Holiday Shoppers May be Influenced by Social Media

story first appeared in USA Today

Retailers may have hit record sales over the shopping weekend from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday, but the impact of social media campaigns many of them invested in is less certain.

Offerpop, which helps retailers including Amazon, Sears and Walmart run social-marketing campaigns, says it saw a 40% increase in social-media campaigns by its clients for the Black Friday shopping weekend compared with last year.

Yet social media made up less than 1% of online traffic and sales on Black Friday, according to IBM Smarter Commerce, which tracks sales for 500 of the top retail sites. And that's down from last year.

That's based on customers who were referred to a retailer's site through social media and made a purchase right then.

It may not necessarily be a bad thing though, given retailers were using social media more to raise brand awareness than to push sales this year, says Jay Henderson, strategy director for IBM Smarter Commerce.

Target rewarded a number of customers that were tweeting about the company with electronic gift cards over the weekend, spokesman Joe Curry says. It also used an interactive Facebook app to reveal its Black Friday deals by pitting a series of items against each other and asking users to pick which product they thought would go on sale for Black Friday. The game had almost 1 million users in a four-day span, Curry says.

Twitter mentions for retailers also jumped. Mentions of the @DisneyStore handle increased 42% over the weekend, the company reports. And tweets with the hashtag #FairyGodmother, which customers included when they had a question or needed help with a product, were up 40% from last year.

While it may be hard to track how much this kind of social-media activity benefits retailers in terms of sales, Erin Robbins O'Brien, head of business intelligence at Viralheat, a data analytics company whose software helps companies track social-media sentiment, says that most of the retailers they've worked with have all agreed that people talking about their particular store or brand is always going to be better than not.

And social media's influence on purchases is stronger than the IBM numbers let on, she says.

Social media in some way, shape or form is oftentimes one of the first ways someone will hear about something, according to O'Brien.

That was the case for Alan Cavanna, who bought a Dell laptop after seeing a tweet sent out by Best Buy on Cyber Monday.

Facebook and Social Media Hype Spinning Out Of Control

Don’t Believe The Hype on Social Media

A new article in the San Francisco Chronicle claims that Facebook is directing more web traffic than Google. 

We think this is sheer brazen hogwash. 

Social Media PR Machine

Hordes of PR pieces are being scattershot all over the web in an effort to convince us that if we have a website, then we MUST get involved in social media or we're missing the big boat. Don't bet on it! 

Headlines Like:  Facebook Driving More Web Traffic Than Google Are False
On its own merits, this claim is outrageous. And if you stop to consider the entire Google package: Google Search, Google News, Google Maps, YouTube, Blogger, and the brand new Google Buzz (Google's own social networking site), it should be mathematically evident that Facebook is not in the same league when it comes to driving traffic to websites.

Social Media Has Its Place in Promoting and Extending Brand Awareness 

By all means, if you have a website and a product or service to offer, you should make yourself a Facebook page, create a Twitter presence, maybe even try the new Buzz. But do not be fooled into emptying your wallet and investing a lot of your time on these sites. They're fun and addictive but, so far, the numbers do not necessarily add up to a good ROI.

Social Media Is Still Not the Primary Driver of Website Traffic
As of March 2009, Google was averaging nearly 300 Million direct searches per day. Currently, Facebook has only 100 Million total users!
 

Clearly, organic search is still the number one way users get connected to websites, and the way to get them to your site is through content development and content support through such mediums as video and blogging.

Here is the SF Chronicle article we mentioned at the top. Take it with a grain of salt:
 

Facebook directs more online users than Google
San Francisco Chronicle 

A big part of the Facebook experience is how friends and family share Web links to interesting news stories, photos, videos and Internet sites.

This "friend-casting" of information has helped propel Facebook into a major force in directing traffic around the Web.

According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.

This trend is shifting the way Web site operators approach online marketing, even as Google takes steps to move into the social-media world.

Some experts say social media could become the Internet's next search engine.

"People are spending less time navigating the Internet on their own and are now navigating the Internet based on their friends' recommendations or their friends' activities," said Dave Yovanno, chief executive of Gigya Inc., a Palo Alto firm that offers social-media services. "That's one of the big trends we started picking up on probably four or five months ago."

For years, Web content creators had to worry whether they had the proper level of search-engine optimization to make sure search engines listed them among the top results. Now, they have to consider what companies like Gigya offer - social-media optimization.

"Marketers must focus on social marketing in addition to traditional search, as customers have a multi-pronged way of finding information," said Jeremiah Owyang, a Web strategist for the Altimeter Group, a San Mateo consulting firm with clients like Gigya. "The clear-cut channels of yesteryear are now an intricate set of connections."

Using a snapshot of Web traffic from December, Compete's director of online media and search, Jessica Ong, found that 15 percent of traffic to major Web portals like Yahoo, MSN and AOL came from Facebook and MySpace. The lion's share of that traffic, 13 percent came from Facebook.

Google, which has profited handsomely from directing Web surfers to their destinations during the past decade, was third with 7 percent, just behind e-commerce site eBay, which had 7.61 percent. MySpace was fourth with just under 2 percent.
 

Surprise gain

The numbers proved eye-opening because Google used to dominate most Web-referral categories. "I was surprised to see Facebook has become No. 1," Ong said.

In other categories, Compete's data showed Mountain View's Google still on top, but Palo Alto's Facebook was not far behind. For example, Google accounted for 21.3 percent of referrals to sites catering to movie fans, but Facebook was second with 12.4 percent. And in a video category, Google - which owns YouTube - was first with 22.9 percent, but Facebook was next at 12.7 percent.

Facebook's meteoric growth as a Web destination was a factor. Facebook says it has 400 million active members, including about 225 million added in just the past 12 months. Its size now rivals that of major Web portals and its demographics mirror those of the Internet in general, Ong said.

"Putting all this information together, we can say that Facebook has become an integral part of the consumer Web experience, similar to how portals like Yahoo and MSN are part of most consumers' online sessions," Ong said. "So the message for the advertising industry is that more serious attention needs to be paid to social-networking sites like Facebook, and advertisers need to figure out how to leverage this traffic."
 

TurboTax gamble

One of Gigya's clients is financial software maker Intuit Inc. Seth Greenberg, Intuit's director of national media and digital marketing, said the company is betting on social media to draw customers to its TurboTax Web site this year. The tax preparation program generates about $1 billion in revenue in the 10 t0 15 weeks leading to April 15.

Half of TurboTax's 20 million users are on Facebook and each has an average of 150 friends. Intuit is using social media to generate more buzz about the program through the sharing of product reviews and answers to tax preparation questions.

Greenberg coined the phrase "friend-casting" to describe how Intuit is using social media.

"We actually want our customers to be our best sales force, not us," Greenberg said. "Enabling our 20 million-customer base to be a word-of-mouth army for us is much more interesting."
Strong influence

Although methods such as paid search, Web display ads and TV commercials still reach a larger audience, the "influence" tapped in social media "is a heck of a lot stronger than it is with traditional advertising," he said.

David Berkowitz, director of emerging media and client strategy for the digital marketing firm 360i of New York, said the importance of search engines isn't going away.

"But there's always been one downside to search," he said. "Consumers only spend about 5 percent of their time online searching and the other 95 percent of the time at the destination. Social media is quickly accounting for a large percentage of that 95 percent. Google's biggest acquisitions, DoubleClick and YouTube, have been all about playing a big role in the rest of consumers' Web usage."

He noted that last week Google purchased San Francisco's Aardvark, a social-media search engine for questions and answers, and then unveiled Google Buzz, which allows Gmail users to post updates, videos, photos and links, Facebook-style.

"Mobile will be another new source for search, and some of that will be incremental rather than cannibalistic," he said.

"But social media's just finding its feet and the business models are just starting to emerge. And they're evolving quickly."

Some Ditch Social Networks to Reclaim Time, Privacy
USA Today

Facebook reports that it has 400 million active users worldwide. Make that 399,999,999. Laura LeNoir is done.

"I feel better, I feel lighter, I got my privacy back," says LeNoir, 42, an office manager at an educational software company in Birmingham, Ala., who logged off a few weeks ago. "People say, 'You'll be back.' But I read more, walk the dogs more. I'll be fine."

As the social networking train gathers momentum, some riders are getting off.

Their reasons run the gamut from being besieged by online "friends" who aren't really friends to lingering concerns over where their messages and photos might materialize. If there's a common theme to their exodus, it's the nagging sense that a time-sucking habit was taking the "real" out of life.



"When I first closed my Facebook account, I felt disconnected from the world and missed the constant updates," says Leanna Fry, 32, of Provo, Utah, who is teaching English in Erzurum, Turkey. She signed off after feeling harassed by strangers. "But I've discovered I don't have to know what hundreds of people are doing. Now I have more time for people who really matter in my life."

Even super-connected celebrities are bolting. Disney pop siren Miley Cyrus quit Twitter last fall, followed by British singer Lily Allen. Both women said the site was proving a distraction from their relationships. Allen signed off with "I am a neo-Luddite, goodbye."

That desire to unplug has made an unexpected success out of websites such as Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and Seppukoo (a play on the Japanese word for "suicide"), free sites that automate and turbocharge the otherwise laborious manual process of scrapping your online self.

Lucca, Italy-based Seppukoo helped 20,000 people erase themselves from Facebook after the site launched last fall. Two-month-old Web 2.0 Suicide Machine — where a noose dangles near a ticker tracking the digital mayhem ("181,898 friends have been unfriended, 329,908 tweets removed") — has been used by 2,600 people. Thousands more are waiting to be accommodated by the site's small server, says Walter Langelaar, 32, one of three programmers who created the "art project" for Moddr, a media lab in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

"We are not anti-social-networking," says Langelaar, noting that the program was conceived for a party the lab threw a year ago to encourage face-to-face interaction. "We do, however, feel things are getting so messy in that world that (the sites) just get in the way of people living their lives."

Facebook is not amused. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company has blocked the servers of both sites and sent cease-and-desist letters stating that they violate Facebook's statement of rights and responsibilities policies by collecting user login data.

"Facebook provides the ability for (users) to use the site to deactivate their account or delete it completely," says Facebook spokesman Simon Axten.

Langelaar says Moddr has circumvented the block and counters: "We're not collecting login information; users bring their (data) to us. We are thinking of hiring our own lawyers."

Seppukoo, however, is now lifeless. "We have postponed any decisions until after our next Anti Social NotWorking art project comes out in the next weeks" is the cryptic comment from Guy McMusker of Les Liens Invisibles, a consortium of Web-focused artists responsible for the program.

Although Twitter is among the sites that programs such as Seppukoo can scour, the San Francisco-based micro-blogging venture has "no issues with people who want to leave," says spokesman Seth Garrett. "Our research shows that quite often they come back later."

Even tens of thousands of dropouts represent a fallen leaf in the forest of social networkers happily updating their status/thoughts/whereabouts at this very moment.

Facebook dominates that landscape, according to The Nielsen Co. It drew more than 110 million unique visitors in the USA in December, double its 2008 numbers. MySpace was second with nearly 60 million, a 17% drop from the previous year. Twitter pulled in nearly 20 million, and sites such as Classmates and LinkedIn had about 10 million.

Youth still rules in this domain. About 65% of kids 12 to 17 (and 37% of adults ages 18 and up) use a social networking site, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. "For many, the time and energy spent putting content up means it's hard to leave," says Amanda Lenhart, Pew senior research specialist.

That said, the 24/7 tech addiction is causing even diehard social site fans to set limits, says Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist with Intel. In a recent survey on mobile-device etiquette, Bell found that 69% said checking e-mail and sending texts in the company of others was unacceptable.

"This always-on lifestyle is being pushed as desirable, (but) there's a deeply rooted human need to have downtime," says Bell, director of user experience at Intel's Digital Home Group. "Perhaps tuning out of social networking is just a way of recalibrating that need for downtime."

Her recent interviews with users reveal that for some the ideal vacation spot is one without Web access. "We're starting to ask, how does all of this (technology) truly fit into our lives?" she says.

'Push back from this tide of technology'

One antidote to the always-on life is Freedom, free software that disables any Apple computer's Internet access for up to eight hours. About 100,000 Web users have downloaded Freedom since 2008, says Fred Stutzman, a graduate student in information sciences at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the program's creator.

"Freedom is a statement that it's OK to push back from this tide of technology and find some space to really think," he says.

People tuning out temporarily eventually could spell trouble for networking sites such as Facebook, says Danah Boyd, social media scholar at Microsoft Research in Boston. "A huge number of early adopters joined Facebook because they felt as though they had to, not because they were passionate about the site," she says.

Boyd cites the early networking site Friendster, which many users ditched for newcomer MySpace. "When the passion was lost, the group walked away. The folks who disengage from Facebook may not be vocal," but they're not to be ignored.

Another frequent user complaint: the barbarians at your virtual gates.

"With social media, there can be this critical moment where strangers take over," says James Fowler, co-author of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. "Twitter could face such a danger, because it's this enormous spam machine now."

Mark Dockendorff, 30, an investment adviser in Cincinnati, initially liked the way sites "let you get to know people through their pages, which is so much easier than talking in a bar. But now a lot of my friends are putting their pages on the back burner and just not updating."

As is Dockendorff, who was put off by his mom friending his ex-girlfriend. "Awkward," he says.

A move to Beijing led Larissa Paschyn to leave Facebook when the site was blocked by the Chinese government. Now this "avid user" feels liberated.

"There are many other ways to meet new people and truly experience life," says Paschyn, 24, a television host for CCTV International.

She also has a confession. One of her Facebook guilty pleasures was "checking up on people who were mean to me in school so I could gloat about my life," she says. Being off social sites has "made me a better person and less self-centered."

'It was consuming my life'

When Julian Smith grew frustrated with Facebook, he got silly. His video 25 Things I Hate About Facebook, which has 1.3 million views on YouTube, shows him being literally poked by a friend (No. 2) and lamenting ads for hot singles (No. 21).

"It's the way people are using social networking sites that's lame," says Smith, 22, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker. "Sure, it's a great way for me to let people know if I have a new film clip out. But to socialize with friends? Don't think so."

Dustin Blythe was initially elated when he joined Facebook. Then the snowball grew.

"I felt compelled to update my page every hour or so, even if there really was nothing new to write or show," says Blythe, 35, who registers voters in Mishawaka, Ind. "It was like (the sci-fi movie) Logan's Run, trapped in a society I couldn't get out of."

So he went cold turkey. Blythe now blogs instead, updating friends and family on his own timetable. "I have no regrets," he says. "Now I can post what's on my mind without the perceived pressure of keeping up with the Joneses and their BlackBerrys."

Getting off Facebook was tough for Roger Williams, whose love of technology earned him the nickname "Chaplain Geek" at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Stockton, Calif., where he's a grief counselor. But his New Year's resolution was to take a break from social networking.

"I liked that I could reconnect with friends from 30 years ago, but that soon turned into all sorts of people contacting me who I really didn't want to hear from," says Williams, 52, whose alma maters and friends-with-causes hit him up for donations. "I was getting hammered for money. I thought, 'Hey, I'm not a commercial entity.' I felt used."

Another frequent complaint from social networkers is that the variety of sites is overwhelming. Joe Ross recently used Web 2.0 Suicide Machine to wipe out his existence on MySpace, because he felt the site was getting too commercial.

"It was very cool to watch," says Ross, 26, a law student who works for the Philadelphia Housing Authority. But don't write him off the scene yet.

"I'm still on Facebook, and I'm a heavy Twitter user and blogger," he says. "Most of the people I'm friends with are people I wouldn't know if it weren't for social networking."

Ah, that word again. Friends.

Jim Hennessey was an avid social networker, using MySpace and Facebook for social updates, LinkedIn for work contacts, not to mention Meebo, Geni, Jiibe, Flickr and others.

The result? "I was so busy updating my various sites that there wasn't a social desire left in my body," says Hennessy, 42, a marketing consultant from Nashville. "It was getting impersonal."

So much so that when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma last year, Hennessey didn't get much support from his online community beyond a few messages. "I knew a lot of people (online), but it was a false sense of comfort," he says.

Though not willing to commit social networking suicide just yet, Hennessey, his cancer in remission, is now more circumspect about its powers and promises. And hungry for the human touch.

"A while back I met up with someone I got to know on Facebook, which was nice," he says. "But when she introduced me, she said, 'This is my friend Jim from Facebook,' as if it were a place.

"I just want to be Jim from Nashville."

Hotels Using Social Networks To Build Connections
As Originally Posted at PR Web

TravelCLICK Launches Social Media Optimization Solution at ITB in Berlin

Chicago and Berlin (PRWEB ) March 11, 2009 -- With the increasing number of social media and consumer-generated content (CGC) sites, people are spending their time online differently. Today it's about conversations--interactions that go beyond the one-on-one to one-to-many through a series of networked relationships that connect us to people, places and events like never before. To avoid being left behind, hotels need to consider being on the sites where consumers now spend their online hours. According to Jerome Wise, vice president of eCommerce for TravelCLICK International, the challenge for hoteliers is to understand these evolving channels and how they can be used to reach new markets. "Social media can provide an essentially 'free' sales and marketing channel for building connections, community and, ultimately, commerce for hoteliers who are savvy in the new order of online marketing," said Wise.

Understanding how to leverage this trend to grow brand awareness and consumer reach through proactive product placement in the social media sites is an essential element of the marketing mix for today's hotel marketers. Consistent, targeted branding and relevant messages are the keys to leveraging the power of these networks.

In response to this need, TravelCLICK is introducing a new Social Media Optimization (SMO) solution for hotels and cruise marketplace leaders. The personalized program is designed to harness the viral power of the social networks--such as Facebook, Bebo, and StudiVZ--to connect hotels with new target audiences worldwide. The offering leverages the expertise of TravelCLICK's award-winning Internet Marketing Services team to develop and implement a hotel-specific social media plan, including:

• Research and strategy to determine the most appropriate sites, depending on the hotel's profile and target guest demographics
• Creation of customized profiles on at least 10 sites (social networking sites, consumer review sites, media sharing sites, mapping and CGC business sites, and user-generated content sites)
• Submission of content and reviews on all target sites
• Support and ongoing monitoring of engagements
• Quarterly reporting on interactions and responses

The benefits of SMO go beyond leveraging social networks for their marketing value. By having a targeted strategy across sites, hoteliers and purveyors of discount Canada cruises can increase traffic to their website and also enhance their search engine optimization ranking by increasing the amount of strong content and relevant links to and from their hotel website.

"According to Google™, networking is going to be the second-most popular online activity by 2012, overtaking shopping and surpassing both communication--such as email--and entertainment," added Wise. "Hoteliers who explore social networking early on in its development will have a clear competitive advantage as it matures."

With this new capability, TravelCLICK brings even more power to its comprehensive online Internet marketing solution, which includes award-winning website design, robust content management, customized landing pages, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, email marketing, and linking--all designed to drive bookings through a hotel's most profitable channel, its own website.

About TravelCLICK Inc. (www.travelclick.net)
TravelCLICK, the leader in hotel e-commerce solutions, provides a continuous flow of high-value online bookings to hotels and discount Mexico cruises worldwide. A uniquely comprehensive one-stop solution, TravelCLICK offers market intelligence, distribution, electronic marketing, and media solutions delivered with personal attention and local market expertise. With revenue optimization experts in every global market, we help our clients make better business decisions, generate greater demand from the right mix of channels, convert more shoppers to high-value guests, and increase revenue and profitability. Serving the hospitality industry since 1999, TravelCLICK has more than 13,000 customers in 140 countries with offices in Barcelona, Chicago, Dubai, Houston, Phoenix, Melbourne, Shanghai, and Tokyo.