Author: Dan Gendro

To a growing extent, these platforms are driving visitors to online shopping sites.

The findings from the Q4 2013 Social Media Intelligence Report from Adobe have now been released and have revealed important social media marketing trends, revealing that this channel drives traffic to retail websites.

This report looked into trends involving paid, earned and owned social media.

Among the primary findings of this social media marketing report was that Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr were sending a tremendous and record breaking amount of valuable traffic onto retail websites in the last quarter of last year. It also determined that the revenue per visit (RPV) was rising across each of those networks.

This report used an extensive data analysis to provide meaningful social media marketing insight.

The analysis was performed using a considerable amount of aggregated and anonymous data that was collected from retail, travel, entertainment, and media sites from the last quarter of 2012 to the same quarter last year. This included over 1.5 billion posts on Facebook, approximately 240 impressions on that social network, in addition to 500 million unique social networking site visitors and 6.3 billion Facebook social engagements (which includes likes, shares, and comments). The Adobe Marketing Cloud was used for the paid social data.

The report that Adobe produced based on its analysis concluded that social media marketing is proving to play an exceptionally important role in the formation of the digital marketplace as well as in the way that consumers are being engaged by their favorite brands. That company feels that a more thorough understanding of these trends – regardless of whether they involve Facebook ads, Twitter links, or Pinterest retail placements – will help marketers to be able to improve the success of their campaigns.

Some of the more interesting data from the study also showed that there was a 340 percent year over year increase in the RPV from Tumblr, a 244 percent increase in the RPV from Pinterest, 131 percent from Twitter, and 72 percent from Facebook. This has revealed that when it comes to social media marketing, the ever-dominant Facebook is now starting to see some heavy competition moving in.

WeChat hosts new application that seeks to modernize an old tradition

Tencent has launched a new mobile application for WeChat users. WeChat is the most popular messaging application in China, and Tencent has been working on ways to monetize the app for some time. The company has taken a strong interest in mobile commerce and has seen the success that online retailers and digital companies have discovered by engaging mobile consumers. As such, the new application for WeChat users aims to leverage the traditional hongbao.

App puts a new twist on the honbao and Chinese New Year

The hongbao is a red envelop or packet that is traditionally given as a gift during Chinese New Year and, in some cases, weddings and typically contain money. As Chinese consumers become more mobile, traditions are beginning to become digitized. Tencent’s new “New Year Red Envelope” application is meant to put a new twist on the hongbao. Using the application, people can send digital red envelopes that contain digital currency. The application can be used for much more than exchanging money, however.

New application could encourage mobile payments through the WeChat platform

WeChat users making use of the application can also allow the application decide how to distributes funds amongst a group of recipients. For instance, if a person sends $50 to eight friends, the application can determine that one friend receives $30 while the others receive a smaller sum. Tencent believes that this creates a sense of suspense among WeChat users and encourages them to spend more money through the new application.

Tencent continues to find ways to monetize WeChat and promote mobile commerce

Consumers have to link their bank accounts to WeChat in order to make use of the new application. Tencent has been working to break into the mobile commerce arena through the WeChat platform and the new hongbao application may be the key to Tencent’s goals. The new application may help encourage users to spend money on WeChat’s in-app payment services by making them more comfortable with the concept of mobile payments and sending money through the use of a mobile device.