Study: Comparison Twitter vs. Facebook

A recent study by Irbtrax, a SEO Internet Marketing firm, tries to determine which platform is the best fit for a particular business application or niche. So, the results of the study is not saying the one or the other is better, but the results give some good basic orientation for marketeers.

Category 1: Traffic ranking and user metrics
Traffic Ranking US and Global traffic ranking:
Facebook 2 – 7 day average daily time on site by users: 32.2 minutes
Twitter 12 – 7 day average daily time on site by users: 7.8 minutes
Facebook has the lead due to its sheer size, traffic volume, and time on site.

Category 2: Online destination for potential clients in the B2C market
Facebook offers more potential as of the option to include photos, detailed information, multiple outbound links, videos, and other business to consumer apps. The study states it is easier to build a larger network of followers in the shortest amount of time to help market a consumer product or service.

Category 3: Online destination for potential clients in the B2B market
The advantage is on Twitter as it provides more viral marketing flexibility while requiring less followers. Viral Marketing is a core business to business social media application for service recognition and other benefits. Popular industry related tweets are redistributed creating a domino effect even if you don’t have thousands of followers.

Category 4: market research benefits
Again Twitter shows more potential. Its search features can be efficiently used to monitor what people are saying about a company, service, product and competitors. Increasing or declining trends can be tracked effectively as well.

Category 5: internal viral marketing benefits
Facebook is top as it’s much easier to build a larger following. Plus, Facebook ‘wall’ feature is much more interactive than Twitter’s internal communication features.

Category 6: external viral marketing benefits
Twitter offers a greater external internet reach – no front door. Google’s ‘Real Time’ search feature often streams live tweets. A comparison of the number of tweets an independent article/release receives verse the number times they are shared by Facebook accounts appears to strongly favor Twitter.

Category 7: Use of each platform for direct internet communication
Facebook offers an instant message feature which allows you to communicate with other users globally.

Spot On!
The study concludes that in order to maximize your social media marketing results companies ideally create a presence on both. And I am happy that a study mentions this: Which platform a company engages first, or where to spend the most amount of available time or budget depends on your customers!!! Businesses should be checking their web-analytic metrics to apply the findings to your target group, and evaluate the potential and strengths of each platform.

Study: Twitter users not as social as they seem?

A new report by Barracuda Networks on the company’s newly launched security research portal unveils a truth that was already found in this Harvard study some months ago: Twitter users are not as social as they might seem.

Although Twitter is probably the fastest growing social network, most of its 50 million accounts seem to follow other users – instead of posting their own messages. In some way this sounds positive, as it shows that we are not living in a pure self-referential world.

The Barracuda study states that in December 2009 73% of Twitter accounts have tweeted fewer than 10 times. Only 21% of Twitter account holders are “true users” as Baracuda defines them. The “true user”, according to their definition, is someone who has at least 10 followers, follows at least 10 people and has tweeted at least 10 times. Now, we may argue differently about that, but it definitely shows a trend.

Paul Judge, author of the report and chief research officer at Barracuda, thinks that Twitter is becoming more of a news feed channel than a social network. That indicates that most Twitter users “came online to follow their favorite celebrities, not to interact with their buddies the way they would on Facebook or MySpace,” said Judge.

The follow-only trend might be part of the is part of Twitter’s “red carpet era” when celebrities pushed their microblogging account into the mainstream during the six-month research period of Barracuda.

From November 2008 to April 2009, some celebrities, like Ashton Kutcher, Oprah Winfrey and John Mayer, joined Twitter. In these days the micro-blogging service grew 21.2% in the month of April 2009 alone.

Spot On!
The question remains if Twitter will be able to get more of these followers activated to become “true users” and to start tweeting themselves. Or if security risks will keep users away from becoming the active Twitterati. In combination with news about sites like Pleaserobme.com people have scared of users not to tell to much about their real-time privacy. In my eyes Twitter should be making the main benefit clear to their potential users and show some monetization strategy for companies and users. Why should someone use a platform that does not show a valid business reason?

The funny truth about PR embargoes

Embargoes have become very popular in the PR industry with the rise of personal blog publishing. This video made me laugh as it shows the funny side-effects of embargoes…

Neurological study: Bad websites causing ‘web-stress’

Bad designed websites and slow loading times are causing ‘web stress’ for internet users. This is the result of a new neurological study by CA in cooperation one of the leading customer experience and consultancy consulting firms Foviance. The study even shows that bad websites have a negative effect on the users health.

During the study, which was conducted at the Glasgow Caledonian University, volunteers (eight women and five men between the age of 25 and 42 years) were wired up to sophisticated neurological and physiological testing equipment (incl. an Electroencephalography cap) which was used to monitor brain wave activity. The volunteers carried out a series of everyday online tasks such as finding and buying a laptop PC and travel insurance. During the test the internet connection was slowed down to increase the stress factor.

With the generated data, CA and Foviance found the two most stressful points of the online sales cycle which caused a high level of ‘web-stress’: search and checkout. Although the volunteers completed the purchase, more than three quarters of customers will abandon the site in reality. And it took the volunteers up to a minute to recover from that ‘web stress’.

This result corresponds with CAs Web Stress Index study. In 2009 CA interviewed 2500 consumers. The key finding was that slow loading websites were a frustrating experience for 92% of the repondents. No wonder that volunteers in the experiment were leaving bad websites, or wanted to call the company’s hotline

“The results of this study sends out a clear message – businesses need to reduce ‘web stress’ and improve the online experience of their customers if they’re going to maximise returns from their web channel” (…) It’s not just about website design or internet connection speeds – the performance of a website is dependent on the performance of the web applications that support it. Businesses need an Application Performance Management (APM)** solution which not only provides real insight into how customers are experiencing their web applications, but will proactively manage the performance and availability of these applications. This translates into better customer service, improved brand loyalty and increased sales.”
Kobi Korsah, Director, EMEA Product Marketing, CA

And Foviance adds…

“Consumers have very high expectations of web applications and web sites – to be always available and instantly responsive. This experiment simulated the experience of underperforming web applications for our volunteers. The results show that when online expectations aren’t met, people quickly become agitated, confused and have to concentrate 50% more than normal. All these problems can be detected and prevented as long as businesses take a proactive approach to measuring the customer’s experience of web applications.”
Catriona Campbell, Director and Founder, Foviance and leading behavioural psychologist

Spot On!
In the summer of 2009, Akamai already revealed that 2 seconds is the new threshold of acceptability for eCommerce websites response times. The study showed that 40% of consumers won’t wait more than 3 seconds for a web page to load before leaving the site. This study by CA and Foviance makes this clear again: Corporations should have a close testing eye on the essential features (loading time for search and checkout) in order not to affect online shopping revenues. Especially if you bear in mind that online retail is predicted to grow to 320 billion EUR in 2011. More information can be found in this video on the CA study.

Lead Generation: Combination of social web tools and email marketing is powerful and cost-effective

All marketers know how much effort and tactical knowledge it needs to generate high quality leads. And everybody tries to find the silver bullet in order not to push too much budgets the wrong way. Finding the right tactics becomes more complex with the rise and importance of the social web.

An annual report by Hubspot “2010 State of Inbound Marketing” has asked 231 marketers, and shows that pull marketing tactics like blogging, search and social media generate cheaper leads than traditional outbound efforts. If companies devote at least one-half of their budget to inbound marketing like social web activities -compared to the same outbound marketing budget spending- they can save up to 60%.

Some more interesting findings…
- The average cost per lead from inbound marketing was significantly less.

- The rate of customer acquisition declines steadily with the rate of blog posting.
- Direct mail is still most cost-effective among outbound strategies. Only 37% generated leads for less than average.
- Social Networking is key! Over 40% of customers using Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook and company blogs have generated a customer from that channel
- Businesses rated every inbound channel more important than any outbound channel for lead generation.
- B2B customer acquisition with LinkedIn was most effective. B2C businesses did best with Facebook (7 out of 10 found a new customer using social networks).

Spot On!
Tactics that are not cost-effective are not supported with spending any longer by companies, concludes the report. Inbound tactics get more value share of general lead generation budgets, outbound tactics loose money. It is not surprising that email marketing is still popular as a tactic. The Merkle report “View from the Social Inbox” states that social media hasn’t replaced traditional e-mail among users. 71% of respondents are spending 20 minutes or more weekly with traditional email – 42% of social networkers check their email account four or more times a day.

So, the combination of email marketing and social web tactics seems to be powerful and cost-effective for lead generation.

Do you agree?

Smile = the key to social business success

For years, the world has thought about the key that perfectly describes what makes business people successful. One of the most important factors is an anthropological challenge (in my eyes) that should be so easy to be implemented for all businesses …and still can so seldomly be found in our social web world.

We business people just have to…

S = Social customer thinking is smart!
M = Market and measure constantly!
I = Invent, improve, innovate and stay involved!
L = Listen to your customers (…or just leave it)!
E = Engage your (potential) customers!

If you read these eight links, integrate the ideas in your business strategy, live it and go out -offline and online- to embrace customers, then these customers will pay back – with a SMILE.

Don’t you think?

PS: Sending you all a smile with this post!

Reloaded – Personal Web Manager

One of my most popular posts was my vision of the personal web manager. Most of my friends or business cotacts even thought that my next business follows this idea and invitations to next web generation events followed.

And yes, I still think and know from C-level executives that it would solve one of their biggest problems when getting engaged in the social web: Having more time when they need it in the future while staying in contact and up to date in the social web world!

Now the vision of the personal web manager is reloaded. Gina Trapani tries to “work against” the idea in her post Work Smart: Mastering Your Social Media Life with a new solution named “funneling”. And thus, she brings the value of my personal web manager vision back to live. Most comments go against her vision and obviously, I have to disagree as well.

Nevertheless, watch the video and maybe rate her funneling against the personal web manager…

The problem of personal productivity versus being a “perfect” social median remains unsolved. Vision are there, the world wants this problem to be solved and someone will realize the personal web manager business model in the future. Don’t you think?

Augmented Reality – the future of customer service?

The customer service world around us is changing with the social web, new technologies, and especially mobile apps. The question is how much this is effecting our perspective of the real offline world around us. A new technology is evolving that is beginning to connect the offline and the virtual world from a customer perspective as it will offer some new form of customer service. The term is Augmented Reality (AR).

It is a technology that brings your visual experience and information from the web or networks together, and by doing this enriches daily situations with relevant data from the web – and in more and more cases the information provided will come from the user.

The competition for users and companies has already begun. We have augmented reality browsers like Layar, explaining us instantly which famous buildings are surrounding us. Or, another AR browser named Wikitude that starts to become one of the most-wanted AR browser apps (not only for iPhone users) and gets nominated for one award after another. With wikitude.me shops and service providers of all sorts can already use this cool service to make themselves visible in the offline world by geo-tagging their office or location with simple online entries. If somebody is new in a city, this person can find a laundry or the next wine shop much easier in the future – just by using an AR browser app.

There are products like T-shirts projecting interactive games with AR. Digital cosmetic mirrors where women in cosmetic shops can see in real-time what a new eye-liner or make-up is looking good at them without testing it in reality. Adidas will launch a series of shoes, each printed with an AR code on the tongue which give you access to an interactive game that changes on a montly basis. Is this the customer service of the future?

Now, just imagine what this technology could do for customer service in the future. Wouldn’t it be a positive effect when we get immediate feedback on health information about the food and drinks we consume?

The following short film, called Augmented (Hyper)Reality, shows us a world some time ahead, where augmented reality is part of our daily offline life. We see what the actor sees, from his own perspective, and get to know the oppotunities that AR might offer to our daily life. OK, if we agree to getting networked completely…

The interesting acknowledgement for companies will be the advertising part of the film – although in some way it might be shocking…

Spot On!
The complete overkill seems to be the massive sea of logos flooding our sight in the beginning. Although the above examples might seem an exaggerated view of a futuristic branding scenario, it gives some idea on how the world might change customer care in the future. And you never know if this will be really happening, or not. Today, this all might sound strange to us but just think about how common the use of artifical medical help is for us, or how often we use the navigation system in cars today.

And then, think about the options when combining location based advertising with augmented reality. This opens a complete new world of customer care…

Don’t you think?

Is customer-centric business the future?

In the last 12 years, the credo of my business life was “Customer First!”. It surprises and disappoints me when I experience poor customer service. Or when I hear from unhappy friends, colleagues or relatives telling me stories about how companies treat the centre of their business: customers.

Last week, when I was thinking about how to leverage this to a higher level, I came across a modern business strategy vision by Ranjay Gulati, Harvard Business School professor and author of the book “Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business“. In the following video Gulati tells us how to deliver what customers really want.

Reorienting vs. Reorganizing
Ranjay Gulati sees the fundamental changes appropriate for some movement in company processes. Customers have more information, more choices on products while companies are facing global competition. So, businesses have to think about their business (not only marketing or sales efforts!) and how it operates.

Redefining vs. Reinventing
The analysis of the customer base might show that the website is designed for male while the majority of the users might be female. So, we need to ask questions like “Who are my customers?”, “How do my customers shop?”, or “What do they really want?”.

Gulati explains with the latest success of Best Buy how women and men shop. At that point, he also hints to the upsale opportunity of recommendations.

Success for businesses, he believes, comes from “Inside-Out-Perspective”. Companies don’t have to produce everything themselves but need to make the client happy like Apple with the iPhone. 90% of the inputs are not made by Apple. The same occurs to the apps in the Apple store where Apple basically just orchestrates the customers wishes.

“Make this identity shift. I am not here to sell what I produce – I am here to solve a set of customer problems (…) and actually acting on that!”

How to get to a customer-centric business…
1. Shifting mindset: the intention to solve customer problems.
2. Sense of curiosity and humility: the wish to understand your customers.
3. Make a creative leap: the will to understand their needs.
4. Align the elements in the organization: the motivation to live the customer-centric business.

Spot On!
Interested to get your view on this modern business strategy. Let us know what you think about customer-centric business. Or do you think the social web will be leading us towards this business process anyway?

E-commerce study: automatic recommendations disappointing for most customers

When we go shopping online today, we all get recommendations for additional or interesting products that might be relevant for us. Might be?! Well, a new research by ChoiceStream called 2009 Personalization Survey states that recommendations by e-tailers are still poor. A personalization strategy can be benefitial for businesses but also be an access killer for customers of online shops.

Almost 60% of the internet users were not happy with personal product recommendations on e-commerce sites in 2009. Compared to 2008 (14% less than this year) this negative shopping experience is massively increasing. The reason is obvious. On the one hand, data mining technology is affordable and used by more and more shops (http://www.thestrategyweb.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=9245&message=10although general knowledge on integration is probably low). And on the other hand, customer personalization expectation is increasing – 74% of the respondents notice product recommendations.

“Shoppers notice recommendations more than they have in the past and, in fact, have come to expect them” (…) “For this reason, quality and relevance are under a microscope.” Lori Trahan, vice president of marketing, ChoiceStream.

iTunes, Netflix and Amazon know their personalization business best and seem to have the lead in personalization efforts. The entertainment business (music and big book-stores) comes quite close with their recommendations, but shoe, toy and office supply sites seem to show bad results.

Spot On!
When results go up by almost 15% to the prior year, of shoppers who complain about not getting recommendations, then this should ring e-tailers’ alarm bells. Especially, if we learn from the study that nearly 60% who had spent at least $500 online in the past six months buy something according to recommendation features. Less successful are suggestions on order confirmations, promotional and transactional e-mails.

PS: Testing is important and e-tailers should be doing this in a periodical mode.

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