Advertising
Twitter Usage in America, Dive into the Data
Edison Research is launching their “Twitter Usage in America 2010″ report today with a live webinar. The report is part of their full Internet & Multimedia Study and includes some quality data. Here are some of the highlights:
- “The percentage of Americans who are familiar with Twitter has surged from 5% in 2008 to 87% in 2010.” We can all blame CNN’s Rick Sanchez for this.
- There are really only 17 million Americans using Twitter. The inflated number of accounts represents SPAM accounts and users with multiple accounts.
- “The percentage of Twitter users who are African-Americans in the current U.S. population… stands at roughly 25%.”
- “The majority of Twitter users are “lurkers,” passively following and reading the updates of others without contributing updates of their own.”
- “The percentage of Twitter users who follow brands is more than three times higher than similar behavior expressed by social networking users in general.”
- “A significantly higher proportion of Twitter users update their social networking profiles – and access Twitter – using mobile phones than the average user of other social networking sites and services.”
- “Only 7% of Americans are aware of location based social networks”
- “Twitter users are more likely to have improved their financial situation in the past year compared to the total population (32% to 18%)”
Twitter Users are Unique
There are still, relatively, very few of us living and breathing Twitter on a regular basis (and sharing our breakfast choices). The users driving the content on Twitter are not reflective of social networking users as a whole. They are very much early adopters and more comfortable interacting with brands. This is great for marketers looking to engage influencers.
“The fact that Twitter users are far more likely to follow brands and engage in brand conversations makes them responsive to marketing, but also considerably different to mainstream Americans,” said Tom Webster, VP Strategy adn Marketing at Edison Research.
Marketers can clearly find in Twitter a healthy community of influencers ready to engage. But as Tom points out, Twitter users are a bit of a different breed. Marketing strategies that work well on Twitter may not hold true within other communities. Many marketers would no doubt agree with this assessment, but it is very interesting to dive into some of the data behind it.
Twitter Has A Strong Black Community
Why are so many African Americans on Twitter (There are Black People on Twitter)? Who knows. Why do so many white people love Frisbee Sports? It does not really matter why, but it’s important as marketers to understand the demographics of the channels we are marketing in. Depending on the brand in question, this may or may not be important to your marketing. Nevertheless, this demonstrated even more that Twitter is an outlier.
And now for a couple surprising numbers…
Twitter Users Make More Money?
If you were on Twitter in the past year, you had a significantly higher chance of improving your financial situation. The question is why? Is it because Twitter users are more likely to be business owners? Entrepreneurs?
“WTF is Twitter?” is so 2009
Oprah, Ashton, The Real Shaq oh my. Thanks to some celebrity and media love affairs with the blue bird in question, Twitter has shockingly infiltrated 87% of American brains. To jump from 5% to 87% in 2 years is quite the leap. So while 17 million Americans are the only ones truly using the service, hundreds of millions know we are here. Twitter can continue to have a large influence (as large as Facebook) on what society talks about with a much smaller core user group.
Thanks to Edison for the great data. Check out the the webinar or download the full report.
Cottonelle Almost Gets Social
I really enjoyed the Cottonelle “How do you roll?” commercial when I first saw it last week, asking people how they prefer to present their paper, over or under (apparently the answer is over).
But, for a campaign that can get people to the internet pretty easily, their integrated social media, if you can call it that, reminds me more of any empty roll that needs to be replaced.
Yes they have two of their commercial’s characters on Twitter, and a Facebook page, and the poll itself with a nice map of results. But these small efforts are social for social’s sake with very little thought toward tying it all together. They even went out and interviewed folks on the street to add to their actor interviews and put all of it on Youtube, but check out the views on those videos. There is obviously nothing being done to promote them.
It smacks of a brand or agency that thinks social media is suppose to be cheap and easy. I see a multi-million dollar traditional ad campaign and a dollar store social media effort.
There is no effort to engage the consumers, whose attention they are buying with some major TV spots, in a long term way. I am sure the media buys will produce a short bump in sales and if that is all Cottonelle wants, then fine, good show.
But in 2010, pointing people to a micro-site that does not extend the relationship beyond the length of a media buy, is traditional advertising and less effective. The opportunity is to build a community, to engage the consumer in a way that creates a longer term relationship (meaning more money), to ask questions of consumers, to answer questions, to get the people they are pulling in with a clever, simple question, and convert them into spending more time with their brand. Consumers want dialogue.
It is a cute campaign Cottonelle, but perhaps you should consider building consumer relationships with a longer shelf life than say, I don’t know, a roll of toilet paper?
Superbowl Commercials and Youtube with Bridgestone
Bridgestone has had several top ranking Superbowl commercials over the last few years and has seen great return from them. From this, they have begun to see the value in sharing that media through social sites like Youtube and are beginning to actively invest in these tools and social media as a whole. Michael Fluck, Director of Brand and Retail Marketing, had a quick talk with us about this and more.
Bridgestone will be attending Social Fresh Nashville, a one day social media conference for marketers, on Jan 11, 2010
One of my favorites of their Superbowl Commercials
The Democratization of Advertising
The Democratization of Advertising
Presentation Transcript
- The Democratization of Advertising JasonKeath.com
- Santa Claus is Real
- YES Kids Love Santa.
Read the rest of this entry »
15 Top Social Media Agencies
In the last month I have had 6 separate conversations with peers surrounding the question “What is a social media agency?”
There are several types of social media companies out there. Some are research focused, or software heavy, or app developers, or monitoring services. Some are purely extending the PR battle plan to a new medium.
The social media agency is one that can grasp all these segments and help companies extend their brand and marketing through training, long term strategy, and execution.
For the purpose of this list, I have focused on companies who mostly do social media. There are many companies making social media a piece of what they offer. These companies are the top ones focusing on social media.
As Armano points out “What McKinsey would offer in SM would be very different than Crayon”. Since almost every company would almost be it’s own category, I am avoiding the categories for now. Perhaps in future lists we can add some delineation.
Advanced Guard of CC Chapman fame. Acquired by Campfire, which may not fall into our criteria of a “social media agency” but now has some major talent in the arena.
Altimeter Group, of Charlene Li and more recently Jeremiah Owyang fame, “provides thought leadership, research, and consulting on digital strategies, with a core focus on how companies can leverage social and emerging technologies.”
Ant’s Eye View “At Ant’s Eye View we concentrate on helping companies of all sizes understand and engage in customer collaboration, social media, and community building.” Clients include Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Dr Pepper, and Maker’s Mark. [added per @TShelton]
The Conversation Group “The Conversation Group is a global consultancy broadly dedicated to the art, science, and practical application of social technologies. We’re enabling organizations around the world to radically scale their ability to discover, engage and collaborate with their constituencies, both inside and outside the enterprise.” [added per @PeterKim]
>carrot creative “is a new-media marketing agency located in DUMBO, Brooklyn, NY specializing in social media marketing and user experience design. We have the unique ability to take a project from the initial ideation stages to full scale application development all under one roof.”
Collective Bias “The Wisdom of Connected Crowds – this is CollectiveBias, a partnership between us, consumers, brands, & retailers.” CollectiveBias, of John Andrews, @GeekMommy and Walmart Moms fame, is a new social media company underneath the MARS Advertising umbrella.
Crayon, of Joseph Jaffe fame, “is a strategic consultancy that helps its clients achieve positive change and impact by joining the conversation.”
Dachis Group, of Jeff Dachis, Peter Kim, and David Armano fame, “was created to unlock the value of social technologies for large corporate enterprises through its Social Business Design global advisory practice and technology implementation program.” Dachis has $50 million in funding from Austin Ventures and recently purchased London/Sydney based Headshift.
Ignite is “the Original Social Media Agency ®. We’ve combined content developers, technologists, and social media strategists to form the Ignite team. Together, we keep up with trends, filter the noise, and help companies like yours put social media to work.”
the Kbuzz “is a Word of Mouth Marketing firm that creates and sustains buzz through word of mouth and social media marketing.”
New Marketing Labs, of Chris Brogan and Justin Levy fame, “is dedicated to solving your online marketing and social media challenges. They approach this in two ways, events and education (see Inbound Marketing Summit) and through guiding you and pitching in as a social media marketing agency.”
Mullen “is a social media agency rooted in strategy, public relations and a belief that creativity is as important as community. Social agency of record for Panera, Olympus, Grain Foods Foundation, Stanley, Stop and Shop and others.”
Shift Communications “is a fast-growing, national agency that lives at the intersection of Influencer Relations & Social Media. We measure our performance according to the impact that we have on driving your business forward.”
Social Media Group “Highly respected independent social media shop, delivering results as Ford’s social media agency since 2007, clients include SAP, Yamaha, ING & govt. One of the world’s largest independent agencies devoted exclusively to helping companies navigate the new socially engaged web.”
Undercurrent “is a think tank based in NYC that provides digitally-focused strategic planning, ideation, measurement, training, and advisement to global brands ready to engage a new generation of human beings that were born digital.” Clients include Pepsi and Ford.”
We Are Social is “a conversation agency. We help brands to listen, understand and engage in conversations in social media. We’re already helping Ford, Skype, Eurostar, The Economist, Absolut, Dunlop, Barclaycard and the WWF.”
Deloitte, McKinsey, Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence, and Porter Novelli are also in the space. Not sure any of them would pass the “mostly social media” standard, but I felt the need to include them in the discussion. They are all contributing to what a “social media agency” is evolving into.
Also, Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group has a great Wiki going with more information if you want to dive in deeper.
Who did I miss?
Include it in the comments and I will add them to the post.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
