Exciting news for online advertisers! Online advertising spend comes in at #1 in 2010, totaling $25.8 billion, closely followed by print publications at $25.7 billion. Many advertisers have shifted offline spend to new online campaigns, some even dabbling in social networking media buys. Advertisers are shifting offline dollars to campaigns that have more measureable results such as banner ads or email campaigns. Even more stunning forecasts are that online display spend will overtake search ads by 2014.

Just before the release of the movie “The Social Network”, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced he was donating $100 million for education that will go toward improving public schools in Newark, New Jersey. A new foundation named Startup: Education will focus on improving education in the United States. The mayor will be working with the education plan to strategize this reform.

Zuckerberg is hoping that his donation being public will help to influence others to do the same thing. This is the first donation that he has decided to do with his $6.9 billion fortune, making him one of the youngest billionaires on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.

Despite some skepticism over the timing of the donation being so near to the movie release,  the donation is nonetheless valuable. With over 500 million users to Facebook, it is good to see that the social network is giving back to the community in such a large way. Hopefully, this is the beginning of more donations to come and not just for good press to surround the movie.

Companies and products have been buying people to “like” their pages on Facebook hoping to bring in as many customers as possible. The ability for people to “like” something was replaced by the previous “fan” option. One of the companies topping off the list of “liked” Facebook pages for their company is Starbucks with 11.8 million “likes”. They even offer a way for the customers to keep track of their spending as an incentive. Other companies/products with an abundance of “likes” are Coca-Cola with 9.6 million, Oreos with 7.9 million, and Skittles with 7.8 million.

While some companies are going out of their way to accumulate as many “likes” as possible, others are only interested in quality customers. Mike Corrales, Vice President of BillMyParents says,

“I would rather have 2,500 real, authentic people than have 250,000 fake ones”.

There are so many different social media outlets today, making the potential for new customers easier to reach. On the same note, quality traffic is something that is more difficult to come across. Leadpile focuses on the best quality traffic for consumers.

A recent study indicated that the use of at least three social media options in email marketing campaigns lead to a 55% higher click-through rate.  The interesting thing is that only about half of email marketers are adding some sort of social element to their email campaigns.

The real ROI comes in the shared messages of these type of campaigns. Messages that included a sharing option generated 30% higher click-throughs than emails without the social sharing links.  Three or more generated 55% higher click-throughs.  Twitter alone showed a 40% higher CTR than without a sharing link.  Twitter appears to be the most popular option at 67.2% of all social emails with Facebook coming in a close second at 62.7%.

Think about it, you send an email to a million users in your email list.  If 55% of the users that click through your message and share it with their 130+ friends on Facebook or followers on Twitter, imagine how much ROI you are getting on that email campaign without any additional cost!  Folks, time to start A/B testing!

Landing a fish is just like landing a customer. Why do some businesses fail when others succeed? Here are 10 ways to keep your business afloat.
1. Know what you’re after: Know your products demographics, typically 20% of your audience will generate 80% of your revenue.
2. Know where to fish for your customers: Now that you know your customer find out where they spend their time. Find the blogs they read, the social networking sites they frequent, and their sites of interest.
3. Be aware of your competition: Do some investigating of your competition. See what design style, copy, images are working for them. Don’t necessarily copy but know what’s out there so you can learn.
4. Use good bait: Your product isn’t the only one. Make sure you use compelling graphics, catchy copy and have some value to your site to make your product stand out amongst the rest.
5. Setting the hook: Make sure once your customer bites you have an amazing offer they can’t pass up. It’s your job to get them threw the door once they’ve come a knockin.
6. Forget catch and release: Remember is a lot more cost efficient to re-sell to an existing customer. Re-marketing, high-quality affiliate offers and up-sells are great ways to retain customers.
7. Test the waters: Try different marketing campaigns, A/B test landing pages, test time and/or day of the week. Find when your product best performs and increase your ROI.
8. Don’t get discouraged: You’re not going to know everything over night. Continue to educate yourself on your competition and bettering your offer, you’ll land your big fish soon enough.
9. Partner up to get a bigger catch: Partner up with sites that can help you real in a bigger catch, having an offer that compliments yours on your site and referring traffic can be a great idea.
10. Enjoy the trip: Be proud of what you’ve learned, not everyone will succeed but enjoy the journey of trying.

Has Facebook gone to far by implementing “social plug-ins” on over 100,000 sites?

This plug-in is allowing Facebook to bring users friends lists to external sites and showing them their friends’ activity. For example, a news site could show you which stories your Facebook contacts have been reading and recommending. You can easily “like” a site by clicking the plug-in and not having to actually sign into Facebook.

Some sites like IMDB which allows members to share their favorite movies and TV shows on their profiles have seen more then 350,000 “likes’ since integrating the plug-in.

Facebook recently conducted a poll in the US between adults 18-34 and those over 34 to take a deeper look at the users perception of the Facebook brand. The poll was based on -100 to 100. While the 18-34 demographic rose from 32.8 to 44.8 the older group slid from 26.7 to 21.2

What group do you fall in? Has Facebook gone to far with possibly sharing users private information?

The current economy has brought many changes to personal, business and government financial standings and now is showing effects on Social Security payouts as well. This year Social Security will have a flip in it’s financial balances, as it will begin paying out more in benefits than receiving in payroll taxes.
With the poor economic status many jobs have disappeared having 2 large effects on Social Security taxes collected. With jobs disappearing, many people applied for the benefits sooner than they had planned, as well as without as many people currently employed there are less paychecks to tax.
With the US debt rising and less taxes being collected due to unemployment it raises concern. By law, Social Security cannot pay out more than it’s balance in any year given. The often referred to “trust fund” that Social Security has serves as a way to track pay-as-you-go revenue and outlays over time, the “balance” is actually a history of its vast cash flows (a total of all past revenue minus outlays). In a year such as this, the “paper gains” from the interest earned on the securities will more than cover the difference between what it takes in and pays out.
Projections show the effects of the recession easing in the next few years with possible small surpluses reappearing in 2014 and 2015. In the following years as the baby boomers leave the work force, and start collecting rather than contributing, outlays will exceed revenue every year regardless of the economic status.

Solutions to this problem are few including raising taxes, lowering benefits, or pulling funds for general revenue.

LeadPile hopes to see bigger and better things with the economy in the future months coming!

Facebook is the largest social networking site out there. Whether you are looking so see what your friends are doing, finding old classmates, or just trying to stay connected, Facebook seems to have it all. All except Twitter that is.
When Facebook failed to acquire Twitter.com in the fall of 2008 they decided to do the next best thing and try to be more like them. Within the past week Facebook launched Facebook Lite, which essentially works in the same manner as Twitter. Facebook Lite took out all the frills so a user can only post their status updates. This is a great way to get more people to the site who are looking for a simple way to follow what their friends or favorite businesses are doing.
Facebook has also made it so people who already have Facebook can simply “Tag” a friend and then begin to follow them. This will eliminate the need to juggle between two Facebook accounts. Facebook really did their homework when they decided to start to have some of the same features as Twitter. They even decided to copy the “@” that one puts in front of a name when someone “Tweets” to someone else. So it looks like Facebook didn’t do their homework, but just copy off the person next to them.

Leadpile Lead Exchange is proud to announce we are now a part of the Facebook craze. Social networking sites are key to helping to define a company’s online presence. Leadpile realizes this, and now has it’s own profile. Join our Leadpile list of friends, and become apart of our Lead Exchange if you are not already.

What would you do if you came across your primary care physician on Facebook? How about if you came across a surgeon that was going to be performing some surgery for you in the coming weeks? Would what you see and read about that person affect your decision to trust them and their abilities?

This is something many need to be concerned about when it comes to blog posts, social media sites and other networking groups the public has access to. Too much information could be a bad thing. Too many negative blog posts could put a negative light on some and affect how the outside world perceives them.
According to a recent article on MSNBC, some researchers looked up more than 800 medical students and residents by name on Facebook.com, one of the most popular social-networking sites with about 80 million users worldwide. Everyone can limit who has access to their pages to just friends, however this information could be sometimes accessed.
The study, published recently in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, “found that nearly half the medical students had Facebook pages, with only 37 percent limiting viewership to their friends.” More than half of those whose pages were open for review provided lifestyle information, including sexual orientation, personal relationships and political views and sometimes opinions, according to MSNBC.
Erick W. Black, one of the researchers, said he found pictures with some students grabbing each others private parts, posing with weird objects, and multiple photos of medical students drinking heavily. Does this represent the image that we all have on those that are potentially taking care of us, such as our doctors?
I have to admit Leadpile Lead Exchange has this blog to posts our thoughts and industry news, however I would still be a little hesitant on posting something that I would some day regret or not want another person to see.

When I think of Sears, I think about hardware stores my grandpa and dad used to go to to get that new tool. However, over the years Sears has evolved into a store for more than just tools. No, REALLY! Trendy clothing lines, jewelry, and other non household items has turned Sears into a place all of us can shop at.

According to DMNews, Sears is now going to do some marketing in some social networking sites. They are looking to places like YouTube, Facebook and Myspace as a means to generate interest with the tween (for those of you out of the “loop”, Tween age is between childhood and teenage years) population.

This online marketing campaign is Sears trying to bring in some interest in their back-to-school website arrivelounge.com. There goes the days of Sears in 1886 when they sold watches as a mail order company. Times sure have changed, but I give credit to Sears for realizing that they need to continue to adapt to what is going on in the “world”, in order to stay a store people of all ages shop at.

This just goes to show you, if you want to survive and stay in business- you MUST be open to revising your current business plans, and be open to new ways of running your business. I can guarantee Richard Sears could have never imagined his company marketing to tweeners on social networking sites….social networking WHAT????????