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Twitter Users v Facebook Fans

According to the Emarketer web site Twitter is more likely to induce advocacy and future purchases from its users than Facebook. It says: "Marketers looking to push out the most effective messages to opt-in recipients must understand how audiences differ across channels and what causes them to connect with brands. Marketing venues that seem similar may differ strongly if their users have different needs and motivations."

According to the final edition of ExactTarget’s “Subscribers, Fans and Followers” report, the differences between email, Facebook and Twitter also include their influence on customer loyalty. Daily Twitter users who followed a brand were more than twice as likely as daily Facebook users who “liked” a brand to say they were more likely to purchase from the brand after becoming a social media follower. What’s more, Facebook fans were the most likely group to actively disagree with the question. Subscribers to opt-in marketing emails fell in the middle.

(Nearly) a really nice viral, social campaign...

Firebox have been running a really nice campaign called "Firebox Inventor", in which they searched for the next 'must have' toy, gift or gadget for 2010. They had a huge response, with over 1200 entries ranging from genius to just plain weird. These were whittled down to a shortlist of 11 that were debated by their panel of expert judges.

The opportunity would have been to put this back to a public vote which could have bought lots of new people to their site with the shortlisted entrants sharing their entries on social networks. The winner was a twelve year old boy from Leicester called Tom Spring, his product idea which is currently being developed by Firebox Labs is Putty Monsters.

Barcode link to content

It's a rare product today that doesn't come with a barcode. Stickybits lets anyone scan any product barcode and append their own music, text, photos or video content.

Stickybits lets consumers add digital content to any barcode out there. Users need only download the free Stickybits app—it's available for both Android and iPhone—scan a barcode, and attach content. When the geo-tagged barcode is scanned again by someone else, they'll see whatever was attached to it along with who else has scanned it along the way. Users can even be notified when a barcode is scanned, gets new attachments or changes location. Also available from Stickybits, meanwhile, are barcode stickers that can be attached to anything, as well as downloadable, printable barcodes that can be glued, ironed, printed, tattooed or otherwise stuck onto anything in the real world. Stickers are priced starting at USD 9.95 for a pack of 20. Thanks to a partnership with Zazzle, Stickybits also offers birthday cards, business cards, mugs and shirts with unique, content-enabled barcodes printed on them.

Integrating Social Media and SEO

Search engines are starting to index the content users create on social media sites – and marketers have got to take advantage. Before engaging in any social marketing tactics, remember that SEO goals must take a back seat to your audience’s experience. Your primary concern when engaging with social media must be addressing customer needs, interacting with your audience and providing good content.

Within those parameters, however, there are many opportunities to use social media to distribute keyword rich content and attract links that can boost your natural search rankings. Here are seven tactics Marketing Sherpa recommend:

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Advertising on Facebook...

I've been running some test pay-per-click campaigns on facebook using their advert campaign manager with some interesting results. There isn't anywhere else where you can display adverts based on quite detailed profiles, the ads appear on the right hand side of people's profile pages once they are logged in. It was an obvious move on facebook's part but it's one which gives advertisers some fantastic opportunities.

I tested some simple ads which have been proven to work on Google previously with the added bonus of being able to add an image too, the image is again one which has proven successful in small banner ad positions previously. The ads were pointing to an established landing page so I had a pretty good foundation for the test.

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