BCA

Twitter, the microblogging service, is expanding the range of options it makes available to brands, having received positive feedback regarding its initial activity in this area.

Walt Disney, the entertainment group, has signed up to the social network’s latest marketing tool, @earlybird, which allows users to access deals and discounts for a limited period of time.

As part of the communications strategy supporting its film The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Disney is offering two tickets for the price of one via Twitter.

In return for its investment, the company will see its paid-for post retweeted on a regular basis via the earlybird feed, which has rapidly secured over 50,000 followers.

The link contained in Disney’s tweet directs netizens to a dedicated section of its Fandango site, where they then enter a special code.

Any offer hosted on @earlybird must be exclusive to Twitter, which is hoping to roll out regional and other targeted deals in the future.

Toy Story 3 to be featured on Twitter homepage

Disney’s Pixar studio has also previously paid for Toy Story 3 to feature as a trending topic on Twitter’s homepage.

Dick Costolo, Twitter’s chief operating officer, said it planned to build advertising models which reflected existing habits among its audience.

“We’re trying to make sure our ad platform is organic to how people are already using Twitter,” he said. “There’s going to be lots of iteration and testing. So far it’s working.”

‘The man your man could smell like’

Procter & Gamble’s Old Spice recently ran a Promoted Trend tied to its campaign “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”, an effort that has achieved considerable viral traction across the web.

Virgin America, Bravo and Red Bull were just some of the firms that had joined the Promoted Tweet scheme by the time it first went live, and most participants have reported promising results.

Costelo suggested the fact many corporations established a presence on Twitter prior to these developments means they have learned to interact with consumers rather than simply repurposing search ads from Google.

“If we tried to monetize at day one, you’d see people cutting and pasting their Adwords ads and getting no followers,” he said.

Coke Tweets pay off

Coca-Cola, the soft drinks giant, generated impressive figures from employing Promoted Tweets and Topics during the World Cup, when it sponsored the conversation surrounding a match between England and the US.

According to Carol Kruse, Coke’s vice president for global interactive marketing, this approach yielded 86 million impressions in 24 hours.

It also delivered an “engagement rate” of 6%, which can be measured against the corresponding total of well under 1% in terms of the number of people that generally click on other forms of online ads.

“The amount of impressions in such a short period of time around our whole World Cup campaign, to me it was a phenomenal time,” said Kruse. “It made this emotional connection at the time, it was great.”

Kruse added that Coca-Cola decided to utilise Promoted Trends as soon as it saw the opportunities they would provide.

“We get a lot of first looks and we jumped on that one immediately. It is the perfect example of us wanting to learn in this space,” she said.

“We didn’t know how it would work out but we wanted to learn in that space … It could have completely flopped.”

From World Advertising Research Center

Missed opportunities for some marketers

From e-Marketer.com

Despite social media marketing’s popularity, business-to-business (B2B) companies are still fairly new to it. According to a survey from Business.com, 73% of B2B respondents have less than two years of social media marketing experience.

March 2010 research from marketing automation firm Genius.com and BtoB magazine found that about one-half of business-oriented marketers are staying away from social tools such as blogging and Twitter. Facebook was more popular, with nearly three-fifths participating, and business-focused social network LinkedIn was used by three-quarters of B2B marketers.

Both business-oriented social networks and general social networks offer B2B companies a variety of opportunities. They can improve communication between customers, prospects and suppliers; aid collaboration between business partners; help with product development; and identify leads.

B2B companies also have an advantage when using social media because they tend to focus on goals and results, such as leads, that visibly affect their bottom line. Business.com found in 2009 that those B2B marketers who do use social media tend to do so more extensively than their business-to-consumer counterparts.

Those with at least one profile were more likely to manage a presence on several sites than the general B2B respondents to the Genius.com survey, and were more likely than B2C companies to measure their social success.

“While recent studies have shown that up to 90 percent of consumers are using social media to make their purchasing decisions, B2B marketers seem to be out of step and are using these tools much less frequently,” said the Genius.com report.

Kodak, the photography and printing specialist, currently has 47,000 “friends” on Facebook, while 13,000 netizens are tracking its posts on Twitter.

It has built an application on the former of these two websites, enabling members to produce their own photo albums, as well as send messages and images to each other.

From World Advertising Research Center

JCPenney, the mid-market apparel chain, has over 620,000 “fans” on Facebook and 3,200 “followers” on Twitter, and has heightened its visibility on both of these platforms in recent times.

Among the options available for visitors to its brand page on Facebook are making recommendations to their contacts, as well as sharing their stories about buying gifts.

Nick Bomersbach, director of JCP.com, said “our customers are spending a lot of time connecting with each other in these online communities, and we want to be there.”

“Oftentimes they’re talking about brands and JCPenney, and we want to have an open avenue to have that dialogue.”

From World Advertising Research Center

According to Dell, its various internet-based activities – covering everything from Web 2.0 portals to its own online communities like Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm – reach an audience of 3.5 million people worldwide.

The Texas-bases firm also reported earlier this month that it has generated revenues of $6.5 million across its portfolio of computers, software and accessories via its presence on Twitter.

It established a corporate profile on the microblogging utility in 2007, and now has more than 100 members of staff contributing to 35 accounts.

More broadly, for the three months to December, the number of “fans” of the computer manufacturer on Twitter has increased by 23%, to 1.5 million overall.

From World Advertising Research Center