Measuring Twitter

Twitter offers numerous methods of measuring the popularity and effectiveness of their accounts. Both Twitter and independent websites offer programs and tools allow users to gather and analyze a variety of data, including metrics for individual posts or topics, account growth, traffic and more. 

The variety of data available is important. Simply tracking your number of Followers does not provide conclusive information about your audience, and it does not indicate the overall success or failure of your messaging. 

We use a number of tools to gather metrics about our Twitter account. Here are a few useful applications: 

According to “How to Gather and Use Twitter Metrics” on wikiHow, the tools below perform the following functions: 

• The Follower count indicates the number of people you are following and the people who are following you. You can calculate the number of “retweets” – the number of posts that Followers shared with their Followers, and you can create custom links to measure the traffic of specific URLs. 
• Twitterholic measures the growth of an account over time. It also compares Twitter accounts based on region, revealing the most popular accounts for a certain geographical area. 
• Google Analytics, used for many other websites, also provides a tool for Twitter. This measures the traffic of the account, including the number of visitors per month and visits per follower. 
• Twitalyzer is an independent website that measures a Twitter account in five ways: influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity and clout. 

Not only can businesses use these tools to measure data about their own account, but the public can use these tools to check the credibility of accounts they follow. Giving the public access to these measurements helps make Twitter a more effective communications tool. It allows the community to identify influential and significant users, detect spammers, and determine the actual popularity of accounts, including their own. 

All of these tools will help Twitter gain credibility among businesses, as they can attain a variety of measurable data to measure the success of their accounts. 

These instruments also support the notion that Twitter is a valuable social network, and might be more of a permanent marketing staple than many experts initially believed.

Confessions of an IF Intern: Social Media Ethics

On Facebook, we find it deceiving when someone uses a picture from ten years ago, making him or her appear younger and more attractive than they actually are. On Twitter, we feel cheated when we find out that our favorite celebrity is not actually updating their page, but rather having their publicist write all the updates instead. While reading blogs and customer reviews for products and services, consumers find themselves questioning the validity of the comments. As businesses increasingly turn to these social media networks, they should consider the ethical and moral obligations that follow.

Just like any other user of a network, a company has the moral obligation to be who it claims to be. Internet users are savvier than you might think, and are able to identify when a persona is forged and when comments are well-crafted. Just as well, posing as someone else can do great damage to the business’s credibility. It will not matter how the organization acts offline if they lose the public’s trust online.

Katherine Reynolds Lewis, in an article for Parade Magazine, found that companies spend an enormous sum on word-of-mouth advertising, including activities on social media networks and blogs. “Companies pay about 1.6 billion to generate ‘buzz’ online,” said Katherine.

This is a lot of money to be spent on social media. Considering that memberships on most social networks are free, we have to consider what the money delegated to buzz marketing is really being spent on.

Using social media networks and websites to gain attention and support is a smart, sometimes necessary move for a business. There are many benefits – creating personal relationships with consumers and sharing information with the public. But companies should always be honest. If an organization receives positive reviews from a third party, they should be shared! Even negative comments should be shared, as it strengthens the organization’s integrity and provides an opportunity to address unfavorable remarks. Companies should never provide incentives to people to write good things about their company, as it will hurt the company’s reputation in the long run.

Unfortunately, as opportunities to reach customers increase, so do the opportunities to deceive them. Consumers should exercise caution and vigilance when viewing material online. They should scrutinize the credibility of statements and explore where the information really came from. Businesses should be confident as they become involved in these online networks, as doing so is not considered unethical. However, they need to remember to produce honest, truthful material and avoid engaging in unethical practices, no matter how tempting they seem.

Confessions of an IF Intern: ESPN

In New England there is a saying, “if you get sick of the weather, wait a minute,” as the conditions constantly change. At IF, it should be “if you run out of things to do, wait a minute.” Every moment I worry about running out of projects to work on, an e-mail will flash on my desktop or someone will stop by my desk with a task for me to do. With so many clients, IF constantly has work to be done. If I ever get a chance to be bored, I don’t have to wait long before I receive another assignment.

It’s a good thing IF keeps me busy. Otherwise, I might be tempted to do the unspeakable. Change the TV, which is right above my desk, from ESPN to SOAPnet, Oxygen, or the Food Network. They warned me in the beginning that if I were to ever change it, I would be in BIG trouble. Although ESPN serves as great background noise for me, I must admit there are other networks I would enjoy much more. However, admitting this would not be wise, as a large part of IF’s culture is sports.

I don’t usually mind ESPN being on all the time, especially when I’m busy working on a project. Yet the spare moments of down time I get, I wonder what really would happen if I were to change the channel. Would anyone notice? Everyone always seems so busy at their desk, concentrated on their individual tasks, especially when on deadline. Would it disrupt the order and balance at IF? I am still too scared to try.

ESPN has caused me a little bit of embarrassment as well. Sometimes, a person will stand in front of me and say “Way to go!” or “Good job!” and a few times, I think they might be talking to me. Once or twice, I’ve even said “Thanks!” It takes me a second to realize that they are addressing the TV right above my head instead.

If I can appreciate ESPN for one thing, it would be the large amount of traffic it generates around my desk. Without it, I would hardly get as many visitors as I do with it. Whether people are walking by my desk to get from one department to the other, or are just trying to catch a quick sports update to break up their day, I will never know. I wish I could say they passed by just to talk to me, but I know that isn’t true. I can pretend though, right?

Confessions of an IF Intern: High Heels and Breakfast Tacos

Just like any other intern about to start their first day, I found myself confused about what to wear. Most advise you to dress up, regardless of the working environment. However, was that necessary for IF – an advertising agency started by 2 former NFL players? An office that plays ESPN all day and every day? Better safe than sorry, I figured, as I put on dress pants, a nice shirt, and heels.

I was relieved when I walked in to find another fellow intern dressed up just like me. He was even wearing a tie. It seemed like I got it right, and would not look overdressed and ridiculous when making my first impression to the company.

We walked in, and found all our superiors wearing jeans and flip-flops. FLIP-FLOPS! How could such a successful company get away with dressing so casually? I knew IF was pretty laid-back, but I never thought I could actually pull off flip flops and jeans in a real working environment. I wasn’t fully convinced that this style was okay until the two creative directors walked in and made fun of our attire, telling us we weren’t allowed to work at IF dressed like that. To make it worse, Fridays are considered “Inappropriate Fridays,” as the attire becomes even more casual, including tee-shirts. Two of the account executives walked into our meeting in pink IF tee-shirts – two different shades, as they couldn’t decide which they liked better, so they ordered both.

And nobody told me that everyone brings in food on Fridays. The smell of breakfast tacos all morning made me angry that I had already eaten breakfast before I came. I became even more upset when someone plopped a taco right on my desk, which looked so much more appealing than the bowl of cereal I ate hours before. And don’t forget the cake, donuts, brownies, and other types of goodies that were piling up in the kitchen. Note to self – on Fridays, come to work hungry.

I’ll have you know that as I’m writing this, I’m wearing jeans and flip-flops. The dress pants and nice shirt I wore on the first day are hanging in my closet at home, and will remain untouched for the entire summer. And I can’t wait for Friday, when I can skip the cereal and come in and eat a breakfast taco instead.

Social News Site Digg to Launch Voting System for Ad Content

Social news site Digg is launching Digg Ads in an attempt to break away from static banners and apply a more interactive approach to their advertising in order to become profitable in 2009.  

Digg Ads will allow users to vote whether they like an ad or not, the same way they structure the news content of their site, and the voting determines the success of the ad.  If an ad is highly regarded among users, or “Dugg,” then the price per click of the ad goes down for the advertiser.  If the ad is not well received, it is buried and priced out of the system.   

Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, stated in an interview with Ad Age that “people are already doing this on Digg with all kinds of commercial content. There are tons of examples, like the recent Intel ‘Rock Stars’ TV ad that got more than 1,500 Diggs. I think our audience is OK with the idea of advertising when it’s relevant or useful or interesting.”

YouTube Finds Niche for Advertisers in ‘Midtail’ Content

Over the past six months, YouTube has seen a shift in the number of viewers watching long-form content, such half-hour network TV shows, to a category of video that didn’t really exist before YouTube.  It’s called “midtail” content. 

Midtail is in a category somewhere between studio-produced and user-generated video and it is becoming more and more popular.  According to Advertising Age and video analytics firm TubeMogul, “the top 100 midtail producers, including names such as College Humor, have racked up more than 2 billion views during the past six months on YouTube, growing nearly 5% a month on average.  Meanwhile, the full-length hour-long and half-hour TV shows on YouTube, 3,215 episodes in all, have accumulated 19.5 million views.” 

Since most of the valuable rights to major TV shows are under contract with Hulu for the next two years, YouTube has turned to midtail content because, according to Advertising Age, “it supplies the biggest pool of brand-safe ad impressions, fertile ground for YouTube’s overlays and banners, and malleable content for brand integrations it can peddle to Madison Avenue.” 

“The closest thing as made-for-YouTube is this midtail; it’s more snack-size — you’re watching at work when you have less time,” said TubeMogul CEO Brett Wilson. “As audiences grow, this will be more profitable for YouTube than selling ESPN’s content.”

The Future of Global Social Media?

Mixi, Gree, DeNa, 51, Tudou, Xiaonei, Jia Jia Cheng – will these be the future competitors of Facebook and MySpace? Can they succeed in China and Japan when faced with the different cultures and incumbent social networking websites?

http://bit.ly/2bINk4

Tony Boselli in the News

Our co-founder and business development guru, Tony Boselli, was just mentioned in an article for his philanthropic work.

E-mail – The Classic New Way to Reach Your Target Audience

As retailers and marketers look for cost-effective and results-oriented marketing strategies during the current recession, e-mail has emerged as a viable tool that is becoming the “rock star” of direct marketing.

According to Shop.org, “the number of companies focused on retention has nearly doubled in the past year — experts say few cuts are being made to e-mail budgets, while areas including paid search, affiliate marketing and social marketing are coming under scrutiny.”  While it is becoming more popular because of its cost-effectiveness and ability to reach targeted audiences through demographic segmentation while providing reliable tracking, e-mail is by no means a new tactic.

In the fall of 2008, Koloa Landing at Poipu Beach enlisted IF marketing & advertising to create an email campaign to increase awareness and drive fresh leads for their luxury resort and residences on one of Kauai’s most famous beaches. The developers had already exhausted their “friends & family” list and their existing marketing programs were averaging around 20 leads per month.

We sent three emails over a 6 week period: one to their list of prospects, one to ours and one promoting a special event for high-end buyers in the Napa Valley. When the dust finally settled, we generated more than 350 leads during one of the toughest markets in recent history for a luxury home product starting in the $900s.  Replies and information requests poured in, the callback list quickly filled with fresh prospects, and the newly energized sales team went to work converting leads to sales.

Marketing Non-Profit Organizations Successfully

IF Marketing & Advertising has recently been doing a lot of work with non-profit organizations.  In fact, we just finished doing a huge web proposal for a large non-profit in Austin which was a very exciting process.  Through our research we found that, surprisingly, many non-profit organizations’ websites lack usability and content that is important to potential donors when making their decision about what organization to donate to.

Through an article at www.useit.com/alertbox/nonprofit-donations.html, we found that many non-profits would gain much more from their websites if they clearly stated what they are about and how they use donations.  The major problem with many non-profit organization websites is that they are cluttered, hard to navigate and sometimes people can’t even find where to donate on the site.

In our pro-bono work with non-profit organizations such as the Berry Creek Cancer Fund and The Boselli Foundation, we have designed sites that are easy to navigate and clearly state their purpose.  These are the top-of-mind issues that the majority of people have when making a donation to a cause.