Twitter ads business model

Twitter is planning a new ad funded business model according to Charles Arthur writing in the Guardian this morning.

He quotes a story coming out of All things digital which claims that

1. Ads will be tied to Twitter searches, in the same way that Google’s (GOOG) original ads were. So a search for, say, “laptop,” may generate an ad for Dell (DELL). The ads will only show up in search results, which means users who don’t search for something won’t see them in their regular Twitterstreams.

2. The ads will use the Twitter format–140 or fewer characters–and will be distributed via the third-party software and services that use Twitter’s API. The services will have the option of displaying the ads, and Twitter will share revenue with those that do.

3. Twitter will work with ad agencies and buyers to seed the program, but plans on moving to a self-serve model like Google’s, down the road.

The power of twitter at Sony

Sony have clearly demonstrated the power of using twitter after it revealed that it has generated over £1m in sales through its twitter account.

New Media age reports that

Speaking at Marketing Week’s Social Media for Brand Building event yesterday, Sony head of corporate communications Nick Sharples said the company sees Twitter as a viable sales platform as well as a tool to amplify PR activity.

adding that

Sony launched a campaign for a special edition of its Cyber-shot camera range last year and used social media to extend PR coverage over nine months, resulting in over £12.5m in revenue.

Better networking or information overload?

The arguments have been heard many times but are we actually better off for all this technology?

As Vaughan Bell writes in a cracking article over at Slate magazine

Worries about information overload are as old as information itself, with each generation reimagining the dangerous impacts of technology on mind and brain.

As far back as the sixteenth century a Swiss scientist,Conrad Gessner,wrote of how the modern world overwhelmed people with data and that this overabundance was both "confusing and harmful" to the mind.

Maybe no different to the scare stories that we read about the internet today?

But it seems ecah technology brings it warnings.As Bell writes

When radio arrived, we discovered yet another scourge of the young: The wireless was accused of distracting children from reading and diminishing performance in school, both of which were now considered to be appropriate and wholesome. In 1936, the music magazine the Gramophone reported that children had "developed the habit of dividing attention between the humdrum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling excitement of the loudspeaker" and described how the radio programs were disturbing the balance of their excitable minds.

However all the evidence suggests contrary to what the Daily Mail might think,that those who use the net and social networks actually tend to have better offline social lives.After all being social is all about making connections,the net means that they are more easily made.

Malaysian politics shows the way

One very good example of polititians using online tools to woo voters comes from Malaysia.

As BBC news reported earlier in the week.

when 2008's elections saw the ruling coalition lose key seats to the opposition, then-Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi admitted his government had underestimated the power of the internet.
So now, members of parliament from all over the country are using Twitter and Facebook to communicate with their voters.

He now currently has over 70,000 fans to go along with over 9,000 followers on Twitter.

Mobile and social media hard at work on aid to Haiti

Besides producing coveerage of the disaster in Haiti,social media is also making a significant contribution to the aid programme.

According to the New York Times,

many Americans are reaching for their cellphones to make a donation via text message. And plenty of them are then spreading the word to others on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

adding that

The mobile donations are part of a larger surge of money flowing to the relief effort. The Red Cross said it had collected nearly $35 million as of Thursday night, surpassing the amounts it received in the same time period after Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami.

So you’re drowning in a sea of information. Perhaps the answer is more information.

The New York Times' David Carr reflects on a year of twitter

In the pantheon of digital nomenclature — brands within a sector of the economy that grew so fast that all the sensible names were quickly taken — it would be hard to come up with a noun more trite than Twitter. It impugns itself, promising something slight and inconsequential, yet another way to make hours disappear and have nothing to show for it. And just in case the noun is not sufficiently indicting

and on its professionalism

the best people on Twitter communicate with economy and precision, with each element — links, hash tags and comments — freighted with meaning. Professional acquaintances whom I find insufferable on every other platform suddenly become interesting within the confines of Twitter.

This year's Christmas No 1 will be held up as yet another victory for social media in its war against traditions this year.

The facebook campiagn to prevent Simon Cowell's dominace of the charts ending in victory yesterday evening.

What does it actually mean though?

This from Robert Andrews at Paid Content

1. unlimited digital shelf space for archives can be restorative to long-ago out-of-print cultural artefacts - providing there is significant enough impetus

2. virality only requires a single seed to spread, as long as enough people share its sentiment

3. there is a large enough constituent in the UK frustrated at the lock on culture exerted by national talent contests

And in case you want to know what all the fuss is about

Despite social media content is still king

The tools of social media are all well and good but the real issue is providing the content to attract the target audience.

It is especially true for the business audience and as Bristol Editor says

One of the ways social media can win for businesses is by placing their content at the very heart of their marketing. We all know that audiences, including Google, value content and regularly uploaded fresh content above all else. The content dominates the relevance and positioning.

Of course whatever the business model might be telling us at the moment,content is not cheap and as he continues

Effective, quality, timely content integrated across a range of social media platforms represents one of the most powerful ways our clients can gain attention online, win engagement from a number of different sources and sites, as well as providing a cost-effective, multi-channel distribution method for their marketing content.

Research shows 2010 will see big investment in social media

A recent survey have indicated that business is preparing to invest a lot more in social media.

A survey of more than 1,100 companies carried out in September 2009 by Econsultancy produced in association with bigmouthmedia found that that an overwhelming majority of companies (86%) surveyed plan to spend more money on social media in 2010, and a further 13% are planning to keep the same level of budget.

In addition

* Almost two-­thirds (64%) of companies say they have experimented with social media but have not done much.

* Micro-­blogging (i.e. Twitter) is now the most widely adopted social media tactic, used by 78% of company respondents.

* Just under half of companies (46%) are not yet using reputation or buzz monitoring tools to understand what is being said about their brand.

* Nearly a third of respondents (31%) are not spending any of their budget on social media.

* There is a mixed view of the benefits of Twitter, with almost a third of respondents (31%) saying that there are tremendous opportunities available.

* The biggest barrier to better social media engagement for companies surveyed is the lack of resources (54%).

Ht-Mark Comerford

That question-how do you measure social media?

How do you measure the impact of social media?

Some say it is very difficult,nigh on impossible but David Berkowitz reckons there are a hundred ways and just to prove the point he lists them out

Here are the first 10

1. Volume of consumer-created buzz for a brand based on number of posts

2. Amount of buzz based on number of impressions

3. Shift in buzz over time

4. Buzz by time of day / daypart

5. Seasonality of buzz

6. Competitive buzz

7. Buzz by category / topic

8. Buzz by social channel (forums, social networks, blogs, Twitter, etc)

9. Buzz by stage in purchase funnel (e.g., researching vs. completing transaction vs. post-purchase)

10. Asset popularity (e.g., if several videos are available to embed, which is used more)

Ads work better on search than social

Whilst on the topic of search,research from Mintel suggests that consumers are more likely to pay attention to ads on search engines and price comparison sites than on social networks.

New Media age reports that

consumers are most likely to pay attention to ads placed on search engines (54%) and price comparison sites (43%) than social networks (28%) and email (22%).

But there is also a gender issue

Women are more likely to see ads on social networking sites, 47% compared with 41% of men. But men are more likely to see ads when consuming on-demand video content as just 27% of women had seen an ad around VOD content compared with 36% of men.

Facebook-a portal for product branding

A new survey on peoples use of facebook in the United States has found that they have more conversations about brands than the typical US consumer.

The survey by the Keller Fay Group assessed over 350,000 pieces of marketing-related "buzz" each year, with its data covering everything from personal to online interactions.

It found that people

had an average of 36% more brand-focused conversations a week than the typical US consumer.

and it applied to

a broad range of categories, and included an uptick of 47% for children's products, 46% for retail and apparel, and 43% for technology brands.

Ht-Joanna Geary

Twitter looking to businesses to monetise the model

For me the most interesting part of yesterday's NESTA sponsored discussion on twitter was the news that the company is looking at launching corporate accounts that would help the site begin to generate revenues.

Biz Stone dropped this into the conversation adding that they hoped to roll out some of these tools by the end of the year

“This takes advantage of some of the commercial use of Twitter we’ve seen from businesses like airlines and big box stores,” he said, “We want to present to them a layer of features that allows them to become better at Twitter, show them some of the analytics.”

The discussion features Stephen Fry, Biz Stone, Founder and Chief Executive of Twitter; and Reid Hoffman, Founder and Chief Executive of LinkedIn who discussed the future impact of social media.

You can watch the whole thing here

Why people follow brands on twitter

An interesting survey from the The digital agency Razorfish in the States via (Joanna Geary)

It found that discounts and special offers are the main reasons why "connected consumers" in the US choose to "follow" brands on social networks like Facebook and Twitter

The digital agency, part of Publicis Groupe, surveyed 1,000 Americans in an effort to identify the characteristics of "connected consumers", the audience which it argued "our clients are most interested in both understanding and reaching."

and

Among participants tracking brands on Twitter, 44% said access to exclusive deals was the main reason for doing so, a total that fell to 23.5% opting to link to these feeds because they were an existing customer of the brand, and 22.7% in order to view "interesting or entertaining content."

Want to be a happiness Ambassador?

Well it had to happen.

Coca Cola has taken to the social media bandwagon like a duck to water.

Mashable reports that

they are on a mission to find happiness in the 206 different countries that sell Coca-Cola products across the world.
With the Expedition 206 campaign, Coca-Cola is tapping regular people to be their “Happiness Ambassadors” and travel the world for the whole of 2010 and document their quest via blog posts, tweets, YouTube (YouTube) videos, TwitPics, and other social media mentions.

Keep emailing your boss

Certain e-mail connections and patterns at work correlate with higher revenue production.

That's the conclusion of a joint survey by IBM and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Business Week reports that

Workers who have strong communication ties with their managers tend to bring in more money than those who steer clear of the boss, according to this new analysis of social networks in the workplace

So the message is -Keep messaging the boss

Ht-Robin Hamman