Twitter and You
Check out this post by Brian Solis entitled I tweet therefore I am.
Excellent overview of social media.
How the Recession Sparked Social Media
by Drew Hawkins
During one of the roughest economic patches we’ve seen since the Great Depression, the business world saw a huge increase in the use of social networking for marketing purposes. Even now that we are climbing out of this economic hole, social media is still on the rise, transitioning from the “shiny new experimental tool” to a device that is on the verge of necessity. So is it a coincidence that this message medium excelled during a time when money was tight?
Absolutely not. But not for the reasons you may initially think.
Many (including myself) saw social media as more of a cost-effective way to spread a brand message. If you had asked me a year ago why social media was so popular as a marketing tool I would have told you “because nobody has money to spend on advertising, so this way is cheaper.” Though there is a little bit of merit to that statement, I have matured in my thinking (and mostly through experience) that this idea is a bit flawed.
So why did social media become so popular?
During the recession, consumers had less discretionary income. It’s what happens in a recession, we can’t spend as much. That being the case, we as consumers had to be more choosy on what to buy, when to buy it, and most importantly – who to buy it from. With the recession came a lot of distrust among us towards these companies and with good reason. Many companies had made unethical (or just dumb) business decisions which negatively impacted consumer confidence and definitely impacting those spending dollars. How were companies supposed to go about building back that trust?
If you said social media…you would be correct! (Bet you didn’t see that coming huh?)
Social media wasn’t just cheap advertising. It provided a channel for brands to become more transparent to their buying audience. With social media came a two-way communication between brands and consumers. We weren’t forced to listen to brands feed us their BS on how awesome they were anymore. Social networks gave us the ability to respond to their messages and hold brands accountable. We were able to reach out to brands with our concerns and even customer service issues. Those brands who didn’t reach back in turn didn’t earn the trust of their consumers, falling even further behind in the process.
If you still see social media channels as a way for free advertising, guess again. For one, social media marketing takes time and time = money. Still cheap though right? Monetarily speaking, yes. However, using these channels isn’t a way to just broadcast your brand. It’s a way to interact with your target demographic like never before and let them join in on the conversation. It’s easy to tell which corporations really want to engage and others that just want to be heard as much as possible. It may seem like a good short term publicity boost but consumers are a savvy bunch. The BS will eventually be read through and these self-promoting-happy brands will feel the hurt in the long-run.
So what is social media to you? Cheap advertising medium or brand engagement tool?
Marketers Move Toward Dialogue Based Strategy
Although only 25% of marketers currently use centralized decisioning technology, another 40% plan to, according to [pdf] a new study from marketing technology provider Unica.
“Centralized decisioning” technology coordinates outbound and inbound marketing through a single system maintaining a comprehensive contact and response history. By allowing marketers to centralize the matching of customers to marketing messages and offers, the technology is designed to make it easier to have a well-orchestrated dialogue with customers.
Total Expected Usage Equals 65%
One in four survey respondents said they currently use centralized decisioning technology. Another 23% plan to use it in the next 12 months, and 17% plan to use the technology beyond the next 12 months. Twenty percent have no plans to use centralized decisioning, and 14% don’t know or aren’t sure.
Europeans More Open Toward Centralized Decisioning
In the short term, there are no differences across geographies, but longer term, Europe is more receptive to centralized decisioning. One-quarter of European marketers plan to use centralized decisioning more than 12 months from now, compared to only 11% of North American marketers. Meanwhile, 26% of North American marketers have no plans, compared to only 13% of European marketers.
IT Issues Less Problematic than Organizational, Financial Issues
The top two barriers preventing marketers from adopting centralized decisioning technology are not being internally ready (e.g., organizational structure, corporate culture, internal processes) and financial (lack of budget).
IT-related issues only pop up in the third-most cited barrier, existing systems and data are too disparate, and fourth-most cited barrier, difficulty working with internal IT. Two other finance-related barriers, cost is too high and uncertain ROI, trail difficulty working with internal IT by two and seven percentage points, respectively.
Lack of budget, with a 76% total response rate, was selected as a barrier by almost all European respondents (86%) and on a wide basis among North America respondents (69%). Not too surprisingly, non-marketing executives see the lack of executive sponsorship as a major barrier; whereas the executives themselves don’t have this problem.
Marketers Use Offline Data
One good reason for marketers to use centralized decisioning technology is that despite the drastic shift the internet has caused in the marketing industry, most marketers still use traditional offline data in their offer decisioning, according to other results from the Unica study.
Seventy-five percent of respondents currently or plan to use offline data when making decisions about marketing offers. Rather than viewing offline and online data as competing or incompatible information streams, marketers are using them in a complementary fashion. When asked in which channel(s) they are using or plan to use offline data to make decisions, the highest percentage of respondents (72%) said email.
About the Survey: The Unica Global Marketing Survey was fielded to more than 150 online and direct marketing professionals in partnership with Salloway & Associates. Online surveys were completed in Q4 2009 within two geographic regions among Unica customers and prospective customers. North America represents respondents from the US and Canada. Europe represents respondents from 12 European countries that are large technology markets.
Video Views Increase
The number of US unique viewers of online video increased 10.5% year-over-year, in February 2010, according to VideoCensus data from The Nielsen Company.
Last month, 141 million unique online viewers watched online video, compared to 127.6 million unique viewers in February 2009. On a month-over-month basis, the total number of online video viewers fell 1.1%, from 142.7 million in January 2010.
YouTube Has Most Unique Viewers
YouTube had the most unique viewers of any video site last month, 108.7 million. million. This represented a 3.4% month-over-month decline in viewership. There is a substantial gap between YouTube and the second-most-viewed video site, Yahoo, which had 25.5 million unique viewers last month. Yahoo’s monthly viewership declined 2.2%. Facebook, which ranked third with 22.5 million unique viewers, grew at a 4.7% monthly rate and appears in position to overtake Yahoo in the number two spot in the near future. CNN Digital Network, which came in sixth with about 13.6 unique million viewers, had the highest monthly growth rate (30.6%).
Total Streams Number 10.3B
Viewers watched 10.3 billion video streams in February 2010, which was a 15.8% increase year-over-year growth but a 6.9% decrease in month-over-month growth. The average viewer watched 73 streams, a 4.7% year-over-year increase but 5.8% month-over-month decrease.
YouTube dominated monthly streams even more than monthly unique views, with 5.9 billion streams, or more than half the total. This was a 10.7% drop in monthly streams.
Hulu came in second with 647.6 million monthly streams, a 1.9% increase from January 2010. CNN Digital Network, which came in fifth with 152.4 million streams for the month, had the highest percentage monthly growth (46.2%).
Hulu Leads in Time Spent
Hulu, a website which allows viewers to watch full episodes of TV shows, led in average time spent per viewer during February 2010 with 244.8 minutes, a 4.3% increase from January 2010. ABC Family, which also features TV episodes, came in second with 203.3 minutes, a 10.8% monthly increase.
The nonprofit digital library Internet Archive, which came in 10th with an average of 95.1 minutes spent per viewer, led all sites in terms of monthly growth with an impressive 426% rate. YouTube ranked eighth in terms of average monthly minutes, 108, which was a 3.6% decline from January 2010.
Online Video Viewing Accelerates in ‘09
Online video viewing accelerated in 2009, with 19% more people in the US viewing more videos for longer periods of time, according to comScore Video Metrix data.
Americans also viewed a significantly higher number of videos in 2009 compared to the prior year, due to both increased content consumption and a growing number of video ads being delivered. The average online viewer consumed 187 videos in December 2009, up 95% from 96 videos in December 2008. The number of videos viewed grew almost 150%, from 14.3 billion to 33.2 billion, while the duration of the average video viewed grew 28%, from 3.2 to 4.1 minutes.
About the Survey: Nielsen VideoCensus combines patented panel and census research methodologies to provide an accurate count of viewing activity and engagement along with in-depth demographic reporting. Online video viewing is tracked according to video player, which can be used on site or embedded elsewhere on the Web. A unique viewer is anyone who viewed a full episode, part of an episode or a program clip during the month. A stream is a program segment. VideoCensus measurement includes progressive downloads and does not include video advertising.
<via Nielsen>
Women Use Mobile Social Media More Than Men
In a demographic view of social networking activity on mobile devices, women were found do use their phones to “tweet” and “friend” 10% more than men. And while social networking is commonly thought of as something for “the kids,” the 35-54 age group had more active mobile social networkers than any other group.
Thinking about your own MobileApp
If you are thinking about creating an iphone/mobile application for your business you will want to see the latest report from AdMob. Here are some take aways:
Gender
The iPhone, iPod Touch, and webOS user bases are all fairly similar in their gender distribution, which is to say that they skew slightly to the male side. Why high-end technology ends up in the hands of men more then women is up for debate (we lean towards the “Oooh, shinies!” theory here at PreCentral). iPhone users were 57% male, iPod Touch owners just 54% male, and Palm webOS users skewed to 58% male. What is interesting, though, is how much more Android landed in man hands, to the tune of a 73% male userbase.
Age
The average webOS user is 36 years old. While in the middle of the Android (35), and iPhone (37) averages, the numbers are so close together to not be statistically different. iPod Touch owners, however, are much younger, landing with an average age of 23. Between different age groups the smartphone platforms are just about evenly matched, with the iPhone scoring a few more younger (less than 17 years old) users while webOS garnered more middle-aged users (35-44 years old). As evidenced by the notably younger average age, many more youngsters have an iPod Touch in their hands than a cellular-enabled smartphone – some 65% of iPod Touch owners are younger than 17. Of note, webOS had the smallest portion of adolescent users, just 2% of the userbase is pegged at younger than 17 years old.
Apps
On average, a webOS user is less apt to download an app from the App Catalog than an Android or iPhone OS user is from their own respective app repositories. The average webOS user downloads on the order of 5.7 apps a month, of which just 0.6 are paid apps – 10% of downloads. Android, on the other hand, logs 8.7 downloads per month per users, with 13% paid. The iPhone’s expansive App Store selection hasn’t netted significantly more downloads, with the average user pulling down 8.8 apps a month, though a full fifth of those are paid. When combined with the age statistics, the download count shows just how much the iPod Touch is used as a gaming platform: the average iPod Touch user downloads 12.1 apps a month, with 13% of those paid.
Satisfaction
All this leads to user satisfaction, which leads to word of mouth sales, which leads to something that Palm would like very much right now: profits. As you might expect, iPhone owners are more than satisfied with their purchase, with 91% replying that they are likely to recommend the device to friends, and just 3% saying no. iPod Touch users are more or less the same, with 89% willing to recommend, and 84% of Android users saying the same. What is telling for Palm is that only 69% of webOS users would recommend the platform to their friends, and 11% would outright turn their fellow man away from Palm devices. Obviously there’s not one single issue that would lead to such results, though we can be sure that it’s some combination of app selection, interface speed, and build quality.
What these numbers show are two things.
- Palm needs more apps and better ways to promote those apps. Check out Apple’s commercials for inspiration. While the open App Catalog feeds are awesome and we at PreCentral are proud to have been able to work with Palm at the launch of them, they’re really for the sort of niche market that we serve. That’s the niche market that’s already downloading apps.
- Palm is having no trouble reaching across age demographics and gender groups. Their performance here is on par with results for iPhone and Android users. The problem is that not enough people in general have been convinced to buy a Palm phone – no single demographic slice needs to be exploited to gain precious sales.
[via: TechCrunch]
Building On Your Strength
This commercial is an outstanding representation of clearly differentiating your brand in a crowded field.
If you travel on business you can certainly relate. Cisco narrowed their focus on this issue and did it with emotion. A great example of stand out branding.
The take away for your organization: Build on your strength. Identify your companies greatest benefit and then tell the story with emotion.
Exploring Our Comort Zone
John D. Cook explains we why waste time on trivial matters. This is not only employees but I have found it to be the case for non-profit boards as well. It is easier to discuss the light bill than the organizational strategy.
Yesterday I found a copy of Parkinson’s Law for $1 at a library book sale. This book is best known for it’s opening line: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
The name “Parkinson’s law” can mean at least four different things:
- The 1957 book by C. Northcote Parkinson
- The first chapter of Parkinson’s book
- The principle expressed in the book’s opening line, as understood by Parkinson
- The principle in the opening line as understood today.
I’d heard of the general principle of Parkinson’s law a few years ago. I only found out about the book more recently. I didn’t know until last night that Parkinson intended his principle to be applied more narrowly than it is applied now.
The full title of the first chapter of the book is “Parkinson’s Law, or The Rising Pyramid.” This chapter explains how work expands to fill the available resources within a bureaucracy and why bureaucracies grow exponentially at a compounding rate of around 5% per year. The subtitle addresses the mechanism for this growth, bureaucrats creating a pyramid of subordinates. Parkinson derives his law from “two almost axiomatic statements”:
- An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals.
- Officials make work for each other.
Nowadays Parkinson’s law is usually condensed to saying work expands to the time allowed. It is applied to individuals as well as a burgeoning bureaucracies. Parkinson discusses this interpretation in his opening paragraph but then limits his attention to organizations.
The total effort that would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety, and toil.
Chapter 3 of Parkinson’s law is “High Finance, or The Point of Vanishing Interest.” This chapter is the source of the phrase bike shed arguments. In this chapter Parkinson states what he calls the Law of Triviality:
… the time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
The idea is that people are more likely to contribute to the discussion of things they understand. A nuclear reactor will sail through the finance committee, but a bicycle shed will cause endless debate because everyone can understand it and everyone has an opinion.
republished from John D. Cook
Why are you doing that?
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”– Sun Tzu
Both are needed but many times we focus on one or the other. In start ups it is usually the tactics. It is understandable when you need to produce now. But without a clear strategy it is easy to get caught up in activities and make the measure of success how well you have executed the tactic. Look at your strategy and measure your tactics on how they have facilitated your movement toward the ultimate strategy. Sometimes we fall in love with our tactics and they can be mistaken for strategy. It’s all in balance. If your strategy is clear the tactics to use become apparent very quickly. Clarify your strategy by aligning it with your vision and values. Take every opportunity to model your behavior based on the ultimate strategy for your business. The result will be less wasted time and business growth.
Old School Twitter
I was an early adopter of twitter. My first follow was Robert Scoble, he only had a few followers then and 
was brilliant at this “social media” thing. We talked on line. I listened and learned, asked questions and engaged. Same with Guy Kawasaki and Chris Brogan. We were all figuring it out together. Rules were established as we went along.
Things began to take a turn when the get rich marketers came in and everyone started focusing on talking instead of listening and learning. It now seems as if you have to scream to get your message across.
My followers may not be in the 100K plus (not even close) and I like it that way. I guess I am “old school”.
Here is my list of ways you know you are an old school twitter user.
Before following someone I do not personally know I like to:
1) Read their biography to see if we have any common interests
2) Check their links to see what they write about and if they are serious about engaging in conversation
3)See who they follow
4)Follow and send a personal note. See if it comes back with a canned message
5)Follow for a while to see if we can add value to each other
All this takes time. Just like relationships. I don’t want to shout about my business to people. I like to think that twitter will build relationships with people I have things in common with but would not otherwise have the time or the opportunity to get to know in the offline world.
So much of that is changed now.
So here are the questions:
Are you “old school”?
What do you continue to do that seems rather outdated as twitter moves to a more traditional marketing tool (everyone shouting no one listening)?
You can comment here or use the hashtag #oldschool on twitter.
Would love to hear your comments.
