One of the stranger social media sites to come down the pike is Twitter, created by Jack Dorsey in San Francisco in 2006.
Twitter is a text-messaging service that limits each message to 140 characters. Initially, users were prompted to text an answer to the question “What are you doing?” (Recently it has evolved to “What’s happening?”) This “tweet”, as it’s called, is then sent out to your friends, or people who are following you.
People encountering this for the first time could be forgiven for thinking, ‘Who cares?’ Dorsey himself said “The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information’ and ‘chirps from birds.’ And that’s exactly what the product was.”
As it turned out, a lot of people did care. In 2007, people sent 400,000 tweets per quarter, growing to 100 million tweets per quarter in 2008. Today the number exceeds 350 million tweets per day, or more than 4,050 tweets per second.
What’s going on here?
Writing in the New York Times Magazine, Clive Thompson explains it as “the paradox of ambient awareness.” Each update is insignificant on its own. “But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a suprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.
“Merely looking at a stranger’s Twitter feed isn’t interesting. Follow it for a day, though, and it begins to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.”
It wasn’t long before the service moved beyond the strictly personal. At the 2007 South by Southwest interactive festival, Twitter placed 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, streaming Twitter messages. Conference attendees tweeted each other, traffic rose from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000, and Twitter was an instant sensation.
Twitter usage began spiking at prominent events, setting a record during the 2010 World Cup and breaking it during the 2010 NBA Finals. Twitter has been credited as a significant factor in the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. And it has expanded into the world of business.
Today, hundreds of thousands of professionals use Twitter as a professional networking tool. Twitter has facilitated this by adding a search function. It has augmented the service’s marketing powers by adding the ability to display pictures and videos. People use it to listen to the industry “buzz,” get more followers and expand their circle of influence.
There is speculation that social media marketing, and Twitter in particular, will lead to a sea change in traditional advertising practices, which will be replaced by smarter relationship communications and new marketing and public relations models. Because of the speed of this evolution, nobody can say exactly what these new models will be, but everybody agrees that they’re on the way.
Michael Brito, a social media strategist at Intel, offers some best practices for using Twitter to augment your brand:
- Do your research. How are your customers using Twitter? What are they saying about you (if anything)?
- Determine your organizational goals for using Twitter.
- Decide whether you’re going out under an organizational or personal profile.
- Build your Twitter equity by engaging people with your expertise (not by pushing messages about your products or services).
- Be authentic and believable. Spend time listening to your community, and establish trust with your tweets. “Authenticity is the golden rule in social media.”
August 3, 2011
The ‘typical’ social media user employs its tools to keep in touch with family and friends.
The ‘political’ social media user employs its tools to keep ahead on ballots.
In the 2008 Presidential Election, Barack Obama’s social media presence held a distinct advantage over John McCain’s, and gained him terrific support among younger voters. By creating ads and messages specifically for Facebook and YouTube, Obama was able to target younger voters more effectively than any other politician before him. In fact, his social media support was so strong that only 3 months after creating a Facebook Fan Page, Obama’s official page registered over 3.1 million supporters! With the 2012 Presidential Election just down the road, expect to see a lot more politicians follow in Obama’s footsteps.
What makes social media so useful to politicians is its ability to cater to users. The Obama campaign managers did an incredible job of compiling research, and then targeting their messages at younger voters, a notoriously difficult group to reach.
For example, let’s look at Facebook. Facebook has nearly 95 million registered users in the United States, and over half of those users are between the ages of 18 – 34. This represents 80 million votes, with more than 50 million falling between the 18-25 year old range. This is a huge number of voters that are typically underrepresented in the polls, and could make the difference in electing the next president of the United States.
Understanding that many young voters are not interested in listening to an entire presidential debate, Obama’s media team created short clips where he discussed popular topics that were relevant to younger voters, and put the clips on Facebook and YouTube for them to view at their convenience.
Additionally, Obama used Twitter to announce rally spots, FlickR to post pictures from the campaign trail, and also maintained a blog to keep followers informed and updated.
It was a truly revolutionary way of targeting a generation that wanted to voice their opinion, and it worked. How lopsided was it? In a Twitter poll conducted by Forester Research, 96% of registered users supported Obama; 4% supported McCain.
What attracts politicians to social media networking sites is their reach, frequency, peer influence abilities, cost efficiency, and technological capabilities. Politicians have the ability to present an idea, create a following, hear feedback, and communicate with voters in a forum that helps voters relate to the individual behind the articulate speeches.
Since 2008, establishing a social media presence has become an integral part of a presidential campaign. But now we’re looking forward to 2012. Old social media platforms have stumbled, new ones have thrived and new tools are available. The challenge for the 2012 candidates will be to turn these changes to their advantage.
Barack Obama became the first ‘Social Media President‘ in U.S. history in 2008. In 2012, we may find our second.
July 27, 2011
Will your customers refer you to their friends?
That’s it. That is the big marketing resource that companies across the globe strive for: the friendly referral – the most effective marketing technique in the world, ever.
For companies large and small, the overall vision is generally quite simple; create business, make money. Yet, this goal is often muddied by the hectic workload that goes alongside marketing your business. Lots of time and money can go into creating ways to attract customers to your product or services. However, the next time, start off with a simpler approach. Consider your investment in your most trusted and vital marketing tool – your customers.
The most valued and influential marketing vehicle is word-of-mouth messaging. How your customers feel about your business can have a tremendous impact on other potential customers, and discovering what your customers are saying is now easier than ever.
A simple method has been developed to determine how likely your customers are to refer your business to others. It’s known as the Net Promoter Score methodology. Fred Reichheld, author of The Ultimate Question, designed a system that ranks customer survey feedback, and determines a score that indicates how likely customers are to refer your business to their family and friends.
First, you issue a survey that asks customers to rank how likely they are to refer your company to their friends or family, on a scale from 0-10 (10 being the highest probability of referral). Customers who rank your business a 9 or 10 are a company’s ‘promoters’ who are the most likely to refer your business onward. Customers who rank your business a 7 or 8 are labeled ‘passives’: customers who like your product/service, but aren’t likely to refer your business. Finally, customers who rank your business between 0-6 are the ‘detractors.’
To determine your net promoter score, simply take the percentage of your customers who are ‘promoters’ and subtract the percentage of ‘detractors.’ For example, if you survey 100 customers and 50 say rank your business a 9 or 10, and 30 customers rank you between 0-6, your net score is 20% (50-30=20).
According to Reichheld, a score between 10-15% is average for most businesses, but anywhere above 15% is believed to be a strong indicator that your business is attracting strong customer referrals.
This is an easy way for businesses to gain an idea of how they rank in customer satisfaction, and how loyal their customers are to their business. It is a great way of receiving important customer information at virtually no cost, and of course companies large and small can benefit from learning how likely they are to be referred by their customers.
With a single question, a lot can be answered.
July 25, 2011
In 2003, Myspace exploded onto the scene of social networking with a single vision in mind – become the greatest.
For a while, that seemed to be exactly where they were heading.
From 2003 to 2008, Myspace became the most visited social networking site in the world. In 2005, it was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation for $580 million. At its peak in 2006, Myspace’s annual revenue was more than $605 million. In 2007, it was valued at an astonishing $12 billion.
In 2008, Myspace registered its 100 millionth user; but in April of that same year, it was overtaken by its main competitor, Facebook, based on monthly unique visitors, and since then it’s been all downhill.. Myspace laid off 30% of its workforce in June, 2009, and News Corporation sold the site to Specific Media in June, 2011, for $35 million.
Analysts estimate that Facebook’s pre-tax profits for 2011 will be about a billion dollars, and if the company were to go public this year, it would fetch between $80 and $100 billion. That’s ‘billion.’
So what happened?
Facebook took over the success that Myspace had once enjoyed, and improved upon it tenfold. Facebook has greater technological capabilities, a more attractive design layout, and a more user-friendly navigation system. Simply put, it’s faster and easier to use. Add to this a series of questionable management decisions at Myspace, a poor public relations effort, and an audience whose attention span lasts only as long as you can make it, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Facebook created a robust platform and invited outside developers to build new applications. Myspace was saddled with a legacy ColdFusion development environment and a deal with Google that loaded up the site with ads, making it slow and difficult to use.
Furthermore, a challenging public image has haunted Myspace’s reputation for years. What was introduced and intended to be a place where friends could meet and keep in contact with one another became a community contaminated with online harassment. The site became known for pornography, perversion, vandalism, phishing, malware, spam, worms and spyware. Little effort was taken to address and correct these issues. A poorly managed public relations effort allowed the reputation of MySpace to be tarnished beyond repair to many users, particularly the younger ones.
Finally, a less developed website led to major problems in attracting the younger audience members to Myspace. The excitement and energy that was directly fueling Facebook was being taken away from Myspace, and by 2011, Myspace appeared dead in the water.
However, Specific Media does not feel that Myspace is dead in its entirety. Industry observers are waiting to see what the company will do with its $35 million investment. In hopes of revitalizing the energy behind MySpace, actor/singer/dancer Justin Timberlake has taken an active role in the company, and also serves as a part owner. As they wait to see what approach MySpace will take in order to reestablish its name and reputation in the world of online communities, people are looking forward to the next chapter in the Myspace story with both curiosity and exhaustion.
July 13, 2011
The recent release of QuickSurveys, the latest tool from Toluna, has attracted a lot of attention. QuickSurveys makes it possible to conduct targeted market research with just a few clicks.
Toluna is an online community that specializes in polling and surveys. The website was designed to allow individuals to voice their opinions on various topics, and compare their views with those around them, as well as those throughout the world.
Drawing on Toluna’s online panel of over 4 million participants, the web-based tool specifically formulates searches targeting a company’s primary audience. Participants take surveys in return for rewards that the company offers. A survey designer can specify the region, gender, income level range, and other characteristics so that the survey can be sent to the appropriate participants. Responses are organized and evaluated to help the marketing campaign.
Toluna released QuickSurveys to the United States market in 2009, but the application has become much more sophisticated and successful since then. Now, as of June 2011, QuickSurveys is available in 34 different countries, and has “won the support of over 1,500 of the world’s leading market research agencies.” It is now one of the most widespread online surveying tools in the world.
Other online surveys exist, but they don’t offer the features of QuickSurveys, such as the largest online panel, a 24 hour response guarantee, and well-organized and calculated results of survey responses.
Marketers get overnight feedback from targeted potential customers, to determine how a product is being perceived, or measure the level of competition. within a particular industry. The speed of the response allows modifications and adjustments to be made early in the planning process, so that marketers can know what to expect from a certain campaign.
For example, suppose that you are a marketing director for a small retail company planning to advertise a sale. Your graphic team puts together a good layout, but you are not sure what headline will best attract the attention you feel the ad deserves. Rather than polling your colleagues in the office, you can distribute a survey to the actual viewers who will be seeing the ad, and have them respond to you overnight. It is fast, inexpensive, and effective.
More traditional market research will continue to be valued for its reliability. You will gain more complete and trustworthy market information from a focus group than from an anonymous online poll. However, the ability to receive overnight feedback can be very valuable, with decisions based on field data made more quickly, and campaigns more easily fine-tuned.
QuickSurveys is making marketing easier.
June 29, 2011
The Google ‘+1′ tool is almost guaranteed to transform the role of the world’s most popular search engine, 
and its users. Let’s look at the facts:
Fact #1: People are influenced by public opinion.
Fact #2: Social media have a lot to do with that.
In February 2009, Facebook launched its ‘like’ button. which allows an individual to support a posting by a friend with a single click of the mouse. Simple enough, right? When an individual ‘likes’ a posting, that notification is sent to each friend on their network and attracts potentially significant attention to the post. The average Facebook user clicks the ‘like’ button nine times a month! Impressive – especially when it attracts the attention of the world’s number one search engine.
On June 1st, Google released its version of the Facebook ‘like button,’ with its ‘+1′ feature. This feature enables individuals with Google accounts to view web searches and sites that their contacts have commented on and may recommend.
For a Google account holder to support a particular website, that website must register with Google and acquire a +1 button. From there, only individuals with Google accounts will be able to click the +1 button, and have their support represented in Google searches. If a user has a public Google account, their preferences can be shared with everyone else who also has a public account. However, if a Google account is kept private and shared only amongst a close group of contacts, than only those individuals will be able to see what that individual has chosen to support.
Google is the highest trafficked website in the world, averaging 91 million searches each day! Over a trillion websites are indexed through Google, and there are extensive criteria for ranking and rating how searches are displayed. Now your opinion can be one of them!
Because Google does not have a homepage where you see friends’ activity, Google displays its ‘+1′ feature directly in the search results so that visitors can see what their friends are saying about a site before they ever click on it. For example, imagine that you and I both have public Google accounts. If I decide to Google search ‘popular places to eat in Boston’ and come across a website that rates and ranks the top 20 restaurants in the city, I will simply click the +1 button located on the site, and now anyone performing a similar search, will see that this site has helped me.
Businesses across the world should be jumping at the opportunity to acquire a Google +1 feature for their site. The installation of this feature is quick, easy, and undoubtedly effective at improving a company’s standing on their Google search ratings.
Tools such as this have the potential to transform the ways in which individuals perform basic internet searches, and influence what individuals view. Until now, the accuracy of a search was entirely based on computer generated responses from keywords and reputable links to and from the site. Now, searches are also being influenced by those around you!
There is a lot to ‘like’ about Google’s ‘+1.’
June 23, 2011
It is a widely held belief 
that technology’s most important role is connecting people to one another. As social media becomes more and more popular in today’s business environment, the importance of networking has never been more apparent. The rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter are all tools that were designed to create and strengthen relationships between friends and family. However, although this continues to be a major component of social media today, the more rapidly increasing use is associated with the developing relationships between individuals and businesses.
Undoubtedly, the world of social media has changed the communication process to a more digital and interactive experience. People and companies can communicate with each other through social media platforms that enables receiving information easier and faster than ever before. With the evolution of the internet and its vast capabilities, the rise of social media in the 21st century has changed the world of communication forever.
Industry guru Tim O’Reilly calls social media a “platform for participation” due to its ability to encourage constant communication between individuals and business entities, and shift away from the classical rules that once governed advertising. By utilizing platforms such as websites, e-zines, and blogs to create conversations with customers, people are motivated to participate and voice their opinion. One of the greatest factors that has led to audiences contributing to these conversations is the informal and relaxed environment that social media coveys.
So, what does this all mean? Here at Sullivan Creative, we recognize and understand the importance of establishing effective relationships with our customers online. Whether you are a new or returning client, or simply someone visiting the site, we welcome you to voice your opinion about our company and communicate with us on topics you want more information on. We are here to help you reach your business goals!
Over the next several weeks, Sullivan Creative will be posting information on trending topics in the world of social media and marketing. These posts are intended to inform our readers and share our knowledge on a variety of marketing strategies and topics that are unfolding in a very exciting industry.
To learn more about Sullivan Creative, please visit our website at : www.sullivancreative.com
Or contact us on Facebook at : http://www.facebook.com/SullivanCreative
To learn more about how social media is impacting today’s business environment, please visit the following links:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100901/social-media-grows-up.html
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/feb2008/db20080219_908252.htm
http://thesocialcustomer.com/compukol/38110/social-media-impact-small-businesses
http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/business-a-social-media-laggard/227929/
June 13, 2011
