MarketingSherpa Blog

Think Twitter is going down? Think it’s just for kids? You might want to think again. A graph from comScore shows an enormous spike in visits in January and February. Eyeballing the graph shows about 100% growth worldwide, about 5 million more unique visitors.

More recent comScore data on the US market shows a continued surge in visits to the micro-blogging site, from 2 million UVs in January to 9.3 million in March. That’s a 365% increase!

My guess is that Twitter’s most recent explosion in traffic has been magnified by the press. A search for “twitter” in Google News for the past month retrieved over 65,000 results. The same search for all of 2008 retrieved 25,500 results. I don’t understand the nuts and bolts of Google News nearly enough to consider this solid data–but I can say for a fact that I’ve heard more talk and press about Twitter in the past six weeks than I have since the site’s 2006 founding.

Also, traditional mass media typically has an older audience in the US, and this generation has been checking out Twitter–a lot. The largest portion of February’s 4 million UVs were age 45 to 54, according to comScore’s second chart on this page. The second largest group was age 25 to 34, followed by age 35 to 44. (The chart’s time period is not mentioned, but we called to check–it’s for Feb.)

What does this mean? Twitter is exploding, the media is talking about it, and people older than 20-something are checking it out. You cannot assume that the platform is insignificant and only appeals to a younger audience.

Is there a way to measure the ROI of social media?

I ask this question all the time and rarely get a concrete answer because it’s just one of those tactics that’s difficult to measure.

Research from MarketingSherpa’s new Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide suggests that 43% of marketers rank the inability to measure ROI the most significant barrier to social media adoption.

I still don’t have the answer, but here’s one example of a way social media can impact an Internet marketing campaign:

Read more…

More marketers are testing the world of Twitter and shaping their strategies. Last week we reported how a unique discount retail site, Woot, is using Twitter to promote products.

Then I came across the mother of all lists of brands on Twitter. The list has more than 200 links to feeds run by fast food companies, manufacturers, hoteliers, eretailers, airlines, publishers and many more. The companies are as large as GM and as small as online startups.

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Finally, finally, finally. I’ve been waiting for someone to enlighten me about the ways journalists and PR professionals are using Twitter to interact with each other. Thanks to the launch of a new Twitter resource called MicroPR, I can  really see the value.

MicroPR was developed by Brian Solis, Stowe Boyd, and Christopher Peri. Here is a quick guide provided by Brian’s blog post:

• Journalists, bloggers, and analysts, send a tweet to @micropr (www.twitter.com/micropr) with what you need help with. The PR subscribers will read it and only those who can help will respond. Always start your message with @micropr.

• PR, follow @micropr to monitor the inbound requests from the media and to determine how you can help. This is a listening and response service for you, not a broadcast channel. Do not send a message to @micropr unless you need the assistance of the PR community.

• If you want to refer to micropr on Twitter, please use the hashtag, #micropr.

It didn’t surprise me to find out that Brian was a key player behind this wonderful tool. He is the person who inspired me to write, Essential Guide to PR 2.0: Social Media Dos, Don’ts. Thanks to him for allowing me to interview him for that article.

I should also mention, this tool reminds me of Help A Reporter Out (HARO) created by Peter Shankman. The idea is similar though Peter uses a different medium, namely email, to get requests from journalists to a list of experts and PR professionals.

For more information on HARO, check out the Fame article I wrote in March. Check out MicroPR as well. Both wonderfully useful tools from innovative thinkers. Thanks guys!

Regularly connecting with clients and customers on social networks can be a lot of work. You have multiple accounts to log into, feeds to watch, messages to respond to, etc. Can it be fun? Sure. Can it be tedious? Absolutely.

I stumbled on a free Web-based tool that helps eliminate some of that tedium. Fuser will take all your messages from MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and your email accounts, and put them into one, easy-to-use interface. (Unfortunately, I did not notice LinkedIn as a supported platform)

I just gave the beta service a quick test and it’s definitely fast, easy, and free. Fuser takes your messages–everything from wall posts on Facebook to Tweets on Twitter–and lays them out like emails. You can view and sort all the accounts at once, or select which you’d like to view.

So if you’re struggling to keep up with your business contacts’ online banter, Fuser can help eliminate a few steps. Hopefully it will give you more time to contribute to the conversation.

I am a huge fan of the AMC television series Mad Men — a drama about the ad men and women on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. That’s why a blog post about the shutdown of Mad Men Twitter feeds caught my eye.

Apparently, fans were posing as Mad Men characters, creating Twitter profiles for them, and posting regular Twitter posts. (Check out Don Draper’s, Betty Draper’s, Peggy Olsen’s, and Pete Campbell’s Twitter feeds.) AMC asked Twitter to shut down the feeds, which angered fans.

Here’s an excerpt from the Reuters’ article:

“Although anybody can legally pretend to be any made-up character, Twitter could be in violation of AMC’s trademark if its presentation successfully confuses readers as to whether the feeds are endorsed by the network. Still, sources said that AMC still is looking into the matter and noted that some executives at the network recognize the value of the feeds.”

Later, AMC revoked the request, allowing the feeds to continue. I think this leads to some fundamental conclusions about the ways brands should view social media avenues like Twitter.

1. As long as consumers aren’t being profane and inappropriate or otherwise offensive to others and the brand, what can it hurt?

2. Social media avenues work best when minimally policed.

3. It’s free, no effort viral marketing for the brand.

Thanks to David Lidsky, Senior Editor of Fast Company, for blogging about this. I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.

I think it’s safe to say that Twitter-mania has arrived. In every other interview I do, someone mentions Twitter. Doing a keyword search for “Twitter” in my RSS reader, I found thousands of blog posts about it.

But how does this micro-blogging site help marketers and PR professionals?

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