Ho! Ho! Tweet!?! Social Media & Holiday Shopping

The holiday season is already here. It’s time to call up loved ones for gift ideas and begin combing the Sunday papers for the best deals. Wait. This year when I say “call up loved ones,” I actually mean go to their Facebook page, and by “Sunday paper” I mean Twitter.

The graph below shows the results from eMarketer.com’s study on social media use this holiday season.

Also reported:
- 27% of online shoppers will use social networks for gift ideas. According to eMarketer
- 45% will “use social networks to research items, compare prices and look for offers.” According to eMarketer
- 17% of all Christmas shoppers will use social media to aid their efforts in one way or another this holiday season. According to Deloitte

Since last holiday season, networking giants Twitter and Facebook have been consistently proving their promotional value to businesses. In the last 12 months, their power to share information in real-time has substantiated them as the fastest and most cost effective way for retailers to connect with potential customers. With the majority of people planning to use social media this holiday season to find discounts, coupons and sale information, I’d expect to see many creative social media-driven promotions this holiday season.

If you have already seen promotions like these, feel free to share them with us on facebook.com/dirxion or twitter.com/dirxion. We’d enjoy hearing about them.

More Reason to Socialize

Over a short period of time, sites like Facebook and Twitter have grown from messaging tools between friends into widely adopted means of self-promotion, advertising, and interaction. Most recently, the growing popularity of sharing useful information through these networks has caused a shift in the way the internet is being used, blurring the lines between its informational and social atmosphere.

As of last week that gray area got a little grayer. Microsoft announced that they struck deals with the two social networking giants to start integrating real time search results that will come directly from Twitter and Facebook users but will be listed within the Bing search engine results. Google also announced that they cut a similar deal with Twitter and would soon be launching a whole new search tool called ‘Social Search’. So it appears that now the influence of your tweets and updates will expand beyond just their narrow social circles.

This all came about as increasing amounts of traffic to websites were coming from Facebook and Twitter, taking some potential business away from search engines. The search engines, rather than compete, realized that when people are seeking information they are finding that content is often more relevant when it comes from someone within their sphere of influence online and not a mysterious and complex algorithm. Also, social search is predominantly based on recency because more times than not the most recent information is also the most pertinent.

What does this mean for publishers? There are larger marketing opportunities in growing your online social circle and actively participating within it. This is also important because for the first time these new forms of search are giving you some control over being found.  Instead of solely being bound by the strict rules of search engine optimization and highly competitive keywords, now by making regular use of Twitter and Facebook you are vicariously using search engines to reach an even larger audience. The more social you become with your marketing, the more traffic directed through your links.

67% of Shoppers Spend More Money When Their Facebook Friends Give Them The Green Light

At Dirxion, we like to think that we have our finger on the pulse. We cashed out with Bernie Madoff like 2 years ago. In 2003, we popped our collars at least a month before everyone else caught on. Not the best examples, but it makes my point about us having some foresight. We not too long ago introduced our social sharing feature aimed at our customers with digital catalogs, travel guides and magazines. Without fail, a study recently came out from the E-tailing Group, Inc and it proved us right again.

The report states that 83% of consumers who shop online are keen to the notion of sharing their potential purchases with their Facebook and Twitter friends. On top of that, 67% admit that they end up spending more money online if they receive their social networking friends’ seal of approval.

Also discovered through this study:
62% of online shoppers are more likely to return to a retail website that offers social tools.

Twice as many shoppers say they prefer the recommendations of their friends in social communities rather than that of the retailers.

41% of people say they would be interested in being a part of online communities that share information about shopping and their favorite products.

Social networks are continually proving to be a valuable business resource. If you aren’t using these sites for all their marketing capabilities you could be missing out on some potential revenue. So here’s an idea … publish a digital edition of your publication. Use the social media features to circulate it to your customers, and then let your customers start circulating it for you. That’s working smart.

Marketing Done Right

It’s official; the new Moosejaw Back to School ‘09 Catalog, “No Pants,” has gone viral.

The concept of the catalog is that in this economy, no one can afford to buy an entire outfit, so all the models are wearing shirts and jackets without pants.

Besides the fun of all this, they are doing a great job marketing the new digital catalog. In addition to the usual link on the homepage and email campaign, they also wrote a blog post about the new catalog and they are using Twitter effectively as well.

On Twitter, they are retweeting (RT) all their customers who tweet and talk about the new catalog. This is a great use of social networking to build the brand and drive more catalog page views.

You can follow Moosejaw on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/MoosejawMadness.

Here is a screenshot of their Twitter timeline from today. As you can see, people are still talking about it!

Twitter Is All The Rage In The Small Business Sector

We thought it would be interesting to mention a few Twitter stats that we noticed over at MarketingProfs.com a few days ago. This is very brief, yet very interesting, especially for all of our customers who are taking advantage of the extremely popular micro-blogging service known as Twitter.

Take a look at what they’ve found:

According to this survey Twitter users, most of whom represent small businesses expect their company’s use of this microblogging tool to increase in the next six months.

• 84% of respondents say their company’s use of Twitter will increase
• 46% say it will increase by a “significant” margin
• 66% of respondents consider Twitter either extremely” or “somewhat” important to their company’s business/marketing operations.

Rating the value of social-media business tools, respondents replied that the following gave “great value” to their company:

52%, corporate blogs
41%, Twitter
25%, LinkedIn
17%, Facebook

As we’ve talked about in earlier marketing posts, there is quite a bit of opportunity for all of our customers to promote their digital publications through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and all sorts of social media outlets. It’s never too late to start, and if you have any questions, just drop us a line in the comments below or you can use our contact form.

Learn The Basics Of Proper Twitter Etiquette For Businesses

With Twitter (the popular micro-blogging service) becoming a household name, it’s probably safe to say that a lot of people who want to use it are a little intimidated to start their tweeting adventure because they’re not sure just exactly what to say or do without looking like a total newbie. While there are no hard and set rules, there are a few things that fall into what is commonly referred to as “Twitter etiquette”, or, “Twitiquette”.

Below, we’ll review five things to keep in mind when using Twitter, and since we’re all about using Twitter in a business environment, most of the information below will be geared towards using Twitter in the business and corporate world.

1. To Follow, Or Not - One of the daily aspects of using Twitter, whether personally or for business purposes, is checking out your new followers and deciding if you should follow them back. One thing to keep in mind is that before you go off and follow everyone that follows you, your best bet is to take a look at your new followers to see if they’re indeed “real” people or just spam accounts that spammers set up to promote junk offers. It only takes a few seconds to do this, and can go a long way in protecting your timeline from being clogged up with spam offers. Now, assuming the person is real, you still don’t know if you should follow them or not. That’s quite common, and what you need to ask yourself is - “Am I potentially interested in what this person has to say on a daily basis?” or “Do they seem interesting” or “Can I learn something from them?”. Simply taking a look at their past few tweets should give you an idea of what kind of Twitterer they are. Don’t worry, unlike the opinion of a few so called experts - Twitter wasn’t made for you to follow everyone that follows you. It doesn’t hurt to give them a chance and follow them for a few days to see what they’re like, but by no means should you ever feel obligated to follow someone just because they followed you.

2. Engage And Answer - If you’re representing a business on Twitter, it’s very important that when you receive questions, replies, or direct message that you answer or respond to them in a timely manner. Part of the beauty of Twitter is the “real-time” atmosphere, and businesses who understand that and actively engage and respond to their customers are the ones making waves in the social media atmosphere.

3. Offer Value - One of the best things about Twitter is the potential value of a single 140 character post. People like to follow those who share useful links, helpful or insightful information, or anything else of value that makes your readers make a point to pay attention to your tweets. For instance, sometimes the computer giant, Dell, runs special offers exclusively for their followers on Twitter. If you’re representing a business or company, try something similar. Run a promotion exclusively for your Twitter followers, and if it’s good enough, you can bet that word of mouth will travel at light speed, and your follower count will go up!

4. Don’t Overdo It - Twitter is a highly powerful social media business communication tool, and it’s a great way to reach out to a brand new audience. But one thing you don’t want to do is continually promote your business to the point where it gets annoying. No one wants to sign on to Twitter to read advertisements all day, trust me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with talking about your business on Twitter part of the time - but to really build trust, loyalty, and popularity, make sure you’re adding value to your Twitter stream. Keep the self-promotion to a safe minimum.

5. Show Your Human Side - This relates to the advice given above, but it’s still worth pointing out. If you’re Tweeting for a company or business that you run, make sure your entire existence on Twitter isn’t about the business side of things. Show your followers that there is an actual face behind the company logo. Become more personal and show them that you believe in the power of social media for connecting on a personal level. Take a picture or maybe even a video of a company meeting or gathering, or take some funny pictures of the company BBQ where the boss falls into a puddle of mud during tug-of-war. Your customers will absolutely LOVE this, and it works wonders for building the trust factor - which is already hard to do sometimes in a virtual environment.

There is a lot more to consider when using Twitter for your business, but to save you from reading a novel, we’ll post more tips down the road. If you have anything to share, please leave it in the comment section below - we would love to hear your thoughts!

5 Twitter Tools That Will Help Make You A Professional Tweeter

Twitter is one of the hottest forms of social media on the planet right now. With the recent wave of huge celebrity endorsements (Oprah, Ashton Kutcher, Larry King, the list goes on…), there are thousands of people jumping on board every single day.

Some people are hesitant to get involved because they think Twitter is nothing more than a geeky way to tell the world (who may or may not care) what you’re doing at the moment - but those that know the true power of Twitter will tell you that it’s one of the hottest ways to promote and grow your business online.

Last month, we gave a quick primer on the basics of Twitter, and while Twitter isn’t complicated by any means, there are an absolute TON of third party Twitter management tools that can have you “tweeting” like your a pro. We’ll give a brief overview of each tool and what it does below.

1. Tweetdeck - When you get in the swing of Twittering, and as you add more friends, and more people start to follow you, you’re going to be overwhelmed and most likely miss some of the action if you’re just using the standard Twitter.com interface. Tweetdeck, one of the most (if not the most) popular Twitter stream management tools around, will solve all those problems. With the ability to shorten links on the fly, picture uploads in an instant, and a dozen ways to manage and streamline your Twitter stream, it’s not surprising that a majority of the Twittersphere uses it daily. Find out more here.

2. TwitPic - One of the big things on Twitter is sharing pictures. For a business or company, it’s a great way to share a picture of a company meeting, a fun company outing, new products, etc…By far the most popular way to share a picture on Twitter is through a service called TwitPic.com. No signup required, just log in with your Twitter account credentials and you can post pictures all day long with the speed of light.  (Twitpic is built in to Tweetdeck). Check it out here.

3. TweetLater - TweetLater allows you to do all kinds of things with your Twitter account, such as easily scheduling tweets to go out at certain times, automatically follow people back that follow you, send automatic thank you notes to new followers (a great way to introduce your company to everyone that follows you), and much more. Find out more about TweetLater here.

4. TwitScoop - One of the big draws to Twitter, and why it’s becoming so popular, is the ability to share breaking news and information faster than any cable news network or website could ever dream of. Twitter is used by “the people”, so when something happens, it ALWAYS breaks on Twitter first, because instead of waiting for a newscrew to show up to ground zero, chances are good now that citizen reporters are next door tweeting about the situation. Major cable news networks have already admitted that they find a lot of their stories on Twitter first, and if you pay attention, they’re interviewing Tweeters more and more every day. Anyway, TwitScoop.com is a great site that watches the real time trends that are happening on Twitter. It will allow you to find out what’s going on at the moment, in real time. Tons of features here - try it out today.

5. TweetBeep - If you want to take a more hands off approach and are only interested when someone mentions you, your company, or whatever keyword you’re paying attention to, then TweetBeep is your solution. Similar to Google Alerts (which I know we all use), TweetBeep will notify you when someone mentions one of the words or phrases you’re watching. Easy to use and setup, it should be part of your marketing arsenal. Get more information here.

In closing, there are tons of fantastic Twitter management tools out there, with new ones popping up every single day. The ones listed above are some of the most popular, and will allow you to have complete control over your Twitter situation. We hope you enjoy them, and if you have any questions about using Twitter for your business, you can email Ryan at: ryanl[at]dirxion[dot]com

Promote Your Digital Publication With Twitter

Twitter, if you haven’t recently heard, is a micro-blogging service that is currently one of the hottest forms of communication on the internet right now. World news breaks on Twitter faster than it does on any cable news network out there, and the Twitter madness has only just begun.

Twitter was born a few years ago, but just recently (as of late ‘08, early ‘09) it has really skyrocketed in popularity, and make no mistake, it’s not just for people to talk about what they had for breakfast or what’s happening in the world - it’s also a highly powerful and effective form of online marketing.

Every single day, hundreds, if not thousands of new companies are jumping on the Twitter wagon, and rightfully so. With the ability to “follow” specific groups of people (for instance, if you’re in the clothing industry, you can do a quick search and follow anyone that talks about clothes) the marketing reach and potential is huge. Dell, one of the world’s most popular computer manufacturers, is now known to offer spectacular “Twitter only” sales, and these sales have such far reach, that they make a difference in Dell’s bottom line.

Marketing on Twitter is not limited to any specific industry, anyone can take advantage of it. If you have a digital catalog or any kind of digital edition, by all means, start a Twitter account (if you haven’t already). It’s free, and doesn’t take much in the way of resources to maintain it. “Tweet” out updates about your company on a regular basis, and trust me, your customers WILL find you and follow you.

Once you have a respectable following, make sure you “tweet” about any new digital issues that come out for instant traffic to them. If you have 2000 of your customers following you, and you maintain an active Twitter presence, announcing a new product could bring a large percentage of them to your digital publication immediately, and of course, a percentage of those could and probably will turn into sales.

Get the picture?

So again, if you haven’t started a Twitter account, head over there right now and sign up. It literally takes a few minutes of your time, and if you treat it like you would any other online marketing channel, the chances of it paying off are really good right now.

While you’re at it, you should definitely follow Dirxion on Twitter.

Newsrooms Going All Digital?

We recently talked about the inevitable switch to online editions for a few big newspapers, primarily for cost cutting measures. It’s a lot less expensive to not have to print tens of thousands of copies and maintain a huge building with tons of employees. Going with a digital edition of your publication, in nearly all cases, is becoming a very hot topic these days.

There was a fantastic article at CMSWire.com yesterday about the transformation of big newspapers who are looking at going digital. Journalists would turn into bloggers, who report on the fly, not having deadlines, and also embracing social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook.

I think Marisa Peacock from CMSWire.com summed it up best with this:

“If Outing’s projections are accurate, the traditional print journalist will have morphed into a multi-tasking digital online super star. Those eager to jump on board, thumbs a-twittering and digital cameras shuttering, will thrive in this active 24-hour news world.”

It’s exciting to see how fast the news media world is changing. I mean seriously, during times of world crisis, would you rather hear a delayed reporter on the news who is 20 miles from “ground zero”, or follow the Tweets of someone who is a half block away in their apartment?

Social media is taking over, get ready for it, these are exciting times!