Quantifying Social Media

Everyday more companies and more consumers are joining the social media fray.  What does the increased noise level mean? Can you actually measure whether the investment has any impact on results?

Extent of Company Social Media Today

In June 2012 a two-day conference was held in New York City to share and discuss the State of Social Media. The conference served as a forum to discuss the results of data produced by a survey conducted by Useful Social Media from 650 participating corporations.

71% of the survey respondents said that they were responsible for developing and executing the company social media activity using a team of between 2 and 4 team staff members on a part-time basis.

Not surprisingly, 90% of respondents use Facebook for their company and 89% have a Twitter presence. These two are the unrivalled leaders for companies – and an incredible proportion of

businesses have taken the plunge and set up accounts on these two sites. YouTube and LinkedIn were also popular with 75% acknowledging regular participation. Also, 49% disclosed that they have created and promote their own blog.

Measuring Return On Investment in Social Media

Less than a third of respondents feel that they are accurately measuring the impact of their social media activity, and only 40% of respondents say they measure social media ROI (with only 23% confident they’re getting this measurement correct). Early measurement shows:

1. Activity/Engagement 14%

2. Conversion to leads or sales of those engaged 6 to 7%

3. Development of recommendations or customer testimonials from evangelists 2%

What is Next in Social Media?

The most popular replies from survey respondents about what to expect next year are:

1. 200% more companies will use social media to develop better products

2. A third more companies will offer customer service delivery through social media

3. 95% more companies expect to use social media for market research in determining future offerings.

What would participants like to be able to measure in the future? The answer is activity, growth in followers, increase in web traffic, translation to leads, and conversion to sales.

 

You can download a free copy of the full survey report @ www.usefulsocialmedia.com

Ninety Percent of All Data Created in the Last Two Years!

An IBM web page describes the company’s big data offerings by stating that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created daily now and as a result 90% of the data in the world has been created in the last two years.

 I never claimed to be a math major but if I understand the data progression correctly, it goes something like this:

1 Byte is made up of 8 bits

1 Kilobyte           KB          10³          (or 1,000 bytes)

1 Megabyte        MB         10⁶

1 Gigabyte           GB          10⁹

1 Terabyte           TB           10¹²

1 Petabyte           PB           10¹⁵

1 Exabyte            EB           10¹⁸

 One Exabyte is equal to one quintillion bytes. To put this staggering amount of storage in some perspective, the world’s technological capacity to store information grew from 2.6 exabytes in 1986 to 15.8 in 1993, over 54.5 in 2000, and to 295 exabytes in 2007. This is equivalent to less than one 730-MB CD-ROM per person in 1986 (539 MB per person), roughly 4 CD-ROM per person in 1993, 12 CD-ROM per person in the year 2000, and almost 61 CD-ROM per person in 2007.

 Another way to begin to grasp the explosion is to realize that we are creating data at a daily rate of all the data that existed in 1986.

10 Important Things I Learned From Yogi Berra

To celebrate his 87^th birthday, I thought I would share 10 important things I learned from New York Yankee catcher and manager, Yogi Berra.

1.  Reciprocity:  “Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise they won’t go to yours.”

2.  Forward progress:“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

3.  On observation: “You can observe a lot by watching.”

4.  Miscalculation: “Ninety percent of the time the game is half mental.”

5.  Telling it like it is: “If you ask me a question I don’t know, I’m not going to answer.”

We want to talk. How should we contact you?

Once upon a time you were able to reach your customers and targeted prospects with direct mail, newspaper ads, outbound phone calls, email blasts and even enhanced yellow page listings.

If you are using the same channels to reach your audience that you employed ten years ago, you are finding it more and more difficult to deliver the same message.

While targeted and personalized messages in the mail can still be effective, response rates to offers are down 30% to 40%. Newspaper advertising, as I documented in a previous blog is 40% less effective than it was in the 80’s and 90’s and just as costly. And of course, telemarketing took a 50% hit in usefulness with the advent of the do not call list. In the last decade, the phone book has gotten smaller and smaller and barely qualifies as a decent kids booster chair anymore. The most important thing to know about email is that large generically addressed blasts don’t work anymore either. To maintain any effective return your email messages need to have a very targeted single message and be personalized for each individual.

Create A Customer Loyalty Program

The objective of any loyalty program is to establish long-term relationships with your customers so that they are motivated to continue to buy from you. According to marketing firm, Colloquy’s loyalty census released last year, membership in U.S. customer-loyalty programs has reached 1.8 billion, up from 1.3 billion in 2007. The census showed that the average U.S. household has signed up for 14.1 loyalty programs, but only participates in 6.2 of them.

One of the more successful loyalty programs is the Emerald Aisle, National’s fast lane for frequent renters that not only gets them from plane to car faster than most competitors can call up their rental agreement, but also gives renters their pick of any car on the lot once they arrive. National’s special service is not only free, but available in 56 cities. The “reward” program earns a loyal customer one credit for each rental, with seven credits earning a free-car day — but the VIP speed-through service is what motivates return customers.

Budget Your Social Media Time

Are you spending too much of your time on social media?

I am amazed at the people I know that constantly send or post messages during times that they are working as full-time employees. Surely, this a form of Russian roulette that will likely end at some point when their employer decides that their distraction with a social media obsession is interfering with achieving company objectives.

As a freelance Copywriter and Marketing Strategist, my income is directly determined by the percentage of client billable hours. At the end of the week I don’t want to feel like the attorney who can’t figure out where ten hours of my time went.

It’s Not SEO Anymore, It’s Marketing

When the topic of online marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) is discussed in meetings every day and even at marketing conferences, unfortunately SEO is often viewed as a silo of  it’s own, separate and distinct from all other forms of marketing.

The Comscore January 2012 report says that the average American user spent a record 36 hours online in the month-that’s a full time job’s worth of time!

If you are a marketing decsi0n maker responsible for driving more leads and sales growth for your company-and you want to achieve your goals in 2o12, you better start believing that SEO is at the hub of all marketing.

The question no longer is where do you spend your ad dollars, its how do you spend your budget online?

SEO today is at the hub of all marketing!

Take this  quiz to confirm it’s not SEO anymore, it’s marketing!

1. At your desktop or laptop PC when you Google the word or words that best describe your product or service e.g. “widgets” (not your brand or company name), does your web site appear on page 1 of the natural or non-sponsored listings?

2. Same question as above,  only with your blackberry, iphone or other PDA?

3. Have you reduced or eliminated entirely your Paid search spend as a result of gaining more page 1 organic listings from your most relevant, high-volume search keywords?

4. Have you integrated your website with external social media by linking and bookmarking from their profile pages to your site?

5. Have you experienced a significant gain in organic search as a % of all sources of traffic to your website?

If you answered yes to  3 or more of these questions, you will have confirmed for yourself that it’s not SEO anymore, it’s marketing. If you scored 1 or 2 yes’s, you need to get busy talking with an SEO pro…

Steve Emory, co-author DM Deja vu

President, Managing Partner Emory Digital

Should You Use Google+ for Your Business?

By now  you already have  a Facebook and Twitter account or at least are considering how to leverage social media for your business.

If you haven’t taken advantage of a Free Google+ profile page yet and you want to keep your SEO strong and fresh this post is for you.

Add Recommended Links

In order to drive traffic to your website and create business leads, you should post helpful links under the ‘About’ tab that’s located on your Google+ Page. If you link to your helpful and informative blog posts, offers or anything that you think customers can benefit from, people will click them and be taken to your website. Take full advantage of this area of your Page, because if not, you won’t be making the most of what Google+ has to offer.

Promote

Why wouldn’t you promote your Google+ Page on your website and blog? If you promote your Facebook and Twitter Pages, you should also promote your Google+ Page. This is an easy way to be added to more Circles. Because your website and blog get a lot of traffic, it’s a no-brainer that you should be cross-promoting on these sites as well as on Twitter and Linkedin. By doing this, it’s a great way to build new leads and be added to more Circles.

Get more information at Google+ for business

Steve Emory, President & Managing Partner Emory Digital

Is the New ‘No Track’ Button a Threat to Ad Industry?

In a Wall Street Journal story today, a coalition of Internet giants including Google Inc. has agreed to support a do-not-track button to be embedded in most Web browsers—a move that the industry had been resisting for more than a year.

If you are an online display banner advertiser-you know that this has been coming for a while. If you are new to online advertising,  it is important to be aware of this new consumer tool  that lets them control what they see or don’t see when they are surfing the Web and visit sites that accept ads.

In spite of all the hype, school is still out on how much of an impact this will really have on the revenue of Google and other Ad giants’  like Yahoo, MSN, Facebook and others.

I also wonder how many consumers really care if they are exposed to ads that are increasingly “audience targeted“. This refers to display ads that are only delivered to  consumers that match their exact profile including demographics, lifestyle and web behavior.

This is a win-win as I see it. Consumers with the “No Track” button on their Web browser can grant permission to be exposed to audience targeted ads by default, or opt-out by clicking a button . The online Ad industry makes  a long overdue decision to police itself and keeps the government from intervening in something they have  no clue about.

Steve Emory, co-author DM Deja vu

President, Managing Partner Emory Digital

Newspapers in Their Heyday

Newspapers in Their Heyday

The heyday of the newspaper industry was the 1940s, but the percentage of Americans reading newspapers began to decline with the increased competition from radio, television and, more recently, the Internet. A growing population helped the absolute circulation numbers continue to increase until the 1970s, where it remained stable until the 1990s, when absolute circulation numbers began a sharp decline.

Newspaper circulation numbers reported to the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that a 20-year view documents a steady slide in paid circulation. Daily circulation, which stood at 62.3 million in 1990, fell to 43.4 million in 2010, a decline of 30%. Sunday circulation held up slightly better, falling from 62.6 million in 1990 to 46.2 million last year, off 26%.