It wasn’t too long ago that i was sitting in a meeting speculating as to the lifespan of our (currently) beloved Twitter.

First we saw the rise of the platform from Jan to May, with the celebrity influx bringing fame and glamour to the platform.

Then we saw the stats that read that the majority of new registrants are inactive and 90% of all Tweets are generated by 10% of all users! - something that seemingly brought the platform back into the ‘media use only’ camp once more.

However, the recent political fracas in Tehran, and the subsequent media blackout, have meant that Twitter has become a vital communications lifeline for Iranian civilians and reporters alike.

So, should we think less of platforms being rendered defunct, but rather be more creative as to their applications?  Perhaps we limit ourselves too much in seeking new technology to further our social networking progress, thus negating that most powerful platform - our minds.

So, as a learning to myself as much as anyone, let’s de-geek for just a minute and see how we can’t apply what is already there to a broader spectrum of applications…

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Why are marketing departments losing budget?  Why are audiences switching off?  why aren’t we switching ON?

An uncomfortable truth for many marketing managers is that the audience share is not only diminishing in terms of ROI, but that they are losing budget (and jobs!) as a result.

So, why not do the obvious thing and use social media.  I have quoted the stats in my previous posts, so here they are again.

Remember:  Just because you don’t want to involve yorself in social media due to ‘fear of losing control of the brand’, doesn’t mean the converstion isn’t happening anyway. Take control, get those 95% brand recall rates and get your company’s market share value up.

Before it’s too late.

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Hands up who ISN’T scared that their ROIs aren’t going to spell their downfall when it comes to office cuts?

Well, anyone who’s using social media can be fairly smug in the knowledge that their ROIs are trumping traditional forms of media. So, how to make your campaign recession-proof? Follow these simple steps:

1) Gen up on Social media. Make sure you know what it is as it should be very much part of your strategy, not an add-on

2) Try it out for yourself: you may not entirely trust yourself with a campaign, but have a bash at creating a Twitter account, make sure you are on Linked In, create a forum profile such as on UK Business Forums and see what it’s about

3) If you are tentative about social media, commission a social media audit first. You’ll then be able to see exactly what’s being said about your brand and employ a strategy around that

4) Make sure you set goals and be realistic about the targets, timelines and budgets. As i mentioned, there’s no point in going into things half-hearted, but don’t go crazy if you or your company are not ready yet

5) Ensure that social media is a core part of the campaign: by integrating into the holistic comms campaign, you will maximise ROI and get the best for you and your brand

And remember, that for the equivalent value of several full page magazine ads with a conversion rate of 10-15% you are getting extrememly good value, great ROIs and fantastic brand exposure and recall rate!

So, makre sure you’re keeping up with the Joneses and get using social media - your job could depend on it!

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I have had the most frustrating time of late trying to update the latest ROI stats for some prospective clients: Every time is type in the phrase “ROI Stats” or “click-through-rates” I get some marketing spiel or blog post about how variable they are but no stats. Let alone when I type in the phrase “social media ROI” - this does nought but open up a can of worms. Some of the wonderful search results (which have not helped me resolve my answer at all are):

- You cannot put a number on human interaction and peer-to-peer influence - Fair point, but goes no way to resolving how this might be achieved

- There are many qualitative benefits such as brand loyalty, trust, passion, ripple… - great, but not necessarily what a marketing manager is looking at

- You can start a social media campaign for £0 - though this does not take into account the value of your time

- It’s hard to map out real, tangible KPIs for social media - yes certainly, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t benchmark something in the interim

My point is, that there is so much debate out there and maybe the social media measurement camp will help us edge towards a solution.  NetImperative went some way to trying to resolve this issue and even had a title (in bold!) in their recent social media report that said “How can brands make money through social media?” and then failed spectacularly in telling us.

I will tell you, the most accurate conversion rates that we have seen and experienced, which ARE supported by metrics are as follows:

- Social Media exposure generates a 95% brand recall rate That’s an ROI on an exposure campaign to 1m people of 950k who will remember your brand.  A pretty good ROI.

- Twitter click through rates are 4%.  That’s about 800% higher than a banner ad average of 0.5%

- According to BzzMetrics the conversion rate on social media impressions is 10-15%.  That’s over 300% higher than Paid search, the next highest converter.

So, cross reference those stats against your expenditure and you have a real, tangible ROI to benchmark your social media spend against.

Hope it helps!

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We are in a situation whereby marketers ignorant of how social media works are falling behind on their sales targets. Fact. How do we know? Because McCann Erickson said so and they did a survey and everything!

Seriously though, the social media survey carried out by McCann shows that:

Two-thirds of marketing experts admit they do not understand social media despite acknowledging it is here to stay, according to a survey.

The Social Media survey of marketing professionals by McCann Erickson Bristol found that 86% of them thought social media is more than just a fad.

However, 65.6% of them said they did not know how to use it for the purposes of marketing.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn remain the most popular social networking sites for marketers, with 72.8%, 42.4% and 40.2% having a presence on them respectively.

Just over half of UK businesses using social media used them for profile raising or PR, followed by 48% for networking and 30% for advertising.

Pretty remarkable stats you might think.  Well, yes.  Yes indeed.  Especially when we consider that the recall rates for social media are 95% and the conversion rates around 4%.  A pretty high ROI for something that people are avoiding like the plague.

Want to make sure you are hitting targets (and keeping your job!)?  Get involved with social media.  You know where we are.

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It seems to me in speaking to people about social media that their biggest hurdle (either personally or from their directors) is a perception that they lose control of their brand in using social media.

Wrong.

Let us look at traditional media and marketing. You are ‘in control’ of your brand by creating on-brand tag lines (limited to a set number of characters), choosing on-brand imagery (subject to interpretation), and releasing it in trusted media channels (that you feel safe in).

However, does that mean that you are in control of your brand or does it limit your touchpoints - the ways in which you are really communicating with your market?  Moreover, just because you are controlling your media message, it doesn’t mean that the media is confined to those channels.  In today’s multimedia world any brand message can be transposed to another platform by pretty much anyone.

So, just because a brand is ignoring a channel that they are scared of, it doesn’t mean that their brand isn’t propagating a life and image of its own on that channel.   Is it not better to acknowledge every platform and channel and close the gap between the ‘marketing’ and the consumer?

If you ignore social media networks and the people using them (which is the large majority of your consumer base) then you are ignoring the key bridge between you and your customer.  And, importantly, just because you ignore social media, doesn’t mean it’s not being used to talk about your brand.

In reality, if you’re not engaging in social media as a brand, you’re really not in control.

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We get many an inquiry as to what exactly social media is and how it can help a company. And of course people should ask. Should you be following the hype or sticking to what you know?

Well, social media is a largely online medium that uses social networks such as blogs, messageboards, forums and wikis to interact with audiences in a highly targeted way and informal setting. It works above the line and below the line and is fully trackable and measurable. The returns on investment for social media are very high, generating a 95% recall rate and a 10-15% conversion rate, and integrates into many PR and marketing campaigns.

So how do you, as a commissioner, decide upon which social media agency to go for?

Well, there are a few simple rules that apply across the board: reputation, clients and usage – are they liked/recommended, do they have established clients and do they practise what they preach? We of course are confident that we deliver on all three of those points, so what of the rest?

As an agent you have to deliver on results, therefore, the main things you should be able to use as an assessment are as follows: Measurability – all social media is trackable. Anyone who tells you that this is not so doesn’t know how to do it and shouldn’t be used; Transparency – not only in practicalities such as billing, but also in how they work, their strategy and their outreach channels; and finally ‘How’ – is your agency shoehorning their latest fad into your strategy or are they really leading with the audience in mind? Don’t be blindsided by your own perceived lack of knowledge into buying in to something that won’t work.

Working with Amnesty International amongst others, we have seen how social media transcends borders, cultures and political boundaries to engage and audience as well as mobilise people to real action. And this is because we have listened then engaged.

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My faith has officially been restored in humanity.  Fact.  As we are all well aware, Twitter has become ‘the’ social media phenomenon of 2009.  For those of us who have been involved with social media for a whole however, we have had accounts for yonks - but that’s by-the-by.

However, how many new users in the UK type in the URL www.twitter.co.uk upon first try?  Well, at least 74,000 in the past few weeks actually.  Now, it would be very easy for the owner of domain name www.twitter.co.uk to become greedy in this enterprise and either: try to sell the domain name to Twitter for gazillions of pounds; start his own twitter stream and cash in on advertising; sell to a major competitor and again charge a lot of ad revenue.

However, no.  Whilst mildly peeved at having to fork out for extra bandwidth due to these many many misdirects - and indeed pointing out some rather major security issues in the Twitter.com sign-up process -  the domain owner has put this frustrating coincidence to good use.

Namely, as a call-to-action for charity donations.  Whilst you can advertise your business on-site simply by applying to the webmaster, you can receive priority listings simply by donating to any of the listed charity links on-site - charity links that are again sumbitted by individuals.

This shows an incredible amount of goodwill on the part of the webmaster as it takes time and energy to manage all of this, but I particularly respect the adherence to social media ethics that is being demonstrated, and of course the lack of greed!

3 cheers to that man, and thank you for restoring my true faith in humanity.

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Unless you have been hibernating in a cave you have probably been aware of the Twitter phenomena that has been taking over our lives and media of late. From Ashton Kutcher getting into trouble for revealing the intimate details of his relationship with Demi Moore to the infamous firing of one would-be Cisco employee with the ‘tweet’ “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.” Even Britain’s favorite silver fox presenter Philip Schofield has felt the need to discuss the topic on the ITV show This Morning and since he announced that the Twitter account was indeed run by him his “followers” have risen dramatically.

So what is Twitter and why is it apparently having such an impact on our lives? Described on the site as “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

But why do we always need to know what we are doing? Can we not stay connected through various other communication devices and social media techniques such as text messages, emails and Face book?

It depends really on why the message needs to be delivered. One thing that is undeniable about Twitter is that it gets your message out, to a lot of people. For those that need to share a message, it is easy to see the appeal. In a quick update on your profile you can instantly connect with potentially thousands of people. However, Twitter is a tool that should be used with caution, as there have been many high profile cases where the concept has backfired on the sender of said message.

With regard to social media, Twitter is undeniably a fantastic tool to share information in a quick and easy manner, when done by somebody who fully appreciates the intricacies of how it works. In fact, it’s made me so lazy that I rarely even blog any more! When it comes to “tweeting” your more personal messages, all that can be said is exert caution or potentially face the dole queue, divorce courts and many other undesirable situations.

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We are reaching a crossroads; large companies are starting to catch on to the social media phenomena currently under way, but the question is which path will they choose? Will they decide to start using innovative technological ways to engage/re-invigorate audiences themselves, from within, or will they opt to work in harmony with other specialised, experienced social media agencies. Indeed, which strategy will be the best for the company?

Certainly, the best way to genuinely engage with the audience would be to consult the experience and expertise of the agencies. This is because they fully, coherently comprehend the subtle intricacies of the social media movement. Large companies simply cannot expect the same results by attempting to get on board with the phenomena internally without fully understanding the niche concepts behind the movement.

Social media agencies that have been fully involved with the techniques of this marketing strategy from conception undoubtedly have the upper hand in appreciating how best to operate since they have evolved within it.  It is these agencies that have made these techniques so successful. Whether or not the big companies will be able to see the significance of this or not is something only time will tell; will they play ball with the small companies in a harmonious environment or attempt to stamp them out turning to their own for direction?

One thing that is certain, whichever path the companies to decide to go down, they can no longer ignore their need to expand online presence in the current climate. Indeed “brands that fail to embrace and engage in Online consumer dialogues are set be amongst those most severely affected by the expected economic downturn”  In order to survive the hostile business environment at present, companies at all levels must acknowledge the power of the online community and consumer. What they will do with in order to access that is yet to be seen. The one clear advantage of social media techniques in comparison to more traditional PR methodologies is the ability to produce demonstrable, measured results, in the form of monitoring online conversation about a product and indeed web traffic. The next few years will certainly be interesting in terms of results; then we will certainly be able to comprehend whether or not size does matter.

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