Research - Food, Clothing, Shelter & The Internet: The Four Basic Life Groups

Is the Internet a fundamental human necessity? Is a workplace with flexible mobility policies as valuable as salary?

To demonstrate the role of the network in our lives, Cisco commissioned an international workforce study of nearly 3000 people. The study revealed that one in three college students and young professionals consider the Internet to be as important as air, water, food, and shelter. The study also found that their desire to use social media, mobile devices, and the Internet more freely in the workplace is strong enough to influence their future job choice, sometimes more than salary. .

Next-Generation Views on the Internet, Mobile Devices, Social Media, and IT Policies in the Workplace

This year, the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report examined two new groups of subjects:

• College students
• Recently employed college graduates, many working in their first full-time jobs

The findings are telling. More than half of the study's respondents could not live without the Internet and cite it as an "integral part" of their lives. In some cases, they call it more essential than owning a car, dating, and going to parties. Also, one in three would prioritize social media freedom, device flexibility, and work mobility over salary in accepting a job offer.

Influence of the New Workforce

The report findings provide insight into the mind-set, expectations, and behavior of the world's next-generation workforce and how these workers will influence:

• Business communications
• Mobile lifestyles
• Hiring practices
• Talent retention
• Corporate security

The Cisco Connected World Technology Report can help your organization address how it needs to evolve to:

• Attract talent
• Diversify the idea marketplace
• Groom the next generation of workers

Study Highlights:

• Many respondents cite a mobile device as “the most important technology” in their lives
• Seven of 10 employees have “friended” their managers and coworkers on Facebook
• Two of five students have not bought a physical book (except textbooks) in two years
• Most respondents have a Facebook account and check it at least once a day
  • Half would rather lose their wallet or purse than their smartphone or mobile device.
  • More than two of five would accept a lower-paying job that had more flexibility with regard to device choice, social media access, and mobility than a higher-paying job with less flexibility.
• At least one in four said the absence of remote access would influence their job decisions, such as leaving companies sooner rather than later, slacking off, or declining job offers outright.
• Three out of 10 feel that once they begin working, it will be their right- more than a privilege -to be able to work remotely with a flexible schedule.

The Way We Social and Entertain Ourselves:Times Have Changed

 The Internet 1 of the Essential Ingredients in Life

Get More Information

• Learn Methodology (PDF - 66 KB)
• Gain insight on the expectations and demands of the next-generation workforce.

Chapter 1

• Read Press Release
• Read Press Deck (PDF - 672 KB)
• Read Chapter 1 Report (PDF - 1.3 MB)
• Connected World Technology Report Chapter 1

Chapter 2

• Read Press Release (PDF - 301 KB)
• Read Press Deck (PDF - 592 KB)
• Read Chapter 2 Report (PDF - 1.21 MB)
• Connected World Technology Report Infographic Chapter 2
• 
  

Source:  http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns1120/index.html

Stats: Search Engine Optimization Beats Pay-Per-Click and Social Media

Infographic: Digital Marketer Views On SEO, PPC & Social Media

Nov 2, 2011 at 11:30am ET by Search Engine Land Infographics

What has the biggest impact on lead generation? A new survey finds SEO beats PPC and social media. But PPC still gets more budget for those targeting consumers over SEO, and lest anyone believe social media is a waste of time, more than half have closed leads from social media channels.

These stats, along with many more — such as which social media platforms see the most use by marketers (hint: Facebook) — were compiled into the infographic below by the people atWebmarketing123, which backed the survey:

Want the infographic for yourself? It was sent to us as part of press materials today about the survey, which we covered in this story: SEO Beats PPC & Social Media For Generating Leads, New Industry Report Says. It hasn’t yet been posted online for others to use, but it might appear later on the Webmarketing123 blog.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/infographic-digital-marketer-views-on-seo-ppc-social-media-99648

SEO is the number one source of leads for both B2C and B2B marketers, beating out both PPC and social media marketing in a recent survey of online marketers. But more of those surveyed say they plan to increase their social media marketing budgets in 2012, ahead of SEO and PPC.

The numbers come from the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, which was compiled by Webmarketing123, a California-based online marketing agency. The company surveyed more than 500 U.S. online marketers in August and September; about two-thirds of all respondents identified themselves as B2B marketers.

Whether B2B or B2C, both groups of marketers agree that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. 57 percent of B2B marketers credit SEO as their primary source of generating leads, while 41 percent of B2C marketers said the same thing.

Both types of marketers say that website traffic is the primary way they measure the success of online marketing efforts. Brand awareness was at the bottom of the list for measuring success by both B2B and B2C respondents.

The survey asked a number of budget-related questions, including one about which channels get the majority of the marketers’ budgets. On the B2B side, one-third indicated that SEO gets the majority of their budget. But on the B2C side, more than 42 percent say that PPC gets the majority of their budget — about double the number of B2C marketers who said SEO is their top budget allocation.

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their budget for social media marketing in 2012; 53 percent plan to increase their budget for SEO and 40 percent will increase their PPC budget.

Those increases in social media spending are likely field by another couple statistics from the survey: 68 percent say they’ve generated leads from either Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, while 55 percent have closed deals from social media leads.

The 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report can be downloaded from Webmarketing123′s website. You’ll need to provide name and contact information. There’s also an associated infographic with many statistic, which we’ve posted separately here: Infographic: Digital Marketer Views On SEO, PPC & Social Media.

The Long Haul to Capitalizing on Web Trends

By Geoffrey A. Fowler and Emily Steel

November 2nd, 2011

Web companies often upend industries. But they can labor for years to fully make money on their revolutions.

Take Google Inc. When the Internet titan came onto the scene in the 1990s, the company first focused on building technologies for searching the Web before considering its advertising prospects, recalls Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the digital advertising company owned by Publicis Groupe SA.

It wasn’t until a competitor, GoTo.com, created a pay-for-placement search product in 1998 that Google got serious, he says. The way that service worked, a company would make a bid to appear at the top of a search results page then pay if a consumer clicked. Google launched a similar advertising product in 2000. The key difference was that the system took into account the relevance of the ad to decide its placement on the search engine results page, not just the amount that the advertiser paid.

But the company’s early successes didn’t come from major corporations, but rather the so-called “long tail” – smaller, often local businesses. Gradually, search advertising gradually grew in importance across a wide spectrum of marketers, especially those in the automobile, tech and finance industries where online research became an important factor in people’s decision to buy a product or services, Mr. Tobaccowala says.

Google gradually expanded to selling a wide range of ad formats, including search to display to mobile. Today, Google leads the Internet advertising business. The company is expected to capture 40.8% of the U.S. Internet ad market this year, or $12.8 billion, according to research firm eMarketer Inc.

Similarly, Facebook’s earliest success with paid advertisers has come from that “long tail” with the businesses largely using the site’s demographic targeting abilities to reach a niche audience.

According to comScore Inc., almost 62% of the ads shown on Facebook in the July through September quarter came from advertisers that are not among the top 1000 digital advertisers in the U.S.; on Yahoo Inc., just 23% come from such small advertisers. These sorts of Facebook advertisers range from nail salons marketing to people who live a particular town, to recruiters targeting employees at a specific company.

“Facebook has the great opportunity to change the way that people think about advertising. Now, if only they can make it happen,” says Sean Corcoran, an analyst with Forrester Research Inc.

Lately, Facebook has been amping up its pitch to Madison Avenue by touting the capabilities of ads that incorporate information about users’ friends, and even their names and photos. It has invented out a new genre of paid advertising formats, dubbed “sponsored stories,” that let marketers spend money to republish user comments involving companies as ads.

The idea is that customers can be turned into promoters.  “The most effective way to influence someone is through word of mouth marketing,” says David Fischer, who runs Facebook’s ad department. Stimulating and measuring friend referral has long been the Holy Grail for marketers – but it has become tantalizingly possible at scale on a social network like Facebook.

“On Facebook, for the first time, you have the ability for marketers and brands to connect to people — and ultimately to tell their stories through people,” says Mr. Fischer.

Sponsored story ads are exact copies of what a users already post to Facebook – the difference is that the sponsored ones get plucked out and posted again next to other ads.

Facebook tells advertisers that sponsoring a post increases the chance friends will notice it, since new postings in the news feed push others down and off the page.

Only 20% of free messages posted by companies to users ever actually get seen on the site, Facebook says. Buying sponsored stories is a way to dramatically increase the odds that a piece of content will get seen. Moreover, Facebook says that some of the early users of sponsored stories have found that users are more than twice as likely to click on sponsored stories than typical Facebook ads.

To be sure, Facebook isn’t counting its entire future on advertising. It is also nurturing a digital payments business called Credits, in which it takes a 30% cut on consumer purchases of digital goods in social games, such as those made by Zynga Inc.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/11/01/the-long-haul-to-capitalizing-on-web-trends/