Most people want to just dive in and side step this strategic planning – as it is so much easier and much cheaper to just put up your own pages and get started. Which by the way I advocate – if you do not dive in – you cannot understand how this social media, networking community building, engagement and collaboration works. This must not take away from the importance of the strategy to understand who those influencers are and how to connect directly with them.  Relationships can mean profiling them and having them speak about your products, providing them with special offers or product trials prior to launch. Being true with the ways that you engage them and allowing them to provide their thoughts opinions and challenges – rather than “selling” them is an honest way to say – you appreciate their support.

Mashable.com provides some great examples which is why I feature their articles so often. Author Ben Straley gives some great ideas on how to connect with your top 1%. As I said in my speech understanding where they go and how they connect is vital – but it is also important to understand how they want to connect with you. Are the on Facebook, that now commands 41% of the social media traffic as reported by comscore media or are they on Twitter, Myspace or Linkedin? Are they spectators where they read blogs and newsletters or are they posting comments and engaging with the things they like to read?

This vital information will clearly allow you to tap into sourcing the influencer you are looking for. Your commitment to them will  encourage them to galvanize their  followers to your community and the followers -to whom follow them – do the same. This traffic boost can only lead to growth in sales for your business and better yet a vibrant community to which you can engage and connect with the people who love what you offer.

Have you identified your influencers and the ways that you are  targeting them?

Best Nicole

our brand has 10,000 Twitter () followers and 2,000 fans on Facebook (). Does that mean your social media marketing efforts are paying off? Maybe not. As the old adage goes, it’s quality, not quantity, that counts.

Recent data that Meteor Solutions collected from across more than 20 brand marketer clients shows that the type of friends, fans and followers a brand amasses on social media sites matters more than the number. On average, approximately 1% of a site’s audience generates 20% of all its traffic through sharing of the brand’s content or site links with others. And these “influencers” drive an even higher share of conversion. These very important Internet users can directly influence 30% or more of overall end actions on brand websites by recommending the brand’s site, products or promotions to friends.

As this data shows, successful social media marketing isn’t simply about amassing thousands of followers, but instead precisely identifying the most influential members of your audience and recognizing them for their value. By directly engaging one influencer with exclusive opportunities, special offers, and unique content, you are indirectly engaging thousands of other people who are part of this influencer’s social sphere.

Sounds pretty enticing, right? But the challenge in crafting a successful marketing program that activates influencers is two-fold. First, you have to use the right data and traffic analysis tools to find out who your most influential followers are. Second, you have to connect with these people in an authentic, “non-salesy” way, and truly build a relationship with them –- because if you overly “sell” to your influencers, you’ll burn a bridge and potentially turn your biggest fans into your worst detractors.

Here are a few concrete tips brands can use to get started marketing with influencers.

Find Out Who Is In Your 1%

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Find Out What Your 1% Likes to Share

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After you’ve identified these individuals, use your social media analytics platform to dig down into the content they like to share most often. Do they tend to share deals and discounts? Or do they prefer to share links to your branded entertainment content, like YouTube () videos, social games and contests, or informational articles? At this stage, you can separate your 1% into groups, such as “shopping mavens” who love to pass along deals and discounts; “experts” who love to share new research, top-10 lists, how-to articles, and other educational content; “gaming gurus” who like to share information about contests and games; or “entertainers” who like to share movie trailers, YouTube clips, and social media apps.

Find Out Where Your 1% Goes to Connect and Share

Now you need to identify which social networks, blogs, forums, and websites your 1% hangs out on, and which methods they use to share your content (e-mail, social updates, tweets, etc.). One thing you’re likely to find out is that while Facebook and Twitter undoubtedly play major roles in the spread of your brand’s content, major social networking sites are not where you’re likely to find and reach your 1%.

Think about it — if you are someone extremely passionate about cars, are you really going to bore and alienate your family and friends on Facebook? Some of them might (and lose friends and followers in the process), but for the rest, they have a blog, post comments on other blogs, and interact with niche communities of like-minded influencers, advocates, and fans.

Finding these sites and communities on the web requires some sleuthing. Aside from digging deep into the traffic data provided by your social media analytics platform, another way to find these niche sites is to follow a number of active “experts” on Twitter in your topic of choice. Ask them where they go to learn about and share the content that matters most to them.

Find Out What Motivates Your 1%

Do your influencers share content about your brand in pursuit of fame, fortune, or a bit of both? Understanding what motivates your 1% to share is key to finding out what makes them tick, and what types of content they will respond to favorably.

For most people that spend time creating and sharing content, it’s not about fortune, it’s about fame. They share links with friends and their wider social network because it makes them feel important, special, and useful. That doesn’t mean influential people don’t like deals as a rule — they’re just like the rest of us in that regard. But they respond most positively to the attention and recognition they get from sharing useful content and valuable information with others.

For example, we’ve seen on several marketing programs that the percent of incremental unique visitors to a site from shared links more than doubled when the names of the top sharers where posted on an online leader board, and top-sharers were given access to exclusive content.

Make ‘Em Famous

Use your company’s Twitter and Facebook pages to call out public achievements, like funny or useful YouTube videos on relevant topics posted by your top 1%. Blog () about an interesting article, post, or tweet an influential member of your customer base has written, and let them know what you’ve done. And make sure to extend special offers or direct access to top company executives to your influential users. A big part of making these people feel special involves granting insider access to people, deals, or information that is limited to a select few.

Conclusion

Apparently according to this Mashable.com article, I am not alone.  Author Christina Warren writes about mobile social media and provides stats about social networks and their usage on mobile devises. These  stats clearly indicate that this area has had huge growth and will continue to rise.

I remember that old commercial for Yellow Pages that said “let your fingers do the talking”. These days its “let your mobile devise connect you” so that you can talk in real-time! How easy it can be……. with your mobile device!

Best Nicole

Digital measurement firm comScore released a study today highlighting the rise in social media access via mobile phones and offering some comparison metrics for some of the biggest social networks and their usage on mobile devices.

comScore measured the changes in both mobile browser access to social networks and the access numbers to specific social networks from January 2009 to January 2010.

Some highlights:

– 30% of smartphone users accessed social networks via mobile browsers — this was up from 22.5% in 2009.

- Total social networking access via mobile browsers on all mobile phones rose to 11.1% — this was up from 6.5% in 2009. Most of this growth was in the uptick in smartphone usage.

When it comes to specific social networks, Twitter () and Facebook () both had increases in mobile browser usage in the triple digits. Twitter usage via mobile browsers was up 347% while Facebook mobile browser usage was up 112%.

Mirroring non-mobile usage, MySpace () mobile access was actually down 7% year over year.

It’s important to note that these figures are just from mobile browser statistics — they don’t even take into account the use of mobile applications for Twitter or Facebook.

Both Facebook and Twitter have prospered from having strong mobile strategies. Twitter’s mobile strategy and integration with SMS messages has made it a natural mobile player since its inception; still more and more users are turning to its mobile browser counterpart to send and receive messages.

Facebook has a great presence on mobile platforms, but the fact that so many people are continuing to use it from a mobile browser shows that its strategy of catering to mobile users is working.

Do you use Twitter or Facebook more on your phone or via your regular computer? Let us know!

We are working on all sorts of digital projects these days—many of them are contests—with the plan to build a fan base, so they can begin to engage and connect with their clients one-on-one. As we continue to guide and educate our current clients with social media strategies and execution – we are always trying to sell new clients who have yet to really get engaged. As a women owned and run business – I always use the analogy that social media is a natural for women. It is focused on how we communicate. We like to tell stories and share our ideas. If we have a great experience we want the world to know and when we don’t we want the world to to know that too.

I have written regularly on our SHARE Blog, about the stats that provide overwhelming evidence – about the influence that women have as decision makers and buyers of all products and services. The power of their influence is even greater in an online community environment. The breadth and depth of the reach alone – is many, many, many times greater than that of using traditional methods. Today’s post is inspired by a post from a blog called Whymomsrule.com - I say not just moms but women too! Written by Jamie Dunham, this post provides stats that reinforce the importance of women and social media.

Don’t have a campaign that you feel reaches your target “women consumer”? Time to take a good look at social media in order to reach the women – who are eager to recieve from you – information that is important, authentic and personal to them – as they look to fulfill their needs, wants and benefits. The ones that best fit their day to day life.

Best Nicole

A recent post by Socialmediatoday.com did a nice job of bringing together some new studies that reinforce the importance of women in social media.  It’s not surprising to see that women are more active on social networks than are men.

The latest research from Royal.pingdom.com shows that across 19 social media sites, there were more female users than men on 16 out of the 19 most popular sites.

Here are some interesting facts:

• Twitter and Facebook have approximately the same male-female ratio:  Twitter is 59 percent female and Facebook is 57 percent female.
• The average ratio of all 19 sites was 47 percent male, 53 percent female.
• The most female-dominated sites are Bebo (66 percent female users), MySpace and Classmates.com (64 percent female users).

The three sites with more male users are functional, news related sites – Digg, Reddit and Slashdot.

So why is this female user important?  She’s the consumer, the connector and the decision maker for most of the purchase decisions in the family.

But more important to marketers, women are three times more likely to share personal stories with a friend than men.  Evidently, women are hard-wired that way – with more actual brain activity for bonding and connecting with others.

When we need a recommendation, we tend to ask our friends for their hairdresser, the dentist they go to, their favorite stores and what book they read last.

The multiple effect of a women’s Twitter or Facebook account has important implications for marketers.  The average Facebook user has 130 friends.  The more followers you have on Twitter, the most Tweets per day.  Twenty-one percent of online women tweet.

But remember, marketers, women want information that is important, authentic and personal to them.  Their age, their lifestage and their lifestyle are important indicators of how to address them.

The outcome of this survey reiterates that customers care about sharing content that they are interested in and passionate about, but deals and discounts are definitely a key component in this relationship. It is an age old tradition of give and take.

How are you giving in return for what you want to receive with your 2010 social media online marketing?

Best Nicole

Deals Aren’t The Only Thing

Brand marketers want consumers to follow them to build buzz and engagement, but social media users often desire something in return. What they’ve come to expect is a good deal, but many consumers—including the most active users of social sites—are also interested in deeper engagement.

A December 2009 MarketingSherpa survey indicated that learning about specials and sales was the top motivation of those who friended or followed a brand online, supporting the results of earlier surveys. But looking for savings was followed closely by learning about new products, features or services.

Users described as “max connectors”—those with at least 500 social connections—were less interested than average in getting deals. Instead, they cared about new products and company culture, demonstrating the deeper engagement expected by social media power users.

An earlier study, by Razorfish, also found that exclusive deals and offers were the primary motivation of US Internet users following brands on Twitter.

Respondents who friended a brand on Facebook or MySpace responded similarly, though they were more likely to become a fan because they were a current customer (32.9%) than were users of Twitter.

Sharing interesting content that users care about, along with the deals and discounts they have come to expect, will both keep them engaged and spur them to pass along marketing messages.

Keep up on the latest digital trends. Learn more about an eMarketer Total Access subscription today.

Mashable.com posted an article a couple of days ago by Josh Catone, that was originally featured on the American Express Open Forum. This article backs up the thoughts I open with today. It addresses the conversation I have with anyone who asks me about what we do and how we approach building a digital strategy with our clients. In our case, our ace in the hole is that we began (long before social media was on the radar) in the world of branding and marketing offline by engaging with our customers. We are now able to use that knowledge to integrate an online profile that becomes a seamless extension of what a client may be doing in a traditional space and knit the two mediums together. Building cultures and defining brands through those cultures, is how you will be able to gain success over time. This post shows some ways that you can do some preliminary searches and talk to people offline to find out how they best will connect with you via social media—so that when you finally dive in, they are ready to swim with you and invite others into your pool!

Best Nicole

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Twitter, Facebook. LinkedIn, MySpace, Foursquare, Brightkite, Posterous, Tumblr. The list of social networks and social media tools goes on and on, and as a small business owner, the biggest limitation you’ll run up against when planning to use social media is not likely going to be cost, but time. Utilizing social networks and web tools properly requires a significant time investment, both for learning how to use the networks and setting them up, as well as maintaining an active presence and building a community. Unlike corporations, most small business owners do not have the ability to hire a dedicated social media or online community manager.

How does a small business owner know where to invest their time and resources?

Talk to People

Asking these sorts of questions of your customers can be invaluable. You’ll learn which sites the people who buy from you use, and what uses of those social media products and services would be most useful to them. By spending a couple of weeks talking to your customers and getting their feedback, you’ll be able to hit the ground running and dive into social media already knowing that your time and resources will be well spent.

Do Some Preliminary Searches

Even after talking to customers, before you commit to putting a lot of time and effort into building your presence on a specific social media network, you should do some searches to see what’s out there. It’s possible that your customers are already on the network and talking about your business. And it’s probable that your competitors already have a presence there. Spend some time searching around the network or tool to see what’s there.

Start by searching for your company name. Are your customers already talking about you? What are they saying? The types of things they’re talking about might inform how you should utilize that platform. Next search for your competitors and evaluate how they’re using the platform. What seems to be effective for them? Is it something you can emulate? Finally, do some more general searches for keywords related to the product, service, or industry you’re in. You might be able to attract new customers through social media, but only if the people in your key demographic are using that social network.

Keep Communications Channels Open

On the blog Mediashift, Author Nick Mendosa did an interview with Doug Neil of Universal Pictures. One of the questions he asked was ”What do you think is Universal’s most successful digital marketing campaign to date — whether defined by online buzz, consumer participation, box office or other metrics?” “Fast & Furious” and “Bruno” were two of the most successful campaigns this year. “Fast & Furious” had over one million Facebook fans by the time the film opened. In addition, the content that was released — trailers, photos, clips, an iPhone game — had significant traffic. Similarly, “Bruno” built a tremendous community online — 700,000-plus fans on Facebook, 350,000-plus friends on MySpace, 60,000 followers on Twitter — which demonstrated the interest in the film and the character.”

In June 2009, E-marketer had a report titled “Digital Media Meets Entertainment”, which explores the three pillars of entertainment: music, movies and video game. Which “are all facing disruptive changes prompting them to explore opportunities in digital distribution, digital marketing and social media.” The report analyzes the the usage and economic trends that are fundamentally altering the ways consumers spend their leisure time—and money.

“With these dynamics in play, all three industries are adopting new business models centered on digital content and distribution—and social media is a key link in the chain.”

Cisco’s Media Solutions Group attended conferences around the US that focused on “Discussions About the Social Entertainment Experience.” In this article, which included the E-marketer stat that I provided above, “is an excellent chart that demonstrates how artist driven communities like allseanpaul.com develop over time—how the artist/fan relationship develops given the social media tools that allow a two-way dialogue between artist and fans. Again, it’s about content and how the technologies that facilitate artist to fan relationships enable further commerce, and fan engagement. The blog Hit Singularity offered a nice chart below that illustrates that point.”

Our experience (along with the knowledge I gained while writing this post), points to how necessary it is (particularly for those in the business of promoting) to manage all of these platforms and to track fan engagement. Which will also help to decipher how social media leads to ROI for whatever your goals may be. This could include listening to your community, promoting a movie, album or event, creating an audience for an advertiser and so much more. Add to that an understanding of your target market’s social computing behavior so that the channels you are using are the ones that will be utilized. A lot of food for thought….ultimately the social entertainment experience has clearly become a joint partner in capturing a consumers attention. Wonder what my 14 yr old early adopter will be messaging me next!

Best Nicole

Today’s article from ManageSmarter, by Alex Palmer,  provides some research that concludes just that. Customer reviews are really valued by web shoppers as well as info from family and friends. One of the best sales tools you can implement is the feedback of your customers on your products and services. It’s a great way to get the conversation going and get them engaged! Besides, your future customers are eager to hear from them.

Best Nicole

Online shoppers trust the online reviews of strangers more than the recommendations of their friends, new research finds.

“Conversations Among Consumers,” a new report from online retail marketer Ripple6 and the e-tailing group, finds that shoppers buying products on the Internet are influenced both by online social networking sites and face-to-face conversations with friends. But when it comes to whose opinions influence the shoppers, strangers have as much if not more impact than friends.

The survey, which drew on the responses of 1,000 online shoppers, found that while 46 percent of e-shoppers find value in product recommendations from their friends, 47 percent look to onsite customer reviews when making a decision.

Online consumers also look to expert information (43 percent), information from individuals they consider “like me” (40 percent) and product comparison tools (38 percent) to help decide what to buy.

Two-thirds (67 percent) of respondents spend at least one hour per week on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Forty-three percent said they make purchases as a result of time spent on these sites. Sixty-five percent of respondents see value in connecting directly with other shoppers who bought similar products.

Representatives from the e-tailing group and Ripple6 believe these results point to consumers’ desires for more online communities where they can share recommendations and opinions about their purchases. In a statement, Ripple6 CEO Sang Kim said, “This research confirms that most of the things consumers find valuable are those delivered by community.”

But friends still play an important role in influencing consumers. Eighty-three percent of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place.

The groundswell is here! Are you ready to engage?

Best Nicole

Here’s a New Lexicon to Help You Think Clearly

As I speak with companies that want to engage with their customers in the online social world, I continually find people confused as soon as they begin talking about “social media.” The reason is the baggage that comes along with the word “media.”

Media is something that media companies control, and media is overwhelmingly one-way. The online social world is about as two-way, multi-way, any-way as it can be. Nobody controls it, not even Facebook, which found it can’t even change its own terms of service.

Media is something people spend time with. So are online social interactions. That’s a pretty tenuous reason to call it media. And while, as in media, you can advertise in social network sites, that is the least interesting use for them.

Here are some words you can use to think more clearly.

If you want to refer to the whole world of people connecting and drawing strength from each other online, you can call it the “social web” or the “social internet” (or you can call it the “groundswell,” if you wish). It includes huge sites such as MySpace, communities, YouTube, the blogosphere and so on. (You could call the whole thing “Web 2.0,” but people often use that term to refer to a set of technologies — not the best way for advertisers to focus — and it doesn’t get directly at the people-to-people aspects.)

If you want to build an environment where consumers or other customers connect with you and each other, call it a “social application.” It could be a community, a user-generated-content site, or even adding ratings and reviews to your site. By calling these applications, you remind yourself that 1) it’s going to take some effort to build it right, and 2) people will interact with it. And you may even remind yourself that 3) it could last a long time, rather than coming and going quickly as advertising campaigns and media do.

If you’re going to participate in a big social site (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube), call it a “social-network site” (or just a “social network,” for short). And you’re often better off with a channel or a profile or an identity than an ad in such an environment.

But no matter what you do, the sooner you stop thinking of the social web as media, the better off you are.

Best Nicole

“There’s so much talk about social media that it is easy for people to become cynical, perhaps losing track of the fact that it can have a positive impact on your business.”

So how can you determine whether a social media strategy is proving beneficial to your business? How do you know that it is working out for you? And is now really the best time to find out?

Rather than focusing on individual social media campaigns, I’d like to look at social media measurement from the perspective of a business that a) buys into social media, b) commits to it over a period of time, and as such c) has an integrated social media strategy. You people know who you are!

Let it breathe

The key with social media measurement, I think, is to stand back and take a widescreen approach to measurement. 

Rather than focusing on the smaller, campaign-specific metrics, such as traffic from Twitter or the number of fans on Facebook, wouldn’t it be better to look at how it helps to shift the most important business KPIs, such as sales, profits, as well as customer retention and satisfaction rates?

To do this effectively, you’ll need to give your social media strategy time. Like a good wine, it needs to breathe. In doing so you will be able to look at your overall business performance, as well as the performance of your social media campaigns over the duration. 

Take the Skittles campaign. I called it ‘brave’, ‘amazing’, ‘sensational’ and ‘ballsy’. I still think it is all of those things, and I’ll think that next year even if it fails miserably. It was a big move. But nobody yet knows for sure whether giving over a brand’s entire website to consumer-powered media channels is a smart move. Only time will tell.

Social media vs TV advertising

Here I want to make a small point on accuracy, and attribution. I firmly believe that if you can spend tens of millions on TV ads and make any kind of sense out of that investment, in terms of TV ads helping to boost sales while increasing the key brand metrics, then you can make sense of your (much smaller) investment into social media. 

TV campaigns can run for a long time, and the effects on the business are a) not known immediately and b) possibly overstated. Hindsight is a beautiful thing, and advertising executives (and creative agencies) like to take credit for improving sales, when really these sales might have little or nothing to do with TV ads. Attribution is one thing, but knowing that something works is entirely different. Social media appears to be a mixture of the two.

Maybe we can create a model for scoring the performance of social media, or for splitting up attribution by channel, but the truth is that there needs to be some room for manoeuvre when making sense of things. There are few absolutes in measuring advertising campaigns, if you work outside of paid search. You can far more accurately measure social media than you can a TV ad, but like TV advertising, or PR for that matter, there has to be some scope to play around with attribution.

Like TV advertising, social media will play a role in moving brand metrics, and perhaps more so (it is easier to make a noise and to be socially active; there’s an anytime, anywhere factor at work here. And hey, shit sticks around longer when you throw it online). There is a huge viral factor with social media sites (behold ye retweeters). You can really see word of mouth in action on social media sites, and as such there is less guesswork involved when measuring the results – less extrapolation is needed. If 500,000 consumers start saying good things about your brand, with few dissenters, then surely it is fair to say that brand favourability will have improved?

If brand indicators matter, or if you subscribe to the AIDA model, or if you care enough to undertake research to find out your own brand metrics (PDF), then by all means factor in your social media efforts when attributing the success of your overall marketing campaigns.

Take a snapshot

Before you start the clock it is a good idea to benchmark where you’re at…

1. Make a note of the obvious numbers (number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Digg links, Delicious bookmarks, and referrals from social media sites, plus existing website traffic).
2. Make a note of the less obvious benchmarks (such as SEO rankings and referrals, customer satisfaction scores and other business data). 
3. Make a note of ROI benchmarks. How much are you paying to acquire customers via other marketing channels? How vast is that advertising budget, and how is it being split up? And what proportion is being directed into channels that you cannot accurately measure?  

After that make sure you’re doing the right things. There are lots of social media experts handing out lots of advice for free. There are all manner of social media agencies out there that will help you, if you don’t have the appetite to do this in-house. And there are sites devoted to measuring social media. Get some, get some.

Measuring the effects of social media in 10 steps

1. Traffic
This is one of the more obvious ways of measuring social media. Remember that quality often beats quantity, though not always (as many CPM-focused publishers will surely testify). 

2. Interaction
Participation is a valuable indicator for many publishers (and brands). It says something about the kind of traffic you are attracting. Remember that an engaged customer is a highly valuable one. Interaction can be anything from leaving comments, to participating in support forums, to leaving customer reviews and ratings. It can happen on your website and on other websites. Keep your eyes and ears open!

3. Sales
We at Econsultancy are tracking sales from organic Google referrals and also paid search. It didn’t seem like much of a leap to track other channels, such as Twitter. Try it. Dell did, and discovered that it made $1m from Twitter in 18 months. Blendtec’s ‘Will It Blend?’ campaign on YouTube helped to drive “a five-fold increase in sales”. 

4. Leads
Some companies simply cannot process sales online, because their products or services do not allow for it. For example, the automotive industry, which tends to measure the effects of its online ad campaigns by the amount of brochures requests, or test drives booked in (as opposed to car sales, which is, in marketing terms, an altogether more macro effort). B2B operators are in a similar position. If you are a consultant and spend time interacting on LinkedIn Answers then there’s a way of tracking that activity to enquiries about your services. The same applies across the spectrum of social media sites. Choose your weapon, thought leaders.

5. Search marketing
The SEO factor cannot be understated. Social media can be far more powerful in this regard than you might initially imagine. For example, a well-placed story / video / image on a site like Digg will generate a lot of traffic and a nice link from Digg itself, but the real win here is that it will generate a lot more interest beyond Digg. Bloggers and major publishers are following Digg’s Upcoming channel to unearth new and interesting stories (Sky News now has a Twitter correspondent). One link and 20,000 referrals from Digg might lead on to 40,000 referrals and 100 links from other sites. The long tail, in action. 100 links means that your page might well wind up being placed highly on Google, resulting in lots of ongoing traffic. Remember too that you can use sites like Twitter and YouTube to claim valuable search rankings on your brand search terms (‘social search optimisation’).

6. Brand metrics
Word of mouth and the viral factor (inherent in sites like Twitter, Facebook and Digg) can help shift the key brand metrics, both negatively and positively. These include brand favourability, brand awareness, brand recall, propensity to buy, etc. Expensive TV ads are measured in this way, so if these metrics are good enough for TV then they’re surely good enough for the internet? Positive brand associations via social media campaigns can help drive clicks on paid search ads, and responses to other forms of advertising. We know that TV ads boost activity on search engines, resulting in paid search success stories, so I’d bet that social media can do the same.

7. PR
The nature of public relations has changed, forever. The last five years have been largely about the traditional PR folks not really being able to figure out the blogosphere. But if PRs cannot control the bloggers, then how on earth will they handle consumers? The distinct worlds of PR, customer service, and marketing are fusing. Twitter means everybody has a blog these days, and somewhere to shout about things to their friends (and beyond). Social media sites are the biggest echo chambers in the world! In any event, if you can measure PR (beyond adding up column inches and applying a random multiple to the equivalent size on the rate card!), then you can measure social media.

8. Customer engagement
Given the prevalence of choice, and the ease with which consumers can switch from one brand to another, customer engagement is one of the most important of all metrics in today’s business environment. Engagement can take place offline and online, both on your website and on other sites, particularly social media sites. Customer engagement is key to improving satisfaction and loyalty rates, and revenue. By listening to customers, and letting them know that you are listening, you can improve your business, your products, and your levels of service. The alternative is to ignore customers, which sends out a terrible message. Our research found that an engaged customer will recommend your brand, convert more readily and purchase more often. 

9. Retention
A positive side effect of increased customer engagement – assuming certain other factors in play work in your favour – is an increase in customer retention. This is going to be a crucial factor in the success of your business in the years to come. Make no bones about it: we are moving into an age of optimisation and retention. Watch your retention rates as you start participating in social media. Over time, all things remaining equal, they should rise. Zappos, which is a case study in how-to-do-Twitter (and active on MySpace, Facebook and Youtube), is closing in on $1bn of sales this year, and “75% of its orders are from repeat customers”. Go figure, as they say.

10. Profits
If you can reduce customer churn, and engage customers more often, the result will surely be that you’ll generate more business from your existing customer base (who in turn will recommend your business to their network of friends, family, and social media contacts). This reduces your reliance on vast customer acquisition budgets to maintain or grow profits. It makes for a far more profitable and more efficient organisation. I really hope that more businesses will find a better balance between acquisition and retention, sooner rather than later, from a resourcing standpoint. Too many acquisition strategies appear to be ill-conceived, are not joined up (both in terms of marketing and also operations), and as such are ripe for optimisation. Plug the leaky bucket and you won’t need to turn the tap so hard to top it up. And remember that old adage about it being cheaper to keep existing customers than to seek out new ones.

For those individuals and businesses who realize that this is now THE way to create honest, transparent relationships with people who love your brand, product, service or idea—while engaging with other like minded people—the scope of your reach globally is unlimited. I think with celebrities, high profilers, presidents and prime ministers all currently clamoring to find ways to connect one to one (and one to many) the game is on!

That being said, bcad Group has a FB page. Come be a fan! Let us know about your page and we will connect.

Best Nicole

Facebook now lets you have more than 5,000 friends.

Starting next week, you can ignore the ones you’re not that excited about.

The world’s leading online social-networking service on Wednesday unveiled a redesign that adds Twitter-like real-time chatter, better filtering of incoming information, and a platform for reaching mass audiences.

Facebook will begin shifting users to a new home page design on March 11 and posted a preview at the popular social-networking website for its famously change-wary users to check out.

“Our intuition is this is the right direction,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in disclosing the changes at the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

“This isn’t the last time we are going to change this. As long as the amount of people sharing information is going up, we know we are going in the right direction.”

Fast-growing Facebook boasts more than 175 million members and Zuckerberg believes that number will crest 200 million by the end of this year.

Facebook on Wednesday lifted a 5,000-friend cap at the website, allowing people with large audiences to have their virtual voices heard instantly by unlimited numbers of fans.

Those signed up for the new Facebook profile pages at its launch include US President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and rock band U2.

The change positions Facebook to try to make money with a feature that provides an online platform for people with brands to promote or messages to spread.

“There is a philosophical change; we want to converge all these different kinds of people on the website,” Zuckerberg said. “Bono, the New York Times, public figures and more have messages and want their voices heard by their audiences.”

Facebook still lets users filter which friends get access to profile pages that typically hold personal information such as family photos, intimate thoughts and private phone numbers.

Changes announced on Wednesday, which include making the status update question “What’s on your mind?” build on a theme in a Facebook home page redesign last year.

Zuckerberg began the presentation by saying he “admires” work done by micro-blogging service Twitter and social-networking rival MySpace and that a clear trend is that people want to stream information quickly.

“Over the past five years, Facebook has evolved to make sharing information more efficient and to give people more control,” Zuckerberg said of the website he started in 2004.

“This year, we are going to continue making the flow of information even faster and more customized.”

Zuckerberg said he can envision Facebook eventually letting users use smartphones to find out at any given moment what their friends are up to.

The new home page lets people better filter messages or updates from those listed as “friends.”

“You can decide you no longer want to get updates from your old friend from high school who you rarely talk to, or you can filter the stream to only see updates about your family members,” Zuckerberg said.

“And now, if you want, you can read what President Obama is saying on the same page as your best friend.”

New profile pages rolled out Wednesday for public figures and organizations are interactive, allowing Facebook users to post responses on the “walls” of the likes of Sarkozy, Obama, Bono, and talk-show celebrity Oprah Winfrey.

“Obama can post what he thinks of the new economic stimulus package and you can reply ‘Awesome,’” Facebook director of product Chris Cox said.

The list of high-profile people who launched profile pages on Wednesday includes US governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sarah Palin and actor couple Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher.

“Just as you connect with friends on Facebook, you can now connect and communicate with celebrities, musicians, politicians and organizations,” Zuckerberg said.

“This means that you can find out that Oprah is reading a book backstage before a show, CNN posted a breaking story or U2 is working on a new song, just as you would see that your friend uploaded new photos from her trip.”