Social Media Tools Gaining Fire

The first annual Community and Social Media Study conducted by the e-Tailing group showed that brands and retailers are exploring the social space at an extremely high rate. The study shows 75% of respondents feel brands have accelerated their use of, or commitment to, community and social media in the past 6 months.

The top 3 concerns of Marketers and Retailers in Social Media:

• Brand Degradation fear - people can trash my product in front of the masses
• Competence fear - using outdated marketing techniques
• Competitive fear - believing customers are willing to leave sites to find more social friendly brand/retailer sites

WomFire, a social media marketing company, is implementing various social media strategies, based on clients' goal, in order to let brands take an open, active and effective role in conversations online.

Discipling Twitterers: Managers Seeking Control of Employees/Players

News is spreading in both the sports and business world with managers trying to keep the employees and players under control. NFL star Antonio Cromartie was just fined $2,500 for violating NFL and San Diego Chargers rules by bashing the teams training camp meals on Twitter. ESPN/NBA analyst posted a note today that ESPN sent a memo to employees that they were implementing a company Twitter policy "prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN."

The $2,500 tweet in question, according to NBC Sports, originated on July 31, and states: “Man we have 2 have the most nasty food of any team. Damn can we upgrade 4 str8 years the same ish maybe that’s y we can’t we the SB we need.”

The ESPN Tweet from Ric Bucher is Below:

These two stories topped "Tuesday Twitter Limitation" that was started with news that the United States Marines have also banner social media sites on their network.

Facebook #1 Site For Time Spent Online

Nielsen just released their June report on Internet usage, and with 87 Million visitors, spending on avearge 4 hours and 39 minutes during the month on the site, Facebook has become the #1 (out of the top ten web brands) in time spent online, and #6 when is comes to overall U.S. traffic.

Why is time spent such a huge deal? In digital marketing, we try to find user eyeballs, the "ultimate currency" stated by Stan Schroeder in his Mashable blog post. Impressions and page views are beginning to lose their cache', with marketers focusing on users' time spent on a site, or in certain content.

Facebook is not necessarily the end all place for marketers to flood with advertising, but there is a paradigm shift that needs to be investigated. People spend hours on AOL, Google, and Yahoo! as well as other portal sites, but just because time is spent there, doesn't make it the best place for advertising.

Social Media Recommendations and Opinions: Most Trusted Advertising Worldwide

Nielsen recently released a global study of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries, recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising worldwide. 90% of consumers surveyed said that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trusted consumer opinions posted online. Social media is not just a fad, but here to stay, and more and more companies are beginning to add social media strategies to their advertising budgets.

“The explosion in Consumer Generated Media over the last couple of years means consumers’ reliance on word of mouth in the decision-making process, either from people they know or online consumers they don’t, have increased significantly,” says Jonathan Carson, President of Online, International, for the Nielsen Company.”

We have currently implemented social media campaigns for multiple clients of ours; engaging people talking not only about promotional campaigns, but also about the client's #1 concern, the product/service they sell. Tracking Pre and Post campaign “buzz" for our campaigns have only brought the need of social media for clients to fruition for us.

Women Put Trust in Social Media

According to The 2009 Women in Social Media Study of the 79 Million women online, over half are taking part in social media on a weekly basis. This study by BlogHer, iVillage and Compass Partners also showed that 64% of women are nearly twice as likely to use blogs than social networking sites as a source of information. 43% Use social media for advice and recommendations and 55% for opinion-sharing.

Social Media Activities include:

• Social networks (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn)
• Blogging
• Reading blogs
• Posting to blogs
• Message boards & forums
• Status Updating (e.g.Twitter)

Companies looking to tap into women for product advertising shouldn't question whether or not to enter social media. The real questions should involve "How to connect with my target audience?" and "What can I offer them via social media".

The study is definitely worth reviewing:

Source:http://www.blogher.com/files/2009_Compass_BlogHer_Social_Media_Study_042709_FINAL.pdf

Dell uses Twitter for $3M in Additional Sales

A great story broke today about Dell Computer's use of Twitter to help stir up an additional $3 Million in sales since 2007. @DellOutlet, Dell's Twitter account, has been providing exclusive deals to its followers, as well as answering questions from users.

Dell has over 640,000 Followers looking for updates from Dell about new product offerings, specials, and promotions.

From Dell's blog post regarding the success... "Twitter has had numerous opportunities to bring in revenue. However, they currently do not charge companies for the usage of their service. With a growing amount of companies embracing the web (and more specifically, Twitter) in order to reach out to customers and promote their products, this could be one of the better opportunities for Twitter to make money, should they decide to take this one up."

Here is a link to the Dell Story

http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2009/06/11/delloutlet-surpasses-2-million-on-twitter.aspx

Interesting Stats regarding Twitter

Found an interesting post, showing sound astounding facts about Twitter, and wanted to share with world. I have to say before you read the stats it is important to know that Twitter is just a tool in social media, Twitter has helped change the way we communicate. There will be something that comes and is better than Twitter, but people's desire for information at their disposal, from multiple authors is a trend that will continue forever.

Research by Sysomos Inc.

Authors: Alex Cheng, Mark Evans, and Harshdeep Singh

• 72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009.
• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
• 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people.
• 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity
• New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston; while Detroit was the fast-growing city over the first five months of 2009
• More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
• Of people who identify themselves as social media marketers, 65.5% have never posted an update
• Of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people. This compares with 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people.

The Appendix where this research was taken:

http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/appendix

Twitter Alone is Not Enough

A recently published study by Nielsen stated that more than 60% of US Twitter users fail to return back the following month. With only 40% of Twitter users being "loyal", marketers should be cautioned that Twitter, although growing at an incredible rate, is still only one piece of the total social media puzzle.

Marketing executives are looking to Twitter, the 140-Character micro-blogging site, as the answer to all their company's social media needs. The true of the matter is that social media involves a lot of work and hours, with more and more companies employing "community managers" to handle all of the companies social media tasks at a full time level. These managers Tweet on behalf of companies and manage brands in all social media by monitoring and responding to what customers and others are saying about their company, product, or service.

When companies and people are beginning their involvement in social media, it is important for them to be monitoring and reviewing the following:
-Facebook/Myspace/LinkedIn, etc
-Blogs, Micro-Blogs (Twitter)
-Message Boards /Wiki's
-Social Bookmarking & Sharing sites
-YouTube/Video Sharing sites

Social Networking on the Rise....Retailers Look to Follow

Alert: Social Networking is on the rise! 

According to a recent study by the University of Maryland School of Business, 33% more people are communicating with friends and family in social media this year compared to last year and 53% communicating the same amount as last year.  

Due to the amount of traffic and time being spent on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites, companies across the board are looking for ways to capitalize on this trend. Retailers are looking to investigate the potential this relatively new channel offers to reach consumers with declining interest in traveling to stores or making purchases. 

Retailers - including Netflix, Papa John’s, Pizza Hut and Kmart - have recently used social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for promotional campaigns.

Source: "Social Networking May Help Retailers in Downturn"

The value of Twitter for business

Twitter, if implemented correctly, can be a great way for companies to enter the social media realm online and engage consumers.  I have seen it first hand with 3 clients at the digital ad agency I currently work at.  Find "key twitterers" for your target audience, and follow both people that are following them, and the people that the "key twitterers" are following.  If you are targeting Moms, follow people like Martha Stewart, Oprah, Ellen, and then the people associated with them.  If you are targeting sports fans, follow Twitter accounts such as ESPN, FoxSports, etc.  This is allow you to build a Twitter account with a relevant audience, who will be more likely to accept your message, and engage your brand/promotion, etc.