Earlier this week I published the findings of the ForeSee Results 2010 Social Media Report. Kevin Ertell who is Vice President of Retail Strategy for ForeSee Results and author of the report kindly agreed to answer my question about the report.

I found the results of the report really interesting Kevin. What one or two things from the Social Media Report jumped out to you

I was surprised to see how many people wanted to hear about new products and promotions from retailers they friended on Facebook. I find it encouraging that retailers’ best customer are eager to hear marketing messages in a forum that has been widely believed to be personal “no marketing zone” space.

That 25% of the Top 100 online retailers does not have a Facebook fan page is astounding. What it holding online retailers (who by definition “get” the Internet) back from marketing on social media sites?

The 25% was an informal look–we basically went to Facebook and searched for all of the Top 100 retailers and couldn’t find pages for 25% of them. What’s interesting is that if you Google a retailer’s name and facebook, it seems that some of the ones I thought didn’t have a page do have one. But if you can’t find it by searching on Facebook, it’s a lot less powerful.

I think the bigger obstacle might be lack of clear strategy or execution of less effective strategies leading to poor results. If customer want to know about new products and promotions and the retailer is giving them polls and silly status updates it wouldn’t be surprising to find the retailer getting poor results and deciding to assign resources elsewhere.

It strikes me that people are following or friending brands that they already have an existing relationship with. How can brands use social media to reach out to potential customers, who maybe are not that familiar with them?

I think it’s impressive that these loyal customers are friending brands in such a public forum. Social networks are incredibly powerful, so brands should look for ways to engage their best customers and give them the tools to spread the word via their own networks.

What companies/brands that you think are doing the best job marketing via social media?

I think Victoria’s Secret and Best Buy are doing the best job. VS has really focused in giving customer what they want on Facebook, and their fan count seems to indicate they are successful.

Evan Carmichael just came out with his Top 50 SEO Posts of the Year and our post on Don’t Forget Search made his list. Certainly an honour considering some of the other great posts that Evan has on the list.

For those of you not familiar with this site here are some details:

EvanCarmichael.com is the Internet’s #1 resource for small business motivation and strategies. With over 450,000 monthly visitors, 4,650 contributing authors, and 78,000 pages of content no website shares more profiles of famous entrepreneurs and inspires more small business owners than EvanCarmichael.com.

Great tweet from Michael Brito, aka @Britopian last week on a Study of the Top 15 Brands Social Presence Comparison

The Top 15 Brands as decided by Interbrands and they then looked at the level of presence of each of these brands on the two main social media channels: Twitter and Facebook. From the chart below, it appears that brands are really focusing on either Twitter or Facebook, but few brands are taking advantage of their brand power on both networks.

Here are some of the key findings of study.

There is a new Twitter book coming out by Tee Morris called All a Twitter: A Personal and Professional Guide to Social Networking with Twitter. The book has a good chapter on how to set-up a Twitter account which is informative regardless of your Twitter experience.

Here is an excerpt from that chapter.

1. Complete Your Profile.

Consider how you want to introduce yourself to people. Take a moment to fill out your profile and let people know something about you. You don’t have to tell Twitter everything, but you do want to make an introduction.

2. Come up with a good profile picture.

A profile picture can really be anything, but there should be something there in place of the default image. The profile picture (or avatar) can a candid picture of you to a favorite cartoon character to a corporate logo. Tread gently when using copyrighted images, but express yourself. Tastefully, of course.

3. Take advantage of Twitter.com’s “Find People” feature.

This built-in network builder will help you find people that share common interests with you. It goes off your profile what you share in common with others and finds you a wide mix of people who reply often or have high Twitter profiles. It’s a great start in building your network.

4. Review the feeds of people who want to follow you.

It takes a few minutes and really is the only maintenance you have to contend with on Twitter, but when you receive a follow request, have a look at the first page of their feed. If it is a resource you think you will benefit from or if it is a person that strikes you as someone you’d like to share a dialogue with, then follow back. If the feed is random links on a topic of interest or someone simply re-tweeting others, then you can either follow or not follow back. If the feed offers abusive content, spam, or nothing, blocking is a good idea. To preserve your security, both yours and your network’s, check your follow requests.

5. Avoid the shortcuts.

You will be pitched by services promising to increase your numbers overnight. The problem with these services is they do so by automatically hitting random accounts, following and unfollowing them, and (in some cases) approving followers you have never reviewed. These service will also sometimes hijack your feed in order to promote their own services. The idea of picking up 1000 followers in only two days may sound tempting, but it would be best to avoid such shortcuts.

6. When talking to people don’t forget the @ symbol and their username.

Many new Twitters tend to forget that Twitter is not an instant messenger, and forget to add in a reply or an address to someone. By starting an update or “tweet” to someone specific you simply add in an @ symbol and a username (i.e. @ITStudios Good morning. How’s your coffee?). This will grab their attention and start up an exchange between the two of you.

7. Download a third-party desktop client.

These clients, going under names like TweetDeck, Twhirl, Destroy Twitter, and so on, go out and fetch your tweets for you. Your feed is then automatically refreshed so you can see what people are saying both on the open feed and directly to you. These free applications make Twitter more efficient and offer additional options not found on Twitter.com.

8. When working with Twitter on smartphones, practice common sense.

If you are waiting for a train or sitting in a café enjoying a Mocha, then tweet away from your iPhone, BlackBerry, or G1. If, however, you are behind the wheel of a moving vehicle or at the dinner table with the family, put the phone away. The reason it is called “Social Media” is because you are using Twitter to make human connections, not so you can substitute the Real World with a virtual one.

9. Understand that tweeting from startphones isn’t the same as “unlimited texting.”

This is particularly important when you are traveling overseas or working with a limited data plan. The tweets you send from your phone are not SMS messages but data, and much like “push data” (receiving email, updating calendars remotely, etc.) every time you tweet, upload media to MobyPicture or TwitPic, this is data you are using up and will be accrued accordingly. Keep that in mind when working with Twitter on the road.

10. Tweet unto others as you would have them tweet unto you.

When you get on Twitter, what does your feed say about you? I glance at @ITStudios and see promotion for All a Twitter, exchanges with people who are new to my feed, and the occasional bit of “What I am doing…” updates. My @TeeMonster feed is far more eclectic. In both, I always consider what I am saying and how I carry myself. I want to be helpful, generous, and above all, fun. When I promote, I try to make it subtle. I never go for the hard sell. Your tweets say a lot about you. don’t be afraid to be yourself, and allow yourself to enjoy the community aspect of Social Networking. There is a lot to Twitter, so long as you remember that behind every account (most of the time) is a person, curious as to what you’re up to and what you have to say.

Had an interesting conversation last week about the news industry and social media specifically about how mainstream media is using Twitter.

At the most basic level, Twitter is a two-way conversation. Follow most people’s Twitter stream and you will see a number of retweets and pieces of conversation back and forth.

That is not how the media is using Twitter and I think it is part of the reason why they are not being successful with social media.

Here are two examples of Twitter accounts:
Stephen Colbert has a twitter account. This account has 303,000 followers, but Colbert only follows 51 people. A look at his Twitter stream shows no RT’s or conversations. You cannot send a Tweet to Colbert and ask him a question about his show from last night. He is on Twitter, but he is not part of the conversation.

CNN is similar. Their Twitter account is http://twitter.com/cnn which has 157,000 followers. CNN follows only 17 people and they are all other CNN twitter accounts. Obviously CNN is not interested in a conversation on Twitter. To them it is simple another way to distribute their headlines, like a ticker tape running across your TV screen

That is not to say that traditional media cannot add value to Twitter. One way the New York Times could have added value to the Twitter conversation during the Iran Election would have been to create a mashup page. This page could have included a running script of twitter posts on the Iranian election, and next to it the NYT could have had a series of articles/commentaries/editorials that gives some context to the twitter stream.

One weakness of Twitter is that it can be a fire hose of information, especially on a fast-moving topic like the Iran election, and what is missing is someone to put some context around all these Tweets.

This strategy would allow mainstream news organizations to be involved in Twitter, but in a way that plays to their strengths, instead of trying to be something that they are not.

The reason for the lack of posts recently is that I am on vacation until mid July. Normal posting will resume then:)

Over the weekend I reread Rohit Bhargava’s original article on Social Media Optimization (SMO). Rohit wrote that:

The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.

Rohit’s original 5 rules/guidelines for SMO was expanded to 16 rules:

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup
6. Be a User Resource, even if it doesn’t help you
7. Reward helpful and valuable users
8. Participate
9. Know how to target your audience
10. Create content
11. Be real
12. Don’t forget your roots, be humble
13. Don’t be afraid to try new things, stay fresh
14. Develop a SMO strategy
15. Choose your SMO tactics wisely
16. Make SMO part of your process and best practices

The point that struck me was how Facebook and Twitter have co-opted social media marketing. When was the last time you read about someone talking about Del.icio.us, Digg, StumbleUpon, or MySpace? Even blogging and YouTube has taken a back seat to the dynamic dual of Twitter and Facebook.

Has social media marketing “evolved” to the point where all that matters is Twitter and Facebook? Or is it a result of all the mainstream attention on these two sites that anything else gets drowned out in the noise?

If you are developing an SMO strategy today, does you strategy include any tactics other than using Twitter and Facebook?

I opened up the Nashua Telegraph last week and was surprised to find an article about how two Nashua restaurants are using Facebook and Twitter to offer deals and keep in touch with customers.

One of those restaurants is Axel’s Food and Ice Cream (@eatataxels) in Merrimack NH. Axel’s has a web site, a Facebook profile and Twitter page. Through its new Web presence, Axel’s has been running special promotions for Twitter followers and will start providing coupons via Twitter in the near future.

“We’ve been wanting to get on the Web and reach our customers on a daily basis,” said Kristen Costa, one of four family member managers at Axel’s. “It’s just another way to keep contacting them… “The Twitter presence is really ramping up. With the economy now, people are looking to save.”

Although the number of Axel’s Twitter followers has continually increased since the eatery signed up, especially once it started posting more status updates and discounts, Costa admits that their main source of success hasn’t come from the site.

“Right now, our Twitter followers hasn’t expanded as much as we thought it would,” Costa said. “We do have a bigger following on Facebook right now.”

Axel’s loyal customer following may contribute to its success on the Web, but there are other local eateries that are new to this food market, and are using the Web to get their name out there.

Another local restaurant is The Sugar Mommy (@thesugarmommy), which sells homemade baked goods and confections, and was founded only a few months ago by Jenny Cheifetz. Cheifetz’s products are made to order, and though she also has had more success on Facebook, she’s still trying to find a way to successfully use Twitter.

“The more I talk to people, the more they tell me they’re on Twitter,” Cheifetz said. “Twitter, to me, is still a mystery.”

Cheifetz created her Twitter account more than three weeks ago, and she has been using the site in order to provide status updates that let her followers know what current products she is making. For instance, last week Cheifetz posted that she was making vanilla creams and raisin nut clusters. She is hoping, in this tough economy, that daily or weekly updates will provide more publicity and exposure to her new business, without having to pay a hefty advertisement fee.

“I think there’s good potential because you don’t get the (same) exposure on Facebook,” Cheifetz said.

I find it interesting that so many restaurants are using Twitter, even though they don’t have a handle on how to fully monetize it, or measure its success. As Kristen Costa said of Twitter “It’s a powerful tool. We didn’t know quite to the extent.” I wonder if this the Achilles heel of Twitter. So many people have heard of it that they feel they have to be on it, even as Jenny Cheifetz says “Twitter, to me, is still a mystery.” It will be curious to see in three months how many of these local restaurants are still actively using Twitter, or whether it Twitter will have been another fad that has come and gone?

Stealing mySpace by Julia Angwinn is an interesting look behind the scenes at the history of MySpace. While Facebook gets all the media attention MySpace is still by far the second largest social networking site in the world. The book looks at the astounding rise of MySpace, which went from a Friendster competitor designed to save a flagging department at eUniverse, an Internet company best known for hawking dubious diet pills and downloadable cursors packaged with spy ware, to being sold for close to one billion dollars to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

What I found most interesting is when Julia talks about why MySpace was built the way it was. The option to customize pages, for example, was an early design flaw that the team only held off on fixing once they saw how popular it was and how MySpace took best ideas from around the Web, encouraging pinup stars such as Tila Tequila to make their home on its pages and giving everyone freedom to experiment with online identities–including using somebody else’s identity.

There is one paragraph in the book that really caught my attention. Angwinn quotes an essay written by Danah Boyd (http://www.danah.org/) who described the class difference between MySpace and Facebook as follows:

The Goody Two-shoes, jocks, athletes and other “good” kinds are now going to Facebook. these kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and gong to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward tot he prom and live in a world dictated by after-school activities.

MySpace is still home to Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts”, “Alternative kids’, “art fags”, punks, emos, Goths gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who don;t pay into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. These are the teens who plan to go into the military immediately after school. Teens who really are into music or in a band are also on MySpace, MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

I found this paragraph so interesting. Is one of the reasons why MSM (main stream media) gives Facebook (and Twitter) so much publicity because reporters view Facebook users as people with goals and viewpoints similar to their own?

I read this book a couple of weeks ago and have been meaning to write a review of it. The official title of the book is The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff by Clara Shih.

Clara works for Salesforce.com and while the book at times reads like a sales manual for Salesforce.com that does not detract from the useful information in the book.

What I really liked about the book is that not only is it focused on the B2B segment of social networking, but the book is full of great case studies of how actual businesses are using social networking today. One great chapter is how to use social networks for generating and qualifying sales leads. Clara includes several simple but non-obvious ideas that any business can start implementing.

Overall this book is a very good read and well worth the price.