Social media is continuously evolving, and as a result, marketing professionals now have access to a wealth of insightful information on the attitudes of a typical user. Additionally, sites such a Facebook continue to roll out sophisticated features to help advertisers better leverage the viral power of social media. Below is a quick summary on the latest trends and technological updates in the online marketing world.

Facebook Introduces CPA Bidding

Possibly the greatest improvement to the ads manager since the advent of promoted posts, Facebook executives recently announced that they will be rolling out CPA bidding for social marketing advertisers. At the moment, advertisers only have the ability to optimize bids based on a CPC or CPM model. The new CPA bidding will allow PPC advertising professionals to bid based on the following actions: offer claims, Facebook page likes, and clicks/link opens (specific click-throughs to an external page rather than general clicks). Managing CPA programs will allow advertisers to better optimize paid campaigns  and control the amount they are willing to spend per on new Facebook page likes.

Facebook Updates Promoted Posts Targeting

Relatively minor compared to the CPA bidding feature, the new expanded promoted posts option available in the Facebook ads manager will also be rolling out soon. Currently, page owners can promote their posts to fans of their page and people within their respective networks; however, this update will permit advertisers to promote specific posts to everyone on Facebook, targeting specific groups outside of the typical  page owner’s reach.

Social Media Bench-marking Report Notes that Twitter Reigns Supreme in B2B Marketing

A recent report prepared by Circle Research extracted the following key insights from surveying B2B marketers:

• Twitter is the most popular social platform with an approval rating of 85% from B2B marketers. Following Twitter was LinkedIn (82%), YouTube (77%), Facebook (71%), and Google+ (36%).
• While Google+ is not a focal part of social media marketing strategies at the moment, B2B marketing professionals expect the platform to become more important by 2014.
• The top three objectives in any social media marketing plan were reported to be: (1) driving traffic to the website, (2) building brand awareness and positioning, and (3) strengthening thought leadership.
• B2B marketers measure the efficacy of social marketing programs by analyzing the following in order of importance: website traffic, number of followers, content downloads, and last but certainly not least, lead generation.

These results, while not surprising, indicate that social marketing is more complementary to branding/remarketing strategies rather than a main lead generation/sales strategy. Reinforcing your brand message, cementing your position within the market, and driving traffic to your website should be the main goals of any B2B social program.

27% of all time Spent Online is on Social Media Networking in the United States

As expected, users spend a significant amount of time on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, logging an average 16 minutes out of every hour on social sites and forums. This put social media ahead of entertainment (9 minutes), shopping (5 minutes), email (3 minutes), and business (3 minutes).