First some background and for those who haven’t seen the commercials, scroll down a bit I included one of his most popular ones. Also at the end I included some stats on the ROI successes Old Spice has found through this campaign.

Some background, these commercials started back in February and as the months went by and Old Spices commitment to the campaign grew they went from funny, cheeky videos that broadcasted to their followers to social reactions to real non-Old Spice events and people. For example Mr Old Spice (aka Isaiah Mustafa) started responding to key influencers on the web and on Twitter. In one YouTube video he responded to Kevin Rose of Digg fame and a very networked guy saying he hoped he got well soon. Apparently Kevin had posted a status message on Twitter saying he was feeling ill.

So you want to know just how successful they were?

Well in non-ROI terms over two days in July over 180+ video’s were made about their campaign, 5.9 million views of their videos occurred and 22,500 comments (according to Visible Measures).

In terms of ROI, the official numbers are that their body wash has seen sales surge 107% in July and 55% over the entire campaign period. Considering their body wash is nothing new, nothing special (per say) and hasn’t seen any official discounting during the campaign that is an amazing number.

Apparently Adweek was told the Old Spice videos have reached an audience the size of 110 million. That’s the same amount of people as live in all of Canada, Australia, and the UK combined.

Has social media marketing impacted your business? Are you considering it for future campaigns?

So that means one out of every hundred people or less are using any location-based service. If for example you look at a mid-sized city like Calgary that means only 11,000-12,000 people (maximum) check-in just once a week or just 52 times a year.

Is this a big enough market for your business to spend time and money cultivating? If so why and how has been successful for you?

Data courtesy of Mashable.

Have you heard of Community Pages? Have you used them? What has your experience been?

Real Time Web – The Third Leg of Marketing

What to see more slides on this topic, check out ReadWriteWeb’s article on the topic

The guidance you will find in this study is the freshest on the market, it is an excellent source to add to your knowledge base!

The Society of Digital Agencies reports that more than 45% of senior marketers worldwide named social networks and applications their top priority for 2010.1 Yet despite the urgency, most brands lack a strategy.

Thanks to Diana G for the image

Don’t know what FollowFriday is?
FollowFriday (aka #ff on Twitter) is a Twitter tradition that has been going on for well over a year now on that offers Tweeters (those that add updates on Twitter) the chance to promote their friends, contacts, etc that they feel are a source of good (in essence). These ‘sources of good’ can be people they respect as peers in their industry, friends in real life or on Twitter, comedians or anything else that you want to say hey ‘check this person or business out’.

Now that you know this remember to thank those who #ff you on Twitter. They just did you a huge favour and paid you a huge compliment, because they basically said to all their followers you should check this person/people/company/companies out. Pretty sweet deal eh?

If you want to see what it looks like on Twitter next friday do a search (http://search.twitter.com) for #ff and see what happens.

Want to learn more about Twitter?
You can download our eBook Twitter for Business – it is from 2009 so be patient with the graphics.

A special thanks to @RevSocial, @ajproc, @nscafe, @AshalaGaren, @Zagoumenov, and @JessiWilk for all your continued support. If I am missing anyone I am sorry no slight was intended and I am happy to add you.

We found [extrapolated from the Flowtown data] that:

• 35% of teens with an internet capable phone never access the internet
• 46% use the internet once a day or less
• and only 16% use the internet more than once a day

This shows a rather different picture than what we would have assumed. It is worth reviewing the graphic we included [via Flowtown] below carefully since there are other gems of data in there e.g. Sexting and driving while texting.

Click me to make me bigger

A great example of how an organization uses analytics to make business decisions lies in the American Cancer Society and their use of analytics. They were able to directly measure their online spending vs the amount of online donations received.

In the fight against cancer, every dollar counts

The American Cancer Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem. Ensuring their advertising dollars are generating online donations is crucial to their objectives since a large portion of their overall revenue comes from donations. Using Google Analytics, the Society was able to determine that 20% of the traffic on their website was from visitors using the site search tool and so they were able to add content that was more relevant to this group of visitors.

It helps us use our dollars more wisely for our mission… Google Analytics is literally helping in the fight against cancer

Without having analytics tools to help in their decision making, the Society would not have been able to effectively allocate their advertising budget based on how well their online ads were performing. By having Google Analytics as part of their strategy, the Society were able to boost ROI (return on investment) and help treat patients around the country. For the full report, visit the Google Analytics cases site http://www.google.com/analytics/case_study_acs.html.

West17Media offers analytics consultation to help your organization get the most out of your online ad spending. To find out how we can help you, contact us today.

In the past you were only able to target fans of your page/group or people who weren’t fans. With this new feature you are now allowed to target friends of your fans and in addition to seeing your ad they will also see ‘social actions’.

For example…

Priya is a fan of the Nordstrom, Inc. Page. When Nordstrom, Inc. promotes their Facebook Page, they can choose to target ads to Priya’s friends by selecting the “Friends of connection” filter. Priya’s friends will receive the Nordstrom, Inc. ad with the following sentence: “Priya Gupta is a fan of this Page.” Priya’s friends are naturally more interested because Priya’s interaction with Nordstrom, Inc. is showcased directly in the ad (from Facebook Ads newsletter).

For a better idea of how this feature works, see the screenshot of the Facebook ads targeting screen. Using this feature you can see in real-time just how many people your ads will reach.

West17Media has experience advertising on Facebook so if you have a page and want to get more fans, more interactions and increase your brand’s visibility, then contact us today to find out how we can help you.

But in the last year things have been a changing.

A key indicator and a common comment by the younger generation:

• ComScore has revealed that the time young people are spending on Facebook has been declining since July ’09. These declines have been steep in relative terms with September reaching 16%.
• Comments by teenagers like ‘when mom and dad are there it is hardly a party anymore’

Also lots and lots of blog posts talk about how people feel Facebook leads to a disconnect after all just how many friends can someone have?

It makes alot of sense that young people would wish to have their own space after all they are exploring their individuality when they get to that age. Also as cool as Facebook and even Twitter are, they have people glued to their smartphones and computers not to people, places and friends.

With FourSquare you get all the perks and perceived benefits of Facebook but you are driven to engage in the ‘real-world’ rather than just via a colour screen of varying sizes. Sure I socialize with friends on Facebook and Twitter, but those sites don’t really encourage that kind of relationship and FourSquare does through its geo-location awareness and game play style of interaction.

With FourSquare I can get a notification of a friend being nearby. This gives me the chance to go visit with them and with FourSquare’s ad platform when my friend and I go for lunch we may be even able to get a coupon to a place nearby.

Source: http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/media/e3i15e6314384dccfe3fbf6715a445e0e2b

1. Status Updates
Have you ever updated your status with your new phone number? Although this is an easy way of letting your friends know, you don’t want to let ALL of your friends know, do you?A good rule of thumb is to not put any personal information like phone numbers and addresses in your status updates. If your friends really need that information or if you really want to give that to them, send a message.

2. Adding Photos/Videos
When uploading, you can tag your friends but ask yourself if they would want to be tagged – if you’re not sure then send them a message and ask. It’s easy to do and it avoids having someone tagged when they didn’t want to be. This mutual respect is an important factor in making the experience on Facebook as positive and safe as possible for you and your friends.

3. Importing Blog Posts
Facebook gives you the option to import your external blog so your friends can read your blog posts (called ‘Notes’ in Facebook). But, be careful. If you’re importing from your blog make sure that your privacy settings on your blog match those of Facebook. For example, if your blog is private and requires users to sign in (ie Opendiary) but your Facebook profile is public, then your notes are now available for everyone to read.

4. Wall Posts
Posting on your friends’ wall. We all do it. And with the ability to comment on their status, we do that too. But something which we shouldn’t do is to say something private on their wall or status. Send that in a message. As much as you think people care about how sorry you are for your friend, they don’t.

5. Updating Your Profile
Having information in your profile will give your friends a sense of who you are but you can provide too much information. Because your profile is viewable by your friends means that whatever information you have included (including phone number, address and email address) is available to them. Facebook has a great feature called Lists which you can use to separate your friends based on specific criteria. Some examples include friends, family, business. The benefits of using Lists is that you can restrict your business list from viewing certain photos, videos and other parts of your profile. We will be posting a video next week showing you how to use Lists to segment your friends list.

Being mindful of your privacy settings protects you and your friends. By understanding how the different components of Facebook work, we become a more informed consumer and ultimately will help make Facebook more user friendly, relevant and safe for its users.

Would you share your phone number with all your friends? Let us know what you think!

45% of employees are allowed to use social media during work hours

According to a recent study, 45% of employees are allowed to use social media during work hours (either for personal or business) which means that for almost half of all organizations have employees who are engaged online while at work. What does this mean?

Say for instance that John Smith, who works at a technology company in a big city, is working on a major project with a tight deadline. His company has invested a lot of money already but they are still behind schedule and if they don’t get back on pace soon they are in danger of losing the client. John’s role in the project is a major one and if he completes his task on time then the entire project can be brought back up to schedule. However, John is having trouble on one part of the programming and is worried he won’t be able to finish on time.

So, while taking a break on Linkedin, John updates his status saying “This project is killing me…probably not going to finish on time “. To John, this is a harmless status update but to  one of his connections on Linkedin, Sam, this is far from harmless. You see, Sam is the project manager at the client for which John’s company is doing the work. Spotting this update from John, who knows that John has a crucial part in this project, he immediately calls his boss, who phones John’s boss and they call an urgent meeting to discuss the project. Thing is, John was just a little stressed out but is very capable of finishing the project on time; however, Sam’s boss has heard enough and they end up dropping John’s company as the contractor. Subsequently, John is fired.

Now, this is a simple example of what is a seemingly harmless status update. However, it escalated into John’s company losing the client and ultimately John losing his job.

Although this is a fictional example, there are many cases of employees sharing information about their job, their clients, a product/deal, writing offensive posts and other sensitive information which shouldn’t be made public. For some humorous examples, read 30 Ways to Lost a Job on Twitter. However, what’s stopping John, or others like him, from sharing whatever information he feels like sharing?

Unfortunately, there is no magic answer. How this is managed depends entirely on the company itself and their Code of Ethics, their Privacy policy, or whatever other systems they have in place. However, how they apply this raises the issue of personal privacy. Because the employees are using a company computer to access the social network, but since the information is stored on non-company servers, what authority do company’s have over what an employee puts in their profile and what they share online?

Just like an organization has an agreement which employees sign stating that they must respect sensitive data, so too does an organization need a document which applies to social networks. Many organizations assign code names to internal projects so if word does get out, it doesn’t breach the privacy of the project. It’s important to be proactive because it’s not an easy task to monitor the activities of all employees, but it’s within the right of the organization to require that an employee follow certain guidelines while using social networks on company time.

Here are a few suggestions to keep your company’s information secure:

1. In the description of an employee’s current job, have them use the description from the public job description so as to keep any specifics (such as the names of projects) private

2. Require that employees don’t talk about the specifics of any projects when updating their status, writing a blog, etc. Many organizations have a company blog (Direct2Dell)

3. Require that employees make their profiles private (or protect their tweets) so that only their friends will be able to see their profile information

Above all else, you need to establish trust with your employees. If they get angry with their job, they can easily share information, which shouldn’t be shared, with anyone they want using Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or many others. How your employees respect you on social networks all begins with your organization respecting them.

Okay, this debate continues to rage and the irony (for me at least) is that there is no debate because there is no either or scenario.

Jasper Blake and I have had a chat (via email and commenting) back and forth for a while now because of his post “The Question is Not Can You Measure Social Media ROI? It is Should You?“. The article he wrote was essentially a discussion around his title and with some source information from his peers (very respectful first impression I thought).

However as happens in the Social Web, through the comments area, the discussion has evolved and in my opinion moved to a new separate debate. I alluded to this fact in the first line of this article and that is ‘conversations‘ are either ‘measured‘ or not. Further it appears (generalizing here) the social media world seems to be battling back with talk that ROI is too hard or is limiting the view of the value of social media. Great minds like Olivier Blanchard are fighting hard to keep the conversation on measurement with Olivier being a strong advocate of ROI-based measurements.

There are many examples of this casual attitude (or apathy) towards measurement and a couple examples can be found (or referenced) in the comment section of the article (here and here).

So I want to add my voice to the ‘hum’ of this debate and say without any reserve that ‘developing a social media strategy or campaign without making every effort to measure the Impact or ROI is just plain old Poppycock’. Surely there are circumstances where costs, tools or resources make measurement challenging, but to whole-heartedly dismiss the effort of measurement is foolhardy from a business perspective. Further this attitude not only doesn’t answer the typical questions we marketers are faced with from financial, sales and C-level executives but it likely engenders fear in the ‘unknown’.

Who is out promoting this attitude, none other than Lionel Menchaca of Dell. A company known for its social media success and clearly (see following quote) tolerance of its marketing and communication professionals.

“I frankly don’t care that we’ve done $3 million in revenue through Twitter – but I do care that Stephanie Nelson is out there answering questions and engaging with customers.”

The goal of every marketing effort but NOT exclusively should be to measure whenever possible, this is not only a marketing necessity, but a requirement of business. Admittedly social media marketing isn’t without considerable challenges when it comes to solid accepted measurements and tools to cheaply and efficiently communicate those measurements but that doesn’t give my peers a free pass to give up and then flip flop implying social media shouldn’t be measured.

If measurement were a mountain, I would say it must be climbed for the sake of our clients, our employers and our customers who deserve more than just business as usual from marketers.

“Welcome to the world of Social Media. Social Media is much more than using a few of the newest technology tools and some Internet wizardry to improve your marketing. It’s causing B2B companies worldwide to rethink their go-to-market strategies. Join us as we explore the new world of Social Media and how it relates to business-to-business marketing efforts. You’ll see examples of how some B2B marketers have faced very real challenges. You’ll leave with an understanding of the strategy, tactics, tools, techniques and measurements you need to establish as you venture into the world of Social Media.”

Where:
Lunch & Learn sessions are held in a boardroom at the Alastair Ross Technology Centre (3553 31 Street NW, Calgary). Lunches can be purchased (cash only) at Choices Cafe in the lobby.

When: October 7th, 2009 12pm to 1pm

Signup at our Facebook Event page.

Social Media is in the mainstream now. According to comScore, out of all developed countries, Canada has

* highest Internet penetration (71%) – vs. U.S. of 61%
* time online (45 hours per month) – vs. 32 hours in the U.K. and 30 in the U.S.
* 84% of Canadians (c18mm) are active on social networks viewing 828 pages and spending 6 hours per month on these sites

The question becomes: How do consumers use Social Media now and how will they use it within the next 500 days? Knowing their next steps in using Social Media technologies and platforms to enhance their day to day lives is the determining factor in the success of your business. The power is with the consumer. Your force is in knowledge. Let the force be with you!

Join Digital Alberta’s panel of experts to learn how consumers will be using Social Media in the next 500 days. Find out what to expect from the Moderated panel of 4 experts.

About the Speakers:

Manoj Jasra
Manoj has been in the Internet Marketing industry since 2002, he currently leads Internet Marketing Strategies at Shaw Communications Inc. Prior to Shaw, Manoj was the Director of Technology and Sr. Strategist at Enquiro Search Solutions. Manoj provides business consulting through his company Jasra Inc and authors one of the leading Online Marketing/Analytics blogs: Web Analytics World.

Roger Kondrat
Social Media Strategist/Principal of West17Media
Roger Kondrat is the Principal of West17Media and a 12 year veteran of the Web including over 6 years with the Social Web. A serial entrepreneur, Roger founded several successful businesses, including two while living in Europe (UK-based), of which one covered social media and mobile phone trends and innovation. Adviser to businesses and marketers globally on strategies to develop, extend and optimize their use of online media (social media, SEO, content creation and campaign measurement) to reach customers and build brand awareness.

Roger is a recognized thought leader by his peers in social media as well as by our clients for my ability to communicate complex social media concepts, using analogies, anecdotes and laymen’s terms.

Lynda Brown
Lynda has published numerous projects, including the first national study of the games industry in Canada. She has been instrumental in the formation of the Canadian Interactive Alliance and chairs the Trade Team Canada, CGS New Media Group. She was awarded the 2005 CNMA Industry Advocate of the Year, has been recognized as a Wondrous Woman by the Wired Woman Society, and was recently named one of the top 40 under 40 by BIV. She sits on the boards of Great Northern Way Campus and the Vancouver International Film Festival. Lynda has a B.A. in Communications and a graduate degree in Educational Technology.

Douglas Walker
Doug Walker is the Director of Client Services for Social Media Group acting as the key contact for client engagements. Doug has seen the power of viral and word-of-mouth communications first hand. He has conducted a unique experiment to become the world’s leading authority on the subject of Rock Paper Scissors. The experiment was a massive success and led to interviews by hundreds of media outlets including Rolling Stone, CNN, BBC, New York Times, and the Today Show. He is the also the subject of a feature film documentary at the 2007 Calgary International Film Festival (Audience Choice Award) and runs the annual World Championships of Rock Paper Scissors in Toronto.

Panel will be Moderated by Norman Leach
Norman is a historian, freelance writer and professional speaker from Calgary, Alberta. He graduated with a degree in Strategic Studies from the University of Manitoba, and he now gives speeches around the world on Canadian military history. Norman’s writing has won him two Crystal Awards from the University of Lethbridge, and he has been awarded both the Canadian 125 and Alberta Centennial Medals. He has also been named an honourary peacekeeper by the Canadian Armed Forces. Most recently, he served as historical advisor on the Paul Gross production of the film Passchendaele.
5:00 PM Registration and Networking
6:00 PM Welcome and Social Media Panel
7:00 PM Expected Finish

http://www.digitalalberta.com/social-media-and-consumers-next-500-days