We have been running a campaign on Twitter for the last couple of months for a client of ours. While I cannot go into specifics about the campaign, I can share some of our learning’s:

Build Credibility
There is nothing worse than a Twitter account that only tweets sales offers. Unless your name is Dell you cannot build a following that way.

What we have found is that the Twitter account has to tweet useful information. To do this we set up accounts on a program called EasyTweets. EasyTweets allows us to add some RSS feeds to our Twitter account. These RSS feeds pull in news from the niches that we are targeting. So anyone who follows our account, will get news that they are interested in.

What does that look like?

Well if I was a restaurant in Nashua NH, I would add RSS feeds of Nashua news to my feed as may target audience is people who live in, and around, Nashua.

What we found was that if we added local and industry news to our Twitter feeds, we were able to increase the number of followers that we had. And since the feeds we added were of interest to our target audience, we were able to add followers who were interested in what we were selling.

Don’t Oversell
We have found that if for our client that the optimal number of “sales tweets” was one to two a day. And since the Twitter accounts were sending out 10-15 tweets a day from the RSS feeds, our “sales tweets” blended into the overall stream and did not look like all we were doing is selling on Twitter.

Test Content
Just like testing Ad copy for PPC, test and retest your sales tweet content. It is amazing what a difference changing one word can do for your CTR. Also, test the time of day of your offers. Do they convert better in the morning or afternoon?

Use Hashtags
Hashtags (#mets for example) is an massively underused Twitter feature. There are a lot of portal type web sites now that run continuous twitter steams. For example Metsblog.com is aimed at New York Mets fans and averages 2.5 million page views every month in traffic, and is read by roughly 35,000 unique people every day. Metsblog.com has a twitter feed page on its site that pulls in Tweets that use the tag #mets.

So if your target audience is Mets fans, and you use the #mets tag in your tweets, then suddenly your tweet is getting exposed to 35,000 mets fans. Multiple that by the hundreds of Mets web sites that are online and suddenly your reach is much greater than the 1,000 followers that you have. Your tweets are now being seen and read by tens of thousands of people.

Google Adwords has dominated the online advertising space for the last three or four years but Facebook I believe is positioned to really challenge Google for some of those advertising dollars.

We recently ran a series of campaigns for local events on Facebook and I was really impressed with the ROI that we got. It was much higher than anything that we have gotten using Adwords. So how did we do it?

Demographic Targeting
Unlike Adwords, Facebook users are not actively searching for your product or service. But by using Facebook’s demographics and location data we were able to really focus on our target audience.

Since our campaign was specific to a location we were able to target just the people who liked the brand we were promoting and who lived within 50 miles of the event.

This ended up being a really small group, but that was ok because the conversion event and CPC was really good.

Use Pictures
We tested ads with pictures and ads without. The ads with pictures all performed substantially better than those without.

Test Multiple Ads
When we run a paid campaign we always use multiple ad text, but it really is useful on Facebook. We tested new ad content every day until we were sure we had the most optimized copy. Then we let that as run until the end of the campaign.

Privacy within social media networks is a hot topic at the moment with people like Jason Calacanis, Matt Cutts and even my sister-in-law all cancelling their Facebook accounts in recent weeks.
Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of his Facebook staff should not be surprised to Facebook users fury at the news that Facebook was sharing their information with advertisers. According to a recent study by Edelman the vast majority of Internet users were not willing to stint on quality or give access to their private data in return for free content.

As a father of a 12 year-old daughter I am very aware of the influence that social media sites like Facebook can have on teens and pre-teens. So when should you let your child onto these social media sites? That is one of the questions of Retrevo.com’s latest Gadgetology study that looked at parenting, technology, and social media.

Study Highlights

• 30% of parents think 13 – 15 years old is the right age to get a social media page
• 36% of parents think 16 – 18 is the right age to get a social media page
• 26% of parents say over 18 is the right age to get a social media page
• 8% of parents are okay with kids under 12 having a social media page
• 48% of parents on Facebook are “friends” with their kids. 52% are not.
• 29% of all parents don’t allow texting during family meals. 36% of parents of teenagers don’t allow texting during family meals.

Hello Mother… Hello Father… On Facebook
Should you friend your child on Facebook? FaceBook-using parents in this study were almost evenly divided with about 48% saying they are Facebook friends with their kids, where as 52% said they are not. Andrew Eisner, director of content at Retrevo adds,

“It looks like more parents with teenage children are more likely to be friends with their kids, although many admit it can be awkward at times but they say they do learn a lot about their teenagers, which is probably why children are so hesitant to friend their parents to begin with.”

Just Being a Protective Parent
Eisner added, “Not that it would be easy (how about impossible) to prevent a kid from having their own Facebook or MySpace page if they were determined to have one, most parents agreed that teenage years were the right years for a child’s first Facebook or MySpace page.”

I am really surprised that almost one in ten parents of pre-teen kids will allow them to have a Facebook or MySpace profile. And that number rises to almost 40% for kids under 15. That is a situation that as a father I am really uncomfortable with.

Listen to Your Mother; Put That Cell Phone Away and Eat Your Dinner!
If you ever have to tell your kids to stop texting at the dinner table, you’re not alone, but we were surprised to discover that only 1/3 of parents said texting was not allowed during family meals.

I am shocked at this statistic. I could never imagine interrupting a family dinner to exchange text messages with someone else.

Really interesting numbers from Retrevo. I feel that I am very much in the minority with how we protect our daughter. But  part of that is because I am in the social media world every day and there is a lot of stuff that I would rather not expose her too at this point in time.

What do you think is an appropriate age for a child to have a Facebook or MySpace account?

According to a new study by Vitrue the average Facebook fan is worth $3.60 in earned media. Vitrue calculates the value of a Facebook fan based on impressions generated in the Facebook news feed. It then applies display banner advertising pricing to the number of Facebook fans you have and viola, an instant metric.

From the Vitrue blog:

This means our 1 million Fan Facebook Page can average 1 million impressions with a single post to the wall. Factor frequency; a two post per day strategy would garner approximately 60 million impressions per month. Now here’s a metric all marketers are familiar with – we’ve been buying impressions since the dawn of the Internet.

These impressions are practically free, similar to earned media – that we are all familiar with. So our last step is to place a CPM value to our earned media. We factored a very conservative $5 CPM – how much would you pay for highly targeted impressions?

This final assumption gives our 1 million fan page $300,000 in earned media per month or $3.6 million annually.

Here is a recap of the formula used to calculate the valuation:

1M impressions x 2 posts x 30 days = 60M impressions
60M impressions / 1000 x $5 CPM = $300,000
$300,000 x 12 months = $3.6M
$3.6M / 1M fans = $3.60

What do you think of this formula? Is it an accurate way to measure the value of Facebook fans or is it simply an agency trying to put a metric on social media marketing?

One of the most asked questions about Twitter, is how many followers do I need? What sort of reach do I need on Twitter to successfully generate leads?

Well according to a recent study by Hubspot called 2010 State of Inbound Marketing (PDF) that sweet spot is between 100 and 500 followers. Hubspot data showed that companies with 100 to 500 followers generated 146% more monthly leads than those with 21 to 100 followers. Growing a large following of thousands of followers does not appear top generate any additional leads lift.

HubSpot also noted that more and more companies are now successfully using social media to acquire new customers.

It is not a surprise that in the B2B market, that LinkedIn is most effective social media marketing channels while in the B2C market, it is Facebook. What I did find interesting was that 51% of B2B marketers surveyed said that they had acquired a new customer versus Twitter.

I came across a fascinating new study from Retrevo.com about social media addiction. At first glance I was shocked at the addiction level that people have to sites like Facebook and Twitter, but after travelling for the last two weeks and seeing people checking and updating these sites from their phones, I came to better understand the numbers.
The study asked 1,000 social media user’s questions such as when, where, and how much time they spend on sites and services like Facebook and Twitter. Here are the some of the results.

Last thing At Night And First Thing In The Morning
Almost half of the respondents said they check in on the social media scene in bed, during the night or as soon as they wake up in the morning. As you would expect younger social media users said they tweet by night more than those over 25.

Twitter As A News Source
While almost 50% of social media users check Facebook and Twitter first thing in the morning, 16% of social media users say that these sites are how they get their morning news.

It will be interesting to see how this number grows over the next couple of years and what it means to news portals like Yahoo News and Google News as well as traditional media channels like TV and newspapers.

Facebook Addiction
Facebook’s continued growth has been phenomenal and one of the reasons for its continued success is its addiction. 56% of social media users need to check Facebook at least once a day and an amazing 12% say they need to check it every couple of hours.

Social Media Interruption
As part of the study respondents were asked how they felt about being interrupted at various times and occasions for an electronic message. With everyone texting away on their phones these days, not surprisingly, over 40% of respondents said they didn’t mind being interrupted for a message. In fact, 32% said a meal was not off limits while 7% said they’d even check out a message during an intimate moment.

Summary
It is pretty clear from the study that there are a significant number of people who are addicted to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, especially Facebook. It is also quite apparent that individuals expect companies to have a Fan Page on Facebook and a Twitter account as well as a web site. They expect your brand and company to be visible wherever they are online.

Great interview with Roger Drake, senior vice president of marketing and communications for Morton’s The Steakhouse by Chain Leader on how this restaurant chain uses social media. What I found really interesting from the interview was how Morton’s uses all different social media channels like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to read different audiences.

YouTube

What are the benefits of YouTube?
It is a great way to get your message out. Whether it’s a special event or a promotion, we are trying to post more and more video on YouTube and other Internet sites.

Give me an example.
We are doing a celebrity-server series. These are fund-raising events where we close the restaurant for a night and professional athletes actually serve the guests. We had one recently with Larry Fitzgerald and the Arizona Cardinals. Kurt Warner offering pepper for steaks. Beanie Wells was pouring wine. Larry was running entrees. There’s an 8-minute video on YouTube highlighting the event.

This is a great example of a video that works on Facebook. Morton’s was able to get almost 3,000 views of its video because the video focuses on the event not the restaurant.

Facebook

You also promote events on Facebook.
Yes. For Valentine’s Day we asked guests on Facebook to send us photos of their Valentine’s Day experience at Morton’s. We got more than 50 photos. One couple has recently got engaged [in the restaurant]. That was a great way to bring our Facebook page to life.

Lots of photos seem a perfect way to show off the restaurant.
We are looking at doing more of that kind of thing with special occasions. Mothers Day is coming up, and we will take photos of groups. We will be saying, “Hey, go to Morton’s Facebook page, and you can post your favorite Mother’s Day Morton’s dinner photos if you like.”

Morton’s is building up its community on Facebook by not directly selling to fans. It is being part of the community. Morton’s is using social media to position itself as more than a steakhouse. It is where people go to get engaged, it is the place to take your mother for Mother’s Day.

Twitter and Blogging

Which social-media tool does the best job of providing feedback?
Probably Twitter. Just because it’s only 140 characters there’s more frequency on Twitter. You can engage in a conversation where there are a lot of exchanges back and forth. We are on our Twitter account on a daily basis. Facebook allows you to do that, too.

These are the people who follow you on Twitter, correct?
Yes. We offered them bar bites in our bar. We encouraged people to tweet from the event. It drove bar business. We have also done other events at other Morton’s. We call these events Burgers for Bloggers. We’ve served mini Prime Cheeseburgers.

How do you get the word out?
Through our Twitter account and sometimes on Facebook. We are not using the local PR firm channels for these events. It’s strictly through social media.

What type of bloggers show up?
Usually people who blog about restaurants, people doing travel information on a blog, or those who blog about activities and events in the city.

What a great way to reach out the blogging/twitter community. Again, Morton’s is not the story here. They are providing a destination for Tweetups and Bloggers to get together. I also like how they are reaching out to bloggers in their space; restaurant bloggers, travel bloggers and local bloggers.

There was a really interesting study last year by BabyCenter, an online community for expectant and new moms. The study called “21st Century Mom” found that new mothers gravitate to social media sites after having a child.

How moms are using the Internet and social media today:

• Social Mom: Social Media is Mass Media for Moms. The number of moms who use social media regularly has significantly increased from 11% to 63% since 2006. Forty-four percent use social media for word-of-mouth recommendations on brands and products and 73% feel they find trustworthy information about products and services through online communities focused on their specific interests such as parenting.
• Gadget Mom: The 21st Century Mom™ is not intimidated by technology. Moms are using PDA technology to manage the hectic family schedule, digital cameras to share family life and gaming consoles to connect with their children. The vast majority of moms (91%) never leave the house without their cell phones and compared to just three years ago, are 348% more likely to use her cell phone to go online. They are considered the Chief Memory Officer in the family and over half (55%) have replaced the traditional family photo album with an online version.
• Mealtime Mom: Family dinner time is a priority for today’s moms. Ninety percent of moms say they eat dinner as a family several times a week. The Internet has become moms #1 source (77%) for recipes, higher even than cookbooks (36%).
• Dr. Mom: The 21st Century Mom™ is AAD (Almost a Doctor). Today’s mom has become the key decision maker in the health and well-being of her family. She comes to appointments armed with information and actively seeks second opinions online. She consistently taps into both expert and mom-to-mom wisdom using the Internet and social media. In online communities, children’s health issues are the leading topic of interest in online communities (91%) followed by childhood development tips (79%) and product reviews (72%).

A couple of the stats jumped out at me. I am amazed that 55% of mom’s surveyed have replaced the  traditional family photo album with an online version.  I am not too surprised that more than twice as many mom’s use the Internet to search for recipes instead if using cookbooks. That mom’s use online communities for information on their children’s health is not a surprise. That 91% of them use them, is a much higher percentage than I expected.

I have to say I was not surprised to read that according to a survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education, that less than one in five marketers measured their ROI from their social media marketing efforts in 2009.

“Marketers believe that measuring true ROI for social media is difficult,” said Geoff Ramsey, eMarketer CEO. “There are so many metrics available that it is difficult to choose which ones are the most important. In addition, marketers do not start with clear objectives for using social media.”

So how do companies measure the success of their social media marketing campaigns? One obvious was is to simply measure traffic to your site from the different social networks and this is the measurement that between 60% and 76% of companies use.

How do you measure the success of your social media efforts?