Twitter’s World: Click … or Clique?

May 19, 2011 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Ashton Kutcher, Bloggers, Blogs, Celebrities, Celebs, CNN, Cornell, Cornell University, Elite Users, Following, Interactive, Interactive Media, Lady Gaga, Media, Much Ado About Nothing, New York Times, News Media, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Online, Online Media, Phillip Nones, Social, Social Marketing, Social Media, Starbucks, Tweets, Twitter, Who Says What to Whom on Twitter, Yahoo, Yahoo Research

Twitter traffic: dominateed by a tiny fraction of users. — Half of all tweets are generated by fewer than one-half of one percent of Twitter accounts.

What’s happening these days with Twitter? The micro-blogging service continues to light up the newswires every time there’s a civil disturbance in a foreign land, because of how easily and effectively it facilitates planning and interaction among the dissidents.

But what we’re also finding out is that Twitter is overwhelmingly dominated by just a small fraction of its users.

In fact, Cornell University and Yahoo recently published results of an evaluation of ~260 million tweets during 2009 and 2010, which found that ~50% of the tweets were generated by just 20,000 Twitter users.

That is right: Fewer than one half of one percent of Twitter’s user base accounts for fully half of all tweet activity.

Just who makes up this “rarified realm” of elite users? It turns out that they fall into four major groups:

 Media properties (e.g., CNN, New York Times)
 Celebrities (e.g., Ashton Kutcher … Lady Gaga)
 Business organizations (e.g., Starbucks)
 Blogs

Even more interestingly, these “elite” users aren’t interfacing with the rest of us “regular Twitter folk” as much as they are simply following each other: Celebs follow celebs … media companies follow other media companies … bloggers follow other blogs.

The Cornell/Yahoo research report, titled Who Says What to Whom on Twitter, can be found here.

But one wonders if the report should be retitled Much Ado About Nothing?

Virgin Mobile’s “Sparah” campaign: Art imitates life … or vice versa?

May 15, 2011 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Advertising, Buzz, Buzz Marketing, Celebrity, Celebrity Couples, Consumer Advertising, Consumer Marketing, Facebook, FourSquare, Lillie Langtry, Lily Langtry, Marketing Buzz, Mobile Phones, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Pay As You Go, Phillip Nones, Sarah Bernhardt, Sarah Carroll, Social Hype, Social Marketing, Social Media, Sparah, Spencer Falls, Twitter, Viral Marketing, Virgin Mobile, YouTube

In recent days, American television viewers have begun to see ads about a “faux” celebrity couple — Spencer Falls and Sarah Carroll – dubbed “Sparah.” What’s up with this?

It turns out that Virgin Mobile dreamed up these entirely fictitious characters as a way to raise interest and generate “buzz” about its Android-powered phones that feature monthly “pay as you go” plans that include unlimited web, data, messaging and e-mail.

The idea is to pique the curiosity of viewers who will then interact with other consumers and go online to view a variety of videos about this “celebrity couple.”

Now, before reading this blog post any further, I’d suggest you take a moment and view the intro ad here.

The “celebrity couple” is being “given” a house in Hollywood Hills, a stylist and an agent/publicist. As their “fame” grows, the “couple” is being asked to “participate” in activities “typical” of A-list celebrities, including photo shoots, store openings and appearances at special events.

As part of their “contract” with Virgin Mobile, the “couple” will be chronicling their “activities” across a variety of social media channels, including Facebook. Twitter and FourSquare.

And of course, the consumer public is being urged to “keep up with Sparah” by following all of the “important activities” of this “celebrity couple.”

Judging from the comments being left by viewers of the “Sparah” videos on YouTube, Virgin Mobile’s campaign is having the desired effect so far. Not only is the campaign generating significant buzz, it’s near-universally positive in tone.

There’s little doubt that Virgin Mobile has come up with a clever and successful way to generate awareness and interest in its phone plans as it competes with other service providers in the market. But what’s also interesting is that Virgin Mobile is shining a light on the hyperbole and “blue smoke and mirrors” that inform so much of social media and celebrity marketing today.

The line between what’s genuine versus what’s “manufactured” in pop culture – whether news or biography or gossip – is a very fine one. That’s always been the case, of course: the successes of a Lillie Langtry or Sarah Bernhardt a century ago would not have been so impressive without it.

But in today’s world, the explosion of interactive communications creates a hothouse-like environment in which the buzz can be born and spread faster than ever. (That’s why it’s often called “going viral.”)

It’s not hard to speculate that Virgin Mobile is conducting this campaign with “tongue planted firmly in cheek.” Still, the marketing pros at the company realize that while people may laugh at the irony of the campaign, at the same time Virgin Mobile is benefiting in a major way from the very things they’re spoofing. And that’s a master stroke.

Art imitating life? Life imitating art? It’s a pointed joke for sure … but on whom?

What Social Media is Teaching Us (Again)

March 6, 2011March 7, 2011 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Blogs, Business, Company Organization, Corporate Strategy, Facebook, LinkedIn, marketing, Marketing Management, Marketing Metrics, Marketing Strategy, Metrics, News, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Organizational Behavior, Phillip Nones, Sales, Sales Management, Social Marketing, Social Media, Strategic Marketing, Thoughts, Twitter, Weblogs

Social media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and all that – burst onto the scene only a few years ago. Because of this, we’re still learning daily how these tools are impacting and influencing attitudes about companies and brands … as well as the propensity for people to buy products and services as a result.

But some aspects are coming into pretty strong focus now. One of the interesting insights I’ve drawn from social media is that it spotlights the “disconnect” that exists between marketing and sales personnel.

This disconnect has existed for decades, of course. In my nearly 35 years in business, I’ve heard a common refrain from sales folks. It goes something like this: “I have no idea what those people in marketing do all day long!”

On the flip side, the marketing pros have a few choice words for the sales personnel as well: “All they ever think about is the next order. Unless it delivers instant hot prospects who are ready to buy immediately, they’re not interested in any of our marketing programs.”

This is why so many B-to-B companies have tried to cross-pollinate between marketing and sales by moving staff back and forth between the two areas.

But what company is inclined to gives up its star sales performers to marketing? What happens more often is that the underperforming sales people are the ones who end up in marketing … where they then achieve only middling success there as well.

Conversely, so many of the best sales performers aren’t “God’s gift to strategic thinking” at all … while the marketing people who are so creative and insightful when thinking about markets are woefully inadequate when it comes to keeping up with a Rolodex® full of dozens of sales contacts.

Another part of the problem is the approach to metrics. Marketing personnel have historically been focused on reaching wider audiences. To a salesperson, things like “creating awareness” and “building a brand” are frustratingly fuzzy. Instead, salespeople focus on individual customers, sales quotas and other quantifiable information – real “bottom line” figures.

Today, social media is bringing all of this into sharper relief. To be most effective, social media demand that marketing and sales personnel work together. It’s no longer possible for the two groups to employ different approaches, different interactions and different metrics for success.

To my view, it’s going to be harder for marketing and communications personnel to get their heads around new expectations for metrics and analyses when compared to the sales folks. There are many new analytical tools to be mastered – and that’s probably a source of fear for many a marketer.

For salespeople, who live and die by facts and figures, this is duck soup by comparison.

And if you really think about social media, it’s about audience (customer) engagement in a direct and personal manner. Who’s been doing that for years? The sales force, of course.

So does it make any sense to “silo” social media activity and content development within the marketing department? Generally speaking, no.

In fact, many sales personnel have already embraced social media activities because they see it as another useful tool to leverage customer engagement. This is an environment they already know well, because they’ve always been in the business of building relationships.

So the times demand that marketing and sales team up as never before. For marketers, that means opening up the social media initiative and structuring it to include sales personnel as well the marketing staff. Redlining these tasks won’t work.

And here’s another idea: Have the marketing staff hang around with the sales force. Put them out there at trade shows and other industry events where they are forced interact with customers and behave like … salespeople!

[This is especially true if a company’s marketing staff comes from collegiate or administrative backgrounds – a common weakness in many mid-sized B-to-B firms where the most lucrative upward career paths take employees through engineering, R&D or sales, not through marketing and communications.]

Social media reminds us, once again, that the key to success in business is “mixing it up” with customers and prospects. We need to make sure we do the same inside our own companies.

What Facebook Looks Like Today

January 16, 2011January 17, 2011 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Barack Obama, Bob Marley, Communications, Eminem, Facebook, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Lil Wayne, marketing, Media, Megan Fox, MySpace, News, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Obama, Online, Phillip Nones, Relationships, Rihanna, Shakira, Social, Social Behavior, Social Behaviors, Social Interaction, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Network, Social Networks, Thoughts, Vin Diesel

By now, everyone knows that Facebook has pretty much won the social media wars, as early entrant and rival MySpace hemorrhages employees as it tucks its tail between its legs and slinks away.

And Facebook itself is a good chronicler of the hyperactivity of Facebookers wordwide. Recently, it published some stats on “what 20 minutes on Facebook looks like.” Among the revelations:

 ~10.2 million comments uploaded every 20 minutes
 ~2.7 million photos uploaded
 ~2.0 million “friend” requests accepted
 ~1.8 million status updates posted
 ~1.6 million wall posts
 ~1.5 million event invites sent out
 ~1.3 million photos tagged
 ~1 million links shared

Fan designations (or “likes”) are now reaching stratospheric proportions for some celebrities. And who were the most popular in 2010 based the “most liked” status? The results show a major skew towards the younger generation … and toward entertainers rather than political, scientific or academic leaders:

 Lady Gaga: ~25 million people “like”
 Eminem: ~24 million people
 Megan Fox: ~20 million people
 Vin Diesel: ~19 million people
 Rihanna: ~19 million people

Where does President Barack Obama rank by comparison? He’s at ~17 million “likes” – right along with Bob Marley, Li’l Wayne, Justin Bieber and Shakira.

Personally, I found the trends in relationship status to be the most interesting. There were quite a few relationship changes … but perhaps not as many as you might expect considering that there are an estimated 600 million active users on Facebook these days.

For the record, here’s what happened with personal relationships in 2010:

 ~44 million people changed their status to “single”
 ~37 million changed their status to “married”
 ~28 million changed their status to “in a relationship”
 ~6 million changed their status to “engaged”
 ~3 million changed their status to “it’s complicated”

Notice that the number of people who migrated away from marriage were nearly equally matched by those becoming engaged or getting hitched. As the famous French saying goes, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

The Maturing of Social Media

October 10, 2010October 10, 2010 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Augie Ray, Blog, Blogosphere, Blogs, Collectors, Communications, Consumer Marketing, Conversationalists, Creators, Critics, Forrester, Forrester Research, Global Social Technographics, Inactives, Interactive, Internet, Joiners, Market Research, marketing, News, Nones, NonesNotes, Phillip Nones Nones Notes, Social Behavior, Social Behaviors, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Behavior, Social Media Behaviors, Social Media Ladder, Social Media Trends, Social Networking, Social Networks, Social Technographics Ladder, Spectators, Technographics, Thoughts, Trends, Twitter, Web, Weblog, Weblogs

Forrester Research, an international technology and market research company, has been formally tracking the growth and maturation of social media behavior over the past four years. Each year it has seen steady increase in participation – until now.

In its most recent study, just released, Forrester reports that although social media “joiners” and “spectators” continue to grow in the U.S., the number of “creators” has now reached a plateau.

Forrester defines social media “creators” as those people who maintain a blog, publish their own web pages, or upload their own videos or musical creations. As of today, Forrester estimates that approximately 23% of U.S. online adults fall into this category.

But for the first time since Forrester’s annual “Global Social Technographics®” studies began in 2007, the number of “creators” hasn’t risen. In explaining this news, Augie Ray, senior analyst of social computing/marketing at Forrester, had this to say in a 9/28/2010 blog post:

“The reasons span things as complex as human nature and as simple as web site usability. For example, is it sensible to believe that ‘creator’ behavior will ever be universal? Not every person has a burning need to be a reporter, an industry expert, a videographer, a musician, a thought leader, an editor or a broadcaster. The fact that more than one in five online adults in the U.S. are exhibiting ‘creator’ behavior is a testament to how social technologies have lowered the bar, since these tools have allowed more people to create and distribute their ideas, opinions and creations than was ever possible in the past.”

The 2010 Forrester study did find that the number of “joiners” – those people who maintain social networking profiles – continues to grow. That’s explained by the fact that people feel they must be part of social media, if only to keep in touch with friends and relatives. Notes Ray, “Today, avoiding social networks is about as easy to do as avoiding e-mail – it’s possible, but it comes at a substantial cost in terms of relationships and knowledge.”

Another interesting aspect of the Forrester report is a look at the Social Technographics® ladder that does a nice job of breaking down social medial activities into behavioral categories. As of today, the research finds the following breakdown:

 ~23% are “creators” – They publish a blog or their own web page, or upload their own videos or music at least once per month.

 ~31% are “conversationalists” – They update their status on Twitter or social networking sites at least once per week.

 ~33% are “critics” – They post ratings or reviews of products and services, comment on someone else’s blog post, or contribute to online forums at least once per month.

 ~19% are “collectors” – They “vote” for web sites online, add “tags” to web pages or photos, or use RSS news feeds at least once per month.

 ~59% are “joiners” – They maintain a profile or visit social networking sites at least once per month.

 ~68% are “spectators” – They read blogs, listen to podcasts, watch videos, read online forums or read customer reviews at least once per month, without otherwise interacting with the content.

And what about the “inactives” – those who engage in none of the activities as described above? They represent just 19% of all American adults who are online. Based on the most recent findings, that’s a figure that may stubbornly refuse to decline much further.

A Social Media Success Story from the Far North

September 19, 2010September 20, 2010 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Advertising, America's Favorite Park, America's Favorite Park Contest, Bear, Bear Head Lake, Bear Head Lake Park, Bear Head Lake State Park, Bears, Black Bear, Black Bears, Boundary Waters Canoe Area, BWCA, Coca Cola, Communications, Ely, Great Smokey Mountain National Park, Great Smokey Mountains, Hope, Lily, Lily & Hope, marketing, marketing communications, Media, Minnesota, National Park Foundation, News, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, North American Bear Center, Northern Minnesota, Phillip Nones, Social Marketing, Social Media, State Parks, Thoughts, Travel, Wilderness

Now that social media has gone from being a novelty to becoming standard fare in marketing and communications programs, we’re seeing evidence as to where these tactics shine their best.

One aspect that’s become clearer over time is that the most effective uses of social media must have an underlying “hook”; it’s not sufficient simply to engage in social media as just “business as usual.”

An interesting example of this phenomenon at work is Bear Head Lake State Park in extreme Northern Minnesota. It’s located near Ely, a town that’s miles from nowhere but somewhat famous as the embarkation point for exploring Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

This is the most famous park you’ve never heard of. How so? Because it beat out every other national and state park in the country in winning a popularity vote on the Internet.

In a just-completed “America’s Favorite Park” contest co-sponsored by the National Park Foundation and Coca-Cola, Bear Head easily outpolled every other park in the United States by garnering nearly 1.7 million votes out of 5.7 million cast, far outdistancing the runner-up (Great Smokey Mountain National Park).

How does a park ranked just 11th in the state of Minnesota and visited by only ~100,000 people annually accomplish such a feat?

The answer lies in taking a fortuitous event and figuring out how to give it velocity through the social media world. In this case, the “hook” was a webcam that had been set up in the park by the Ely-based North American Bear Center to record the birth of a bear cub named Hope.

Hope and her mother Lily were given their own Facebook page and had attracted more than 112,000 fans, while another ~90,000 people followed the bears on the North American Bear Center’s own web site.

So when the Coca-Cola contest came along, the web site administrators went into action, asking the bears’ friends and supporters to vote for the local park as home to the research bears. They emphasized that people could vote as often as they wanted, which resulted in some friends placing dozens or even hundreds of votes for the park.

The objective wasn’t just to gain fame as America’s “favorite park.” The contest also included a $100,000 prize for the winning park. That was the big incentive in the case of Bear Head Lake, which as a small state park has an annual working budget of only ~$226,000.

Reportedly, the prize winnings will go toward building a three-season trail center, a project that has been on the drawing boards for years but never begun due to lack of state funding. “At a time when many parks are facing difficult financial and budget decisions and reducing services … this is quite an opportunity for us,” noted Jan Westlund, the park’s manager.

Lynn Rogers, a researcher at the North American Bear Center, summed up the success of the initiative this way: “None of this would have happened without our 200,000 fans.”

This one example of social media success tells us an awful lot about how to harness the power and “viral velocity” of social media as a tactic.

The key is to consider each event or opportunity that comes along and then envision what could happen if social media tactics are applied. By contrast, starting out with social media is approaching it backwards … and more than likely, mediocre results will be the result.

Online Customer Review Sites: Who’s Yelping Now?

April 7, 2010April 7, 2010 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Advertising, Business, Company Ratings, Company Reviews, Comparative Ratings, Consumer Marketing, Customer Reviews, Internet, Jared Beck, Legal, Local Search, marketing, Media, Merchants, News, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Online Advertising, Online Reviews, Phillip Nones, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, Sponsorships, Technology, Thoughts, User Reviews, Web, Yelp

The news this week that social networking and user review web site Yelp® will now de-couple the presentation of reviews from advertising programs comes as a rare victory for businesses that have been feeling more than a little pressured (blackmailed?) by the company’s strong-arm revenue-raising tactics.

The web has long had something of a “Wild West” atmosphere when it comes to reviews of businesses helping or (more likely) hurting the reputation of merchants.

Yelp is arguably the most significant of these sites. Since its inception in 2004 as a local site search resource covering businesses in the San Francisco metro area, Yelp has expanded to include local search and reviews of establishments in nearly 20 major urban markets. With its branding tagline “Real people. Real reviews®,” Yelp is visited by ~25 million people each month, making it one of the most heavily trafficked Internet sites in America.

Yelp solicits and publishes user ratings and reviews of local stores, restaurants, hotels and other merchants (even churches and doctor offices are rated), along with providing basic information on each entry’s location, hours of operation, and so forth – with nearly 3 million reviews submitted at last count.

Predictably, user ratings can have a great deal of influence over the relative popularity of the businesses in question. While most reviews are positive (ratings are on a 5-point scale), Yelp also employs a proprietary algorithm – some would say “secret formula” – to rank reviews based on a selection of factors ostensibly designed to give greater credence to “authentic” user reviews as opposed to “ringers” or “put-up jobs.”

Not surprisingly, Yelp hasn’t disclosed this formula to anyone.

So far, so good. But Yelp began to raise the ire of companies when its eager and aggressive advertising sales team began pitching paid promotional (sponsorship) programs to listed businesses that looked suspiciously like tying advertising expenditures to favorable treatment on reviews as a sort of quid quo pro.

Purchase advertising space on Yelp … and positive reviews miraculously start appearing at the top of the page. Decide against advertising … and watch the tables turn as they drop to the bottom or out of site altogether.

Concerns are so strong that three separate lawsuits have been filed this year already, culminating in a class-action lawsuit filed in February that accuses Yelp of “extortion,” including the claim that Yelp ad sales reps have offered to hide or bury a merchant’s negative customer reviews in exchange for signing them up as Yelp sponsors.

“The conduct is an offer to manipulate content in exchange for payment,” Jared Beck, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, states bluntly.

As for whether Yelp’s announcement of new standards will now curb the rash of lawsuits, it seems clear that this is the intent. But so long as Yelp offers to do any sort of manipulation or reshuffling of reviews in exchange for advertising, the lawsuits will probably continue – even if there’s only the appearance of impropriety.

Oh, and don’t look for Yelp to provide any additional revelations regarding how reviews are sequenced to appear on the page. Too much transparency, and it’ll only make it easier for people to figure out how to “game” the ratings.

Facebook Continues on its Merry Way to Social Media (and Web?) Dominance

February 1, 2010February 3, 2010 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Business, Business Insider, Communications, Compete, compete.com, Digital Media, Drake Direct, Facebook, Google, Internet, Media, News, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Online News, Phillip Nones, Silicon Alley Insider, Social Marketing, Social Media, Technology, The Business Insider, Thoughts, Traffic Stats, Web, Web Analytics, Web Statistics, Web Traffic, YouTube

Here’s a very interesting finding ripped from today’s social media headlines: The Business Insider and other media outlets are reporting that Facebook now accounts for nearly one in four page views on the Internet in the United States.

So claims database marketing consulting firm Drake Direct, which has studied web traffic in the U.S. and the U.K. by analyzing data collected by Compete, a leading aggregator of web statistics.

Just to give you an idea of how significant Facebook’s results are: by comparison, search engine powerhouse Google accounts for only about one in twelve page views.

And Facebook is now closing in on Google when it comes to site visits – with each currently receiving around 2.5 billion visits per month. In fact, studying the trend lines, Drake Direct anticipates that Facebook site visits will surpass Google any time now.

Another interesting finding is that the length of the average Facebook visit now surpasses that of YouTube (~16 minutes versus ~14 minutes per visit), whereas YouTube had charted longer visits prior to now.

These findings underscore the continued success of Facebook as the most successful social media site, even as it has grown to 350+ million users, including more than 100 million in the U.S. with 5 million added in January alone. No doubt, it’s on a roll.

Social Media and the Internet: Click … or Clique?

October 14, 2009November 11, 2009 Phillip Nones Uncategorized Advertising, Business, comScore, Internet Advertising, Media, News, Nielsen, Nielsen Company, Nones, Nones Notes, NonesNotes, Online Advertising, Phillip Nones, Social Marketing, Social Media, Thoughts, Web Advertising

All of the hype about social marketing and social media might make you believe that people are flocking to this new form of communications in droves.

Well, if you think this … you’re right. And now we have the stats to prove it. The Nielsen Company has just released web statistics for the month of August that report that time spent on social networks and blogging sites accounted for ~17% of all time spent on the Internet.

Compared to August 2008, this figure is nearly triple the percentage of time spent on social networks and blogging sites just one short year ago. Seeing as how there is an upper-limit ceiling on the total amount of time available to spend online in any given day, the increased attention on social media is coming at the expense of the more traditional use of the web as an informational tool.

This is not to say that text and video content don’t remain central to the online experience, because that is clearly the case. But the ability consumers have now to use platforms like Facebook and blogging sites to “connect, communicate and share” is what’s driving much of the continuing growth of the web and online engagement.

Because of this new emphasis, is it any wonder more online advertising dollars are chasing social media than ever before? Nielsen pegs advertising on social media sites as representing ~15% of total online ad spending in August 2009. That’s more than double its proportion a year earlier.

Along with the shift in online ad revenues to social media sites, we’re also experiencing a major change in clickthrough behavior as it pertains to online display ads. Research published recently by comScore shows that the percentage of people who clicked on one or more display ads during a monthly period of Internet interaction – in this case March 2009 – was only ~16%.

How does that result compare with earlier surveys? It’s dramatically lower, and dropping. Just two years ago in 2007, ~32% of people online clicked on at least one online display ad over a month-long period – twice the proportion as today.

What’s more, the comScore analysis reveals that a very small portion of viewers represent the vast majority of the clickthrough activity. Specifically, only ~8% of the people are responsible for ~85% of all clicks. Of course, we can be sure that the robust clickthrough behavior of these 8% translates into equally robust product sales … NOT!

Clearly, any company that is attempting to promote products and services over the Internet needs to carefully study the composition of its market and the behavior of its online audience targets before making extensive online advertising program commitments.

The reality is, with the dynamics we’re seeing such as the behaviors noted above, it’s more likely an online promo effort will fail rather than succeed unless a dispassionate review of the situation is done beforehand and a practical, realistic program put into place.

But that’s so unlike many of the web advertising programs we’ve seen implemented up to now, which could be best characterized as: “Throw a bunch of advertising at the web and hope some of it sticks.”

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