This is not going to be a long post – more of an introduction to the idea that Small Business doesn’t have much of a clue on how to do Social Media or measure the ROI of SM.   I gathered as much reading SMB’s, Social Media and Reality in Marketing Pilgrim, today.  Here’s some of the highlights published in the post which came from a recent survey by Internet2G Into and Merchant Circle 45 percent of those surveyed use social media (including Facebook and Twitter) to promote their business 79% of respondents report annual marketing budgets of less than $5,000 per year with the 44% spending “less than $1,000” annually on advertising and marketing 80% of respondents have four or fewer employees Asked about their “biggest complaint” regarding online marketing the top two were “too costly” (26%) and “there’s not enough time to do it well and still run a business” (15.9%) 75% said they monitor online reviews of their business. The most common method was by visiting specific review websites (47%) and by searching on their business name (44%) Despite its popularity social media showed the biggest gap between SMB adoption and perceived effectiveness as a marketing platform. But, then, looked at, another way, it turns out that ….

This is not going to be a long post – more of an introduction to the idea that Small Business doesn’t have much of a clue on how to do Social Media or measure the ROI of SM.   I gathered as much reading SMB’s, Social Media and Reality in Marketing Pilgrim, today.  Here’s some of the highlights published in the post which came from a recent survey by Internet2G Into and Merchant Circle

• 45 percent of those surveyed use social media (including Facebook and Twitter) to promote their business
• 79% of respondents report annual marketing budgets of less than $5,000 per year with the 44% spending “less than $1,000” annually on advertising and marketing
  80% of respondents have four or fewer employees
• Asked about their “biggest complaint” regarding online marketing the top two were “too costly” (26%) and “there’s not enough time to do it well and still run a business” (15.9%)
• 75% said they monitor online reviews of their business. The most common method was by visiting specific review websites (47%) and by searching on their business name (44%)
• Despite its popularity social media showed the biggest gap between SMB adoption and perceived effectiveness as a marketing platform.

But, then, looked at, another way, it turns out that

….. If an SMB has gone through the trouble of completely engaging with Merchant Circle but only 45% of those who are that far along the curve have said they use social media (like Facebook and Twitter) to promote their business then what about the millions of other SMB’s who still think the Yellow Book is the most effective spend of their precious marketing dollars? I would say that the last point in the above list is the most telling of them all.

Interestingly, when I was in Minneapolis last week I came across a company called CloudProfile that was created to address just that problem – and they have done big, big deals with British Telecom in UK and some upcoming US deals look very promising.

Here’s my CloudProfile, btw.

I will have more to say about CloudProfile, shortly – right now I suggest my readers take a look at it, as it simplifies Social Networking and Search for small businesses – and there will be an iPhone Application released sometime over the next month or two.

See the original post: 
Small Business Social Media Insights – CloudProfile

Popularity: 19% [?]

I don’t know about you but I have been noticing less and less content in my Google Reader lately, probably a few months – but I bet the trend has been going on longer.  I subscribe to 200+ RSS feeds and haven’t added many in the last 6 months (I realize there will be some churn in who is creating content) but I’m convinced it’s more like a fundamental shift in content consumption than the particular feeds I happen to subscribe to.

I don’t know about you but I have been noticing less and less content in my Google Reader lately, probably a few months – but I bet the trend has been going on longer.  I subscribe to 200+ RSS feeds and haven’t added many in the last 6 months (I realize there will be some churn in who is creating content) but I’m convinced it’s more like a fundamental shift in content consumption than the particular feeds I happen to subscribe to.

Figured I would use Reader.Google.com (Google Reader) and look at the trends in my own consumption first – but the trends are only for the last 30 days, they don’t cover a year or two timeframe I need.

Proving that RSS is on it’s way out isn’t an easy  – I tried finding “Google Reader” in Comscore, and could not locate it, it’s not captured in Alexa at all, as a subdomain of Google and it’s very incompletely captured by Compete.com.   But the data in Compete doesn’t draw a clear picture that RSS feeds are being less consumed – though I did find one indicator they might well be – the average stay  was 18 seconds in duration last year and 13 seconds this August (the latest month Compete has data on as of today).

Now, I don’t claim this “13 seconds” of time spent per visit per month  matches the real time spent in a visit – but it might suggest that consumption of information has, indeed, shifted away from RSS feeds to Facebook, FriendFeed (and FriendFeed was bought by Facebook recently) and Twitter.

It’s much as Steve Rubel of Edelman predicted.

We’re talking about a lot less time being spent on Google Reader – but far more time spent in Twitter and Facebook – where much of the same information is available and linked to.

I’m suspecting this is what happened.   Sure, sometimes I’ll go to bed and wake up and find 600+ new items my Google Reader to consume, if I want – but lately, I’ll go to bed and wake up and may 100 or 200 items are present for me to read the next day.

I think there’s been a fundamental shift in how information is consumed that’s taken hold.  I wish the rest of the data I looked at was as clear as the two charts I placed above – but they’re not.

See the original post: 
Is RSS on it’s way out?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Jackie Huba talks about the 1% of creators who opulate 99% of online content- the 1 percenters – a motercycle gang. One percent rule – citizen marketers, about 1 percent created content and maybe 10% interact with the content, yet the content benifits the entire community.

Jackie Huba talks about the 1% of creators who opulate 99% of online content- the 1 percenters – a motercycle gang.

One percent rule – citizen marketers, about 1 percent created content and maybe 10% interact with the content, yet the content benifits the entire community. Because only 1 percent create content, they need to be watched more closely.

And now, with all the possibilities to create content via mobile, via YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Social Networks. It’s also more important to pay attention to word of mouth, it was always important, but now, more important.

Jackie brings up the net promoter score and shows the correlation to higher sales. She brings up evangelism and fans with people who are enthusatic (next highest form of loyality) and the highest form (ownership).

Note: I think it would great if we could find a measure of demonstrated ownership using Radian6, Crimson Hexagon, Alterian/Techrigy/SM2.

Jackie brings up the Dominos story and with the growing use of Twitter, YouTube, Social Network that make it easier and easier to have the viral network spread amplified by mainstream media who will pick up on what people are talking about.

As soon as the Domino’s hoax came out, Domino’s responded effectively, but they didn’t have many outlets till then. But now, you can’t afford to wait even minutes, and need to monitor weekends, as a lot of this stuff happens on weekends.

Jackie Huba brings up the Motrin Moms #motrinmoms and when the 1 percenters create content, they generally don’t care what anyone thinks. Due the immediate response from 1 percenters the entire campaign was pulled from all it’s channels. And maybe MSM forgets, but Google doesn’t.

Note: Jackie points out something that is not entirely correct – Twitter only shows the last 10 days of data, and while the perception is immortality of data is a given, but in many cases, there are holes in that perception, more than you think.

Bacon Salt – story of a small brand that produce Bacon Salt and Baconaise… They used Social Media (Oprah) to get attention- they went from being unknown to the holy Grail of marketing. Bacon Lube….ugh.

Jackie points out people spread the message. Jackie Huba mentions Fiscars and scrapbooking (Fiscars required a few evanglists to promote the art of Scrap Booking) – Fiscateers – with custom scissors… This wasn’t a social media campaign, yet it incorporated Social Media. The agency who created this is Brands On Fire.

Stores that have Fiscateers involved have 3x the sales of Fiscars product than those that don’t – which makes sense.

Social Media is about people, it’s about participation and include offline events.

Three points
1. Listen and Respond
2. Use “Attraction Strategies” – make what ever you do “spreadable”
3. Citizen participation

Great session- she’s a good speaker and worked the room well.

Btw, typed this post with one finger on my iPhone, forgive my spelling, grammer lapses and lack of hyperlinks.

View original post here:
MIMA Summit Keynote With Jackie Huba

Popularity: 7% [?]

I’m having fun with this – I can’t believe The Business Insider’s report on Want 5,000 More Facebook Friends? That’ll Be $654.30 where it’s reported … ….. folks at online ad firm uSocial are taking that a step further: Pay them money ….

I’m having fun with this – I can’t believe The Business Insider’s report on Want 5,000 More Facebook Friends? That’ll Be $654.30 where it’s reported …

….. folks at online ad firm uSocial are taking that a step further: Pay them money …. they’ll deliver you 5,000 Facebook “friends” for 7.6 cents per friend ($654.30), or up to 10,000 Facebook “fans” for a mere 8.5 cents a fan ($1.167.30).

….. It claims that since each Facebook friend or fan is worth $1 per month, buyers will make back their investment many times over in the first month (it’s unclear how it came up with that number).

mmm … one of the basic tenets of analytics, any analytics, you have to be able to explain how you come up with a number – your reasoning might be right or it might be wrong, or generally right but have an error or two, but uSocial should be able to explain their reasoning for why a Facebook friend is worth 1 buck, USD, per month, on average.

Let me reason though it and try to figure out what a Facebook friend is really worth – I’m more likely the come up with a fair assessment than uSocial since I’m not in the business of selling friends, and I don’t know anyone who is.

Consulting Facebook’s Statistics page I find out that, at the time of my writing this post, there are slightly more than 250,000,000 active users and, on average, each user has approximately 120 Facebook friends.  According to Nick Gonzales at CheckFacebook.com (who I met last year in NYC and used to write for TechCrunch.com) Facebook has closer to 270,000,000 million users.

Another piece of the puzzle comes from Emarketer’s predictions on annual social media spending per social network, as reported on by  Mashable (see below)..

…..  Facebook numbers seem to be an underestimate based on other reports we’ve been hearing. Most recently, Facebook board member Marc Andreessen told Reuters that he expects the social network to generate at least $500 million in revenue this year, and “billions” within the next few years.

If we take Marc Andeessen’s numbers as being on target and, assume the average number of Facebook Users in 2009 at 250,000,000 (since the number of users increased each month – at might be at 270,000,000 but might have been 230,000,000 in March 09, I’d rather just take the 250,000,000 average users for 2009 and settle on that number).

If we assume the value of each user on Facebook is worth what advertisers are  willing to pay for – then each “Facebook Friend” would have a value in 2009, of roughly, 50 cents USD.  Therefore, on a monthly basis, each “Friend” would be worth about 4 cents.

Ha … 4 cents, USD, per month per Facebook friend in 2009 – that’s my logic!   You may disagree or agree with my reasoning – but at least, I explained how I derived my number, uSocial, didn’t.

Based on my reasoning – uSocial is charging users about twice what a friend is really worth, per month – but then – maybe their going out and getting the friends for you is what your paying for.  But then, is it really worth having “friends” like that?

For me, personally, no.   For a marketing campaign…… maybe; many PR Social Media campaigns have a hard time showing results that are meaningful to the CPM, hits trained, marketing expectation of the clients – in such a situation – might not paying for a bunch of “Fans” to be quickly added – make some sense?    If it were me, no – but I can see some people going for this.   The problem is quality of what you get and there’s a certain ethical issue with buying friends that goes against the grain of many people, including me.

And the idea that a Facebook Friend is worth $.04 cents vs. $07. cents – uSocial says that you can make money off your contacts that is not reflected in the 500 million dollars Marc Andreessen estimates Facebook will make in Advertising fees this year.   That might be true, but there’s no way to qualify the worth of an average user unless a large number of advertisers on Facebook are willing to share what they think their Facebook campaigns are worth, to them, in profits, after expenses, and that information is extremely difficult to find.

This reminds of stock valuations, when buying a company the value of the acquisition offer is anywhere between 8 – 24 times the annual revenue – why that is, I don’t know – by that reasoning, a Facebook friend at 4 cents per month could be worth 1.00 USD per month based on a valuation model that says you can monetize that friendship at 24 times it’s worth, based on advertising.

So that’s where uSocial’s 1.00 per month probably comes from.    Another calculation comes from Clara Shih post on lifetime value of a friend.

Customer lifetime value can no longer just be viewed as the present value of future cash flows from a particular customer in isolation. The new calculation should be something like this:

CLV_new = CLV_old + (Level of influence  x Size of Community) + (Level of influence  x Size of Network) + (Sales resulting from idea contributions)

* Obviously a very rough approximation, assumes there is little to no overlap between the individual’s network and the vendor community. Sales resulting from idea contribution can be defined as total revenue (or incremental increase in revenue) resulting from new products or features suggested by the community, divided by the number of participants in the community.

Assume, then, the CLV of a Facebook friend is some value (between 4 cents and 1.00 USD per month) with a Level of Influence which is currently undefined – since we have no easy way to measure it – but let’s put it at neutral, say .5 for now, and sales from the ideas your friends give you (again, we have no way to know this since we’d have to ask everyone).

Again, if we could get the data, we might end up with a function that draws a diagonal line  that says – based on the the value of an average Facebook friend, of average influences, who brings in so much income in your network – you can figure out the value of acquiring more friends.

I just made up this chart (above) based on some assumptions, below

Assuming I can rank the influences of all the friends an average user has (and that is a whole different discussion) I can create segmentation in analytics that would say, for a certain groupings of friends, they are worth 1.00 USD per month, where as others, might be worth 12.00 USD per month, etc.

The values I came up with are totally hypothetical, I make no bones about it, or apologies for it, my numbers are probably as good or better than anyone else has come up with, so far, and if I could come up with some way of measuring average “influence” the chart would be even more interesting.   My point is – we need to move to something like this – that chart – segmentation of groups of friends. etc.

In saying this, I by no means want to devalue the nature or meaning of friendship – virtual or real (as if there’s much difference anymore) I am looking at it mainly as a way to justify and explain why need to spend money on friends – as if I should have to explain it – but I do – because Social Media Marketing, as I wrote about the other day in Limitations on Social Media as a marketing medium, is really about “Marketing to Friends” in one form or another …. would you disagree?

Originally posted here: 
Are your Facebook Friends worth 1 dollor USD per month? Try 4 cents, instead!

Popularity: 11% [?]

Earlier today I saw two pieces of information, not directly connected, that highlight current issues with Social Media as a marketing medium. First A New Mindset is Needed posted by K.D. Paine on Brian Solis PR 2.0 blog mentioned that most Public Relations campaigns are based on “hits”, including campaigns where Social Media is a component.   Katie Paine goes on to suggest advertising as we know it, is dead, and we should focus on finding influencers who will, though their own opinions, affect their friends and followers … ..

Earlier today I saw two pieces of information, not directly connected, that highlight current issues with Social Media as a marketing medium.

First A New Mindset is Needed posted by K.D. Paine on Brian Solis PR 2.0 blog mentioned that most Public Relations campaigns are based on “hits”, including campaigns where Social Media is a component.   Katie Paine goes on to suggest advertising as we know it, is dead, and we should focus on finding influencers who will, though their own opinions, affect their friends and followers …

.. in  today’s environment, most decisions are influenced to a much greater degree by whatever your followers on Twitter, friends on Facebook recommend or what Google search delivers than they are by whatever ads pop up. Trying to decide what flat screen TV to buy, where to go for vacation, what movie to see, or where to make reservations for dinner, chances are you’ll either ask your friends on Facebook or Twitter for advice, or search on Google for reviews.

But the problem with that …. it’s a good idea – but that data provided by Facebook, Twitter, to name two that I’m familiar with, doesn’t support doing those kinds of outreach.    Sure, Facebook is collecting the information – but they’re not sharing it – and what you get via Lexicon and their advertising tools, at best, is aggregate level information – useful – but not enough to do what Katie suggests.

It’s almost as if, on one hand, marketers and advertisers, driven by supportive businesses open to change,  need to adopt Social Media.  On the other side of it, the “Identity Management platforms” (isn’t that what Facebook really is?) need to figure out a way of allowing targeting of influentials without cutting their own throats by violating privacy issues.

For example, Facebook’s Lexicon data is a year old, you can’t manipulate the choices – and the charts actually seem basic, not nearly as useful as they could be.   While Facebook has the information on who “influences” who – or would or has been an influencer (for any event on Facebook – or, almost piece of data) there’s not easy way to get at it.     In fact, Unbound Technology, has gone, as far as anyone can, to find influencers who materially influence others, than anyone else I’ve seen – look at my earlier post and video interview on Unbound Technology – Social Media mining interview with Brian Killen.

The other bit of information came from Joe Marchese over at Online Spin MediaPost blog – who issued a $1 Million Dollar Social Media Marketing Challenge (see below):

” ….. I am willing to issue a challenge to any marketer willing to, over a given period (minimum three months), spend an equal amount through social media and any “traditional” media outlet at scale (minimum of $1 million on each):If the ROI from social media is not equal to that from traditional media, my company will deliver free media until the difference is made up. This means, if you were planning on spending at least $2 million in media next quarter, this would be a potential no-lose situation and a great social media experiment. In addition, I would even be willing to pay for the research, up to an agreed-upon cost. Here are the ground rules:

Good idea, but I wonder if someone who spends $2 million dollars on a media buy could, materially, find good outlets to spend $2 million, during the same period, on Facebook Ads, Blogger outreach, Viral Videos (hoping they’d spread), Social Networking sites, Twitter Marketing, just to name a few – probably I’m touching the surface.   Joe goes on to say….

Why am I so confident that the ROI of the social media campaign will deliver? Because CPMs are a lie. If you take a $30 CPM rate for television, factor in TiVo and people who aren’t paying attention, then factor in a rate of message waste (males watching tampon ads), the true CPM is much, much higher.

Circling back on both K.D.Paine and Joe Marchese’s posts – I want Social Media to succeed as much as anyone else, but it needs to be addressed, not just educationally, via getting companies to spend money on Social Media – but platforms like Facebook – have to provide information that have, up to now, been unable or unwilling to do.

If we could, in fact, really target people who naturally like a certain razor or certain type of wine, on Facebook, and find out how many of their friends, look to each other when making purchasing decisions – on a micro level, not just on an aggregate level, we might be able to do that large, $2 million Social Media buy – but if someone had a $2 million dollar Social Media spend they had to unload in 3 months, and it wasn’t Facebook or MySpace ads, I bet they’d have a hard time finding enough outlets to even spend the money – much less, deliver the results.

In just goes to show, that most problems in life need to be solved at multiple, levels, at the same time.

However, I think we’ll arrive at a point, in the next two years, where you will be able to do a $2 million dollar Social Media campaign in a short period of time and see results that are better than what your getting now, by spending it in other ways – and don’t count Search Marketing – as Social Media – because it’s not (at least, not in the way it’s structured now).

The rest is here:
Limitations on Social Media as a marketing medium

Popularity: 15% [?]