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.

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.

Is Brand Advertising Dead?

Is Brand Advertising Dead?

The most dramatic shift that is changing how we all do business is the rise of accessible information.

Only twenty years ago, our access to information was bounded by the books we owned, the TV shows we watched, and the newspapers we read. Today, because of the web, we’re seeing an exponential increase in the amount of information that we have access to.

Traditional advertising up until the early 1990’s tried to convert a customer at every touch point, taking them from brand awareness to customer in one fell swoop. Today, the age of brand persuasion at a single touch point is over, and instead most successful companies invest their advertising budgets in great content and in developing a relationship.

In an age of exploding social media, consumers rely more on the experiences of their friends and colleagues than they do on a TV ad or billboard. The influence of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, coupled with the instantaneous speed of smart phone text messaging in the last few years has changed the landscape forever.

The purpose of a piece of branded content is not only to grab the audience’s attention but to stimulate a positive conversation about the brand that becomes viral. In short, it is no longer enough for a brand to tell people it’s great, it has to encourage its customers to tell prospects it’s great.

Five Critical Changes You Should Make to Your 2012 Marketing Plan

Six  Dramatic Changes in the Performance of Traditional Media

Three months ago I delivered the first of a half dozen presentations to local small business groups recommending changes in their marketing plan for 2012. The ideas are driven primarily by dramatic changes we have seen in the last ten to twenty years in the performance of traditional forms of media.

Newspaper – 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% according to the Newspaper Association of America. In short your newspaper ad today is seen by at least 30% less potential customers for your product or service.

TV – Television viewership has continued to decline and become more fragmented offering hundreds of channel choices. The latest Nielsen shows a 20% decline in viewership. 

Yellow Pages – Yellow Pages usage has been dropping at a rate of 2 to 3% since 2004 and the decline escalated to 10 % a year in 2009 according to the independent Kelsey Group.

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