More case studies here.

That means that of the retailers surveyed in a survey by the e-tailing Group and PowerReviews in August and September of this year, Facebook will have almost 100% brand penetration, as reported by eMarketer.

Other interesting insights  from the survey:

• More than 1/2 of retailers surveyed use 5 of 10 of the Social Marketing tools they included in the survey
• Top tools used by retailers includes: Facebook, Twitter, Reviews, Blogs & Viral Videos - all of which are over 50% usage amongst those surveyed

The sentiment measured in the survey indicated what we encounter almost weekly with potential clients - marketers are still scared of Social Media. Scared to give up control of their brand, scared about how the conversations can take a mind or path of their own, and worried that they lack the skills internally to fully understand how Social Media best works within their brand framework.

Pushing those fears aside, the resounding sentiment that they note rings true: Using social media might be scary, but avoiding it is becoming less (and less and less and less) of an option.

Ways to move beyond those fears?

• Conduct a Social Media "Audit" - hire an agency like Affinitive (naturally!) who specializes in the space to look at who/what/where is currently talking about your brand - listening and identifying where to enter the conversation is the first step
• Step away from your interns - Managing a Facebook page is no longer the work of an intern (if it ever was, gasp!), time to put some real strategy behind it
• They're gonna talk no matter what - remember that just like the gossiping girls in your high school, no matter what you do, people are going to talk about you. Best to be there to join the conversation, curb any inaccuracies, and develop a relationship with them that is full of trust, transparency, and ultimately - value
• If the platform fails, so what? - There's a possibility Twitter, Facebook & YouTube could be obsolete in a couple of years. Not looking likely, but always possible (Friendster, what?) but so what... if your presence in that platform becomes no longer necessary, the same applies to everyone else. Crafting an exit strategy is easy. Better to exit when it's time to than to sit on the sidelines and watch your competitors take home a pile of innovation awards and the loyalty of your target audience.

As we've mentioned, it's a land grab. The time to act is now.

This lack of integrated strategy is largely a result of two factors:

• the experimentation encouraged in Steve Rubel’s Digital Embassy strategy
• the relative ease involved with launching a presence

On the surface an integrated approach seems ideal but ultimately it must be driven by the key objective.  An Embassy strategy works well if you’re building up natural search results or brand awareness but not so well if you’re objective is customer acquisition and deeper relationships with customers.  Without integration, there’s no clear path for the consumer to take the casual relationship to a deeper one.

As I started writing I realized there was a good amount to cover, so instead of tackling this topic all in one go, I figured I’d break it into three manageable chunks.  Next up will be working through the various integration opportunities and reviewing the potential road blocks.  Then I’ll post about some successful case studies (please send examples if you have them) and highlight the big benefits that come to those who make integration a priority.

However, Facebook’s success isn’t all good for marketers.  For one, Facebook’s staggering growth has exposed them to more legal issues, and as Facebook fills up their liability soft spots, marketers feel the pinch.  Just recently, Facebook outlawed conducting any giveaways or promotions through page status updates.  All promotions on Facebook must now be done through 3rd party apps, and Facebook must be indemnified.  That's a pretty high barrier to what used to be a casual, effortless process.  Countless Pages from small to big name brands have been running these types of promotions to garner fans, grow brand awareness on Facebook, and increase customer engagement for quite some time.   It doesn’t appear as though Facebook has begun to crack down on this just yet, but they will likely soon.

Second, the discovery of Facebook as a viable marketing tool has led to a deluge of brands jumping into the Facebook Page game.  As consumers become fans and interact with pages, their friends’ news feeds begin to fill up with these brand interactions, which they may or may not care about.  To counter this and other issues, Facebook launched a simplified version of its platform, fittingly called Facebook Lite.  The biggest change for marketers is that no longer do these Fan Page actions hit the news feed.  You won’t see “Jane Doe became a fan of Brand X” anymore, or “John Smith added the SuperBrand Application.”  The stream is streamlined, with only status updates populating the stream, and the Highlights section is 86’d.

It all sounds like bad news but in reality this is an opportunity for marketers; marketers who understand what engagement really means, that is.  As the marketing fence goes up, brands that’ve relied solely on giveaways, promotions, flashy games and stumble-upons will be looking through the pickets, and the brands that authentically engage with consumers and keep a real person behind the voice will be tending the greener garden.  Better to start now while you can still hop the fence.

At least that's the question that keeps coming up in conversations with my current / future / probable clients as we look at how to integrate Social Media Marketing into their strategy for 2010. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, it's no longer an uphill convincing battle of us trying to say to clients YES YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST DO SOCIAL MEDIA AND HERE ARE 1,052 REASONS WHY... now the conversation is more WE KNOW WE NEED TO DO IT SO HELP US FIGURE OUT WHAT WE SHOULD DO?

Lately most of those conversations can't seem to exist without the mention of the one, the only TWITTER.

The Social Media Marketing landscape is a lot like the world of sports. It has some mainstay platforms (like franchise teams -  the Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves = Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr) and then it has it's emerging greats - powerful players who people believe could become a franchise all on their own (like Jordan + Chicago, LeBron + Cleveland, Bonds + San Fran,... well you get the idea). The emerging greats - like players - can come onto the scene from nowhere and stick around.

Sticking around is what separates them from the majorly buzzed about but often prematurely hyped players - who come into the game and can leave it just as quickly - whether they leave it injured due to technology issues, an acquisition, a lack of providing that niche/unique experience that keeps them around or they simply get beat by a better competitor and bow out.

2009 is Twitter's year. In 2008 many tech pundits questioned whether Twitter would stick. The most common statement about Twitter seemed to be "I just don't get it."

But this is a new year. It's like Twitter has been drafted out of high school straight into the pros.

Entering into the Twitter game isn't, however, a right of passage, as some might leave you to believe. Although Twitter is becoming as common a search tool as Yahoo, it still doesn't necessarily mean that your brand HAS to have an account on Twitter. It's a platform just like any other - and decision to engage has to be strategic and tie to your business objectives. Just like a team wouldn't draft a really great point guard if they really are in desperate need of a center forward, Twitter might not be an absolute for your brand.

Without further ado (har har, I couldn't resist! I'm cheesy!) a few things to consider when trying to answer the epic question "To tweet or not to tweet?" (if you're asking it as a brand, not as a person...unless your person is your brand, of course...)

As a brand there are a variety of ways you can interact with your existing and potential consumers, or your target or aspirational audiences (or all of the above). It isn't as simple as a micro statement. Like anything else - the tone, the audience, and the approach can vary based on how the deployment of Twitter would impact your business objectives.

A few common ways brands use Twitter (effectively) are as follows:

• To engage in conversation. At it's core Twitter allows you to develop, facilitate and engage in B to C and C to B and three way conversations - with those who are talking about you, to you or about /within a marketplace segment you'd like to dominate (or you do dominate).
• To answer customer service questions. Are you in an industry plagued with power outages? Are you like Sprint PCS with your customer dissatisfaction chronicled across the web? Twitter is a great place to begin to answer or facilitate the answering of key consumer questions.
• To provide crisis communication and curb rumors. Celebs are doing the best job of this currently - but brands can as well! Don't let the blogosphere or some stodgy press release that goes out to the AP tell your story.  Talk to your friends, tell them the truth in a simple, short statement that links to further details. They'll spread it for you quickly, guaranteed.
• To share new product information and get feedback. Add a new item to your menu? Ask people to check it out and share their micro reviews.  Have something you want to seed? Give it away to some influential tweeters. Don't let joe schmo rogue blogger from Detroit show the first images of your new concept car, break them on Twitter yourself in an ownable way. Give your consumers a backstage pass to the shaping and molding of your brand.
• To drive traffic to another online destination. Check the web analytics of any brand site who deploys social media marketing. I guarantee Twitter and Facebook rank in the top 5 traffic drivers if they are deploying good strategy within either.
• To host giveaways and other consumer promotions. Invite Tweeters to come to a live tasting of your product. Do a giveaway to your followers. Ask people to retweet a statement in order to win XYZ. Note: there is a fine line in executing this well and with good intention/strategy. I'd suggest not deploying this unless you are sure you're doing it in a genuine way.
• To tell a story about a brand, experience or persona. This is really the reason to being. What/who/how/why is the voice of your brand? This is the essence of who you are. It blows my mind when people leave this voice to interns. This is your story on the front lines...directly playing with the key players who will BUY your product, make sure you are 100% confident in the storyteller.
• To develop your brand identity. See bullet above.
• To establish relationships by facilitating simple brand interactions. This probably should have been at the top of the list. 9 times out of 10, Twitter makes the most sense when brands really can benefit from relationship marketing with the right audience.  Before brands used to have to go through a third party to make that happen. Those days are gone resulting in an exciting (and often scary for the old school set) new set of opportunities.

The scope and possibility here is way too expansive to be encompassed in this single post.

The point is that although in most cases we would likely determine that drafting Twitter as a new member of your marketing team mix is the right thing to do - it isn't as simple as signing up for the account, slapping on a background image and tweeting.

There are lots of other players on the field, so if you want to really play, you better step onto it with your A game.

Note on image: The top tweet is one of my favorites, from the man... Mr. A-Z himself twittering about his experience with Surfrider Foundation at a Barefoot Wine sponsored event. Barefoot is one of the brands I have the extreme pleasure of working with on Social Media Marketing.

Less than 10 months ago, I remember creating massive PowerPoint presentations explaining exactly who, what, and WHY platforms like Twitter were going to become key social platforms for brands to engage with consumers - especially when loyalty and retention are part of the brand's goals and objectives. Now we are getting requests for Twitter and Facebook strategic proposals on a daily basis. The tide has definitely turned.

According to a recent study by Burson-Marsteller, Twitter is the top Social Media platform for Fortune 100 companies. Not a huge shocker if you work (live! breathe! all of the above!) the space, but nice to hear tools that you believe, as a marketer, to be viable if properly adopted to begin to emerge as frequent parts of  brands' strategies.

What is even more interesting is when you drill the reported Fortune 100 numbers down:

• 54 percent of the Fortune 100 have a Twitter presence (Anyone have that list? Mashable? Couldn't find it on their Mega Lists)
• 32 percent have a blog
• 29 percent have an active Facebook Page.
• only 17 percent use all three (blog, Facebook, Twitter)
• 94% of companies who use Twitter use it for news/announcements, 67% for consumer service and 57 per cent for deals and promotions
• average Twitter account has 5,234 followers,  median is 674 followers.

At companies using only one of these tools, 76 percent of them use Twitter as the tool of choice. Whew. In some ways this makes me want to dance around in circles and sing "I told you so" like a 4th grader...but mostly this just makes me want to work harder to ensure that all of our current, future, past, potential clients step into the space with purpose AND best practices.

As the best practices for the space continue to get defined and redefined by the people who actively engage in them (as users,  brand leaders, marketers...), the ownership over social marketing as a strategy and the social mediums that fall underneath it's umbrella enters into a huge gray area.

As the popularity has ensued, the land grab for control over social marketing has hit full swing.

In what can perhaps best be analogized as a social marketing gold rush,  marketers and agencies across the board are racing to own that space within their existing (and future) brand relationships. Simultaneously brands are racing to get started in social marketing (for the most part) and aren't sure which direction to go.

Who best owns Social Marketing? PR? Digital? A boutique agency? Internal brand managers and team members?

While there is clearly no universal answer - despite what we'd all love to think - there are a few key items on the list that seem to be basic rules of thumb that most brands simply can't ignore.

So without further ado, let me present my list of Social Marketing tidbits for thought, the growing/morphing changing stream of practices, ideas, and 411s that go into most of my brainstorms:

1. People are talking about you on Twitter... and likely on Facebook, and definitely out there in the big, bad blogosphere. And will talk about you. They are asking for you to join the conversation.
2. The person (or persons) communicating on behalf of your brand have to really know your brand.
3. But they also have to really know the medium...and the medium's user base.
4. There are rules to engagement in all platforms - you cannot go into this blindly as a brand. You have a lot more at stake than Joe Schmo's anonymous testing of the waters.
5. There is a true strategy to using social mediums properly. Frequency of content, types of content, ways to advertise (if you should advertise?), metrics and measurements for success, best type of communication, even the lingo is often strategic.
6. The worst thing you can do is feed all your blog posts into your Twitter, all your Twitter posts into your Facebook, and all your Facebook status updates back into your Twitter.  Sure you want to cross-link and have an integrated strategy, but each audience deserves to be communicated with directly.
7. Transparency. (Always, always, always).
8. There is a major debate with regards to the ethics of paying bloggers, tweeters, etc. Be sure to know where/how your social marketing team approaches this (and know the backstory).
9. Just because [insert cool brand name here] and Oprah are on Twitter doesn't necessarily mean that you should be. Enter all mediums with a plan and with purpose.
10. Chances are your legal department is going to need a full-fledged tutorial on whichever platforms you choose.
11. Don't give up if you're facing some legal challenges. You can work through them. We have navigated through (and prevailed!)  highly regulated industries and it is worth it.
12. The number of "fans" and "followers" and "friends" your brand has only matters if you are actively engaging them with content that makes sense, that they want to consume, in ways that they want to consume it, and in ways it best fits in with your overall marketing mix.
13. Debating social strategy internally? Starting with Forrester's P.O.S.T. analysis really is a good way to get the ball rolling.
14. The blessing (and curse!) of online is how fluid and flexible it is. Make sure you are, too.
15. If the people doing your strategy aren't active personal users of the platforms - mega red flag. Find their accounts, verify they actually are practicing the buzz worthy mantra they are preaching.

I'm sure I'm missing many on the list. So, marketers, tweeters, bloggers, strategists, tumblrers, Facebookers, social media enthusiasts, what do YOU think?

While I have no evidence to argue against this other than the myriad personal anecdotes from teens in the comments of the media coverage (I tweet therefore we tweet!) and the content in the stream of the popular trending  "Teens Don't Tweet" topic on Twitter, I do have a question about the stats Nielsen provided.

As Nielsen puts it, "...only 16 percent of Twitter.com website users were under the age of 25. Bear in mind persons under 25 make up nearly one quarter of the active US Internet universe, which means that Twitter.com effectively under-indexes on the youth market by 36 percent."

Fine, but check out the age breakdown in the graph.  You've got 55+ (avg US life expectancy is about 75, so we'll go with that), 25-54, and 2-25.  That gives us ranges of 21 years, 29 years, and 23 years, respectively.

However, you have to be 13 to join Twitter, so that cuts the youngest demographic in half, making those ranges 21 years, 29 years, and 13 years.

This seems heavily skewed in favor of the older demographics and of course a demo segment would under index when half the audience are literally not legally allowed to use the service, right?  But I welcome more savvy statistics people to show me the light.

Regardless, it wasn't the teens under indexing bit that caught me off guard the most.  No, what gets me is that 20% of the Twitter audience is 55+.  Tweetup at The Villages, tonight!

Total spending on WoM marketing is expected to increase 10.2% to $1.70 billion in 2009 and grow at a CAGR of 14.5% during the 2008-2013 period, reaching $3.04 billion as more brands include WoM in their media mix and ROI metrics improve.

Other Key Highlights:

• "Spending on U.S. word-of-mouth (WoM) marketing increased 14.2% to $1.54 billion in 2008, as brands recognized the need to get involved in consumer and business conversations and allocate resources to WoM. Spending increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37.6% from 2003 to 2008. "

• "Spending on WoM content and services increased 13.0% to $1.26 billion in 2008, as major marketers integrated WoM into the media mix and shifted to specialized WoM firms that help drive long-term campaigns. Spending rose at a 37.3% CAGR of 37.3% from 2003 to 2008. "

• "Spending on WoM ancillary products increased 19.7% to $286 million in 2008, due to growing demand for return-on-investment (ROI) data and the impact of WoM campaigns on consumer purchasing behavior. Growth can also be attributed to the increasing sophistication of WoM tools that are being used to monitor online and offline conversations. Spending grew at a CAGR of 39.1% from 2003 to 2008. "

Who's Investing in WOM?

According to the study, consumer product goods (CPGs) companies are the major adopters of WoM, accounting for 17.4% of spending in 2008. Other top categories include food & drink, finance & business-to-business services, electronics & telecommunications, and retail (they note that auto & transportation would have been in the top five if not for their industry's recent financial woes and cuts in spending).

Shift in Consumer Behavior

Not really a surprise here, but the study notes/validates that consumers are abandoning traditional and ad-supported media, migrating to digital and consumer-supported media.

For more information (or to purchase the report), click here.

The ANA (Association of National Advertisers) recently released a study showing the future shifts in different marketing initiatives with reduction in:

• Media budgets (56 percent)
• Production budgets (50 percent)
• Sponsorship/events activities (41 percent)

The activities most likely to be maintained throughout the recession include:

• Research and development (47 percent)
• Public relations (42 percent)
• Innovation/test/learn budgets (33 percent)
• Promotion activities (33 percent)

The activities most likely to be increased in the current economic environment are:

• Pricing deals (47 percent)
• Social networking and word of mouth activities (26 percent)
• Public relations efforts (23 percent)

These increased activities reflect the real need and understanding from marketers that brand equity comes from emphasis on consumer relationship building. Of course the actual product is the main item for brand equity (89 percent) but customer service (86 percent) and employee advocacy (81 percent) are just as critical. Customer service is where consumers turn to get straight away answers and know that there is always a tangible representative available on hand when questions and problems arise. Give them the assurance that they will get a response, coupled with strong employee advocacy, and will have a brand that will last even through the rough times.

With this realization, customer-related metrics is also being deemed more important with increased attention on:

• Customer conversion/repeat rates (78 percent, as compared to 70 percent in February 2007)
• The percentage of customers who rate a brand as "excellent" (77 percent, as compared to 68 percent in February 2007)
• Net Promoter Scores (73 percent as compared to 67 percent in February 2007)

Sure, this recession has got us thinking of happier times but there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s looking good for us word of mouth marketers. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or tweet me about happy thoughts @Su_Lee.

Enter Quizno’s.

The 28 year-old ‘we toasted subs first’ sandwich shop has created some regrettable online marketing blunders in recent months, from a free-sub word of mouth disaster to a heinous display of literal food-porn, and unfortunately their latest campaign doesn’t fare much better.  Let’s take a closer look:

1 Million Subs: If there is one important lesson to learn about the power of word of mouth online, it’s that if you offer anything that’s worth something for free, people will take it – and then tell all their friends about it and they will also take it.  As my colleague Sarah reported in our previous post, Quizno’s fell victim to the power of WOM with their 1 Million Subs Giveaway campaign in February, which spiraled into a publicity disaster when hungry consumers became outraged as struggling franchisees refused to accommodate the offer after too many people tried to claim free subs.   As you might expect, the Million Sub Giveaway campaign is now “We’re sorry, that page was not found.”  Strike one.

2 Girls 1 Sub: Shortly after the 1 Million Subs campaign, a spoof on the infamous 2 Girls 1 Cup video trailer was released to the internet, prominently featuring the new Quizno’s Torpedo sub sloppily eaten by 2 scantily clad women.  Looking past the utterly horrifying correlation that was made in the Playboy-produced video between Quiznos’ toasty subs and ‘the cup’ from the original pornographic film trailer, the real blunder here is that ‘whomever’ was in on this project (Quizno’s denies any knowledge or involvement in the production of the video, but the majority agrees something doesn’t quite smell right) missed the reason why 2 Girls 1 Cup went viral in the first place.  It wasn’t the actual video people were obsessed with (if you haven’t seen it, I strongly advise you don’t), it is by no means the first of its kind. Rather what made this video so popular was the resulting phenomenon of recording and uploading the hilarious reactions of unsuspecting viewers who were duped into watching it.  Strike 2.

Where Do You Torpedo?:  Quiznos’ latest attempt at viral success is in the form of a user-generated photo and video contest asking customers where they like to eat the ‘$5 foot-long killer’ Torpedo sub.  As of this post, the promotion has 5 entries.  With a grand prize of $10k you’d think the promotion would fare a little better than that, but it clearly fails to resonate with customers.  There is nothing fun or interesting about photo shopping you eating a sandwich in front of a strange place.  It appears to be a thoughtless attempt to get customers to shill their sandwich on the internet.  Strike 3.

One would hope a brand would learn from their mistakes, but these initiatives continue to come off as self-centered attempts to position the brand as edgy and relevant.  If only they would take a step back, listen to their customers’ needs and wants, and then respond to those needs they’d earn the relevance they so desperately seek.  Until then Quizno’s will continue to dig itself deeper into that hole of regret that so many young adults find themselves in.

Maybe I’m being too hard on Quizno’s, not everything they’re doing is reprehensible.  They’re active on Twitter,  Facebook and YouTube, and although the talking oven is kitschy I’ve seen worse and their Twitter scavenger hunts for gift certificates are a fun way to mix online and offline and a good use of the Twitter platform.    However, from scat-porn rip-offs to lame UGC contests, I have to say Quizno’s still has a lot of growing up to do.

Share your thoughts in the comments or send me a tweet @patrickcourtney.