Posts tagged social networks
Why marketers need to target women online
Mar 8th
It is international Women’s Day and what better day to talk about how to target this avid consumer online.
According to a Publicis Groupe survey, 88 per cent of the household disposable income is controlled by the lady of the house and advertisers are beginning to notice that the internet is becoming another place where they can reach women.
According to web measurement firm Media Metrix, women represent 48% of all internet users, with studies by Jupiter Communications, NFO Interactive, and NetSmart America all predicting the number of women will soon surpass the number of men online.
The November statistics from Media Metrix found the types of web sites with the highest composition of women included toy retailers, women’s portals (such as iVillage), greeting card sites, retail savings sites, and health sites.
The online world is beginning to mirror its brick-and-mortar counterpart in appealing to consumers who have both the greatest spending power and the most enthusiasm for the shopping experience.
There are now 86% of women using social networks, a 48% increase over 2008, according to a new study from SheSpeaks.
Social networks including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, have become drivers of purchase intent among women, with 50% of social media users reporting they have purchased products because of information on social networking sites. Furthermore, 40% have used coupon codes found on social networks.
Women have become more comfortable using social media, and for marketers, the overall growth and habitual use of social media represents opportunities to reach and engage women of all ages, and influence their purchase decisions.
Collette Dunkley, CEO of XandY Communications, told UTalkMarketing that the importance of presenting products and services that meet women’s needs is vital, together with brand communication which fully understands the way women think and interact with communication.
Ads during Oprah and The View just aren’t cutting through anymore. Online is where is at for women.
Dunkley says that women are influenced by different types of marketing and communications and there needs to be a long-term commitment to communicate better with them.
Twitter clocks up 50m tweets. What does that mean for marketers?
Feb 24th
Twitter, which has only been around since 2007, now racks up more than 50 million tweets a day. That means 50 million visits a day to a site that has yet to figure out how to monetize. But on the plus side, those numbers mean an opportunity for advertisers to get in front of 50 million people. How? Simple.
For the past few years, advertisers’ exposure on social networking sites has been seen as essential. But perhaps it’s not about advertising, per se. Perhaps it’s not about talking either. If there are 50 million tweets, someone is listening, and wouldn’t you want someone to be listening to nice things about you?
One marketer has suggested to me that Twitter should be about getting consumers to talk to each other – not a place for brands to preach to them.
It’s an interesting thought. So I decided to listen into the conversation and see if customers really were talking to each other.
To do this, go to www.search.twitter.com and you come across a ‘Google’ search-like box. Type in a brand or company. I typed in ‘Coca-Cola’, for example.
Then I was presented with a page full of tweeters who had tweeted about ‘Coca’Cola’. Funnily enough, almost none of the tweets were from Coca-Cola itself or stories about Coca-Cola. People are genuinely talking about it.
Another example. I typed in ‘Google’. Given the news that the EU is going to invest the search king following the catastrophic launch of Buzz. I found a few links to news stories, but again, consumers were actually talking about Google, or at least mentioning the brand, in actual conversations.
However, the problem with Twitter is that it is time consuming. I am on Twitter (here!) but I rarely go on to check on tweets because before I can get to the bottom of the list they are updating. These 50 million tweets are a lot to keep track of.
But perhaps it’s worth keeping in mind though, that the best way to use to site isn’t to preach, but instead listen and just be happy that consumers are talking about you. That, is free.
Moreover, Twitter attracts a number of influential users, including Google’s Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Today we hear that the Dalai Lama even has an account on the microblogging site.
Just imagine if you could get those guys to talk about you.
Windows Phone 7 – in detail
Feb 15th
Following reports yesterday that Microsoft was to launch a challenger to the smartphone market currently dominated by Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Andriod and RIM’s Blackberry, the tech giant has unveiled the details of its closely kept mobile secret.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft showed off Windows Phone 7 for the first time. The handset will pull together content from social networking sites and other web services on a scale unseen on competing platforms and will most likely pose a serious threat to its competitors RIM, Apple and Google.
Why?
It’s flashy and new and has been designed with the user in mind, making all those things we use our mobile for more accessible, easier to use and to navigate.
Previous Windows Mobile versions were scrapped to make way for a completely new design that integrates Microsoft’s Zune music player and the Xbox Live gaming service.
The tech giant is ready to hit the smartphone market big time and has already secured partners including Samsung, HTC, HP, Sony Ericsson, Dell, LG and Toshiba.
At the Windows Phone 7 unveiling, Joe Belfiore, VP for Microsoft’s Windows Phone division, said the explosion of applications and web services available on mobile phones meant devices had become far too complex claiming that that phones had started to resemble PCs but “a phone’s just not a PC – it’s a smaller, more intimate device”.
Microsoft wanted a smart design that would separate applications and bring together some of the key things that are most important to people.
It’s five key hubs, that feature on a completely new interface with a ‘start’ page based around live ‘tiles’ representing the most common tasks include people, pictures, office, music + video and games.
The ‘people’ tile is all of a users contacts from Outlook, social networking sites and web mail services – pulled together with thumbnail images into one interface. People the user has recently communicated with rise to the top and for each contact the phone can display their recent activity on various social networking sites.
Under the ‘pictures’ tile is all of the users photos taken with the phone, synced from a PC or uploaded to social networking sites. Photos uploaded by friends to their social media profiles can also be accessed.
The Office’ tile is pretty self-explanatory, it allows users to view and edit documents or make voice, text and picture notes.
Every Windows Phone 7 will essentially be a Zune music player, with users able to sync music and videos using PC software similar to iTunes under the ‘music + video’ tile. Third-party music and video applications such as Pandora are also integrated.
Lastly, finally finding a way to take Xbox to the next level, under the ‘games’ tile users will be able to play games against other Xbox Live users.
Microsoft has said a key priority with the new operating system was maintaining consistency in design. Each Windows Phone 7 device will have three buttons on the front - Start, Search and Back. The tile menu interface will also be virtually the same on all handsets.
The built-in calendar pulls together appointments from both web-based personal calendars and from Microsoft Exchange, while addresses and phone numbers are automatically hyperlinked. Clicking on an address brings it up on Bing Maps.
The maps feature is interesting, and will be a major competitor to Google Maps. By simply typing “sushi” into the search function – which is of course powered by Bing – the user is shown all of the sushi restaurants in the immediate area plotted on a map. From that screen the user can get directions, ring a restaurant or read reviews.
The web browser is based around the same code as the desktop Internet Explorer, and there is full support for multi-touch gestures such as pinching to zoom. But just like the iPhone, Adobe Flash support won’t be present at launch.
So that’s it. It all looks pretty simple to use, and smart too. But one burning question remains: what about apps?
With the actual launch to consumers still so far away, Microsoft said it would reveal more details about the applications that will be available on the platform at its Remix conference later this year.
Marketers still searching Facebook for that “Holy Grail”
Feb 1st
Facebook was offering up the “Holy Grail” of advertising in 2007. Two years on, what’s changed, better still, what has improved?
It’s no secret that Facebook has never been the “Holy grail” of advertising that is so promised in November 2007. Yes the site had to undergo some radical changes after the failure of Beacon, but the site still offers up some 350 million consumers. Surely advertisers can take advantage of this, but how?
I was there at the IAB Engage conference in 2007 listening to Facebook executives explain how they were launching something revolutionary in the digital marketing landscape. But despite all the fact and figures that pronounce the majority of ad budgets are going to social networking sites, why have the ads not got any better?
Alterian’s “Annual Survey 2009″ — which included 1,068 marketers, 62% North American, 36% European and 2% from the Asia-Pacific region — found that 40% of respondents were shifting more than one-fifth of their traditional direct marketing budgets toward digital and social media channels.
Overall, 66% of marketers plan to invest in social media, while 67% increasingly important or critical to success.
So where are all these ad dollars going then?
Just today, UTalkMarketing reports that Facebook is increasingly falling victim to hackers which could lead to users distrusting advertisements they see on the site. What’s a way around this for advertisers and marketers then?
The key is engagement. And to be honest, it’s probably a drum you’ve heard us bang before.
But with more and more users less likely to leave Facebook and as the number of users goes over and above 350 million worldwide, marketer would be silly to ignore the medium.
However, the key for advertisers now is to find the right way to advertise on the site.
Fifty-seven per cent of marketers plan to use their budgets to improve their websites so that they can open dialogues and increase engagement with consumers.
But how do marketers do this?
Here are some simple steps to get you started:
Step 1
Go the advertising page on the Facebook website. Click on the “Advertising” link at the bottom of the page. Click on the “Create Social Ad” button to get started.
Step 2
Insert your website. This is where users who click on your ad will be directed.
Step 3
Target your ads. On the next page you’ll have the opportunity to choose the demographics you want your ad displayed to. Choose a gender, age group, educational status, relationship status or political views or leave the options blank to create a more inclusive group. In the keywords section, put in keywords relating to the interests you would like your targeted group to have.
Step 4
Create your ad. Move to the next page to input your Facebook ad. Create a short, catchy title and a few sentences of copy to explain your website or product. To insert a photo, click “Upload Photo” from the drop down menu below.
Step 5
Choose whether you want to pay per click or per view. When you pay per click, you’ll only pay Facebook when someone clicks on your ad. When you select pay per view, you’ll pay every time your ad is displayed to a user. Then, click on the appropriate tab.
Step 6
Set a budget. Put in the amount of money you’re willing to pay every day. You may pay less than this, but this is most money you’ll pay for one day of Facebook ads.
Step 7
Bid for ad space. Facebook determines which ads to display by how much you’re willing to pay per click or per 1000 impressions. Choose the maximum amount you want to pay. The amount you actually pay depends on how much other advertisers have bid, so enter the maximum amount you’re willing to pay.
We’re still waiting for the “year of social media” and 2010 could be it. There certainly are a number of tools now available for marketers to track ROI on Facebook, but I’ll save that for another post.
The right tools to help you monetise your tweets
Jan 5th
It’s finally 2010 – the year that will be Twitter’s “revenue year” as promised by co-founder Biz Stone.
And it’s encouraging to note that according to a new OneNewsPage.com poll published on UTalkMarketing half of respondents are also making money from their Twitter activities.
We heavily covered ‘All things Twitter’ last year including how marketers and brands can monetize their tweets and how to incorporate tweets into their everyday marketing activities as a way of keeping in touch with consumers.
Twitter has more than 40 million monthly users, with London being the international hub of activity. Last year, Microsoft began to integrate Twitter messages into Bing, its new search engine, and Google announced a deal to do the same meaning that this year, tweets will be more visible and possibly more lucrative than ever before.
So here’s a list of tools to help you get the most from your 140-character status this year:
1. TwitterCounter
TwitterCounter analyses your account or that of any person using Twitter and provides information on the number of followers over time plotted on a graph.
It uses this information to extrapolate your likely follower growth in the future. You can also find statistics such as your current ranking on Twitter according to follower numbers, and you can then compare this to the most popular users on the service.
2. Twitalyzer
Find out how much influence you have on Twitter. Twitalyzer analyses your activity in five areas: influence, signal, generosity, velocity and clout.
Signal indicates the proportion of tweets that contain information, generosity measures how willing the user is to re-tweet, velocity watches how regularly tweets are made and clout refers to how often the user is referenced by others. Influence is a combination of all of these scores.
3. TwitVid
Share video clips via Twitter. You can upload videos and add a tweet to go with it. TwitVid links to Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.
4. The Twitter Tag Project
Follow Friday is a weekly event on Twitter where users recommend new people to follow. You do this by sending a tweet including the username or names of the people who you want to recommend marked with the hash tag ‘#followfriday’.
The Twitter Tag Project provides a tool to help you work out who to recommend. Enter your username, and it’ll suggest a bunch of people based on your last 200 tweets, ready formatted into #followfriday tweets.
5. TweetGrid
TweetGrid offers a similar service to Monitter, but integrates elements of a full Twitter client. You can log in and use it to send tweets and make re-tweets as well as monitoring searches in real time.
You can also opt for different page layouts, including three columns, or grids of three-by-three searches, giving you nine searches on one page.
6. Twitterholic
Find out how addicted you are to Twitter by entering your username at this site. You’ll get an overall ranking and a ranking by your location. You can also see what tags have been applied to your account. Twitterholic also shows the top 100 Twitter users for context
7. Friend or Follow
Worried about who’s following you back, or who’s dropped you shortly after following you? Friend or Follow helps you find these answers. Go to the site and enter your username.
Friend or Follow then analyses your account and presents you with three lists: people you’re following but aren’t following you back; people who follow you who you aren’t following back and people you’re following who are also following you.
8. TwitterFeed
Automatically notify your Twitter followers whenever you post to your blog. It does this, simply enough, by linking your blog’s RSS feed to your Twitter account.
You can sign in using an open ID and then link your Twitter account. TwitterFeed also enables you to check for updates at hourly or daily intervals and include your blog post title in the automatic tweet.
9. Dabr
Dabr is a lightweight web-based front-end for Twitter that’s optimised for mobile use. It offers many of the functions that other Twitter clients provide, and increasing numbers of desktop PC users have switched to Dabr because of its speed and ease of use.
Icons next to each tweet enable you to reply, re-tweet, mark as a favourite or direct-message the user. Pictures appear as thumbnails in the timeline
10. Mr Tweet
Mr Tweet helps you to find new followers based on people you already follow by looking at their followers and people that they recommend. If you recommend people to Mr Tweet, your followers will see your recommendations and Mr Tweet will use them to help improve his recommendations, which you’ll see when you visit.
11. Twittervision
Watch a selection of tweets as they are posted in realtime set against their locations on a world map. Twittervision is fascinating to watch, although of course you only see a small fraction of the tweets currently being made around the planet. It does gives you a feel for where the global Twitter hotspots are, though
12. Monitter
Monitter supplies real-time search updates from Twitter presented in multiple columns. Search by username, hash tag or keyword. You can enter a different search in each column, and they constantly update.
There’s no need to log in or even have a Twitter account. This makes Monitter a useful place to go if you’ve been working with a client application and have used up the limited number of API calls per hour Twitter permits you to make.
There’s still life in Twitter yet for marketers
Nov 30th
Social networks may have users in decline, but they’re still top of the radar for some brands and marketers.
Remember how last week I said that Twitter users were declining? Well, it isn’t all bad for the micro-blogging site – or any social networking site for that matter as marketers and agencies are definatley still interested. Why?
Well, Twitter is set to become the most popular word in the English language for 2009, according to the Global Language Monitor.
It has also come in second in Bing’s 10 most searched topics of 2009 list.
But just how important is the social network?
An agency in Australia called Community Engine is aiming to cash in on the phenomena of social networking by building internal networks that will integrate sites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace for clients and brands.
Piers Hogarth-Scott, managing director of Community Engine, told The Australian newspaper, “While global social platforms such as Facebook are radically changing human communication, most organisations have little or no idea that they can build their own social networks to connect with their own communities.
“All organisations need to form direct relationships with their audiences, and social networking — when used properly — is one of the most powerful and effective ways of forming those relationships in the online era.”
By adapting internal social networks to work in tandem with popular public ones, businesses will be able to communicate with employees and customers, associations with members, politicians with constituents and charities with donors.
Obviously the Australian market is a little behind that of Europe and the US on the social networking front, but it’s still a good idea. Many marketers have said in various polls that while they would like to increase their spend on social media they are not quite sure how to do so.
The concept of being able to link internal social network systems with external ones is also attracting some big advertisers including Australia’s flagship airline Qantas.
The newspaper said that Community Engine is hoping to take its social networking applications global next year in a bid to capitalise on the $1.5 billion Web 2.0 application market.
Will email be defunct in 10 years?
Nov 19th
The jury is out on the future of email, according to new research from TalkTalk, in collaboration with the University of Kent.
The research found that email could become obsolete in 10 years, replaced by instant messaging and social network sites.
These sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and MySapce, are seen as more fashionable and faster and easier to use, plus they can be accessed from anywhere with mobile phone technology.
Although 15 to 24-year-olds do use email, they use instant messaging and social networking sites more often, according to the research, and on the flip side, older generations are more reliant on email and don’t find it as easy to shift to using the latest communication technology.
OneNewsPage.com asked its users to respond to the following question:
‘Will email be defunct in 10 years?’
The respondents were evenly divided. Fifty per cent agreed it would be defunct, the other half disagreed.
The survey was conducted by OneNewsPage.com over two days. The question was displayed on www.onenewspage.com 57, 604 times, and 240 people answered the poll.
But despite the results, I have to say that I do not think that email will ever be ‘defunct’. How would businesses run without email? Haven’t the advent of smartphones proved how much we rely on email - always having it with us?
Email will never die. Dan Grabham from TechRadar magazine agrees. He told Sky News, “Email won’t completely die off - it’ll probably still be used for some important purposes such as sending crucial files to someone particular.
“But it’s clear that for quick, direct communication Twitter and other social systems are easier to use and can garner a far quicker response - not least because inboxes continue to fill up with unstoppable junk.”
Futurist who predicted social networks sees ‘thought interfaces’ by 2016
Nov 5th
Thought interfaces – that’s right. Soon enough we’ll be able to control our computers with our thoughts. Sound a little far-fetched? So did ‘micro-messaging’.
Ross Dawson, the Australian futurist, has a knack for predicting future trends in technology and business and is The Chairman of Future Exploration Network as well as a prominent international public speaker.
He is best known as the author of the best-selling book, Living Networks, published in 2002, in which he forecast the rise of social networks, micro-messages (Twitter), crowdsourcing and various other digital developments we now take for granted.
This week, Dawson released a list of extraordinary technologies he thinks will be commonplace by 2016.
They include:
People wearing video glasses as they commute, experiencing new forms of television, news updates and information about the world around them and people they meet.
‘Lifestreaming‘ will be commonplace. We will capture, store and share almost continuous videos, photos and conversations from our everyday lives.
We’ll have natural telephone conversations with computers, with almost all call centre staff replaced by automated systems.
Public measures of individual reputation will guide who we hire, do business with, and date.
Over 40% of us will work independently rather than as employees, many providing services to organisations all over the world instead of commuting to an office.
A next generation of ‘thought interfaces‘ will allow us to control our computers just by thinking. While the technology will still be basic, we’ll have begun to merge machines and humans.
What does this mean for digital advertising? All these new technologies are thought of on the basis of us spending more time on our computers meaning the migration of traditional advertising to digital will continue with full speed. However, advertisers will have to be clever in order to capture consumer attention if we only see what we want to see. Ads will have to be more viral, more entertaining and more tailored to individual needs.
What do you think?
How to make money from Twitter using Amazon
Nov 5th
Amazon has this week sent an email to members of Amazon Associates letting them know about its new Twitter integration feature, which can earn users money!
Basically, when you’re logged into your Associate account, you’ll see a new ‘Share on Twitter’ button on your Site Stripe (a management toolbar along the top of the page). Clicking this button will prepare a tweet complete with a shortened URL to send out of all of your Twitter followers.
It’s interesting because as Amazon clearly notes at the end of its email, you will earn referral money for anyone that clicks on these links and buys a product.
As Twitter users do love to click on links, this feature could actually mean some real money for popular Twitter users with a massive following.
And it’s yet another way that companies — and now even Twitter’s users — are making money from the micro-blogging site, which Twitter won’t see a dime of (presumably, anyway).
A lot of blogs disclose when they’re supplying you with a referral link that they will make money from (though certainly not all of them). But on Twitter, that’s going to be hard for people to do even if they wanted to because of the 140 character limit.
Other social sites, like MySpace, for example, do not allow you to post affiliate links. Twitter, it would seem, has no problem with this. In fact, at least one employee tweeted that he was excited for the launch.
Facebook and MySpace partner to take on Twitter - it’s war!
Oct 28th
Traditional social networking rivals Facebook and MySpace have said they are in talks about sharing content.
Facebook has reportedly said it’d be happy to feature content from MySpace now that the two are moving in different directions.
The Telegraph newspaper quoted Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sanderberg, “Facebook is focussing on building the best technology which helps people share content, while at MySpace they are focussing on more a content-led strategy.
“We would like to have their content, as we already do with many other sites, shared across our network because it is good for our users.”
MySpace boss Owen Van Natta – who left Facebook in April to lead News Corp’s social network - confirmed the talks by adding that Facebook is about “core communication” while MySpace is about “congregating around popular content”.
He said that Facebook was no to be a large part of MySpace’s future.
Seems odd to me, but Facebook has more than 300 million users now, while MySpace lags behind with 124 million so it’s not surprising the site is looking at ways of appealing to more people.
In the past 12 months Facebook has extended its dominance in every territory in Europe, but that doesn’t mean it’s terminal for MySpace. The battle certainly isn’t over yet and a combination of the two would be mutually beneficial because ultimately, it would attract more advertisers and give them greater opportunities to target a wider and more diverse audience.
The question now is, I mean about this Yahoo/Microsoft style partnership, is whether it’ll come up against regulatory approval. And what does it mean for Twitter – the current social media darling? It means a while new war.
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