Social Media Management

For the first time, social media platforms were included in recent reports on the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The platforms included Facebook, MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube. ForeSee Results recently released their Annual E-Business Report that  highlighted the surveys key findings. continue

by Lisa Peyton, VP Bonfire Social Media

Last week Facebook began reporting on some interesting data within their ad platform. They are now including ‘Social %’ within the campaign data table (highlighted below) and ‘Social Impressions’, ‘Social CTR’ and ‘Social Clicks’ within exported reports. (Use the highlighted button to export a report and access the new social data.)

Facebook defines ‘Social %’ as:

The percentage of your ad’s impressions where the viewer saw at least one friend who likes your page, event, application or ad.

Targeting friends of Facebook page ‘likers’ has been around for several months and savvy marketers have been touting the power of such targeting. Until now, we had to guess at just how successful endorsements from friends were at boosting campaign results. I have to admit that this technique has coaxed me into liking some items on Facebook that I may have otherwise overlooked.
However, can social impressions make a significant impact on ad campaigns? Facebook is now reporting on data that can help marketers make this determination.

Targeting friends of page fans or ‘likers’ is as simple as ensuring that you have added the relevant page to the ad settings when creating a new ad. Within the ‘Targeting’ section of the ad creation or editing platform there’s a box where you can ‘Target users whose friends are connected to’ your page. If you are running Facebook ads, I would recommend checking to ensure this feature has been added to all of your campaigns. This will provide you with additional ‘social’ data and allow you to make more informed management decisions.

After taking a closer look at the new social data, I was a bit dissapointed with my findings. I didn’t see a clear relationship between campaign performance and Social %. Here are my key findings:

• Highest CTR for the month, 1.15% occurred on a day with NO social impressions. The same day also had the highest Action rate, again with zero social impressions.

• Social CTR trended towards being SLIGHTLY higher than overall CTR.

• Data fluctuated greatly depending on the client, leading me to believe that the ad image, copy and industry were more influential than social endorsements.

For example the lifetime stats of  two  B2C clients compared side by side pointed to little or no correlation between increased CTR and Social Impressions:

Client 1 -  Impressions: 1,864,982  Social %:  78.6% CTR:  0.041%
Client 2 -  Impressions: 1,451,355  Social %:  2.9%  CTR:  0.046%

• Actions didn’t appear to get a boost from social impressions either. Using the same example as above, the client that had the highest percentage of social impressions had the lower action rate. If social impressions were successfully sending more targeted and qualified users, it would follow that the action rate would be higher for accounts running a higher percentage of social impressions. When comparing all our client accounts this wasn’t the case.

• When comparing data there seemed to be little to no correlation between Social % and a lowered CPC. There was an apparent relationship between campaign CTR and CPC. Our clients running the lowest average CPC also had the highest CTR. But these same clients DIDN’T have the highest Social %, in fact our client with the lowest CPC ranked in the bottom when it came to social impressions with only 2.4% of all impressions being served to friends of page ‘likers’.

Overall, I feel this analysis points to other campaign factors as influencing campaign success more than endorsements from Facebook friends. I have seen the most drastic improvements coupled with compelling promotions and strong ad creative. With all the hoopla and hype over social endorsements, it’s easy for some marketers to overlook the basics. It’s still important to build a strong foundation focusing on the tried and true principles of ‘The 4 P’s: Product, Price, Place and promotion.

I’m eager to discover if other Facebook advertisers are making similar conclusions or if they are seeing more of a lift from the elusive ‘Social Impression’. Comment below with your own campaign results, trends or tips.

Twitter launched it’s anticipated revenue model today and  I’m a bit disappointed.  I know many people are keeping their opinions to themselves and letting the ‘Twitterati’ do the talking, but I’ll take my chances by speaking out. continue

This story is by Joel Gorthy of Oregon Quarterly:

Talk about a beer buzz.

In barely four years of existence, Ninkasi Brewing Company of Eugene has grown into Oregon’s seventh-largest brewery—no paltry feat in a state where icons such as Widmer, Deschutes, and Full Sail cap a roster of some eighty beer producers. continue

It’s rare that I try to tout the advantages of outside marketing help. I usually try to focus my efforts on the value of social media to businesses of all shapes and sizes. But I think it’s time as objections, misconceptions and unwise decisions have started to gather momentum within the industry. continue

What seems like somewhat of a harsh title is nothing more than a mantra every business owner, marketing professional and web designer needs to practice. What it means is very simple. Ideas are the easy (but complicated) part, making them simple for other people to learn and enjoy is the hard part. This applies most specifically to web design/engineering, but can be implemented just as effectively for any business owner or marketing professional. continue

I get so many questions about why Twitter is important. The simplest answer is this: anyone can learn what you are feeling at a particular moment. The simple fact you can search conversations for key words and interact accordingly is extremely powerful. This is something I don’t think Facebook gets about their status updater. You cannot search the entire network for what people are saying on Facebook, thus rendering it somewhat useless and narcissistic for people using it regularly. continue

I thought this was a brilliant little article about having fun with bad news. I usually don’t re-blog, but I thought this was too much fun and too good to try and opinionate(not a word) it. continue