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Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Social Media for Business in 2010

Friday, December 10th, 2010

Social media is infiltrating the business world, not only a tool used for personal interaction in the online medium, but also a powerful marketing resource that companies can use, at very low costs, to increase their visibility and improve their customer relations.

A survey conducted in June 2010 revealed that in the past 18 months about 66% of the companies surveyed have adopted social media (SmartBrief and Summus, 2010). The survey population was made of almost 6500 companies among the readers of SmartBrief (over 3,5 million subscribers coming from diverse industries), 92% being U.S. companies.

The same survey revealed that the top favorite platforms in this context are Facebook and Twitter, their extended volume of members making them attractive for businesses, also:

Source: SmartBrief and Summus (2010)

Although the benefits of using social media for business purposes are not few, they are mostly intuitively assessed, as a very low percentage (less than 15%) of the respondents state they measure the return on their social media investment:

Source: SmartBrief and Summus (2010)

Although it is recognized that actually measuring an accurate figure as the return on your investment in social media can be quite difficult, there are other means to evaluate how your efforts pay back and how your communities begin working in favor of your brand, this allowing you to invest less and less and rely more and more on the customer. In this context, the suggestion is to focus intensively on what it is called “influencers” that can further on speak for the brand to other, larger communities.

As shown before, many businesses are still at their very early stages with social media efforts, thus an approach where they engage with limited numbers of consumers that can influence at the expense of larger audiences, although not in the very spirit of social media, can be a better alternative.

The Social media influencers 2010 report released by FreshNetworks reveals which are the most effective social media monitoring tools in what regards identifying influencers across several social media platforms. The research was conducted for the topic of “organic baby food” and a scorecard was developed for each tool considered, rating aspects such as: training, user interface, drilldown, integration of tools etc.

The researchers found that Bandwatch was the best to find influencers on forums, while Radian6 was the best to find influencers on Twitter (FreshNetworks, 2010). Below are the overall number of influencers identified by each tool, without any human analysis:

Source: FreshNetworks (2010)

References

FreshNetworks (2010), Social media influencers 2010. Social media monitoring tools, mummy bloggers and organic baby food, UK.

SmartBrief and Summus (2010), The State of Social Media for Business, US.

Tags: FreshNetworks, SmartBrif and Summus, Social Media, Social Media for Business, Social media influencers 2010, The State of Social Media for Business
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Optus Social Media Index Report – An insight in the Australian small and medium business sector

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

A recent report prepared by Stacombe Research and Planning on behalf of Optus Small and Medium Businesses provides a new and interesting perspective on how small to medium businesses view and use social media.

Study methodology

The study is based on both a qualitative and quantitative research:

The qualitative component of the study comprises three interviews with key social media opinion leaders and five discussion groups involving six to eight employees and owners of small and medium business;
The quantitative component of the study is based on interviews with 340 employees of small to medium businesses responsible for making key social media decisions within their organizations.

Key findings

According with the research results, thought there is an overwhelming number of social media tools available, not all are engaged by small and medium businesses. The most appealing ones are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn.

As the study further reveals, it is expected that in the next years the growth of the „big four” social media tools, in the preferences of small and medium businesses to increase with a steady pace, with LinkedIn benefiting the most.

The study also reveals that, while becoming more popular within business environment, social media tools serve different purposes in the organizational strategies. While, businesses planning to become involved in social media, primarily see it, as a tool „to drive sales through, acquisitions and retention”, those already active in social media „perceive the main benefits in networking and building relationships with the customer”. The major difference between these two types of businesses stay, as the study further reveals, in the metrics used to determine success.

Performance indicators most likely to be used by companies already using social media tools are mostly quantitative in nature, such as: # Followers, # Fans, # Friends. On the other hand, those businesses looking to adopt social media tools in the future are more focused on qualitative aspects, such as # Quality of fans, or # Quality of followers.

Optus Social Media Index Report – video presentation

Conclusion

In the last years social media presented a powerful opportunity for small and medium businesses to connect and get engaged with customers and build relationships with prospects. Among the key benefits are:

Opening new revenue streams;
Establishing new relationships;
Cementing current customer contacts;
Enhancing online brand reputation.

References

Optus Business Social Media Index, (2010), Report Summary, available at http://kathiemelocco.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/SMReportSummary.pdf , (accessed 12 December 2010)

Tags: Facebook, Key Performance Indicators, LinkedIn, Metrics, Optus Social Media Index, Performance Indicator, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube
Posted in Index, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

World Cup 2010 and social media performance – England goalkeeper Robert Green’s mistake attracts social media attention!

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

A shocking error from the England’s goalkeeper Robert Green, earned the U.S.A. squad a 1-1 draw in the first match of the South Africa World Cup 2010 group stage.

The goalkeeper blunder, as outlined by one of the latest Nielsen (2010) analysis, triggered unexpected levels of reactions in the social media from England and USA, but with however contrasting effect in the overall buzz level changes from the two countries.

The analysis outlines the share of online buzz, in English language social media talks surrounding U.S and English national team players related to the 2010 World Cup squads. (Nielsen Wire, 2010)

The analysis is based on two performance indicators:

• % Player buzz in the social media

• % Change in overall buzz levels

USA and England Soccer Player Buzz Rankings, at 14 June 2010

Source: Nielsen Wire, 2010

As the Nielsen analysis outlines, two major reactions were registered in the social media talks after the England vs. USA game from the World Cup 2010, both having english goalkeeper Robert Green’s stunning mistake as a trigger point.

On the one hand, the mistake, who upset almost 50 million English fans, pulled the goalkeeper out from obscurity in the social media spotlight (Nielsen Wire, 2010). Newspaper titles such as “hand of clod”, “cock –up keeper Green wrecks dream start” “tainted glove” or “worst howler ever”, triggered a storm of discussions on social media forums that earned Robert Green an 11.4 % buzz share and the first spot in the Nielsen rankings ahead of more famous team mate Wayne Rooney.

On the other hand, this unfortunate and costly mistake for the England soccer team produced a 21 % drop in the overall social media discussions around the squad, reflecting the general disappointment of the English nation. In stark contrast, same mistake produced a 250% increase in the social media discussions round the USA team, as the Nielsen analyst suggest.

Overall, it appears that a simple mistake from a goalkeeper has the power to ignite, through social media channels, the hearts and minds of USA fans, bringing this sport into spotlight in a country where baseball, ice hockey , american football or basketball are the major sport attractions.

References:

Nielsen Wire 2010, Blooper Turns to Buzz for English Soccer Goalkeeper, Fires Up U.S. World Cup Interest, available at http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/blooper-turns-to-buzz-for-english-soccer-goalkeeper-fires-up-u-s-world-cup-interest/, (accessed 18 June 2010)

Additional resources:

smartkpis.com blog 2010, Performance in Social Media marketing: Tweet, but don’t forget to measure!, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/03/04/performance-in-social-media-marketing-tweet-but-don%E2%80%99t-forget-to-measure/, (accessed 18 June 2010)
smartkpis.com blog 2010, Measuring advertising performance: a recommended set of 8 media metrics, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/02/22/measuring-advertising-performance-a-recommended-set-of-8-media-metrics/, (accessed 18 June 2010)
smartkpis.com 2010, Advertising KPIs examples, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/marketing-communications/advertising/, (accessed 18 June 2010)
yahoo7Sport 2010, Hand of clod – English press slam Green, available at http://g.au.sports.yahoo.com/football/world-cup/news/hand-of-clod-english-press-slam-green–fbintl_aap-au-5dfa09de5527851e5a1b05948706aa1e.html, (accessed 18 June 2010)

Tags: Football, Goal, Indicators, Rober Green, Social Media, Sport, World Cup 2010
Posted in KPI, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

World Cup South Africa 2010 – most buzzed players in the social media

Monday, June 21st, 2010

As one of the latest Nielsen (2010) studies related to World Cup 2010 reveal, the most buzzed player in the social media is the Ivory Coast striker and star player Didier Drogba (3.40%). He is followed quite at a long distance by the Netherlands star Arjen Robben (1.60%), with Argentinean and world best player in 2009, Lionel Messi on the third spot (1.40%), and Portuguese playmaker Cristiano Ronaldo on the fourth position only (1.10%).

The study was conducted in the week previous to the start of the South Africa World Cup 2010 and looked at all World Cup related messages on blogs, message boards, groups, videos and image sites including You Tube, Facebook or Twitter – that mentioned at least one of 345 leading players related to the squads that qualified for the World Cup 2010 (Nielsen Wire, 2010).

The indicator that was used to measure this analysis results was: % Selected player Buzz in the social media

Source: Nielsen Wire, 2010

What is striking, is that most of the pre World-Cup player social media buzz was dominated by player injuries talk, while names such as those of the world football stars Wayne Rooney, Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi caught up frontline positions only due to the players leading roles in the Nike and Pepsi advertising campaigns, about which we talked in a previous blog post: South Africa 2010 FIFA World Cup Social media fever – the most viewed ads on YouTube.

References:

Nielsen Wire 2010, Injury Talk Dominates pre-World Cup Player Buzz, available at http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/injury-talk-dominates-pre-world-cup-player-buzz/, (accessed 18 June 2010)

Additional resources:

smartkpis.com blog 2010, Performance in Social Media marketing: Tweet, but don’t forget to measure!, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/03/04/performance-in-social-media-marketing-tweet-but-don%E2%80%99t-forget-to-measure/, (accessed 18 June 2010)
smartkpis.com blog 2010, Measuring advertising performance: a recommended set of 8 media metrics, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/02/22/measuring-advertising-performance-a-recommended-set-of-8-media-metrics/, (accessed 18 June 2010)
smartkpis.com 2010, Advertising KPIs examples, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/marketing-communications/advertising/, (accessed 18 June 2010)

Tags: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Social Media, Wayne Rooney, World Cup 2010, YouTube
Posted in KPI, Measure, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

South Africa 2010 FIFA World Cup social media fever – the most viewed ads on YouTube

Monday, June 14th, 2010

Without any doubt, social media is one of the hottest topics in marketing practice today. Both large and small businesses use it to leverage their marketing efforts. Benefits are obvious and they rely mainly on the “viral” characteristic that social media platforms enhance.

The latest example of a company who brilliantly explored the advantages of the social media marketing by associating one of its marketing campaigns with the second biggest sport competition in the world after Olympic Games, the World Cup South Africa 2010, is Nike.

Even though is not an official partner of the World Cup event, Nike turned the buzz created round the world soccer competition into its favor, by mastering a brilliant social marketing campaign.

As the latest Nielsen Company study reveals, Nike was mentioned in 30.2% of the English messages online, outrunning by far important World Cup South Africa 2010 partners such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Sony or Visa (Nielsen Wire, 2010).

The study was conducted between May 7th to June 6th 2010 and looked at all World Cup related messages on blogs, message boards, groups, videos and image sites including You Tube, Facebook or Twitter – that mentioned at least one of the 10 official FIFA partners and sponsors with a global footprint or two of their top competitors (Nielsen Wire, 2010).

Source: Nielsen Wire, 2010

Additionally, if it is to make a top of the most viewed TV commercial ads and songs relating with the World Cup South Africa 2010 event, as outlined by the metric # Views on YouTube, we find Nike as the clear leader, again:

1. Nike: # Views = 14,829,784 (accessed 13 June 2010)

2. Shakira & FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010 – Official Song: # Views = 6,595,756 (accessed 13 June 2010)

3. Adidas: # Views = 2,961,940 (accessed 13 June 2010)

4. Pepsi: # Views = 788,766 (accessed 13 June 2010)

5. Optus: # Views = 134,987 (accessed 13 June 2010)

References:

Nielsen Wire 2010, Nike Ambushes Official World Cup Sponsors, available at http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/nike-ambushes-official-world-cup-sponsors/, (accessed 13 June 2010)

Additional resources:

smartkpis.com blog 2010, Performance in Social Media marketing: Tweet, but don’t forget to measure!, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/03/04/performance-in-social-media-marketing-tweet-but-don%E2%80%99t-forget-to-measure/, (accessed 13 June 2010)
smartkpis.com blog 2010, Measuring advertising performance: a recommended set of 8 media metrics, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/02/22/measuring-advertising-performance-a-recommended-set-of-8-media-metrics/, (accessed 13 June 2010)
smartkpis.com 2010, Advertising KPIs examples, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/marketing-communications/advertising/, (accessed 13 June 2010)

Tags: Social Media, World Cup 2010, YouTube
Posted in KPI, Measure, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

Performance measurement in the social gaming industry – KPIs for online games

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Along with the rise of social networking sites, a new type of games emerged and found favorable grounds to develop. These are the so called social games, simple games that let people play with their friends on networking sites such as Facebook. (Gross, D., CNN, 2010)

One developer of such games, Zynga, uses indicators to monitor their games’ attractiveness in order to improve them, and even focus them efficiently towards social causes (Zynga, 2009). Some of the performance measures are:

# Unique active players per month per game
# Unique active players per day per game
% Female players
# Average session length
# Most popular time to play
# Users purchasing virtual goods per month
% Revenues from direct user purchases
$ Funds raised for social causes by purchasing virtual goods across games

Source: Gross, D., CNN, 2010

The most popular games developed by Zynga are FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Cafe World or FishVille, out of which FarmVille won the Best New Social/Online Game Award in 2010 at the Game Developers Choice. One measure used to evaluate the success of the game is the number of players per month, as Bill Mooney from Zynga states: “85 million players a month can’t be wrong” (Zynga, 2010).

One essential element of social games, which also makes them so popular, is that they “can be played in a tab on your browser while you’re on a conference call”, as Mark Pincus, a veteran Web entrepreneur who created Zynga in 2007, said (Gross, D., CNN, 2010).

References

Gross, D., CNN (2010), “The Facebook games that millions love (and hate)”, available at http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/02/23/facebook.games/index.html?hpt=C1 (accessed on 6 April 2010)

Zynga (2010), “FarmVille nabs inaugural social games award at GDC”, Zynga Blog, available at http://blog.zynga.com/2010/03/farmville-nabs-inaugural-social-game-award-at-gdc.html (accessed on 6 April 2010)

Zynga (2009), “Zynga Hits 100 Million Unique Visitors Per Month”, Zynga Blog, available at http://blog.zynga.com/2009/11/zynga-hits-100-million-unique-visitors-per-month.html (accessed on 6 April 2010)

Tags: Measures, Performance Measures, Social Games, Social Media
Posted in KPIs in practice, Measure, Performance Measurement | No Comments »

Google Metrics – Facts and Figures as of March 2010

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Infographic = key data + great visualization

Source: Pingdom, 2010

References

Pingdom (2010), Google facts and figures (massive infographic), available at http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/24/google-facts-and-figures-massive-infographic/ (accessed on 29 March 2010)

Tags: Brand, Facts and figures, Google, Indicators, Innovation, Key Performance Indicator, Measures, Noogler, Search engine, Social Media, Stats
Posted in Business Intelligence, Index, KPI, KPIs in practice, Measure | No Comments »

Guerilla Marketing Metrics – Nokia – The World’s Biggest Signpost

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

The Right Direction in the Simplest Way

A signpost the size of two double decker buses
A 50 meter tall motorized crane, weighting 60 tonnes
A location: Potters Field, London
A time period: 16 October – 6 November 2009

Results

The World’s Biggest Signpost
862 000 views of the installation just by walking over Tower Bridge alone
Increase by 129% of unique visitors to Nokia’s online navigation service
29% visitor returns on the navigation service page

References

Nokia Blogs (2009), The Nokia Signpost has now gone live, available at http://blogs.nokia.com/nseries/2009/10/28/the-nokia-signpost-has-now-gone-live/ (accessed on 30 March 2010)

Farfar (2009), The World’s Biggest Signpost, available at http://farfarlabs.com/awards/general/nokia/theworldsbiggestsignpost/?page=nyfa-inter (accessed on 30 March 2010)

Adghost’s videos (2010), The World’s Biggest Signpost, available at http://www.vimeo.com/8758205 (accessed on 30 March 2010)

Tags: Direction, Good Things, Guerilla marketing, Initiative, Innovation, Marketing, Marketing Metrics, Nokia, Signpost, Social Media, The World's Biggest Signpost, Viral media
Posted in Events, Measure | No Comments »

Email use remains strong despite social media buzz

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Merkle, a US based provider of fully integrated customer marketing solutions, released at the beginning of 2010 a ten page report with the title “View from the Social Inbox 2010 – Actionable Information for Marketers“.

The report presents original findings about social media users’ attitudes and their behavior related to using social media versus email. Here are some of the highlights:

“Time spent with personal, or social, email to friends and family is unchanged from last year, with 71% of respondents spending 20 minutes or more weekly. These numbers suggest social email use remains strong, contradicting earlier speculation that social networking would quickly replace traditional email use.”

“Active social networkers are more likely to be avid email users, as measured by time spent with social email as well as number of times checked daily. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of social networkers use the same email account for their social networking messages and the majority of their permission, or opt-in, email.”

“Social networkers are twice as likely to use mobile email (28% vs. 14%) and be “hyper email checkers” compared to their non-networked online counterparts – 50% of mobile email users check their personal email four or more times daily versus 32% of non-mobile users.”

The image below presents the difference in behavior between users of social media (in blue) and non-users of social media (in red).

Source: Merkle, 2010

This is a clear example on how indicators can provide relevant information about a certain area, informing decisions. Based on the information, email marketing continues to be a key communication tool for reaching potential and current customers. Measuring the email marketing performance is done through a variety of metrics, many of them listed in the library of KPI examples available on www.smartKPIs.com:

Note:

The study “View from the Social Inbox 2010 – Actionable Information for Marketers” was conducted through an online survey of 3,281 U.S. adults age 18+ during the fall of 2009, by Merkle. The report is available for free at the following link: www.merkleinc.com/viewfromsocialinbox2010.

References:

smartKPIs.com (2010), “KPI examples for the Online presence – eCommerce Functional Area, Email Marketing subcategory”, available at http://www.smartkpis.com/kpi/functional-areas/online-presence-ecommerce/email-marketing/ (accessed 15 March 2010).

Merkle (2010), “View from the Social Inbox 2010 – Actionable Information for Marketers / From the Annual Consumer Email & Digital / Media Attitudes and Usage Study”, available at http://www.merkleinc.com/user-assets/Documents/WhitePapers/Social%20Inbox%202010%20WPaper%20Final.pdf (accessed on 15 March 2010).

Tags: email marketing, Indicators, Marketing, Merkle, Metrics, Performance Measure, Social Media
Posted in KPI, Library of KPI examples, Measure, Performance Measurement, smartKPIs.com | No Comments »