Eyeballs and ears apparently equal value.
Social Media Company Valuations
Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
Tech Company Valuations
May 26, 2011Marketing Budget Changes: Where’s Social Media’s ROI?
March 13, 2010More from eMarketer about Marketing Budget allocation shifts:
…even though marketers are on board with the idea that social is key to their overall strategy, many are sick of hearing about it. In addition to being one of the most important buzzwords, social media was considered the most annoying, with nearly 30% of executives tired of it. Twitter, specifically, got on the nerves of nearly 15% of respondents, and social networking rounded out the top three trends marketers were most tired of hearing about.
Regardless, social spending will increase. A separate survey of US marketing execs by Ad-ology indicated social tactics were the most likely to increase in 2010.
Marketing Budgets
Surely executives growing tired of hearing about social media, social networking and the Twitter brand specifically doesn’t bode well for the nascent space or the Twitter brand’s monetization potential.
How can social media reconcile itself with the fact that marketing executives’ chief concern is Marketing ROI while social media and social networking have yet been able to deliver consistent measurable ROI to marketers?
I wonder how many executives have grown tired of hearing about Google and search engine marketing results?
Interactive Marketing Spend Annual Growth Rates
July 27, 2009Forrester Interactive Advertising Models predicts compound annual growth rates for Interactive Marketing spend in the US through 2014.
Interactive Media Spend
Forrester classifies Mobile Marketing, Social media, Email marketing, Display advertising and Search Marketing as Interactive Marketing.
Interestingly – combined all other forms of Interactive Marketing spend remains half of what is spent on Search Marketing annually both in the present and future.
If the other forms of Interactive Marketing were more effective than Search Marketing, it would seem their spend would exceed the investment made in search by marketers.
Don’t Forrester’s spend predictions confirm all other forms of Interactive Marketing are less effective than Search?
Social Media’s Return on Investment?
June 17, 2009I was fishing in the Tweet stream yesterday when I caught the following job posting for a social media coordinator.
Social Media Coordinator
Several attributes of this job description struck me as odd if not misinformed.
The job description sounds more like a wish list composed by someone in Human Resources rather than by someone who actually knew what they were requesting.
The idea that the future Social Media Coordinator position holder has to report to the “Manager – Interactive Projects” runs counter to the list of skills the job description requires.
Any individual who has experience performing the following “social media” laundry list of tasks including the non-social media related disciplines of search engine optimization and web analytics while generating a return on investment would by definition already be a Manager – Interactive Projects – if not considerably more.
Responsibilities of the position will include the support of Interactive initiatives regarding online Social Media (SM), web analytics/research, news distribution and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In addition, responsibilities of this role will include:
· Strategy, planning and direction to content managers and maintenance of Social Media initiatives including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube and others
· Educating consultants regarding new technology and the Social Media environment
· Utilizing technology to research and measure company Social Media status and ROI
· Interaction with corporate and regional company representatives to promote news and activities of the company
· Management of all company related Social Media registrations
· Providing regular reports of web site traffic analytics
· Interaction with company Studio Team to manage and promote a variety of news and activity videos/broadcasts
The position’s “Utilizing technology to research and measure company Social Media status and ROI” requirement indirectly poses a valid question yet one few if any company’s understand or can let alone quantify – “What is the Return on Investment in Social Media?”
Any search engine marketer or SEO worth their salt can answer the Return on Investment question, I doubt a majority of the new breed of social media marketers can.
How Not To Market on Twitter
February 21, 2009I received the following email from a Twitterer today which in turn has prompted this post: How Not to Market.
Twitter Follower Notification
How Not to Market?
First set up a Twitter account under a sexy sounding girls name and then grab an image of the hottest looking girl you can find (preferrably a stock image you don’t have to pay for) Actually image ownership rights of the girl won’t matter because your site won’t be visited by anyone other than those you follow.
How Not To Market On Twitter
Next, get an affiliate account id for some spammy product that purportedly sells well with possibly your own domain pointing to the spammy affiliate page and then post your new prized domain on your Twitter profile page under your Web address.
Begin search for Tweets about Twitter or other generic non specific terms in Twitter Search.
Compile a list of recent Tweets and their authors to first stalk and then follow in the hopes their Twitter accounts will automatically follow you. If “stalkees” don’t automatically follow you back, your hot girl picture should at least do the trick to get the followed to at least click through to your web address to learn more about what it is that you do.
This assumes the followed aren’t suspicious about your single update which upon reading sounds like the introductory sales script from a telemarketer’s cold call.
Then – PRAY! – those who you followed actually eyeball your spammy affiliate web site are also in the market for whatever it is your affiliate site is selling.
Twitter Web Address
Increase click-throughs to your site and hedge your bets by making the biggest promise of all – that your giving away endless quantities of cash – just like the latest Twitter spammer above who followed me did.
The problem with this “social media marketing model” is if anyone of the followed actually visit your website – they will do so only once and then they will probably be mad they were tricked into visiting your website to begin with.
If the new / social media marketer is lucky, they may even get a special blog post written about just how special their social medai marketing “user experience” was.
Linkedin Plus Twitter Equals Who Knows What?
November 1, 2008I just added my Twitter account into my Linkedin account profile after noticing Owen Frager had added it to his “what he is working on” Linkedin updates.
Twitter TimCohn
Pretty cool Owen…
Linkedin TimCohn
I had been meaning for some time to write about the importance of “owning and controlling your brand” whether personal or corporate in the most promising emerging social platforms for both offensive and defensive purposes
Appropriately, I first became acquainted with Owen after having posted on Domain King Rick Schwartz’ blog
Name.com
about how I missed the first offensive opportunity to control “my personal brand” – albeit my not so unique name – on that newfangled social platform called the world wide web way back in 1996.
Tim Cohn
Granted, its hard to gauge in advance which social platforms will have the largest audience and reach after filtering out all their noise.
However, not registering your “brand” in their databases early on can lead to remorse later on.
If you haven’t done so already, register your own brandname.com / companyname.com and create accounts for the same names in MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr – if you can…
The same holds true for individuals.
Sign up for a Linkedin account under your personal brand: your name.
Don’t be disappointed though if you can’t. If yours is a common name – it surely has long since been registered.
Registering your brands with these sites may not make you any money in the short term, but if and when social media platforms ever figure out how to make money for themselves let alone for their advertisers and users, wouldn’t it be better for you to control your brand name(s) on the most successful social media sites instead of someone else?
Search Marketing Communications 
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