Email is crushing Twitter, Facebook for selling stuff online

In 2013, no company can expect to be taken seriously if it’s not on Facebook or Twitter. An endless stream (no pun intended) of advice from marketing consultants warns businesses that they need to “get” social or risk becoming like companies a century ago that didn’t think they needed telephones.

Despite the hype that inevitably clings to the newfangled, however, it’s relatively antique tech that appears to be far more important for selling stuff online. A new report from marketing data outfit Custora found that over the past four years, online retailers have quadrupled the rate of customers acquired through email to nearly 7 percent.

Facebook over that same period barely registers as a way to make a sale, and the tiny percentage of people who do connect and buy over Facebook has stayed flat. Twitter, meanwhile, doesn’t register at all. By far the most popular way to get customers was “organic search,” according to the report, followed by “cost per click” ads (in both cases, read: Google).

Image: Custora

Custora came up with its figures by analyzing data from 72 million customers shopping on 86 different retailer sites. They tracked where customers were clicking from (email, Twitter, Google, etc.) and what and how much they bought, not just on that visit but for the next two years.

Over those two years, Custora found that customers who came to retailers from search were more than 50 percent more valuable than average. In other words, they were more likely to shop more and spend more. Email customers were nearly 11 percent more valuable than average. Facebook customers were just about average. Twitter customers, meanwhile, were 23 percent less valuable than average during the two years following that first click.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say Twitter is inherently a bad way to do (online marketing), but we haven’t seen a lot of good Twitter strategies right now,” says Aaron Goodman, Custora’s lead data scientist. He says Twitter marketing campaigns right now tend to rely on the chancy likelihood that someone will run across a deal when they dip into their feed. Even if they do see it, within seconds it disappears.

Image: Custora

Email, on the other hand, has a certain unfair advantage in that shoppers getting the emails have already given up their addresses to a site, suggesting they already have some prior relationship with that retailer. Still, despite the avalanche of spam we all get, it’s easy to see how the staying power and greater potential for personalization of a medium without a 140-character limit gives email distinct advantages.

Custora’s findings don’t bode especially well for social media business models, especially Twitter. Of course, ads on Facebook and Twitter don’t have to lead to immediate clicks to have an impact. They still have the potential to raise ambient awareness. Yet Custora found that Google’s ads, by contrast, do lead not only to clicks but to purchases—the holy grail of “conversion.”

To be fair, Google had a roughly 10-year head start to turn search into sales. It’s hard to imagine that in a decade that social media won’t be a more important channel for selling stuff. Already its “product cards” provide a very direct way for Twitter to act as a storefront. Businesses probably shouldn’t abandon social just yet. But if they had to pick, that old-timey mailing list may trump tweets for a long time to come.

(article by M.Wohlsen)

How to use Twitter for business

New to Twitter? Trying to give your business the extra edge? These pointers will help SMBs get off to a strong start on Twitter and maximize their presence in the long run.

If you have a small (or large) business, do you need to be on Twitter? In most cases, the answer is yes. This article will give a brief overview of how to use Twitter in the most basic sense, then dive into a few best practice tips for businesses.

Why use Twitter?

People go to Twitter to share what they know and learn in return. Twitter users are hungry for new ideas, opportunities, information, services, and products. If your business is not part of this exchange, you’re leaving two huge opportunities untouched: growing your business and improving it.

Business of all sizes use Twitter for a variety of reasons, from marketing to customer service. The way you use Twitter will vary based on your goal, discussed in more detail below.

5 Twitter tips for businesses

1. Define Your Purpose and Goals

Why is your business on Twitter? If the primary (or only) reason is to drive traffic to your website, you need to rethink your strategy.

The Twitter community values interaction with real people. If the only thing you’re adding to the conversation is a push to visit your website, you aren’t going to have a strong and valuable reputation on Twitter. Some people will still follow you and click your links, but you’ll be leaving several unique opportunities on the table, untouched.

Setting Twitter aside for the moment, what does your business or organization need to do better? Some misguided business leaders think they need to be Twitter because “that’s where our customers are,” and don’t see that Twitter is a tool that can help a business achieve its real goals. Is the business growing rapidly, and you need to find new employees or contractors? Is one of your business’s pain points that it doesn’t listen to its customers or clients? Do you need to improve internal communication between employees? Twitter can help you address those issues and many more – read on to learn how.

2. Assign the right tweeters

You’ve just hired a young, bright intern who’s active on plenty of online social networks, which is why her first assignment will be to set up a Twitter account for your business. Bad idea!

If you want to really leverage Twitter for your business, you need dedicated employees involved. The intern can certainly help you monitor the account and maybe teach your staff basic Twitter etiquette, but she should not be the sole person behind it. You need people who can truly capture your business’ voice and speak knowledgeably about the company (or know how to get knowledgeable answers fast from the executive team).

So, what qualities should your tweeters have?

Knowledgeable – Depending on what goals you’ve set, you need someone who knows the issues related to those goals inside and out. Let’s say your business is growing and you need to hire six Java programmers in the next three months. The person you want tweeting in that case would be someone who codes in Java, not the human-resources manager. If your goal is to better address customer comments – and these will include complaints, questions, and praise – you need someone on Twitter who handles customer service, which in a very small business might be the CEO.

A good listener – The person or people you assign to manage the Twitter account should be as good at listening as they are at speaking and writing. It’s very important on Twitter to respond to people who at-message your account. I’ve interacted with several professional businesses on Twitter who have never once answered my messages. I no longer follow them. You don’t need to say much to acknowledge another person’s existence on Twitter. A simple “@TwitterName It’s a known issue. We’re working on it” or “@TwitterName Thanks!” is all that’s needed.

Trustworthy – Most important of all, put people you trust behind Twitter. It’s a powerful platform that spreads information to millions of people very quickly, and one misguided employee can cause disastrous effects. You need to trust the people who represent your company on Twitter completely. Larger businesses may want to have their employees agree to a few basic guidelines for social media, although I personally feel that a contract-style social media policy is usually unnecessary.

Forcing an employee to sign a social media contract doesn’t convey your trust. The employees representing your business on Twitter need to feel trusted in order to cultivate their voices and write like a human being. Twitter is not an advertisement or slogan – it’s a real person talking with a community of other people. Find people you trust completely, and give them reasonable autonomy.

3. Cultivate a voice


Names – People on Twitter want to know the name of the person on the other end. Here’s how some of the strongest businesses on Twitter do it: they use the company name as the Twitter handle, and in the profile information, they list the employees who manage the account by their real names. The employees then identify themselves when they tweet by include a carrot and their initials (like this: ^JD).

Identity – If it’s important for a brand to have a “voice” or identity, it’s even more important for a real human with a name to have one. Photos help, but with Twitter, you can only upload one photo per profile. How do you get real faces on your Twitter page if more than one person is using the account? General Motors, often named one of the best business on Twitter, came up an elegant solution. The company designed a background image that contains the names and photos of the four employees who tweet for the company. It’s a brilliant solution.

Guidelines, not rules – Getting an individual’s voice to blend with the organization’s can be tricky if the employee is not a PR or marketing professional, but with some general business guidelines and good common sense, it should happen quickly.

Personally, I don’t think most companies need to shroud their employees with a full-force “social media policy” because the rules usually focus too much on what not to do, and that runs counter to community values, like honesty, openness, and sharing.

If you trust the people tweeting for your business, let them do what’s natural and comfortable for them – their voices will come through, which will improve their reputation on the site. The one guideline they need is this: “If another person on Twitter asks you anything you’re not sure about, tweet, ‘I’m not sure. I’m going to ask the right person and will get back to you by the end of the day.'” Encourage your tweeting employees to be honest and upfront, but also fast in acknowledging people. Push home the point that tweeting is an integral part of the business and that other employees should be involved, too, if only as a resource for the designated Tweeters.

4. Follow (and be followed by) the right people

I’m a firm believer that on Twitter, quality outweighs quantity. It’s best to follow and be followed by interesting, influential, and useful people (see “How to Get More Twitter Followers the Right Way” for more advice). Remember that your profile is open to the public (only in the rarest of circumstances would a business make its Twitter account private). Anyone can see whom you follow and who follows you, and those people can affect your credibility.

Keep clean lists – Block, report, or delete all the spammers and people pushing adult content (unless that’s your line of business, of course) who follow you.

Find connectors – Keep the list of people you’re following chock-full of relevant users who will be interested in your content and will feed you interesting ideas that are worth re-tweeting. Look for active Twitter users who post frequently (at least a few times per week) about your field of business. Try to develop a relationship with these people, and be as valuable to them as they are to you.

Use search – Twitter’s search bar is one of its greatest assets. Search for your business name and terms related to your field of work often, and when you see the same names and faces turn up in the results day after day, follow them. You can create saved searches for terms you look up frequently, letting you perform this action in just a few mouse clicks. Get in the habit of it.

5. Be engaging

Being engaging is easier said than done, but it’s by far one of the most important characteristics of a successful Twitter account. Here are some ways to engage your community.

Have a sense of humor – Related to the third tip on this list, having a sense of humor helps immensely on Twitter. No one likes a drone. When people are free to cultivate their own voice and speak freely in 140-character messages, a like humor is going to come through, and your customers will appreciate it.

… but keep it business-appropriate – Keep your business Twitter account business-appropriate when it comes to humor. You don’t have to be funny and crack jokes; just keep a positive and light-hearted attitude. For example, I tweeted at Starbucks Coffee, “I keep reading that you are one of the best biz tweeters! Care to share a tip or two for how it’s done?” and the reply was, “smile a lot. And drink coffee, lots of it.” It’s not ha-ha funny, but it’s not a straight and dry answer either.

Post pictures and videos – People love photos. Your customers and community are curious about what’s around you. What influences you? How does the inside of your factory, laboratory, office, or kitchen look? Share visually and often. People want to know.

As a Twitter user, I highly prefer images that are posted through Twitter’s own photo features rather than those posted through another service that forces me to open a new window to view the images (Instagram being the prime example).

How to use Twitter: The basics in a nutshell

I’ve included this section for people who are wholly unfamiliar with how Twitter works. If you already understand the basics of Twitter, no need to read further.
Twitter is a social network. It’s used by people, businesses, and brands of all sizes for a variety of reasons. The primary interaction is tweeting, or posting a message. Tweets are limited to 140 characters.

Your profile should contain relevant information about your business, the purpose of the Twitter account (e.g., outreach, customer support, news about the business), and if applicable the city and country where the business is located. Also include the business’ website in your profile information, as well as Twitter handles of anyone related to the business (founders, CEO, etc.) where followers can look for additional information and insight.

When you sign up for a Twitter account, you can follow other users – that is, see their tweets appear in your activity stream – and be followed by followers (meaning they’ve opted to see your tweets in their feed). Users aren’t expected to read every single tweet that shows up in their streams, although some do. It’s more common for users to think of their Twitter streams as a place to browse content leisurely.

Retweeting means re-sharing a tweet that someone else wrote. If someone retweets your message, it means not only will your followers see it, but their followers will see it, too (attributed to you).

A tweet that uses the symbol @ followed by a Twitter user’s Twitter name or handle is called a mention. It’s a message directed at another user. The recipient will be more likely to see because it will show up in the user’s interactions list. Interactions alert users to activity that they might want to know about, such as when a new follower adds them and when someone retweets one of their posts. Users often opt to receive special notification via email or an app when someone is trying to get their attention on Twitter.

A hashtag or # symbol used before a word or string of words (Americans sometimes call it the “pound sign” but others call it a hash) denotes a public discussion about a topic. Clicking on a hashtag will bring up a list of search results for that string of words on Twitter, so you can see what other people have to say about the matter. Tweet-ups – or meet-ups on Twitter – typically use hashtags as an organization tool to get people together.
For more terminology, see Twitter’s glossary.

Twitter Extras for Businesses

Business accounts on Twitter have the option of buying advertising in the form of promoted accounts, promoted tweets, as well as paying for access to analytics (that is, data measuring the success of your Twitter efforts). Options and prices vary widely; you can find more information on Twitter’s Business Ad Products page.

(article by J.Duffy)

Eurobarometro: Internet unico medium italiano in ascesa

Gli websurfer quotidiani passano dal 37% del 2010 al 45% del 2012. Ma la tv resta la piattaforma più amata dall’84% degli abitanti. In calo stampa e radio.

Internet si conferma il secondo mezzo di comunicazione più utilizzato dagli italiani, superando la radio, ma la televisione resta il medium più seguito. È quanto emerge dal capitolo su “Gli italiani e i media” inserito nel rapporto sull’Italia  dell’Eurobarometro, il sondaggio più importante condotto a livello europeo sulle opinioni dei cittadini Ue.

La rete segna una regolare crescita e anzi è l’unico mezzo di comunicazione che guadagna utenti in Italia: dal 37% di utenti quotidiani nel 2010 è passata al 45% del 2012. Anche i social network, come Facebook o Twitter, aumentano costantemente la loro popolarità tra gli italiani. Un intervistato su quattro dice di collegarsi ad una rete sociale circa una volta al giorno, mentre nel 2010 la percentuale era del 15%.

Oltre la metà del campione (51%) ritiene che le reti sociali siano un modo innovativo per tenersi aggiornati sulla vita politica. Il 24% degli intervistati si mostra invece scettico.

La stessa maggioranza (51%) ritiene  i social media un modo per partecipare attivamente alla vita pubblica, e non solamente per informarsi. Ancora una volta, il 24% del campione non crede in questa funzione dei social media.

Seppure considerati quindi dalla maggioranza assoluta degli intervistati uno strumento moderno per aggiornarsi e per discutere di questioni politiche, tuttavia i social non hanno ancora la piena fiducia della popolazione. Soltanto il 34% del campione ritiene che ci si possa fidare di Twitter o Facebook su temi politici. La stessa percentuale è invece convinta che non siano affidabili. Il restante 32% non sa rispondere.

Ma la tv resta la reginetta incontrastata dei media. L’84% dei connazionali la guarda con cadenza giornaliera attraverso i consueti apparecchi tv, ed un altro 4% segue i programmi televisivi quotidianamente su internet.

In calo stampa e radio. I giornali sono usati quotidianamente soltanto dal 24% degli italiani, contro il 29% rilevato nel 2010, mentre la radio è ascoltata quotidianamente dal 33% del campione, una quota nettamente ridimensionata rispetto al 44% del 2010. Per entrambi i mezzi di comunicazione i dati italiani sono ampiamente inferiori alla media Ue, dove invece il 37% legge i giornali quasi ogni giorno e il 53% ascolta la radio.