Tip Sheet/Web April/May 2009

Posted on April 1, 2009 by Chief Marketer Staff

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Twitter, Don’t Fritter

Trying to tweet? Here are some tools you should know about to keep your Twitter campaigns rocking, as noted by author and venture funder Guy Kawasaki.

TIP 1: Forget chasing influence

Services like Twitter have flattened the information pyramid, and marquee-name bloggers don’t have the same impact in 140 characters. Twitter’s a numbers game, so go after the widest spread possible.

TIP 2: Follow the followers

Keep track of the people who follow you on Twitter with SocialToo or some other tracking platform.

TIP 3: Watch the “re-tweets.”

Check how many times your messages are copied and sent to others as a measure of your influence. Retweetist or Twitalyzer are good for this.

TIP 4: Monitor the conversations

Watch what they’re saying about your brand on Twitter, as part of a program to disseminate compliments and solve customer concerns. Tweetdeck or Twhirl both let marketers search for keywords and stay on top of discussions.

DID YOU KNOW

Women over 55 are the fastest growing U.S. demographic on Facebook and now number 1.5 million among the social network’s 180 million registered users.
The number of Facebook users over 35 almost doubled from January to March. Over the six months from Sept. 2008 through Feb. 2009, the largest registration increase in absolute numbers came from men and women 35-44.
Facebook is starting to outpace Google as a referral Web site — that is, the stop that sends visitors to other sites. Analytics agency Hitwise found that since January, more Web users have come to CafeMom, video site Tagged, gossip blog PerezHilton.com and Twitter from Facebook than from Google.

Strategies/TWITTER HITTERS

The platform’s growing, but is it a marketing tool? Talk about a disruptive technology: Twitter’s currently disrupting plenty, from Jennifer Aniston’s romance with singer John Mayer (rumored to be a tweeting addict) to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s $25,000 fine for griping — in 140 characters or less — about the refereeing at a recent game.

The Twitter tech platform has exhibited astounding growth in recent months, increasing its unique visitors an amazing 1382% from Feb. 2008 to Feb. 2009, according to Nielsen NetView. That makes it the fastest growing community on the Internet, hands down.

But what marketers can do to take advantage of that growth remains unclear — as in fact does Twitter’s path to its own profitability. Plenty of brands monitor the platform for conversations that relate to them, of course; both Comcast and Dell use Twitter as a CRM tool.

But other companies are finding ways to incorporate Twitter as part of their social media campaigns. Usually these efforts involve simply informing their most loyal customers of events, deals and announcements from the company. Carnival Cruise Lines maintains a Twitter account and used it in March to spread the word about a nationwide house-party promotion on March 29.

At that same time, Home Depot used Twitter to publish news about store openings during the Red River flood threats around Fargo, ND — along with project advice and news about in-store workshops.

Intuit’s TurboTax brand ran a weekly contest through tax season that used the “status update” portion of both Twitter and Facebook. For example, entrants were asked to provide creative answers to why they deserved to travel to the U.S. Open, using “TurboTax” in their updates. Winners were chosen based on both their creativity and the reach of their updates to friends.

And Microsoft has allied with Twitter and blog publisher Federated Media on ExecTweets, a service that will let followers register to listen in on the aggregated micro-thoughts of executives from major brands and organizations.

Including, inevitably, Mark Cuban, who quipped: “can’t say no one makes money from twitter now. the nba does.”

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HERE WE ARE, NOW ENTERTAIN US

The younger the Web visitors, the more interested they are in freebies and entertainment, according to a study by Lightspeed Research and the U.K.’s Internet Advertising Bureau. In online ads, the report says, consumers 18 to 35 are most responsive to special offers, entertaining content and access to exclusive information. Social-net ads such as Facebook gifts and branded apps were very appealing to the 18-to-24 group. Twenty-nine percent said they had seen and sometimes interacted with a social-network ad or branded content. On the other hand, respondents 45 to 54 said they were most interested in ads that were relevant and useful.

WEB VIDEO: STATE FARM IS THERE

U.S. Net visitors watched 13.1 billion online videos in Feb. 2009, according to comScore. And while that figure is down about 12% from the 14.8 billion they watched in January, don’t be fooled into thinking that the falloff represents anything more meaningful than the fact of a shorter month, according to the Web metrics firm.

But how do you reach those video-hungry audiences? If you’ve got — or expect to get — a lot of original content, you can do what Adidas did in March and launch your own Web video channel. At www.Adidas.tv, visitors can find a global hub with channels focusing on soccer and basketball, as well as extended versions of music-laden TV spots featuring rappers and athletes.

That’s great if your brand has access to a drawing card such as athletes getting their locker-room horseplay on. But brands without that organic link to great video may want to take their cue from a partnership that hit the Web in March between Yahoo and insurer State Farm, which is sponsoring an original program on Yahoo Video, the third largest video destination on the Web per comScore.

The biweekly program, “Spotlight to Nightlight,” features parenting tips heavily laced with news of celebrity moms, and is hosted on the “Goddess” blog of Yahoo’s popular OMG! Web site. The programs will range in length from three to five minutes and, at least for the length of State Farm’s contracted six-month sponsorship, will include a short segment of celebrity parenting tips called “Being There” — not unrelated to the insurer’s current “I’m There” TV campaign.

David Oliveira, regional sales vice president for Yahoo, says the company generated the “Spotlight” programming in close consultation with State Farm. “They told us what target audiences they wanted to reach,” he says. “We already had a built-in young mom audience with our ‘Goddess’ blogs, so we were able to put that audience together with their marketing objectives.”

“Our media agency, OMD Chicago, worked on this with Yahoo,” says Ed Gold, State Farm ad director. “We were looking for a couple of ‘ownable opportunities’ that would reach the target audience we wanted in a relevant and engaging way. From an advertiser’s standpoint, it’s always best to develop programming that helps meet our objectives, but also has a high level of interest for the target we’re trying to reach.”

Branding is purposely light during the video: just a quick flash of the State Farm logo at the beginning, and an audio cue from the host, former Miss America Ali Landry, at the end.

Focusing on high-profile parents avoids the potential “ick” factor of pure celebrity gossip. “We wanted to associate ourselves with celebrity in a positive, good-neighborly way,” says Gold. And since Landry is fluent in Spanish, Yahoo and State Farm are able to offer a Spanish-language version of the Web program on Yahoo en Espanol, where it links to the “Mamas Famosas” blog and puts State Farm in front of Spanish-speaking mothers, another target.

“Whenever you create something rather than just putting your advertising where people are already at, you’re working a bit on faith,” says Gold. “But knowing that the Yahoo OMG! site already attracts a huge audience and that this audience is interested in celebrities, and giving them content that they can’t get anywhere else, we’re confident this will pay off.”

SEARCH ADS GET GRABBIER

Yahoo Search doesn’t combine video with other search results as Google does. But that doesn’t mean marketers can’t serve up sound and motion when users go looking for them on Yahoo.

In March, Yahoo rolled out a search-ad format that lets brands offer not just text and links, but images and videos to create messages that are more compelling to users than the standard 75-character clickthrough search ads.

The new Rich Ads in Search lets marketers deploy not just video, but also images, brand logos, search boxes and links into specific pages deep on their Web sites, says Tim Mayer, Yahoo vice president of search business.

“Search results pages are moving away from the 10 blue links to a task-completion focus,” he says. “It’s important to evolve the ad section to keep pace with that change.”

Pepsi, Pedigree Food for Dogs, eSurance and Staples have all made early use of the rich search ads. Yahoo is currently selling them for a flat monthly fee, but may in time move them to the same auction basis that prices pay-per-click keyword ads, Mayer said.

Strategies/SEE AND BE SEEN

Video search results are 53 times more likely to appear at the front of a Google search than text pages, according to Forrester Research analyst Nate Elliott. Google “blends” all kinds of content, including news stories, PR releases, maps and videos, into its search results pages. Looking at 40 popular keywords, Forrester found Google produced blended results half the time, adding video more often than any other content.

By Elliott’s calculation, video has about a 1-in-11,000 chance of making the first page of a Google search, while text pages have a 1-in-500,000 shot.

To improve the chance of winning on Google, marketers should optimize their video clips by putting keywords into video filenames, titles and tags.

Got a Web tip to share? Contact Brian Quinton at [email protected]