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Facebook or Twitter?

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For the past three days I have been talking about why I am not convinced that Facebook is better for business than twitter. This is the fourth in five posts I am writing in response to 5 Reasons why Facebook is better than Twitter for your business.

While I am a Twitter fan, I believe there is a lot of value in participation on Facebook as well, however, to provide reasons why Facebook is better than Twitter without describing what Twitter has to offer is leaving out half of the story.

4. Advertising Platform
While Facebook’s advertising platform within the Facebook interface offers very good targeting opportunities for advertisers and I agree with everything Mr. Smith is saying in his description of advertising on Facebook, there are ways to advertise using Twitter as well. Take a look at Magpie. As a twitter user, you get to share ad tweets with your followers if you approve of the ad that Magpie offers you.

Do I like the fact that I am receiving ads on Twitter? No, but the point is that there are ways to advertise with Twitter click through rates with Twitter still seem to be pretty high. With Facebook you can pay per click or per impression. I like to think of Facebook ads more like banners and Twitter ads more like Google AdWords. Twitter ads tend to be more editorial in nature and if the tweeter is respectful of their followers they will only allow ads that will add value to their followers.  I know that this won’t always be the case, because there will be people that allow all ads, but I’ve seen many ads served to me on Facebook that haven’t been correctly targeted either.  Recently though, this is infrequent, so either Facebook or the advertisers are doing a better job with their targeting.

The problem with leaving the targeting in the hands of the advertiser, is that not all advertisers are created equal.  I.e. some have better knowledge about targeting than others and some just don’t get it at all.

On Facebook at least you know it’s an ad though.  Sometimes on Twitter you’re not given the disclaimer information although what I have seen from Magpie does.

The option to vote on advertising that a Facebook user sees is helpful as well.  I.e. the Facebook user gets to tell Facebook what kinds of ads they are interested in, thus allowing Facebook to personalize the ad content to each user.  And that’s value to the user, and value is good.

Bottom line up front:  If you are an advertiser on Facebook or a publisher of ads on your twitter feed, the more value you ad for your customer and/or follower, the more respect you will receive, the better the ad will do and the more return you will see.

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Facebook or Twitter?

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For the past two days I have been talking about why I am not convinced that Facebook is better for business than twitter.  This is the third in five posts I am writing in response to 5 Reasons why Facebook is better than Twitter for your business.

3.  Viral Promotion

Quoting from William Smith’s article:

In a sense, social media marketing is about giving your fans a platform to talk about you in a positive way – something Facebook makes seemless. If a fan of your Facebook business page decides to comment on something you’ve posted, their friends will see that action in their news feed. If your fans mark a photo as something that they “like” then their friends will see that, likewise, if they sign up to attend an event by sending in their RSVP, it shows up for all of their friends to see. In this way, Facebook can make any content viral.

Similarly if someone talks about you in a positive way on Twitter, and you’re listening to the conversation, you can thank them for their comment.  This will then show up in your timeline which will be available for all your followers to see.  Also, if a person is commenting about you on Twitter, it’s available to the whole world and often indexed by Google.  Have you ever tried Google Alerts? On Facebook, the comment is limited to the network of friends of the fan who posted the comment.  Twitter can have a similar viral effect as Facebook, because the core of both services is the sharing.  Retweeting is prolific on Twitter and if you engage with the people who are interested in your product or service they can become advocates of your brand.

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Facebook or Twitter?

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Yesterday I posted about my thoughts on the community and size of Facebook versus Twitter based in response to a recent blogpost touting Facebook being better for business than Twitter.  That was reason number one.  Here is reason number two:

2.  Analytics
Yes, it is important to track your ROI (return on investment and now also known as return on influence).  Yes, Facebook provides interesting analytical data for business owners inside of the Facebook site and there isn’t anything coming directly from Twitter to show statistics yet.  However, just because Twitter doesn’t include an analytics package service on the site, doesn’t mean there is no way to see data about your twitter profile and how many people are following you.

Just as there are numerous developers creating applications for use on Facebook, there are also numbers developers building tools that work off the Twiiter API.

For example, you can track how many people followed any link you posted on Twitter through services like http://tr.im and http://bit.ly.  There are ways to see where your followers are tweeting from, tools to track demographics, how quickly people grew their followers and thousands more.  Granted, it takes a twitter-nut to find all of the relevant tracking tools, but saying there aren’t any is incorrect. Sysomos, for example offers a wide range of analytics on social media. It’s not free, but there are plenty of others if you have the time to try them out.

Twitter Users By Age Group

Do Teens Really Not Use Twitter?

As Chris Brogan says, the first one there wins the game, but what if the game isn’t whether to use Facebook or Twitter?  What if you really need to participate on both?

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Facebook or Twitter?

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A recent post called 5 Reasons why Facebook is better than Twitter for your business, William Smith of the Internet Marketing Examiner describes why he believes Facebook is better for small to medium sized businesses.  In the next five posts I will provide my thoughts on this.

1.  Community/Size
Smith argues that Facebook’s community (122 million) is much larger than Twitter’s (22 million), implying therefore that as a business owner you have a bigger reach on Facebook.  Yes, most Facebook user’s have about 200 friends, but what are they talking about and what are they interested in?  IMHO most of the activity on Facebook is social.  People are there to relax and have fun.  It’s like a birthday party where you know all the people you invited and you feel comfortable talking about random thing with them.  They are not there to do business or be thinking about their favorite brand.  They are there, yes, but if they are not talking with your company or on your company’s fan page, are they really beneficial to your business.

If you are advertising, then you can certainly target Facebook users well, but FB’ers are still resistant to ads and click through rates are low.  Social media is about being social, not about messaging and targeting.

On Twitter on the other hand, it is easy to find the people who are talking about your brand and start conversations with them.  Conversations start relationships and on Twitter it’s not just conversations between friends (as it is on Facebook), it’s conversations that are happening in public about your brand.  It is easy to listen to the conversation and start participating by just following any mentions of your brand.  Just enter your company name or any brand or topic into Twitter’s Search Tool and you’ll see what people are saying about it on Twitter.  It’s like Google, but for a view at what the twitterverse is saying about your brand.

Going back to the party analogy, Twitter is more like a business cocktail party than a birthday party, because you are there to meet people, share a little information and chat with people who seem interesting to you.  It’s about networking for business, not just reconnecting as friends.

Yes Compete shows more unique visitors to Facebook than Twitter, but look at the Compete Ranking growth of Twitter.  Because it is a little more technical, a little more intelligent, a little less fun maybe, and more business oriented, it is slower to take off, but growing rapidly and the uses for business are inherent instead of add-ons as they are on Facebook.

As for Facebook not making mainstream news as much as Twitter, the reason is because Facebook is a closed network and twitter is a public timeline.  How many times recently have you heard about breaking news that was first reported on Twitter?  Why?  What do you have with you at all times?  That’s right, your cell phone, and posting a quick news update to your favorite mobile twitter service is quick, easy and has the potential to reach a lot more people more quickly than on Facebook, because people build followings of not just friends who may be interested in a number of different things, but followers who are in the same niche market as the tweeter.

Twitter is still an infant and Facebook is a teenager.  I think we’ll see steady growth in the number of Twitter users and Facebook is already starting to plateau.

Tomorrow we’ll look at Analytics on Facebook versus Twitter.

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Susby?

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plate
Well after nearly four months of getting the business up and running, here we are finally with our brand new site.  We hope you like it.

What is “Susby” you’re wondering, right?  Well let me tell you:

When I was in high school in Cape Town, South Africa, my friends called me Suse (pronouce: “Sooz”).  Then there was another Susan, go figure – there are millions, and even more “Susan Barnes”es – just look at Google and you’ll see.

Anyway, I became Suse B, short for Susan B.  I also created handmade birthday cards for all of my friends and family and signed them with By Suse.  So Margaret Barlow, choir mistress and piano teacher extraordinaire started calling me “SusBy” – for By Sus(e).  From then on I have been SusBy or just Susby and that’s the name of my new consulting firm.  I am Susan Barnes, aka Susby and the firm is Susby Internet Solutions Consulting, aka Susby IS Consulting.

Short sweet, nothing to do with bees or honey, sorry.  Oh, and yes, the licence plate is real.  I have had it since 2006.  I must have been dreaming of owning my own business since then.  Be careful what you wish for… 🙂

Logo_SusbyIS

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Social Media Spending Predicted to Grow by 34% In 5 Years

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From today’s PR 2.0 post by Brian Solis today, The Decline of Traditional Advertising and the Rise of Social Media, we see that Forrester Research is predicting strong growth in Social Media and Mobile advertising spending over the next five years.

Social Media spending is predicted to grow by 34% from $716 million in 2009 to a forcast $3,113 million in 2014. Advertising on mobile devices is expected to grow by 27% from $391 million in 2009 to $1,274 in 2014.

Why is this no surprise?

  1. Social media is more easily accessibly on mobile devices
  2. Mobile devices are more accessible (read cheaper) to own than laptops and desktop computers, so more people have them.
  3. What do you carry with you all the time? Your keys, your wallet and…. that’s right, your cell phone.
  4. People are much more accustomed to getting information anywhere anytime, than having to wait to look it up at a specific location, like a library, newspaper stand or even their own desktop computer.
  5. People are much more mobile, traveling more frequently, because being away from the office doesn’t mean being disconnected from work.
  6. Your mobile device is personal and social media keeps you connected with all your friends, colleagues and the relationships that make your world go round.
  7. Mobile application development is rampant.
  8. Smaller is better (i.e. carrying a phone instead of a laptop) and your phone is not just a phone – it’s also your email, your SMS, your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, web browser, your music and almost anything else you want to use it for.
  9. Attention spans are getting shorter and quick messaging is en vogue
  10. Your mobile device is the only thing an advertiser can be pretty sure paying attention to when you’re available to receive information
  11. Because everything is digital it’s much easier to track usage, trends and customer behavior online than it was with traditional media and this leads to innovative ways to personalize information so that it is valuable to each consumer.

If you’re not participating in social media yet, jump right in. As Brian says “Participation is Marketing” and you have to participate first as a person (not a marketer) in order to understand the medium and how to work within it.

Putting the Public Back into PR

I highly recommend Putting the Public Back in to PR by Brian Solis and Deidre Breckenridge. The marketing field is evolving and you need to know how to keep pace with it.

Marketing, Mobile, Social Media , , , ,

Federal Government Grants

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Yesterday I got a phone call from “Kim Smith” of Federal Government Grants. She had a decidely East Indian accent and persisted that she was calling because the U.S. Federal Government wanted to give me $7,000 because my credit is good, I am a good citizen and I pay all my bills on time.

She said that when I get the money I have to promise not to use it for anything bad like gambling, alcohol or drugs, but that I should feel free to use it for anything positive, like towards my mortgage payment, buying a car, school for my kids or home improvement.

The phone call went on and on with lots of requests for agreement and she kept asking me to speak up because she couldn’t hear me. Eventually she told me how to claim my grant money. She needed me to answer a few questions confirming my address, phone , date of birth…. you see where this is heading now, right? Then after all the questions, I had to call (213) 599-7374 which I was told was the Federal Government Grants Accounts department and let the person on the other end of the phone know that I talked with Kim Smith and give my confirmation number.

Well obviously I didn’t call, so Kim Smith called me back a couple of hours later asking me why I hadn’t yet called and asked me to tell her when I would call. I told her I would call by 2 p.m. So at 1:55 p.m. for the hell of it I called, and what happened?

The same story all over again with another woman with an Indian accent explaining the nature of the program and what was involved with lots of questions, asking me to speak up so that she could hear my response. (Do you think she was recording my responses perhaps?)

Does this sound fishy or phishy or vishy to you? It did to me so I hung up. I’m wondering if anyone else has had any similar experiences and what you did or would do if you got such a call. Care to share?

I did a little research and found a nice article on about.com – Federal Government Grants: No Free Lunch, The Truth About Federal Government Grants which also pointed me to the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance website which looks like a good resource for applying for government grants if that’s what you’re looking for, but there doesn’t seem to be any mention of anything for individuals who pay their bills on time anywhere.

The moral of the story? If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.  Be careful out there.

The top three Google AdWords even claim things like “Everyone Approved” and “Never Repay, ”  like this:

AdWord Ad about Government Grants

Life, Random

Answers From Friends Are Best

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… and if not directly from friends, the next best thing is answers from friends-of-friends.

If you haven’t tried it yet, take a look at Aardvark.

Being well connected just got a whole lot better. Whether you are tiptoeing into the social sphere carefully or frolicking in it like a jello wrestler, you will quickly see a benefit if you haven’t already.

While Google offers almost instant access to any information you’re looking for, Wikipedia is a mouse click away instead in multiple volumes in a library around the corner, and community forums offer a great way to learn and share problems and solutions, when it comes to social media, it’s all about your friends and conversations.

What’s better than asking Google for an answer to a question? Asking a friend. And if that friend doesn’t know, perhaps they have a referral of someone they know that may have the answer. The referral system has been around since Planet of the Apes and it’s doesn’t take Neil Armstrong to figure out why people trust their friends more than a big company.

You have ventured into sharing photos and status updates with your friends on Facebook and you may even be intrigued by Twitter, but what about search? Is there a place for the “social” part of “social media” in search?

I believe the answer is yes. With Aardvark, you can ask a question, any question, and either a friend of yours, or a friend of a friend will send you the answer. The key is that the answer is from a human, someone who cares, someone who has a very unique way of thinking about problems, likes, dislikes, the best places to go, the best ergonomic chair to buy, answers to coding questions, browser compatibility issues, the best place in San Francisco’s Union Square for a quick drink, and/or how to find demographic information about your twitter followers. (The Twitter demographics one was picked up and put on FriendFeed by Robert Scoble.)

Last week there was an article in the NY Times about Aardvark, the web service that answers questions through friends and friends-of-friends, which my friend Amy (Happy Birthday again Amy!) referred me to today on Gtalk. I am so thrilled for Aardvark and can’t wait for more people to try it. My experience so far has been very good and I’m betting we’re only at the very beginning of this adventure.

Congratulations on your successes, Aardvark, I’m not surprised. Thanks for offering a great service.

Search, Social Media , ,

What is a Browser?

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This is a fun inquiry into whether people really know what a browser is from Google. It’s incredible how ubiquitous the browser has become. People have the same kind of incomprehension about how the Internet really works as they do about electricity and phone service. “It works, I use it, I like it, but don’t ask me what it is.”

I also find it interesting that people love to be on video, and how few people know about Google’s Chrome.  Is this Google’s way of spreading the word?

Fun, Search, Social Media, Viral Video , , , , ,

How To Get Attention

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  1. Do something different, be unique.
  2. Be funny, entertain me.
  3. Shock with your talent, your _____, your downright boldness, baby!
  4. Be real, be you and really show me who you are, because until you do, you’re just like everyone else and I’m tuning out.

When I first saw a funny flight safety announcement I was in awe at the creativity and courage it took the flight attendant to put on such a show, all in the name of flight safety, but guess what, people listened.  People heard the message instead of ignoring it as usual and people took off on that plane with a good understanding of how to be safe.

Check out this example and tell me you wouldn’t listen. The fact that it is a Southwest employee is interesting and that is something for another blog post (think case study) coming soon.

Well?

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