Hire Doug!

Doug Winfield, who until recently was a VP of Digital Strategies at Waggener Edstrom, applied for a job at SHIFT Communications, but he didn't send out a resume like the average Joe. Using Facebook's precisely targeted advertising, he caught the attention of the entire SHIFT office through this ad which appeared in their Facebook sidebar.

pic via

Are you suffering from IOS?

Take a look . It may not be too late

Skittlemania

Skittles thought social media would be like stealing candy from a baby, but this time the baby fought back.

It all started Monday morning when all visitors trying to access the official Skittles site found themselves looking at a Twitter search page.

The “Chat the Rainbow” slogan was supposed to encurage visitors to share their thoughts on Skittles, so that the Twitter stream would look more like a story made of 140 character-long bits.

This PR stunt was cleaver in theory- getting people to talk about your brand in a new, exciting and different way. But what Skittles omitted in practice was the very essence of social media (and Twitter in particular)- actively engaging, interacting with the community.

People don’t just settle for information anymore, they want a human face to go with it; they want conversations, answers tailored to their needs and wishes.

When brands like Starbucks, Whole Foods, Home Depot and even Kodak choose to connect, listen, engage and bring value to their consummers, you can’t afford to do it wrong.

Sure, Skittles covered all the bases (again- in theory)- from Twitter to Facebook and from Flickr to Youtube, but a closer look unveils the lack of implication and communication with the communities they entered.

As for the Twitter stream, the lack of filters and no way of moderating tweets, the Skittles campaign opened the door to some very offensive tweets right on their homepage; moreover, visitors looking for actual information about Skittles products easily got frustrated by the effort of “digging” through pages and pages of spam in order to find the relevant bits of information they were looking for.

Due to the backfire of the Twitter experiment, Skittles moved their homepage to Facebook and later on Wikipedia, failing to adapt to the new conditions. Now, the Skittles social media campaign has become a case study on how to fail in social media. Lesson learned?

Evan Williams on what's behind Twitter's explosive growth

Social Media Metrics

Activity Metrics
        Pageviews
        Unique visitors
        Members
        Posts (ideas/threads)
        Number of groups (networks/forums)
        Comments & Trackbacks
        Tags/Ratings/Rankings
        Time spent on site
        Contributors
        Active contributors
        Word count
        Referrals
        Completed profiles
        Connections (between members)
        Ratios: Member to contributor; Posts to comments; Completed profiles to posts
        Periods: By day, week, month, year
        Frequency: of visits, posts, comments

Survey Metrics
        Satisfaction
        Affinity
        Quality and speed of issue resolution
        Referral likelihood
        Relevance of content, connections

ROI Measurements
        Marketing/Sales
        Cost per number of engaged prospects (community vs. other initiatives)
        Number of leads/period
        Number of qualified leads/period
        Ratio of qualified to non-qualified leads
        Cost of lead
        Time to qualified lead
        Lead conversion
        Number of pre-sales reference calls (to other customers)
        Average new revenue per customer
        Lifetime value of customers
        Customer Support
        Customer satisfaction
        Number of initiated support tickets per customer per period
        Support cost per customer in community
        Product Development
        Number of new product ideas
        % of ideas from customers/prospects/community
        Idea to development initiation cycle time
        Revenue/Adoption rate of new products from community vs. traditional sources

HR

        Retention/Employee turn over
        Time to hire
        Prospect identification cost
        Prospect to hire conversion rate
        Hiring cost
        Training cost
        Time to acclimation for new employees

Individual Metrics

        New 'friends' after 30/60/90 days
        Number of friends met online that users have met offline
        Number of friends met online that member has subsequently collaborated with
        Number of ideas that the user has gotten and then used in their work

General Internet Tracking (outside of enterprise-sponsored communities)
        Net Promoter Score 
        Meme Lifecycle
        Number of mentions (tracked via web or blog search engines)
        Positive/Negative listing ratios on major search engines

20 Reasons Why You Cannot Ignore Social Media

1. 394 million people watch video clips online
2. 346 million reaqd blogs/weblogs
3. 321 million Read personal blogs/weblogs
4. 307 million visit a friends social network page
5. 303 million SHARE a video clip (viral marketing anyone?)
6. 272 million manage a profile on a social network
7. 248 million upload photos
8. 216 million Download a video podcast
9. 215 million download a podcast
10. 184 million started a blog or weblog
11. 183 million uploaded a video clip
12. 160 million subscribed to an RSS Feed
13. Blog Reading has risen 66% on a global scale in a year
14. 60.3 million american have read a blog
15. 36% of consumers will think more positively about companies that have blogs
16. 32% of consumers trust bloggers opinions on products and services
17. Social Networking has an estimated 272 million users (Myspace, Facebook, etc)
18. 43% of online consumers belong to a social network
19. 74% of social networking users message friends as part of their daily routine
20. Video Uploading growth is 31% to 82% global reach seen in all markets