations, and, finally, the demographic data of bloggers.
Pearson’s Chi-Square test was used to assess the significance of an association between 2 categorical variables. Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was utilized to reveal the relationship between participants’ ages, as well as the number of maintained blogs, and their motivation for blogging. The Mann-Whitney U test was employed to reveal relationships between practices associated with journalism and participants’ characteristics like gender and pseudonym use.
Results: A total of 80 (42%) of 197 eligible participants responded. The majority of responding bloggers were white (75%), highly educated (71% with a Masters degree or doctorate), male (59%), residents of the United States (72%), between the ages of 30 and 49 (58%), and working in the healthcare industry (67%). Most of them were experienced bloggers, with 23% (18/80) blogging for 4 or more years, 38% (30/80) for 2 or 3 years, 32% (26/80) for about a year, and only 7% (6/80) for 6 months or less. Those who received attention from the news media numbered 66% (53/80). When it comes to best practices associated with journalism, the participants most frequently reported including links to original source of material and spending extra time verifying facts, while rarely seeking permission to post copyrighted material. Bloggers who have published a scientific paper were more likely to quote other people or media than those who have never published such a paper (U= 506.5, n₁= 41, n₂= 35, P= .016). Those blogging under their real name more often included links to original sources than those writing under a pseudonym (U= 446.5, n₁= 58, n₂= 19, P= .01). Major motivations for blogging were sharing practical knowledge or skills with others, influencing the way others think, and expressing oneself creatively.
Conclusions: Medical bloggers are highly educated and devoted blog writers, faithful to their sources and readers. Sharing practical knowledge and skills, as well as influencing the way other people think, were major motivations for blogging among our medical bloggers. Medical blogs are frequently picked up by mainstream media; thus, blogs are an important vehicle to influence medical and health policy.

You can read the full article free by clicking on the image below.

This study will encourage and motivate the medical bloggers around the world like myself.

Here is a blog post about my favourite social media case study. It is simple and smart.

I like giving this case to my clients and friends in order to emphasize the power of social media in business.

Located in New Orleans, this pizza company made a twitter only promotion in twitter in April 23, 2009. The result: 15% increase in sales on that day and 90% of the customers being new ones.

Below is a post (April 2010)  from Social Media Examiner about two recent social media market studies on people’s behaviours and attitudes.

People under the age of 25 are more addictive to social network sites i.e. Facebook and Twitter than people over 25 years old. However, the difference is not so dramatic.

A striking finding from that study is that more than half of the Facebook users check their Facebook pages at least once a day. Considering the amount of members in this social networking site, it is huge!

The second study is after the question “What do users want?”

Chitika, an online advertising network , in their study observed:

“Facebook and Twitter users want news, Digg users have more eclectic taste, and MySpace users want to hear primarily about celebrities and video games.”  Interestingly, Twitter users actually were the largest consumers of news sites at 47%, compared to Facebook’s 28%.