A Look at Twitter Marketing

• 42% of Twitter users wish to learn about products and services
• 41% already provide opinions about them
• 28% want discounts and offers and 21% claim to purchase products
• 19% are using Twitter for customer support

If you want to generate some new top-line revenue for your business, you would likely focus on new customer attraction and Twitter is a great place to start. And to do so you should consider putting together a promotional program with discounts to attract those deal hunters.

However; if your goal is to build long term relationship with your customers who will want to keep buying from you, tread carefully before you start tweeting discounts to one-time customers who will never pay full-price.

Knowing your customer on Twitter can greatly increase the effectiveness of your Internet marketing campaign especially when combined with direct response marketing tactics.

Once you know who you’re talking to you just have to find them using a combination of Google and Twitter search.

What to Tweet

Ahhh…the $54,000 question of what do people tweet? What should you tweet? Well, it really depends on why you’re using Twitter and for for what purpose.

Here's some research data on what gets RE Tweeted most often:

Google: Doubleclick Ad Exchange growing, boosting CPMs

It has been nearly three years since Google acquired Doubleclick for $3.1bn and despite the fact that Google's largest cash cow is still far and away AdWords, the search behemoth has quietly built up a very strong presence in the display advertising market.

If the numbers from Doubleclick's ad exchange are any indication, that presence will only be getting stronger.

Over the weekend, Google published a report on the progress of the Doubleclick Ad Exchange, and it had some impressive figures to share.

Perhaps the most important: according to Google VP of Product Management Neal Mohan, "when publishers make ad space available in the Ad Exchange, and the Exchange wins the auction, publishers generate, on average, 188% more revenue compared with indirect sales to ad networks and other third-party buyers."

Obviously, that figure will interest a lot of publishers, even if it won't solve the challenges inherent in pure-play advertising business models. The even better news for publishers, however, is that Google is adding a number of new features that could be winners.

As detailed by paidContent, one of those features is Private Ad Slots, which allow publishers to invite select advertisers to bid on exclusive inventory not available generally.

According to Google, display spending amongst its thousand largest advertisers grew 75% last year, and real-time bidding accounts for 56% of buyers' spend.

The evolution and momentum of the display ad space is certainly a boon for publishers, but publishers also will also need tools to protect the value of their inventory and maximize revenue. That's why features like Private Ad Slots, which help publishers retail a good level of control over their inventory, could be very important to publishers going forward.

At the end of the day, it seems pretty clear that Google's billion-dollar bet on display advertising was a good one. The question now, of course, is whether the increasingly sophisticated technology advertisers and publishers have at their disposal for buying and selling display ad inventory will actually help advertisers buy inventory capable of delivering ROI.

Patricio Robles/Econsultancy

The backlash over Google's HTML5 video bet

Recently on Cnet: 


Choosing strategies based on what you believe to be long-term benefits is generally a good idea when running a business, but if you manage to alienate the world in the process, the long term may become irrelevant.

It was hard to miss the response that accompanied Google's announcement earlier this weekH.264, a widely used technology for encoding and decoding video files so they are playable on PCs and mobile devices. that it no longer planned to support the H.264 codec for the HTML5 video tag in its Chrome browser in order to focus on the WebM technology. Depending on what you read, Google is either evil, brilliant, hypocritical, cunning, principled, or confused in dropping support for
What's more possible is that Google is cutting off its nose to spite its face. Google's two-year plan for WebM supremacy rests on a complicated and shaky foundation of assumptions about how video producers, content creators, equipment makers, and patent lawyers will behave during that period.
Google declined to comment for this story, but people familiar with its thinking said the company is aware of the backlash yet believes that painful steps are sometimes needed to make progress on the Web. However, while many of the emotional responses to its announcement were absurdly over the top, plenty were pragmatic, producing another piece of evidence that the tech industry is getting a little tired of watching another episode of Google Knows Best.
Waiting for codec
First, a quick recap: The W3C standards body has been debating how to implement one of the holy grails of the HTML5 standards--a
But Google also supported a rival codec called WebM, which it released to the open-source community last year after acquiring the technology behind the codec from a company called On2 Technologies. The problem with H.264, in Google's mind, is that it is controlled by a consortium of companies called MPEG-LA that have agreed to pool patents involving the technology. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and a long list of household names are members of the group, which receives licensing royalties from companies that want to use H.264 video in streaming content or playing content on devices.
On Tuesday, Google declared itself squarely in the WebM camp, saying "though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies." Two main lines of dissent exploded over the next few days: one, that Google has put philosophy over actual user experience; and two, that Google is two-faced for dropping H.264 because it's not "open" while embedding Flash in Chrome at present, in that all it really wants to do is force people onto its technology and make life hard for Apple.
Let's get the second argument out of the way first: calling Google a hypocrite for supporting Flash at the moment while preaching the WebM gospel is disingenuous. When you see the world as one big battle between two giants, every little development gets framed in that lens.
Google's blog post is talking about a moment in the future, at least a few years down the road when HTML5 ideally has replaced or at least sidelined technologies like Flash, which desktop browser companies really have no choice but to support in 2011 if their users want to watch video on the Web. Apple may have decided to stop shipping Macs with Flash preinstalled, but even it hasn't barred the technology from the Mac the way it has from the iOS device lineup despite CEO Steve Jobs' well-known thoughts on Flash.
As in many cases involving Google, "open" can be defined in many different ways depending on whether you like the company. A Google critic is likely to point out the supposed hypocrisy, while a Google supporter might argue that supporting both Flash and HTML5 technologies is more "open" when it comes to the interests of the user, who just wants to know if this here gizmo thing gets "Family Guy." (We'll save for another day the discussion about what Google's "don't be evil" pledge really means.)
Split decisions
But Google appears to be underestimating the opposition to its strategy from those who see it as bad business, not just the jeers from the Applelistas who have replaced Microsoft with Google as Public Enemy No. 1.
Video producers are clearly not thrilled with the move. Some of my colleagues at CNET TV are extremely disappointed that Google has chosen to make their lives much more difficult by forcing difficult choices.
At some point in the future, those folks will either have to encode our video in both H.264 and WebM into what amounts to a huge increase in their workload and costs, bet on one standard or another knowing they're going to cause problems for half the user base, or throw their hands up in the air and continue to use Flash video, which solves the interoperability problem but denies them the opportunity to be more creative with how video is placed on a Web page: the whole freaking point of the HTML5 video tag in the first place. And that doesn't even address what to do with 6 years of archived CNET video.

Those who produce CNET TV are not crazy about theprospect of having to

support two different HTML5 video codecs at some point down the road.

(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Google thinks they'll choose WebM because it's open and royalty free. However, H.264 is a superior technology and companies are often willing to pay for things that they know will work and work well, said Wilson Tang, a producer for CNET TV and co-host of The 404 podcast. And besides, H.264 isn't going anywhere anytime soon: with widespread support from Web video content producers and millions of iPhones, iPads, and other H.264-oriented devices out in the wild, no media company can afford to toss those people overboard in support of Google's desire for a more open standard.
Truth be told, video producers were facing an uncomfortable decision anyway because of Mozilla's insistence that Firefox--with 22 percent of the market--support only WebM and Ogg Theora, and the sense that the W3C standards body would never settle on a standard codec. Still, it's an easier decision to make when 65 percent or so of the market supports one technology as opposed to a more even split, and Chrome adoption is growing while other browsers stay flat or decline.
What if camera makers were to include support for WebM video in their devices? That's one way Google thinks it could skip the extra work involved in transcoding H.264 video over to WebM and get more WebM videos out in the wild, and it's talking to device manufacturers about the technology.
But while that may work for consumers recording vacation videos on their personal cameras, professional video producers don't shoot video in either H.264 or WebM. They use "professional codecs" that allow video producers to do all kinds of post-production work that moms and dads uploading videos of Christmas morning simply don't require, Tang said.
That video then gets encoded into the H.264 delivery format for playback because mobile devices largely use H.264 hardware decoders; WebM hardware decoders are starting to emerge but are far from common. It's possible to decode video in software, but it's a killer for battery life on a mobile device.
The biggest potential landmine for Google when it comes to WebM is in the courtroom. It seems like only a matter of time before someone in the MPEG-LA group decides to test whether WebM's technology infringes on the patent pool behind the H.264 standard.
That means content producers who bet on WebM could find themselves in a position where they get caught up in patent uncertainty, and that's a place no one wants to be. Just ask anybody who bought BlackBerrys for their company five years ago and sweated out the final days of a landmark patent trial involving the gadget.
Shells in the omelet
No matter whether the backlash is emotional or reasoned, Google still has to deal with it if it wants to advance its philosophy that a royalty-free codec is the best solution for the future of Web video. Google has urged adoption of the HTML5 technologies for several years as part of its big bet that the Web will become one big software development platform.
However, if the end result of Google's move this week is that Chrome users switch to H.264-supported browsers, video producers fork the

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-20028361-265.html#ixzz1B9fJJEzt

Quotes Of Note

Here's some musing from this years recent CES (Consumer Electronics show): 

By Colin Dixon/Advisor/TDG

"The Vendors are Treating “Smart TVs” like PCs"

"I recently spent $2,000 on a new “smart” LED TV, and as I entered the manufacturer’s booth at the show I immediately noticed the Internet portal on the TV was slightly different from mine. It now included a search function along with several other new features. I mentioned this to the presenter who told me I must have purchased last year’s model. News to me! So I asked how I could get the update. He told me I could not, that to get the new interface I needed to buy a new TV. Excuse me? Just how many people do you know that are willing to buy a new $2,000 TV each and every year? This is just the PC model all over again and a TV is decidedly not a PC."

We agree Colin.....

“Smart TV”?...... Sounds pretty dumb to us.

Digital Predictions for 2011

Here is an insightful article from Dorian Sweet for E-consultancy

Last year was a transitional year for most of the industry and now the traction of these changes are likely to take hold on the cold hard surface of consumer engagement.

We are likely to see elemental change happen faster in this coming year than ever.

Quality becomes the new quantity

Most of what we see or hear has a number tied to it these days. Twitter followers, tweets, retweets, likes, comments and so on. It’s the new personal scorecard. Telling people you have a zillion followers is a kind of reality, but does the largess of the number connote the quality of what you did?

We like approval from others and people that we know especially, but this collusion of opinion and information is not always the truest form of value. Now yes, there is always a blend to that fact and it's not about you or me personally, it's about how the numbers are used. And what will be more important this coming year is how relevant all you see, hear, do, tweet really is.

So as a first step, ratings should become deeper than one out-of-five-star rating or “was this helpful?” if we are going to be able to sift through the hyperbole of quantity.

Agency Consolidation

There are too many agencies and digital services for clients to manage. People like to say that social agencies are winning over traditional digital agencies (traditional digital...really?) but that's too much of a red herring to ignore.

All digital agencies, some specializing in one area or another, are competing. What will hurt them all is too much specialization. Yes, too much specialization sounds sexy but it usually means a very low ROI and not a lot of value for the long term.

There are too many devices and platforms shifting and changing to make pop-up agencies rationalize their value. Many times this past year and in the future months, the mobile and social although inextricably linked will be competing for client budget.

It’s not a competition when eventually you are competing with yourself. So what all agencies need to do is acquire, build, mentor and refine capable technologies and people that are all working harmoniously and are measured in an egalitarian form. Easier said than done I suspect, but it will be the next agency model.

Take 5 Mr. HTML

You'd expect me to say "Flash is Dead" or that "Javascript is too hard" and someday maybe I will. For now I'll hold back.

What is going to happen is that HTML 5 will start invading a lot of work. Some of it super creative work and some banal and purely functional. Again, this wasn't purely because it was better than everyone else, it's a device-driven change, and yes, it's a Steve Jobs-driven change too.

In the end HTML 5 will take a sizable share of the development work for new media and to what end only our collective imagination can tell us. Let’s get comfortable with HTML 5 before HTML 6 comes out with Web 4.0 at its side.

Group shopping therapy

Yes, the billion dollar baby of Groupon is probably the first to come to mind. And the principle in itself will be the next phenomenon of online retail madness. What it has and probably will become is a natural progression in social media and online shopping.

One scenario might be that, rather than buying through Facebook, you'll be linked through Groupon and do your own kind of collective bargaining with brands that are willing to talk to you. Facebook may not like this, but even the investment cash rich have to adapt or adopt to be in on the group game.

Paying for it

The last stage of adolescence for publishing is upon us. The big publishing brands have been our “virtual parents" of content for long enough. This will be the inevitable jumping off point for the poignant and the popular in publishing.

The NYT will be a paid subscription in the early part of the coming year and many others will follow. What will separate the wheat from the chaff of online magazines and news is how valuable they are to the reader.

The paying for professional online content will be the true end of the physical publication and it seems that the public is ready to cut bait.

Virtual acknowledges the physical

Retail is the last bastion of the counter-digital experience. Apart from a few interesting showings, apparel retailers have been the last to take digital to the physical experience. And to be fair, buying an article of clothing is a highly personal and particular psychological experience for the buyer.

Apart from the tactile, what will change is in the service methods that consumers receive in stores. Best Buy has done an amazing job in re-engineering its model to the products and consumers through training, design and digital.

Now digital you say, big whup! Well, the interesting thing is that Best Buy didn't develop any new digital technology to change its business, they just used what was out there.

The TWELP force idea was one of the best things Best Buy could do for themselves, not to engineer the virtual world of Twitter to its wishes, but to adjust its customer service to the use of Twitter as a service tool. Brilliant thinking and a sign of things to come.

Location, location, location

We all know Foursquare has made an impact on social media and those who consume it. In the coming year Facebook will simply turn up the volume dial and have quintupled the subscribers of Foursquare.

But this isn’t just about people checking in anymore. Now businesses can instantly register all their locations and you’ll have a networked location experience. If you travel a lot like I do, this may be a good thing.

Like many features that come and go, this one won’t go away and Facebook will dominate. So 2011 may see an end to the first footer in location-based marketing (sorry Foursquare, you needed a better logo) and exciting forays into location-based marketing.

The year of mobile...again

Mobile has been the Godot of the technology launch world. Since 1998 I've been hearing that next year mobile will be big, and each year it never happens. Well I think the mobile era has finally come to reality.

The Android and Apple platforms are solid, well engineered and ready to change our world. Applications and optics have been the two elements that completed the mobile cake. Gone will be the short-lived and quickly unused "app candy" that has been prevalent in this first era of smartphones. 2010 was a platform building year for mobile, now its time for lift-off.

White spaces will be filled

Mobile's eminent arrival to the vanguard will not be purely due to its longevity in the device game. Remember back in June when in the US the broadcast signal was no more? Well now your mobile phones will be on it in a big way.

Recently AT&T added to its bandwidth portfolio in a play to win the mobile war. This along with other purchases will give consumers a lot more to do at the end of the arm than wait for a signal to come up or for email to download. The age of dial-up speed on mobile devices is coming to an end. 

Content and malcontents

Now with all this newness around, one cannot help but notice the burnout that ensues when engaging in this new world. Why? We first need to wake up and understand that the life blood of all these devices, applications, networks, widgets and the like is the content that is delivered through them.

In the past couple of years, media and content didn't work out this relationship and the dissonance of random information has been shortening attention spans every minute.

Our next evolution in the digital world is in moving beyond the simple fascination with new apps and devices and the true application of them in our lives through valuable and relevant content.

Bad content will fade and the rise of “storied products” will be delivered by transmedia producers through multiple screens in a multitude of contexts.

So, Get whatever rest you can before starting the year. It's going to be a good one.

Mastering Facebook Advertising

Advertising on Facebook can be a cost-effective means of bringing new people to your fan page. To truly harness the value of Facebook advertising, you’ll need to dedicate time and resources to test, analyze, monitor and tweak your ads.

Do this and you may just find a sea of opportunity waiting for your brand, company or event.

The biggest challenge with Facebook advertising is maximizing the efficiency of your ads. In short, this means getting as many Likes for as little money as possible. To help you win this challenge sooner rather than later, here are seven important facts you should know about Facebook advertising that will help you get moving in the right direction.

#1: There are two primary destinations that can be advertised through Facebook

A destination within Facebook is a page, group, event or application. A destination outside of Facebook is a URL.

When creating a new ad campaign from scratch, the Facebook Design Your Ad screen defaults to advertising a destination outside of Facebook. To change this setting, just click the option, “I want to advertise something I have on Facebook.”

A primary distinction between these two types of ads is that with an outside URL, users are only able to Like the ad. For destinations on Facebook, users have the opportunity to Like the page (or RSVP to the event) from within the ad.

The two major benefits of the latter are that (1) users can become connected to your page (or event) without ever clicking on the ad itself (which is a huge benefit for CPC advertisers) and (2) you’re keeping people on Facebook.

Select the “I want to advertise something I have on Facebook” option if your goal is to drive fan page Likes.

As a final thought on this subject, one of the inherent benefits of Facebook is that you can bring individuals into your network and engage with them on an ongoing basis. By driving people away from Facebook, you’re missing out on this opportunity, and consequently defeating one of the primary purposes of advertising on Facebook in the first place.

On the surface, there is only a subtle difference between advertising something on Facebook and advertising an outside URL. But there are actually major differences between the two. Make sure you’re selecting the right type of ad for your goal.

#2: Ad costs and impressions are heavily influenced by click-through rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is an incredibly important measurement for Facebook advertising. Even if your singular goal is to grow fans, regardless of how many people click through, you’ll still need to keep a close eye on CTR. Essentially, Facebook judges the success of your ad on the ad’s ability to get a relatively high percentage of people to click. Facebook rewards successful ads with a lower cost per click or cost per impression and more visibility.

Unfortunately, if your ad drops below a certain CTR threshold it will be nearly impossible to bring it back up. In that case, it’s better to start a new ad than to tweak the one you have. From my experience, having below a 0.1 CTR will almost always result in an underperforming ad. But the criteria for establishing a threshold will depend on the goals you establish.

#3: Targeting friends of connections increases the relevance of your ad

Have you ever seen an ad pop up on Facebook that shows that one of your friends is already connected to that page? Did you feel more drawn to the ad than you would have been if no connections were shown? Fact is, Facebook is really great at peer pressure, and when users see that one of their friends is connected to a page, it increases the chance that they too might want to check it out.

Targeting users whose friends are already connected to your fan page can be a powerful tool for increasing the relevance of an ad.

The downside of the Friends of Connections targeting selection is that it narrows the field of potential ad impressions down by a significant percentage. But, because the cost of the ad is a result of the CTR, having a narrow field of relevant individuals may in fact be more important than having a large field of irrelevant individuals.

Try testing ads with and without the Friends of Connections option selected. You may find that some ads work so well that having that narrowed field may actually hurt the full potential of a given ad.

#4: Facebook advertising takes time

If you intend to get great results from your Facebook advertising, be prepared to dedicate the right resources to supporting the effort.

Facebook advertising requires a lot of trial and error. Every brand, product and company will have a different message and a different audience, and knowing how a given audience will respond is impossible before getting in there and actually trying it.

Create ads, create lots of ads and create new ads every day. Even when you find an ad that works, it will have a limited run. I’ve seen ads that perform well for a few days and some that perform well for a few months. The smaller your potential audience, the quicker your ad will fizzle out.

There are a lot of different variables that can be tested. Test them all – copy, image, demographics, friend connections, interest groups. They’re all important variables that can dramatically change the results of a given ad.

Finally, look at daily analytics. CTRs and CPCs/CPMs change from day to day. An ad can start out with a great CTR, but gradually decrease over time. This means that what was once a $0.05 CPC ad may eventually be $0.50.

#5: An “Action” is an in-ad Like

If you’re advertising a fan page, “Actions” refer to in-ad Likes. In other words, an Action is when someone clicks Like on your ad, but doesn’t click through to your page.

Facebook doesn’t show Actions from the Campaign Overview screen, so you’ll have to click into an ad to see Actions. This may be an extra step, but if at the end of the day your goal is more fans, you need to be keeping track of Actions.

Clicking on a specific ad will give you a more in-depth look into the performance of your ad over time, including number of Actions.

Unfortunately, measuring the actual cost per fan (CPF) of a given ad is not as easy as it should be. And, perhaps at some point in the near future, Facebook will make this a standard measurement tool. But until that point comes, you’ll either need a custom software tool or you can use Actions as a base level estimate for fan acquisition. Just keep in mind that Actions only tell half of the story. The other half is the percentage of people who did click through to your page and Liked your page at that point.

“Facebook does provide a few additional reports that can help you gain a better understanding of the costs and conversion analytics related to acquiring fans. These reports, including the “Advertising Performance” report, can be found in the reports section of the Facebook Ad Manager.”

#6: Daily budget and daily spend limit are not the same

Daily budget is the maximum you would spend in a given day for a single campaign. Daily spend limit is the cap set on your account by Facebook. Your daily ad spend limit is automatically set to $50 per day. So, if you have a daily budget of $500 for campaign ‘A,’ and you continuously max out your spend at $50, this is the reason. To change your daily spend limit, you must contact Facebook directly.

#7: You’re not the only person who can access and edit your Facebook ad dashboard

As discussed, Facebook advertising takes a lot of time and resources. Depending on your organizational structure, it may be beneficial to have multiple people working on Facebook advertising. Under Settings, there is a Permissions section that will let you add other users to your ad account. If multiple people are working on ads at your company, it’s beneficial to have them all tied to one account for a number of reasons.

First, it helps overall measurement and analysis because data between accounts cannot be automatically combined. Second, the more money you spend on Facebook ads, the better access you will have to Facebook Ad staff, which comes in rather handy when you’re looking to get answers and run official promotions on your page.

Allowing multiple people to use and access the same Facebook ads account can help organize resources and data.

There’s a reason why Facebook ad revenue is projected to be over $1.2 billion in 2010. It’s because when businesses manage them correctly, Facebook ads can be an incredibly successful and cost-effective means of tapping into Facebook’s 500 million users. Out of all the reasons why you may consider advertising on Facebook, driving fan page Likes should be at the top of your list. Just make sure that when you do decide to start the process, you understand the factors and resources involved.

Quotes Of Note

This may seem obvious, but many may overlook this important statement:

Social Media is a powerful tool, but it is just one of many gears that you need to make up your marketing machine.

Mike Volpe/VP Marketing/Hubspot