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Sat, November 28, 2009
Here’s an unfortunate example of good intentions gone horribly bad. A local news station used interactive billboards that pulled in the latest tweets from their Twitter page and, well, I’ll let the local paper tell you what happened. According to the website for Lagniappe, a local news outlet in Mobile, Alabama:
“WPMI-TV insiders have confirmed what has been a swirling rumor for the past day — that the station’s general manager and news director were suspended for a week because of an embarrassing billboard. General Manager Shea Grandquest and News Director Wes Finley have been suspended, allegedly because of a ‘snafu’ with one of the electronic billboards in town that showed a picture of anchors Greg Peterson and Kym Thurman and Chief Meteorologist Derek Beasley alongside the headline ‘3 Accused of Gang Rape in Monroeville.’ The headline was under the header “Right Now on Twitter,” and clearly was aimed at promoting the station’s breaking news, but a photo of it has made its way to e-mails all over town and brought plenty of laughs.”
See the picture in the link below and it will make more sense. (It certainly got a chuckle out of me!)
Unfortunately in the world of real-time, quick delivery of content – mistakes will happen which can make you look a bit foolish. But, if this is the sole reason the GM and news director were suspended, I take serious issue with that call. This just sent the message of fear to anyone in the organization who wanted to try something slightly out of their comfort zone. Not good for breeding innovative ideas in an organization.
Thanks Adrian at BBB for the heads-up on this article.
Read the article here.
Thu, September 24, 2009
It’s been a hot topic for some time now – the question of whether or not your brand should have a presence on the popular social networks of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.
I’ve been away for the past few months and have taken a significant amount of time to focus specifically on this topic. The goal - to outline the key opportunities for live event producers and to provide insight that will help them evaluate if the costs justify the investment.
To start, I think it’s important that you have a snapshot of the current social networking space. There are over 100 million consumers that now belong to a social network. Facebook has emerged as the leading social network of choice with over 120 million visitors monthly. MySpace, once the leading social network, is now a distant second in terms of visitors and has not seen any sustainable growth as of late. And, finally, Twitter has emerged with rapid growth over the past year and is poised to catch MySpace as the second most popular social network at their current pace. Take a look at the chart below.
According to our survey, aside from these major social networks, we see some Broadway consumers engaging in specific niche networks like BroadwaySpace (6.1%) which has gained some traction over the past year. For the most part though, all of our data points to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter as the leaders by far in terms of reaching the most Broadway consumers. For the sake of our research, I've put most of the focus on Facebook and Twitter (not MySpace) as they currently serve as the networks most of the current shows are using today.
How does the Broadway ticket buyer differ in usage patterns?
To try and understand the specific usage patterns of Broadway consumers, the first part of our research dealt with analyzing approximately 1,100 survey responses given online to Broadway ticket buyers during the month of July 2009 that asked them about their social networking usage. To check for any abnormal or seasonal skews in data, we compared this data against the 11,000 completed surveys we’ve done since the beginning of the year but saw no abnormalities.
According to the survey, here’s what we learned:
- 66.8% of total respondents said they belong to a social network.
- Approximately 50% of those that belong to a social network were over the age of 24.
- Of those that belong to a social network, 91.1% use Facebook regularly.
- Of those that belong to a social network, 27.2% use Twitter regularly.
- MySpace continues to show a steady decline in usage at 27.2%. When we looked at a month-by-month comparison in our survey results, we are able to see MySpace is rapidly being surpassed by Twitter as the second most popular social network among Broadway consumers.
I do want to point out that this is an online survey so you could assume these numbers skew slightly higher than the entire general population of all ticket buyers that would include those that don’t use the Internet regularly.
Who are these people? Are they new audiences or are we preaching to the converted?
The second part of our research aimed to try and learn more about users of Facebook and Twitter and how their behavior differed from the general online population. One way that we felt we could do this was by looking at users on Facebook and Twitter and track their activity when they clicked out to Broadway show official websites. For example, a consumer is on Facebook or Twitter – then clicks on a link that directs them to the official website. We have systems in place that can track their behavior.
Using the same analytics platform across three different websites of musicals that opened this past season, first we set out to gain a perspective of how the general population acted when visiting the official websites. We were able to review over 200,000 visits and 800,000 page views over the month of July 2009. This gave us a benchmark of how the general population views Broadway show websites. Next, we looked just at those that specifically visited the official show website from Facebook or Twitter to look for differences in usage.
Read on for a breakdown of what we learned.
Facebook traffic versus the general population
After a review of 1,630 visits comprising of 12,604 page views on Broadway show official websites that we could determine originated from Facebook, we found the following:
- Visitors to the official website from Facebook are more likely to have visited the website in the past than the general population. 39% of visits to the official website that came from Facebook were new visitors compared to 65% of the general population that visits the official website.
- Visitors from Facebook are significantly more engaged with website content visiting 30% more pages per visit and spending 40% more time on the site that the general visitor profile. This remains true with new visitors from Facebook as well.
- Visitors from Facebook are more likely to seek out additional information about the show (cast, news, synopsis) before visiting the ticketing page of the website.
What do we take away from this? These are consumers that are actively engaged and are seeking show content whether to re-immerse with the brand or to explore ways to learn more. There a significant number of active, engaged new visitors that we believe creates a two-fold opportunity for Broadway - incremental sales and the ability to harness your most passionate brand advocates.
Twitter traffic versus the general population
After a review of 3,495 visits comprising of 14,560 page views on the Broadway show official websites that we could determine originated from Twitter, we found the following:
- They are typically most familiar with the brand with just 31% being new visitors to the website.
- In terms of overall referrals to our sample websites, Twitter drives more referral visits to the official website than Facebook.
- Twitter visitors spend less time on the official site than both the general population and Facebook, visit less pages and are most likely to exit without visiting other pages on the site.
What do we take away from this? These consumers are most likely already aware of your production and use Twitter to remain connected. Our data shows Twitter is all about quick hits of actionable content – it’s about speed of delivery, fresh content and simplicity. There is evidence to suggest Twitter is primarily talking to the converted – but, it remains a cost-effective vehicle to fuel positive word-of-mouth, to build ambassadors and to drive repeat visits.
In conclusion - believe none of what you hear and half of what you see.
Engaging in the social networking space takes more thought and resources than many expect. Brands that do very well have a plan and an organization-wide process that makes social networking an integrated part of how they communicate with their consumers.
I highly recommend that anyone interested in expanding their social networking presence should educate themselves first. Join Facebook, join Twitter – use them regularly. There are so many resources online that give tutorials, tips, advice and case studies (check out Mashable.com). It will be time well spent as I don’t see these networks going away any time soon.
If you have any thoughts or any questions on any of this, please let me know and we can connect.
Sat, May 30, 2009
I think the most confusing thing for most marketers to wrap their head around in using Twitter is that there really are so many ways to use it. The reality is you can use it for driving sales, improving customer relations, reaching new audiences – the question is what makes the most sense for your organization? I came across this great article from Mashable that highlights forty different brands using Twitter. There are some interesting travel and entertainment brands that I think you should definitely read about including Marriot, Marvel, Luxor Las Vegas, 92nd Street Y, Carnival Cruises among many others – at a minimum it should trigger some ideas for your organization.
This article is from January, so it is a bit dated (which is scary that five months is considered dated!) – but here are some interesting quotes I pulled from the story.
So why is JetBlue tweeting?: “Our goal would be to make ourselves available, help whenever possible, and to show that our brand is built by real people who care about our customers.”
Lessons learned by Southwest Airlines: “Be honest, be real, be quick, be FUN.”
On how Carnival Cruise Line promotes their Twitter account: “…it’s not in your face. Our online guests visiting carnival.com, our Facebook page or one of our blogs find links to the acct. We let word of mouth do the rest.”
How Twitter is affecting the day to day at Marvel: “Well, it’s an important part of our day to day activities for Marvel.com and our staff & creators have gained more exposure.”
In short, Twitter works – whether it works for your organization is a different question. It will depend how smart you use the technology, what your marketing goals are and what resources you put to it.
Click here profiles of forty different brands using Twitter!
Fri, May 29, 2009
Hype + more hype = Twitter. You hear it and see it on every news outlet and it would feel nothing short of irresponsible to not really question if Twitter is simply a byproduct of hype or if it’s really here to stay. Having spoken with the Twitter folks, I’m quite impressed with their vision and their clear success of breaking thru the clutter with a service that has piqued all of our curiosity. But aside from the hype, there is a school of thought that believes the recent Twitter wave will soon feel like the conversations we all had years back about the idea of buying real estate in Second Life – mostly hype, little reality. The following story I came across says… “According to Quantcast, 72% of Twitter visitors stop by once and don't come back. Only 1% of the Twitter audience visits daily and this group of ‘addicts’ accounts for 35% of all visits. These numbers compare unfavorably to other social networks.” The story goes on to say, “60% fail to return for a second month. This number holds true, even accounting for the websites and applications that feed into the Twitter community.” Wow.
My favorite piece of data though is…”In the March 2009 Nielsen Netview, Twitter has an index of 40 against the demographic of kids 12-17, and below-average index against full-time students. The highest indexing demographic group on Twitter is Males 35-49 (167). I question the youthfulness and hipness of any media that Sarah Palin & Senator Claire McCaskill have embraced before our interns.” LOL!
It’s easy to find coverage on how fabulous it is but I thought I would share the view of a few naysayers. Eventually a strategy for driving revenue will have to emerge and I think at that point we will begin to see a clearer path of where Twitter will land in our daily life.
Read on.
Mon, April 27, 2009
The heat is on for live entertainment organizations to keep pace with the ever changing consumer behavior of ticket buyers and the emergence of social media platforms is the hot topic at hand. Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Vimeo – the list of new media opportunities is endless and depending on the day and the direction of the wind, many Marketing Directors I’ve been speaking with are getting pressure from their higher-ups (including Board members) to engage in one or all of these new technologies. Essentially what is happening with the rate of change in consumer behavior and the newfound sense of urgency a recession brings arts and entertainment organizations, is that many of these Marketing Directors are being forced into reactive positions and, I believe, are right now being set-up for failure beyond their control.
Once you become reactive with technology, you might as well jump in a hamster wheel. You can’t expect to keep up with the speed of technology. If history has told us anything, you can guarantee the list of popular social media outlets will only expand over the next few years so treating them as checklist items will leave you in a perpetual chase. So, creating a Twitter account for the sake of creating one will only turn out to be a huge waste of time without an underlying strategy of what you are aiming to achieve.
If you look closely, the one core consistency across the movement of social media outlets is the need for a sound communications strategy – both outbound and inbound. And, without question, executing a communications strategy within social media has a heavy cost (which I think is well worth it) if you expect to do it right. It’s not just money – it’s also not just time – it’s the cost of change that is associated with the fundamental core of social media that requires all facets of an organization to participate in if you expect to succeed.
Organizations can’t think “Twitter strategy” or “Facebook strategy” – they must think “communications strategy” and aim to formulate how a Twitter or Facebook (or any tool for that matter) can help you advance the main goals of your communications strategy. Furthermore, a strong, comprehensive communications strategy is executed at all levels – not just on the shoulders of your marketing department.
This is a fairly complex issue and I can write for hours on this topic, but for the sake of time (and your sanity) let me talk about some super-basic examples that I believe illustrate this point.
For outbound communications, in a social media driven strategy, this means news announcements are no longer simply distributed as press releases – they are adapted to also include a distribution path to the social media outlets you have opted to participate in. You have 140 or so characters to deliver this announcement via a tweet, Facebook status update or text alert. This requires a process in your organization to closely coordinate press and public relations initiatives directly with those handling you ongoing marketing strategy. You get out of social media what you put in to it – so, if you are operating a Twitter, Facebook and MySpace presence, you can see the challenges of creating and distributing timely, relevant content and how the internal coordination and process of understanding this is paramount. I can tell you first-hand that nothing angers your core customers/fans more than when they read a major news announcement or receive a special discount offer from your brand from a random website or newspaper rather than hearing it directly from you first. Those committing to you (by giving their contact information or ‘friending’ you) means they expect you to commit to them that they are part of your inner-circle, not just the general public. This sounds easier said than done – but, if an organization can wrap their hands around this and build a process that creates and distributes content this way, they are essentially building the framework for long-term success in the social media space no matter who the major players are.
For inbound communications, there is another critical issue that many organizations we have worked with have fallen victim to. In a social media driven strategy, organizations must also understand the ongoing dialogue with consumers in real-time has no boundaries – questions about customer service, issues with their ticket buying experience, questions about cast member performance schedules – these questions will be asked and your organization will have the responsibility to listen and act, quickly. Social media is all about ‘the now’ – it’s about community and conversation and you need to be prepared to have a process in place where you can respond effectively. And, from what we’ve learned, this means a process that incorporates all departments and a commitment by all that they will need to be prepared to support. In short, if you ask – they will tell. And if you’re not prepared to respond in a meaningful way, you should seriously consider avoiding taking an active role in social media and play the role of the lurker until you’re ready to commit.
Both of the major points illustrated above about the changes of outbound and inbound communication come with a heavy cost. In fact, I think the cost is ultimately so heavy that I believe marketing plans will begin (and have begun) to go through one of the single biggest transitions of our time – a transition that makes the marketing plan a new found responsibility for all facets of the organization to truly participate in. Your Marketing Director (and marketing team) can’t do this all themselves. In fact, I can say with confidence, that they need more resources to take advantage of the opportunities that social media can bring. Questions like, “What’s your organizations policy for bootleg video on YouTube?” or “What’s your policy for fans using your logo on their Facebook page?” or “What’s your stance on how acceptable consumer criticism is in your MySpace comments?” are just a sample of issues that need to be addressed company-wide and come with all kinds of costs, time and resources along with collaboration across disciplines (i.e., legal, press, management, etc.)
Your marketing team will bring the social media strategy to the table and they can lead the charge but, at the same time, they are destined for failure if their internal resources continue to get cut and if they don’t have the full support and buy-in from the entire organization to contribute to this new way of doing business.
A commitment of transparency, customer service and the investment in funding the existence of your brand in new communities where consumers will make a public mark (both good and bad) on your brand are the realities that social media brings to your brand. These are big changes in how brands are marketed and I think there needs to be a very honest conversation at all organizations on how and when they prepared to tackle this new way of marketing head-on.
There is a lot more to this topic that I can ramble on for hours about – I’m more than happy to extend this conversation onward, so email me if you have a bone to pick with me over this topic. :)
Here's a great rant on the topic that even Seth Godin chimed in on (scroll down to the comments section after you read it).
Fri, April 24, 2009
Here’s an interesting article that dives into a variety of topics of how and why people use Twitter. I can say that from our internal agency survey to over 1,500 theatergoers last quarter, usage of Twitter has seen a 100% increase from Q4 2008 to Q1 2009 with 11% of respondents saying they are now using Twitter which falls in-line with reports I’ve seen as the national average of the general public. So, yes, there’s a lot of hype around Twitter but I’m beginning to come around to the basic fact that a lot of it is well founded. Before I go further with this story, I know that despite its popularity there are many marketers that still don’t really understand Twitter – so, I would encourage you to visit here for a good primer on how it’s used. I would also encourage you to connect with us at @situationonbway – it’ll give you real-time information about Broadway while allowing you to get comfortable using Twitter.
The following research report dives into Twitter use by looking at 425 active users and one of the key issues it aimed to tackle was the “why tweet?” question. According to the study from Pew Internet and American Life Project…
“Interestingly, there is does not appear to be one standout reason why people use Twitter, the research found. Rather, there are a variety of economic, learning and social motivations.
When tweeters were asked to rate the reasons why they participate, on a scale from 1 to 5 (with 1=strongly disagree and 5=strongly agree), MarketingProfs calculated the following averages for each of the responses:
- “I find it exciting to learn new things from people”: Average score 4.65
- “I value getting information in a timely manner”: Average score 4.58
- “I like to be connected to lots of people”: Average score 3.91
- “I want to generate new business”: Average score 3.70
- “I find it gratifying to have people follow me”: Average score 3.64
The findings show that the highest number of respondents are motivated by learning new things and getting information in a timely manner.”
Not really surprising to me but it reinforces the importance of the timeliness of publishing content.
Another interesting point discussed on usage relates to Twitter etiquette – are egos bruised if Tweets go unanswered? Here was the response from the study…
“Tweeters do not necessarily feel badly when nobody answers their tweets, the study found. When asked how strongly they agree with the statement “I feel bad when I tweet something and nobody responds,” the average response among Twitter users (2.41) implies people aren’t too troubled by a lack of response. Moreover, less than 2% say they strongly agree with the statement, and nearly 32% disagree. The remaining two-thirds are roughly equally divided among “mildly disagree,” “neither agree nor disagree,” and “mildly agree:”
For what it’s worth, I posted the following tweet to my 64 followers a few weeks ago – “Do any of my 64 followers actually use Twitter regularly? Hit me with a reply ASAP?” To date, I’ve received 11 responses. Maybe I’m boring… or maybe they’re not really using it... or, maybe that’s how many will actually see my posts daily with the hundreds of other tweets they are getting. Not sure – but it helped put some of it in context for me.
There are a few more important points in the study that talk about tweeting etiquette, egos and more at the link below. Enjoy.
Read on.
Wed, October 01, 2008
Turn on the news, sit in marketing meetings, read advertising publications – there is a crop of buzz words that have now infiltrated marketing conversations that you have all probably heard by now. While many will sound remarkably sexy, I can assure you that there is a good chance that many of these new ‘buzzy’ technologies are all not right for you.
For the sake of this article, I’ll focus on the two items that come up (or have been rapidly coming up) for many of our clients as of late – widgets and Twitter. Both have great marketing potential if used correctly – but, at the same time, both could be a complete waste of time and money. Let’s analyze.
Let’s start with widgets which, in a nutshell, are little snippets of code that we can put on our personal web pages, Facebook pages, etc. that allow us to view and interact with content without having to visit the official site. They are typically music players, news feeds, games, etc. that you will see on your friends Facebook, Myspace pages. Truth is, the possibilities are endless with widgets but to be honest, I hate even saying the word. It’s SO over used now – and the reality is that the concept of widgets has been around for a long time in other forms. The emergence of social nets and consumers blogging has simply opened up their distribution. I guess that’s not what’s important – what IS important is “does your brand need a widget?”
To answer ‘YES’ to this question, you would need to give consumers both a reason to want to use your widget and you need to make sure you have a distribution channel and enough prospects that will actually use it. The content should be new, refreshed often (assuming it's not a game of some kind) and be something that is digestible in the place that the widget lives. Second, to do a widget right, there is cost to developing it – so you should make sure you have the right content, audience and distribution channel to make sure it gets used or it really is not worth the time.
The bigger trend we all need to be watching which I promise you will not change is content distribution. Widgets are just a small sampling of what is to come – that consumers expect to receive information and interact with your brand through the distribution channels of their choice. Widgets are just one channel for you to choose from.
Next up, Twitter which is a service that allows users to send and read others updates primarily by mobile phone but also via web, RSS, IM, email or other applications. Think micro-blogging meets social networking (ok, that may be more confusing). Senator Obama is sending ‘tweets’ like ‘In Detroit, MI. At a Change We Need rally. Watch it live at XYZ’. He is using it to keep his supporters informed of key campaign events. He has 92,248 followers on Twitter. McCain has about 2,000 or so – I don’t think his campaign is tapping into this channel enough as politics really is a great fit for Twitter.
So, the presidential candidates are using it, does your brand need to be doing Twitter?
My gut says Twitter will get bought soon or will have very tough competition. I have an account and it’s totally useful… but, as far as I can tell, totally replaceable when one of the big guns steps in to take it over {Facebook should buy them!}! For now though, is it worth doing? Again, you have to ask “WHY?” Two reasons why I would use Twitter – first, you have a voice/person/opinion that your target market really cares about listening to OR you have information that has to or should be delivered in real-time to groups of people. You can do a lot of what Twitter offers from a technology standpoint through your own or shared mobile short code which is often what we do for our clients – the upside to that is you get to keep control of the data and the costs are pretty minimal. We’ve done ‘live from the red carpet’ mobile campaigns and backstage texting with cast members in real-time and I can say that we have seen both successes and failures. Sure enough, the one’s that succeeded had both a cast that fans adored and were the hottest show on the planet at that time – we could have interacted with fans by messenger pigeon and they still would have participated.
In the end, use Twitter if you can answer the “WHY?” question. Fair warning though - time is money and keeping content fresh and interesting takes time.
So that’s my two cents – let me stress that I’m not saying don’t use these technologies. I’m simply saying don’t feel like you have to just because ‘everyone else is doing it’.
There are plenty of other buzz words swirling and the best way to always protect yourself is to ask the simple question ‘WHY would consumers do what we are asking them to do?’ and ‘Is it worth the expense (including time) to invest in it?’
Here’s a pretty fun article on some other buzz words you should keep an eye on.
Read on.
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