Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

The monetization of any “Web 2.0″ website is a hot topic, regardless of how much traffic and/or buzz they have. At some point you have to make money, not just spend it. Digg, the leader in social bookmarking, announced yesterday their plans to further monetize their traffic by incorporating ads into the main Digg “river” that users can either Digg or Bury. How users react to the advertisement will determine how much the advertiser will end up paying.

Today, we’re announcing our plans to roll out a new advertising platform — Digg Ads. Digg Ads will give you more control over which advertisements are displayed on Digg. The more an ad is Dugg, the less the advertiser will have to pay. Conversely the more an ad is buried, the more the advertiser is charged, pricing it out of the system.

You can see what Digg Ads might look like here.

From a users perspective I like the concept of Digg Ads, of course having no ads would be ideal but Digg has a right to make money. However, having the ability to control what I want and don’t want to see makes the idea of integrated ads somewhat bearable. From an advertisers perspective I absolutely hate Digg Ads. First I cant imagine many ads will actually get Dugg very often, the majority of people will choose to bury ads - especially in the beginning. On top of that, not having a clear understanding of end cost isn’t appealing at all.

The concept of Digg Ads will surely  interest some advertisers enough to run a few tests. But, since there is no shortage of  high-traffic sites that target the same demographic , don’t expect Digg Ads to stay up for very long if it doesn’t catch on.

There are two main questions I hear over and over again when it comes to Twitter…both of which revolve around the same theme of how do “I or we” use it? From a individual  perspective the question becomes more about what the person is looking to gain. From a business perspective things get a bit more complicated but the objective becomes clearer.

I have heard plenty of positive stories and have had my own success using Twitter from a business perspective. Whether for pure traffic generation, customer service, revenue or just general communication - it is clear Twitter is a powerful took every company should be taking advantage of.

Below is a quick list I put together of  ways companies can utilize Twitter (in no particular order).

• Coupon Promotion. Have a coupon or discount code? Why not put it on Twitter and let your fans become your marketers by retweeting and posting. An even better idea is to generate a Twitter exclusive coupon.
• Promote limited time offers. “Only 3 hours left to save an extra 25% off our top products!”
• Online Reputation Management. By using Twitter Search you can monitor mentions of your brand and address any potential issues.
• Customer feedback / reviews.
• Out of stock alerts. Have a hot product that is selling well? Let your followers know there is only a limited quantity left.
• Job recruiting.
• New product alerts
• Shopping advice. Who doesn’t love a good “Here some of our favorite  summer shoes” type links?
• Be the expert. Proactively engage the Twitter audience through Twitter Search. If you are a sock company and someone is asking about socks - answer their question! Not only will you gain a follower you might gain a customer as  well.
• General company news and announcements
• Message testing. Before launching an advertising campaign why not get instant feedback / reaction from your followers first?
• Company fun / random facts.
• Tips and advice related to your companies business.
• Links to new content / blog posts.
• Question & Answer sessions.
• Company stock quotes.
• Market research
• Customer Service
• Promote email
• Promote profiles on other social media services.
• Direct communication from company executives.
• Interesting news and articles not from your company but related to your business.

Should a company take on everything listed above? Of Course not. But, every company who has a Twitter presence should at least be doing a few.

What are some of the other ways companies can use Twitter?

I have been talking about Twitter and other micro-blogging services for a couple years now - the discussion of Twitter monetization has gone for almost as long.  The buzz  Twitter gets is always at a fevered pitch but recently it has been even higher with the “talks” of a Google acquisition. With all the hype and hoopla going around a few interesting discussions have been taking place about what a Twitter brought to you by Google would look like. Outside of integrating GMail, Google Docs, Picasa and other Google services the real interesting potential would be adding AdWords Contextual targeting.

Personally I would hope that either Twitter itself or whomever bought it would not ruin the user-experience by placing ads on either the profile pages or tweet streams. However, what about Twitter search? Think about it for a second - advertisers could target real-time conversations through the existing AdWords (or similar) platform. Check out my mock-up below: people are tweeting about SXSW in Texas…ads for Texas travel deals show up on the side. Sounds like a home run to me…plus Twitter doesn’t need to be bought by Google to do this - a nice rev-share agreement would do just fine.

It should come to no shock to many of you that I am, and have been, a huge fan of Twitter since I first created my @khawe account in the spring of 2007. Over the 2 years I have been on Twitter I have tried just about every Twitter tool out there, over time I have settled on certain ones that are either the best for what I need or I am just comfortable using.

Here is a summary of all of the current Twitter tools I prefer to use through out my day.

• iPhone: When i first got my iPhone I started using Twitterrific, but slowly became annoyed with its UX and functionality. I tried a couple of other apps but eventually settled on TwitterFon - which I have been using ever since.
• BlackBerry: Since I have an iPhone the need to use my BlackBerry on a regular basis has diminished. However, the only app I have used - and would recommend - is TwitterBerry.
• Desktop Client: I was a big fan of Twirl for a long time but eventually moved on to TweetDeck. TweetDeck has been fairly stable for me since I started using it, plus the grouping of friends and UI really can’t be beat.
• URL Shortener: You can’t use Twitter on a regular basis and not have a preferred URL shortener - mine is Bit.ly. Bit.ly provides the basic functionality you need but with click tracking, great tool to see which of your tweets people are actually interested in.
• Twitter Management: Since I have multiple Twitter accounts (personal, professional, etc) I use SplitTweet to manage them all - great tool to send out one Tweet to any / all accounts without logging into each one separately.
• Page Tweet: Say you are reading something on a website that you feel your Twitter audience would appreciate / like, instead of copying the URL and title of the article I use TwitThis to automatically share the contents with my followers.
• Wordpress Plugin: I have used just about every Twitter WordPress plugin out there and have had some issue or another with all of them. The Twitter Tools plugin isn’t perfect but it does what I need (auto post to Twitter blog posts and pull in Twitter feeds) and is fairly stable.

I am sure there are better Twitter tools out there, but these are the ones that work best for me. How do you use Twitter? What tools do you prefer and why?

Dont forget to follow me @khawe on Twitter.

The true value of Social Media properties like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and millions of other websites & services dedicated to connecting people has been a question lingering out there since the term “Social Media” was created. Yes some of these websites drive millions upon million of visitors on a daily basis, but very few actually have put together a comprehensive (and successful) monetization strategy. I have wrote a few blog posts on this topic and have had numerous conversations that usually end up with people agreeing to disagree.  However, over the past couple months I have seen the power (and value) of Social Media first hand - starting with an ad on Facebook.com.

What I have listed below in chronological order is how Social Media has directly impacted a music band and how a cheap click on Facebook resulted in countless new fans.

• A few months ago I saw a Facebook ad for a band called “One Day as a Lion” - the Facebook Ad was targeted directly based on me listing Rage Against the Machine as one of my favorite bands in my profile…the lead singer of ODaaL is Zack de la Rocha the former / current lead singer of RATM. Having never heard of ODaaL I clicked on the ad - which probably cost the advertiser $.10 as Facebook ads are dirt cheap.
• After finding out more info on the band and listening to a couple of their songs I went to iTunes and bought all 5 songs on their new album ( 5 x $.99 = $4.95 - $.10 CPC =  $4.85 “profit” on click).
• The day I bought the songs I mentioned what I was listening to on both Twitter and Facebook. I freely promoted the band with a link to their site and my approval to a direct audience of 1,200+ people (# based on Twitter followers and Facebook friends). The tweet / update was also seen on a various other blogs / RSS feeds.
• Based off of that Social Media messaging I received 15 Twitter replies, 5 Twitter direct messages, 8  Facebook comments, 4 Facebook emails and 6 emails. 1 click on a $.10 ad resulted in the band being part of a social conversation consisting of at least 38 people who never heard of them before.
• Of the people I talked to about the band through Social Media methods, 6 of them subscribed to the bands mailing list and 54 total songs were purchased.
• So do the math - that one click resulted in an unknown (but decent) amount of people being exposed to the band, at least 7 people who are now directly engaged with the band through email and a total of 59 song purchases on iTunes. This example also only takes into account my one tweet / status update but I mentioned that I was listening to the band on numerous occasions and I know of other Social Media conversations that took place based on my “approval”.

Granted the above example works very well for the music genre, however there are many elements that companies of all shapes and sizes could take advantage of. At its core Social Media is about connecting with people and in the end isn’t that the goal?