Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category

Twitter Hits Two Milestones

Friday, March 23rd, 2012

On Tuesday Twitter announced that it is now releasing promoted tweets into user’s timelines on mobile devices. The rollout is only for iOS and Android devices. Twitter is also allowing brands using promoted tweets to target desktops or mobile devices only, as well as specific platforms of the mobile devices.

twitter

Until this announcement promoted tweets were limited to users that followed the brand purchasing the promotion. Twitter says it’s testing has gone very well and now similar interests will be enough to deliver a promoted tweet into a timeline.

Twitter also announced on Wednesday that it now has 140 million active users. 55% of those users log into their Twitter accounts at least once per month from a mobile device. This is a huge base of people that can be reached via Twitter. It is also a very quickly growing base. The 140 million figure represents a 40% growth since September.

Being able to reach people that are not a brand’s followers but that do show similar interests is a huge boon for the social media agency. Given the size of Twitter’s base and the ease of reaching them with promoted tweets, Twitter should be a top social network for brands’ outreach.

Twitter’s Milestone

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Posted in Mobile, Twitter, social media | No Comments »

Most Valuable Follower Is Active

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

Yesterdy this column wrote about Twitter’s coming new analytic tools. The social media agency should be excited about those, but Tuesday saw the launch of a helpful tool that is for free and run by a third party. Most Valuable Follower is an app created for fun. The app will show the top five followers of a Twitter account and hos large their follower base is.

twitter

A feed that has 5,000 followers is a healthy and popular feed, but it only reaches a very small percentage of the Twitterverse. Measuring how many followers those followers has opens up the Twitterverse in new ways. That is preceily what this app allows the social media agency to do. There is also an opportunity to tweet congratulations about the MVF. Some brands can use this mention as a way to build a desire for more followers, akin to FourSquare’s mayorship.

While MVF does not offer a very important tool in the arsenal, it helps some. It is also emblematic of what makes twitter so valuable. There are numerous third party apps out there which when combined can provide some useful ananytucs for the digital marketer.

Who is Your MVF?

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Posted in Twitter, social media | No Comments »

A New Business Model for Free Wi-Fi

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Towerstream is the largest wi-fi provider in New York City and its new business model is unique. Most free wi-fi access points require a user to purchase a product, a latté for example, but the new model incorporates digital advertising into its scheme. Instead of requiring a code to be given by a barista or some other attendant Towerstream is now providing wi-fi access if the user either purchases a daily deal, downloads an app, or watches a long advertisement.

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This new model opens up a new avenue for advertisements for the digital agency. People who are going online are already susceptible to digital advertising, but this new model guarantees that users are exposed to advertising even before the usual advertising platforms are reached.

NYC Wi-Fi

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Posted in Digital Marketing, Twitter, advertising | No Comments »

Social Networking a Must for Millennials To Decide

Friday, July 1st, 2011

New research about Millennials, the demographic ranging from 16 to 34 years old, shows that 68% of them consult their social network before deciding which restaurant to visit. The new report contains more data that is quite illustrative about Millennial preferences.

Social Media Restaurant

YourSocialMove.com

All of this is important for the digital agency to absorb and keep in mind for clients. Restaurants clearly need to increase their social media marketing presence, even at the expense of search results. When examining how Millennials wish to purchase their groceries, grocery stores (34%) are the losers earning just as high a preference as big retailers like Target and Wal Mart (32%). That is a losing statistic because people outside of the Millennial bracket prefer grocery stores 44% to 27%. The good news for the small client of the digital agency is a preference for local mom and pop shops over the chains that are not big retailers. Millennials prefer these stores 11% to the non-Millennial 8%. Somewhere in the data is a unifying theory for these differences. Even without understanding the larger cultural trends the digital agency can learn a lot by studying just the data and tailoring campaigns around it.

Ad Age: Stat of the Day: 68% of Millennials Ask Friends Before Choosing a Restaurant

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Posted in Business Social Networking, Digital Marketing, Facebook, Twitter, advertising, social media | No Comments »

New Social Network Tools Offer Potential

Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

There are two new social networks, Sonar launched in May and Banjo this morning, which may offer the digital agency a new and inventive way to market for clients. Instead of marking friends and then telling you where those people are, these networks treat locations as the friend and then tell you whom else is nearby. Sonar will also flag the other nearby people by how many FaceBook friends you have in common. Both are available for the iPhone, but only Banjo is currently available for Android.

banjo

AllThingsD.com

The verdict is still out on these location friending networks. Effective mobile application development means increasing the apps base usage, so others join up and continue to check in. The other problem plaguing these apps is their counter-intuitiveness. For a brick-and-mortar storefront to appear it would need to be logged into the app and only then would someone else logged in, who also happened to be nearby, see the storefront. Among early adopters, however, that might be precisely why these apps can drive some traffic. If they do take off in popularity then there might be too many nearby contacts to attract much attention, but in the nascent stages it might work very well, especially since the account is free. Digital agency’s using these networks for advertising and social media marketing should wait until there is some growth.

Read Write Web: New Wave of Social Networks Have You “Friending” Your Location

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Posted in Business Social Networking, Facebook, Location based, Mobile, Mobile applications, Social Harbor News, Twitter, advertising, digital agency, google, social media | No Comments »

Take Your Twitter to the Next Level

Friday, June 17th, 2011

By now most of you are using Twitter for business purposes. It is a universal tool that can have a profound affect on your brand image and brand loyalty if done correctly. And like many new media tools, Twitter is still growing and evolving. It’s potential as a tool for business has yet to be reached. Here are some of Twitter-centric tools that will help you take your corporate Twitter management to the next level.


Twellow: This is the unofficial “yellowpages” for Twitter. With over 30 million people registered on this directory, it gives you access to a large portion of the Twitter user base. This resource allows you to search for users based on interests and location. If you own a small business this is especially useful as you will be able to connect to local organizations, businesses and potential customers.

twellow

SocialMention: This is a great site that makes monitoring your online presence much easier. This free tool is simple to use and   allows you to search the web for your brand, or keywords and see the discussion across all online media. In addition you can set up alerts so they will send you updates whenever your brand, or specific keyword comes up in conversations online.

socialmention1

Hootsuite: This is another priceless tool to make monitoring your brand on Twitter a breeze. Not only does this site allow you to update, and monitor several Twitter accounts on one page, but you can set up custom feeds, each with their own set of keywords and every time someone tweets with those words, it posts to your page. This makes it easy to see what people are saying and respond in an expedient manner.

hootsuite1

Those are just a few of the tools out there that help you make the most of Twitter and take your social media marketing to the next level. These will surely help for now, but be sure to stay tuned as new, and better, resources are surfacing all them time.

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Posted in Business Social Networking, Twitter, social media | No Comments »

Businesses Need to Better Utilize Twitter

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

Data shows that Twitter users are quite likely to ask questions but not to direct those questions with an @ or a hashtag. Many of these users are asking for input from their followers or from businesses. Six out of ten Twitter users wish businesses would answer questions over Twitter and data also shows business replies are as trustworthy as replies from regular users.

how-to-use-twitter-business

webdevils.biz

This is a high burden for businesses. Monitoring Twitter usage is relatively easy when people use the hashtags or the @ sign. Monitoring Twitter without those tools requires much more time, but the payoff seems entirely worth it. The digital agency needs to incorporate this into its brand monitoring portfolio. It would also be a wise move to incorporate a method of Twitter contact into an advertising campaign. Maybe some users do not use the Twitter tools (hashtag, etc.) because they are not sure about the appropriate use of those tools. The digital agency can incorporate that education as a means of increasing affective communications.

E Marketer: Twitter Users Want Businesses to Answer Them

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Posted in Business Social Networking, Facebook, Linkedin, Mobile, Mobile applications, Social Harbor News, Twitter, advertising, social media | No Comments »

Don’t bet on the Windows Phone

Monday, June 13th, 2011

IDC recently predicted that by 2015 Windows would control 20% of the smartphone market and the loser would be the iPhone falling to 16%. PCMagazine, however, has a better story about the current state of the Windows Phone. Visiting the major cellular carriers and specifically asking about a WP7 based unit, the writer was discouraged at every turn.

windows-phone-7-series

ToTheTech.com

Sometimes we are too caught up in reading about capabilities and positioning of brands. In the end, the average consumer walks into the store and looks at offerings within a price point. If the representatives in those stores think the market is dominated, and will continue to be dominated, by Android and iOS, then there is little mindshare for the upstarts to gain a foothold. WP7 may make it, but for now it appears to rely mainly on early adopters and other enthusiasts. These are also the people that digital agencies need not market towards because advertisements are highly ineffective with these populations.

Keeping apprised of Windows Phone developments is necessary, but keeping in mind the actual purchasing experience is more important. For now, and the immediate future, it appears marketing on a Windows Phone will not be particularly effective.

PC Mag: Are the Carriers Strangling Windows Phone 7 at Retail?

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Posted in Mobile, Mobile applications, Social Harbor News, Twitter, Windows 7, Windows phone, advertising, social media | No Comments »

Children’s Exposure to Digital Advertising Is Increasing

Thursday, June 9th, 2011

The news that 7.5 million children under 13 were on FaceBook reached near scandalous proportions last month. That number, however, is not at all surprising given new data recently released about children’s online behaviors. 30% of children 3 and younger spend some time each week on online. That number increases as the children grow older. 90% of children between 6 and 8 are online at least some.

kidsoncomputers

Photo: MonitoringSoftwareBlog.com

While there are laws making data collection of children more difficult there are ways the digital agency can capitalize on this changing demographic. Advertising which appeals to multiple age groups can be effective and also does not require data collection. While children are increasingly online, the parent is never far away and advertisement that is child friendly and yet appealing to parents is important. Data shows parents are still the main influence of children’s consumptive desire, even though children are increasingly spending more time on social networks.

E Marketer: Young Children Consuming More Digital Media

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Posted in Children, Facebook, Mobile, Mobile applications, Twitter, advertising, online children, social media | No Comments »

A New Twitter Competitor

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

Sina Weibo is a Twitter-like service that is currently available only in China. In China it is huge and the plan is to move the service into English speaking venues with Sina English. Budweiser is already on board and one of the few differences between Sina and Twitter is geared to marketing. One of those differences is Sina content is also linked to its portal, so links to longer content can still create exposure for advertisements. The main marketing advantage is the layout. Videos and pictures are displayed below the tweet-like message, Sina also operates on 140 characters messages, so viewing the content is easier.

sina-weibo-iphone-app-300x206

Photo: PennOlsen.com

Even though this service will make itself more of a marketing platform, digital agencies should remain cautious. Consumers are notoriously cautious about gumming up their processors with another app that offers a redundant service. To answer the redundancy question, Sina supporters point to the explosive growth Sina has had in China. However, Chinese affords more communicative potential in 140 characters than English does, and the inline display advantage is also mitigated by using apps instead of visiting the web page. The good news Sina does offer the digital agency is competition. Twitter will now have external pressures to develop, especially the in the realm of the pro-marketing differences that Sina offers.

The Wall: Can Twitter still be beaten? Chinese rival to launch in the US

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Posted in Business Social Networking, Mobile, Mobile applications, Twitter, social media | No Comments »