Top Social Media - Twitter, Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook

An overwhelming majority (88%) of marketers say they are using some form of social media to market their business, though 72% of those using it say they have only been at it a few months or less, according to a social media study by Michael Stelzner, sponsored by the upcoming Social Media Success Summit 2009.

The study found that Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn and Facebook - in that order - are the top four social media tools used by marketers, writes Marketing Charts.

The research also included an analysis of nearly 700 open-ended responses, which revealed the top-three questions marketers are asking about social media:

What are the best tactics to use?
How to do I measure the effectiveness of social media?
Where do I start?

When asked if they used social media for marketing purposes, 88% said they are employing some form of it. Business owners are more likely to use social media marketing (90+%) than employees working for a company that is not their own (81%), and respondents ages 30-39 are most likely to use social media marketing (92.8%), the study found. 72% say they have either just started or have been using social media for a few months.

The survey found that there is a direct relationship between how long marketers have been using social media and their weekly time commitment. For people just beginning, the median weekly time commitment is two hours per week. For those who have been at it for months, the median jumps to 10 hours per week. For those who report social media marketing use for years, the median is 20+ hours each week.

Respondents report that the #1 benefit of social media marketing is gaining attention for the business, and 81% say their social media efforts have generated exposure for their businesses.

Improving traffic and growing marketing lists is the second major benefit, followed by building new partnerships. At least two in three participants found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours a week invested, while those who have been doing this for years reported better results. Owners of small businesses (2 - 100 employees) are more likely than others to report benefits.

[read more : http://www.mediabuyerplanner.com/2009/04/15/top-social-media-for-marketers-twitter-blogs-linkedin-facebook]

Domino's nightmare holds lessons for marketers

It's a PR nightmare scenario: A national fast-food chain has to respond to a video, spreading rapidly online, that shows one of its employees picking his nose and placing the result in the food he's making.

That's exactly what Domino's (DPZ), the nation's largest pizza delivery chain, has spent the past several days doing.

Two employees — fired and facing charges — posted a video on YouTube on Monday that shows one of them doing gross things to a Domino's sub sandwich he is making. Among them: sticking cheese pieces up his nose and passing gas on the salami.

The video had been viewed more than 550,000 times by Wednesday.

For Domino's, the PR response hasn't been easy. The video reflects some of the worst fears consumers have about food purchased from restaurants. The video and discussion of it has moved on to Facebook, Twitter and dozens of other social-networking sites.

But Domino's is getting fairly high marks from social-networking and crisis-management gurus about its response.

And marketers are getting an instant lesson in the dangers of an online world where just about anyone with a video camera and a grudge can bring a company to its knees with lightning speed.

"Nothing is local anymore," Domino's spokesman Tim McIntyre says. "That's the challenge of the Web world. Any two idiots with a video camera and a dumb idea can damage the reputation of a 50-year-old brand."

An arrest warrant was issued Wednesday for Michael Anthony Setzer, 32, of Conover, N.C., and Kristy Lynn Hammonds, 31, of Taylorsville, N.C., for food tampering, a felony in North Carolina, police say. McIntyre says Domino's is mulling a lawsuit.

Here are key things experts say marketers can do to quickly catch and respond effectively to similar social-networking attacks:

• Monitor social media. Big companies must actively watch Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social sites to track conversations that involve them. That will help uncover potential crises-in-the-making, says Brian Solis, a new-media specialist and blogger at PR2.0.

• Respond quickly. Domino's responded within hours. "They responded as soon as they heard about it, not after the media asked, 'What are you going to do?' " says Lynne Doll, president of The Rogers Group, a crisis-management specialist.

• Respond at the flashpoint. Domino's first responded on consumer affairs blog The Consumerist, whose activist readers helped track down the store and employees who made the video. Then it responded on the Twitter site where talk was mounting. "Domino's did the right thing by reinstituting the trust where it was lost," Solis says.

• Educate workers. It's important that all employees have some media and social-media training, says Ross Mayfield, co-founder of Socialtext, which advises companies on new media.

• Foster a positive culture. Workers who are content and customers who like your product are far less likely to tear down a company online, PR guru Katie Delahaye Paine says. "This would be a lot less likely to happen at places like Whole Foods."

• Set clear guidelines. Companies must have clear policies about what is allowed during working hours — and what isn't, Doll says. "It won't prevent everyone from breaking the rules, but at least they'll know what the rules are."

As a result of the incident, Domino's is looking at banning video cameras in stores, McIntyre says.

[ Read more : http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2009-04-15-kitchen-pr-dominos-pizza_N.htm]

Video :

Do You Need a Social Media Marketer?

Do you like to go on Facebook and Twitter all day? Do you excel at making online friends and writing pithy tweets and status updates? If so, there may be a job out there for you!

If more companies follow the lead of Pepsi, Ford, Dell and Toyota, then social media marketer will become a growing occupation as more companies hire full-timers to interact with consumers on their behalf via Facebook and Twitter. But the lack of ROI around social media, and the belief that such duties should be spread around rather than concentrated in one unit, may limit that growth.

“Most companies just aren’t ready,” said Matthew Schwartz, president of MJS Executive Search, which placed Bonin Bough as global director of social media, a new position, at PepsiCo in September. Schwartz said he would not describe social media marketer as a hot new occupation yet. “Pepsi was a visionary.”

A recent survey of 110 of the top CMOs by recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles in Atlanta seems to echo Schwartz’s point. The report found that social media was a relatively low priority—ranked in the bottom third. “Mostly it’s because of analytics,” said Lynne Seid, a parter at the firm. “The things that are measurable are a top priority. Most marketers see [social media] as an experiment.”

While almost every company does some form of social media marketing these days, the function is usually performed by an interactive marketing group and not broken out separately. Coca-Cola, for instance, clearly believes social media is important. The company created an office of digital communications and social media led by Adam Brown, director of digital communications for Coca-Cola, last month. But that group doesn’t hire a single full-timer charged with social media marketing. The company prefers that all employees in marketing and communications do some social media marketing instead. “Our model hasn’t been to have a staff that does nothing but respond to tweets,” said Michael Donnelly, director of worldwide interactive marketing for Coke. Donnelly said he believes having full-time employees charged with such a function comes across as disingenuous. “The only way is to be genuine and real,” he said.

That’s not everyone’s view. Dell has more than 40 full-time employees charged solely with social media marketing on behalf of the brand. Dell formed the group in 2006 after blogger Jeff Jarvis had shown how consumers in the Web 2.0 age can flex their muscles. Jarvis’ bad experience with Dell tech support, outlined on his blog Buzz Machine, in 2005, wound up hurting the brand’s reputation. “That was a factor and it was a catalyst for us to start listening and engaging people in the blogosphere,” said John Pope, a Dell rep.

Another pioneer in the space, Wells Fargo, has had a vp of social media since 2005, Ed Terpening. Part of the function of such a position is to determine which forms of social media are worth investing in. “We were the first brand that participated with Second Life and the first one to leave,” said Tim Collins, director of experiential marketing for Wells Fargo.

Wells Fargo entered Twitter in late March and Collins sees that as the big three of social media marketing outlets along with Facebook and MySpace. Other brands have been on Twitter for a while, including Dell, which has more than 80 accounts (most notably RichardatDELL with more than 5,000 followers) on the network and Ford, whose Scott Monty holds the title head of social media for the brand. As of last week Monty had more than 16,000 followers on Twitter and has authored close to 13,000 tweets—bursts of text of no more than 140 characters. While those tweets often plug Ford products in one way or another, he occasionally goes off topic as if to underscore the fact that he’s a real person. (Last week, for instance, he entertained a discussion with a follower about the fact that Bacardi rum is actually made in Mexico, not Puerto Rico as commonly thought.)

The mix of genuineness and salesmanship is a key to being a successful social media marketer, said Collins. “You have to have a passion for the space,” he said. “You can tell some people are very passionate and you can tell [when] it’s kind of forced.”

Though Collins said Wells Fargo has been able to prove ROI on its social media efforts in many cases, Schwartz said most companies are still tentative about social media marketing.
“There’s been a lot of pushback on that as far as marketing goes,” said Schwartz. “People think that social media doesn’t work. It’s hard to find ROI on pure social media marketing, but it’s a long, slow build, not something you see immediate gratification on.”

[read more : http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/news-and-features/digital/e3ie2a94edbc5b0a7c1150d6cbf4741dede?pn=1]

Social Networkers Don't Mind Ads - Razorfish Report

Good news for Social Networking sites....
Advertising is not a turnoff to people who love social media Web sites. In fact, many MySpace and Facebook users said ads on their favorite social sites have prompted them to buy something, according to a new report from Razorfish.

In its survey-based publication named "FEED: The Razorfish Consumer Experience Report," the digital marketing agency says 76 percent of the 1,006 people surveyed said they didn't mind seeing ads when they logged-in to Facebook, MySpace or the other social media sites they frequent. Razorfish also found that 40 percent of the respondents said they made purchases due to seeing those ads.

However, while consumers see a place for advertising on social networks, advertisers should think beyond traditional approaches, said Garrick Schmit, group vice president of experience planning at Razorfish. He said successful ad campaigns can come in the form of fan pages, games, widgets, videos and other "social experiences. "These experiences, or types of content, are what engage users today and will increasingly become the vehicle to acquire them," said Schmit.

Razorfish describes the survey respondents as "connected consumers." It defines them as people with broadband access who spent at least $200 online in the past year, used a community site such as MySpace and consumed or made some type of digital media including videos and music.

"Connected consumers have enthusiastically embraced social media (both technologies and networking sites), are actively building and refining their own trusted personal networks and are rapidly embracing new communication offerings like Twitter," says the report. It notes that these users are "challenging" publishers, advertisers and marketers to give them services they find useful even though those offerings "have no immediate monetization models."

The report suggests that smart marketers and publishers will figure out how to "merge tactics" so that the wall between content and ads is increasingly dissolved. "Content, in our view, will become advertising," the agency believes.

However, the report admits this evolution will not necessarily be easy. In fact, it says online advertisers and publishers are venturing into "uncharted territory," and need to take a scientific approach that will require new tools and services. Razorfish warns that "today's widget might become tomorrow's TV set" making it a challenge to understand and manage users' connections "with almost no explicit controls."

In the report the agency explains it was surprised to find 91 percent of respondents use Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com as their Internet homepages. Over 60 percent of these people have customized their homepages with content feeds and widgets. The report notes 55 percent said they use widgets with some frequency and 62 percent use them on sites such as Facebook and iGoogle.

The researchers found that, while those who view online videos don't mind the presence of advertising, they prefer banners and "newer, emerging forms of video" ads including tickers and interstitials to pre-roll video ads.

While video ads might not be as powerful as their makers might have us believe, Razorfish says retail loyalty programs -- such as Amazon's Prime and Best Buy's Reward Zone -- have a big impact on purchasing decisions.

"Clearly consumers are receptive to advertising with online videos, but the preference for companion banners speaks to the notion of choice," said Schmit. "People will always choose to click or view advertising that interests them instead of waiting for a pre-roll that may not align with their interests." Given the fact that most online videos are short, Schmit said "there's no joy" in watching a pre-roll that can be half as long as the clip itself.

The widespread use of widgets suggests people are comfortable "with the concept of distributed experiences" bolstering Razorfish's suggestion that content and services distribution is becoming more important than Web destinations. This is a big challenge for publishers, especially those focused on media and entertainment because they "currently have no clear path towards monetizing content distribution across the Web," says Razorfish.

"I definitely think there’s a place for a widget advertising network," said Schmit" He said photo-sharing sites Slide and RockYou do this well, and he noted widgets "get really interesting" when advertisers make content or services that are consumed and interacted with through widgets.

While Web destinations may no longer dominate, the report also notes that targeted, personalized recommendations offered by some sites can have an impact. Sixty-five percent of survey respondents said they made repeat purchases from a Web site that sent them a recommendation based on their purchase history.

You could read the original story at http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3631324