Get To The Grapes

What key traits make up a successful social media influencer?   Forbes lists them as the following:

#1. Being active in a large number of channels

#2. Creating and maintaining a high quality network

#3. Frequency of participation

Social media is social after all, which means you need to get intimately involved, engaged and well connected. See entire article here.

So just who are the top social media influencers? According to Forbes, they include:

Name                                    Total Audience (Followers)

Chris Brogan 193,999

Ann Handley 111,619

Gary Vaynerchuk 906,833

Robert Scoble 220,062

Scott Stratten 108,497

Reg Saddler 151,673

Jason Falls 45,859

Scott Monty 63,436

Mari Smith 127,973

Pam Moore 66,618

I’ve included only the total follower numbers, but PeekAnalytics measures not only the size of the consumer audience, but their quality in terms of their network size, social participation and their ability to spread a message further. Thus, the table summarizes pull, total audience, identified consumer count, and consumer ratio.

And one of my favorites, for obvious reasons… Gary Vaynerchuk

There is much talk about the amazing impact social media can have on your brand and business, but equally important is knowing what social media can’t do. Social media can’t:

• Substitute for marketing strategy.
• Succeed without top management buy-in.
• Be viewed as a short-term project.
• Produce meaningful, measurable results quickly.
• Be done in-house by the vast majority of companies.
• Provide a quick fix to the bottom line or a tarnished reputation.
• Be done without a realistic budget.
• Guarantee sales or influence.
• Be done by “kids” who “understand social innately”
• Replace PR

Want more details, read full article here.

Social media usage may have reached a tipping point, according to a new report from, The Pew Internet and American Life Project.

It’s true, grandma did create a Facebook account to see her grandchildren.  However, it isn’t just grandma anymore who is frequenting social media sites.  More and more baby boomers are jumping on the social bandwagon-both personally and professionally.  Social media is finally starting to mature…

“The graying of social networking sites continues…said Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist, Pew Research Center. “While seniors are testing the waters, many Baby Boomers are beginning to make a trip to the social media pool part of their daily routine.”

Fully 65 percent of adult internet users now say they use a social networking site like Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61 percent one year ago. This marks the first time in Pew Internet surveys that 50 percent of all adults use social networking sites.

Among the Boomer-aged segment of internet users ages 50-64, social networking site usage on a typical day grew a significant 60 percent (from 20% to 32%).

Consumer behavior continues to evolve and it’s continuing to evolve at every age range.  So no matter who your target audience or what your selling, social media should be considered an integral part of your media mix.

Source

If Twitter is to survive it needs to pick up more mainstream users, so it’s looking at ways to provide more relevance to the average user.  We see numerous areas of opportunities for businesses and marketers, but for moms (those without blogs, of course), dads (in non-marketing jobs) and tweens (who prefer texting), it will be interesting to see where Twitter goes next. For now, I’m off to send another tweet!

See full article via the Wall Street Journal:  Twitter Tries to Widen Appeal to More Users

Friday, March 25, 2011

Sacramento Business Journal – by Debi Hammond, Contributing writer, Marketing

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn are all great options for small companies

Many companies view social media as a way to create connections with customers. But social networks also can help you reach a broader audience.

If you’re not using social media to enhance your public relations efforts, you’re missing out. Every major — and not so major — news outlet now uses social media to uncover leads and reach readers, viewers and listeners.

CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and Fox News all have Facebook and Twitter accounts. Locally, The Sacramento Bee, Sacramento Magazine, Sacramento Business Journal and Comstock’s magazine (which just launched an iPad app) all engage in social media for business use.

Here are few tips to help get your public relations program more “social.”

• Follow: Start following editors and reporters who cover news important to your business. You never know, they just might start “following” you, too. Get to know what they cover and share appropriate information with them.

• Friend: A lot of media are surprisingly open with their Facebook accounts. This is a great place to learn more about them, both personally and professionally. If you’re not actually “friends,” this is not the place to try and become one. It’s a place to connect and learn, but leave the pitching to the appropriate venues and business hours.

• Connect: LinkedIn is a great tool for creating business connections, and the media is no different. Media outlets use it too for their own professional career connections as well as company information and news. LinkedIn is a powerful tool for doing preliminary research on media outlets and journalists. If you don’t have an account, sign up! And if you’re not currently using it to connect with the media, you should start. (more…)

Recent data provided by Skillpath shows:

• 350 Million: Number of Facebook users
• 60 Million: Number of LinkedIn users
• 50 Million: Number of Tweets created each day (scary that Charlie Sheen is now tweeting… And no, I’m not following.)
• 2.5 Billion: Number of visits Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn together received in one month
• 133 Million: Number of active blogs
• 5 Million: Number of users on the online bookmarking service Delicious (the one I use…)

Want your video to go viral?  You don’t need a  sexy product (or person for that matter – although it has been known to help. “Hello, Old Spice’s Mustafa”) for great success.  Don’t believe me? Just ask the people at Blendtec.   Blendtec is a small blender manufactuer who’s “Will it Blend” video series is the most viewed viral ad campaign of all time (according to AdvertisingAge and Visible Measures).

Who else has had great success? Here are the top 10 viral ads ranked by unique views:

1. Blendtec – Will It Blend – In-house: 134.2 million views

2. Evian – Live Young – BETC Euro RSCG: 103.9 million views

3. Old Spice – Responses – Wieden & Kennedy: 57.1 million views

4. Pepsi – Gladiator – AMV BBDO: 46.7 million views

5. Microsoft – Xbox Project Natal – World Famous: 42.7 million views

6. Dove – Evolution – Ogilvy & Mather: 41.1 million views

7. T-Mobile – T-Mobile Dance – Saatchi & Saatchi: 35.5 million views

8. Doritos – Crash the Super Bowl 2010 – Goodby Silverstein & Partners: 34.2 million views

9. Old Spice – Odor Blocker – Wieden & Kennedy: 34 million views

10. DC Shoes – Gymkhana Two – In-house: 32.9 million views

I just read an article entitled “Why Executive HATE Social Media,” and it made some really great points. Just take a look at the statistics below. As an executive, it’s all about numbers and these are pretty powerful numbers.

Social Media Value #5: Supporting Statistics

Executives rely on market research to support and substantiate any designated course of action, and devour facts, stats, and data-points like shrimp at a wedding reception. Summarized below are a few statistics buttressing the explosion of this social media trend, and detailing how Corporate America is leveraging it to realize significant revenue and market share growth going forward.

• In the last 7 years, Internet usage has increased 70 percent a year. Spending for digital advertising this year will be more than $25 billion and surpass print advertising spending (forever)
• Lenovo has experienced a 20 percent reduction in activity to their call center since they launched their community website for customers
• Blendtec quintupled sales with its “Will it Blend” series on YouTube
• Only 18 percent of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
• Naked Pizza set a one-day sales record using social media: 68 percent of their sales and 85 percent of their new customers came via Twitter.
• Software company Genius.com reports 24 percent of social media leads convert to sales opportunities,
• Dell has already made over $7 million in sales via Twitter.
• Thirty-seven percent of Generation Y heard about the Ford Fiesta via social media before its launch in the US and currently 25 percent of Ford’s marketing budget is spent on digital/social media.
• Seventy-one percent of companies plan to increase investments in social media by an average of 40 percent.
• A recent Wetpaint/Altimeter Group study found companies that widely engage in social media surpass their peers in both revenue and profit.

(Sources for Statistics: meyersreport.com, lenovosocial.com, George Wright, Blendtec, Mashable.com, econsultancy.com, businessweek.com )

Read the rest of the article here.

Social media should without a doubt be a part of your overall marketing strategy.  Key word here is STRATEGY.  Time and time again, we see companies letting interns or “a young person with a facebook account” manage their brands online.  “Manage their brand…?” Fortune 500 companies pay good money to very talented marketing professionals to manage their brands, yet smaller companies who need to build their brands put their brands into the hands of someone with a myspace account.  Managing your brand in the social media space is just as important (if not more important) as managing it via a national or international public relations or multi-million dollar advertising campaign.

Yes, social media is free, but to incorporate it into your branding strategy successfully requires skilled human capital!

Friday, June 4, 2010

Target your social media efforts by going for quality over quantity

Sacramento Business Journal – by Debi Hammond, Contributing writer, Marketing

Dunkin’ Donuts has 80 percent fewer Facebook and Twitter followers than Starbucks. So it is losing the social media game, right? Well, it depends on your definition of social media success.

If your goal is to be like Ashton Kutcher (he was the first to reach the 1 million “follower” mark on Twitter, even before CNN), then I guess you could consider your social media program a success. However, my recommendation is to focus on quality over quantity.

Besides, what do those 1 million followers really represent for a celebrity? More movies? More money? Or was it simply a bunch of people experimenting with a new medium who now have inactive accounts?

After all, according to a recent Nielsen Online data study, 60 percent of Twitter users quit after a month.

From a business perspective, the question you want to ask yourself is, does having more “followers/friends” equate to having more business and more brand equity? If you want to use social media effectively, then stop “selling” and be more “social.”

Be authentic

The biggest mistake marketers and small businesses make when trying to market their businesses is trying to use social media the same way they do traditional media. Social media is not traditional media and should not be treated the same way.

Television and radio use a “hard sell” approach. It’s one way and directional: “buy me” now. Social media is “social,” meaning people need to be engaged to want and to learn about your product, service or other information. You can, and in most cases, should, use it as an integral part of your marketing campaign, but don’t treat it as a traditional marketing tool.

Social media is about engagement. It’s bi-directional. It’s about providing value. It’s about being authentic. If all you do is tweet about what’s on sale, promotions and the number of “friends/followers” you want, buy an ad because social media is not the place for the “hard sell.”

You want followers that want to follow you. You want followers who are truly engaged in your brand and are following you because of the value you bring to their lives. If you’re wondering what kind of social media marketer you are, take this brief quiz (answer yes or no): See article at the Sacramento Business Journal (more…)