Social Media is growing like crazy. Need some data to help prove it in your organization? There have been several studies projecting social media spending. Let’s take a look at 3 recent reports that show businesses making a strong commitment to social media going forward.

In their annual survey of CMOs, the Duke Fuqua school looked at social media spending as a percent of total marketing budgets. Currently social media account for 6% of budgets, up from 4% 6 months ago. It’s a small piece of the pie today, but CMOs have big expectations for Social Media going forward. Respondents expect nearly 20% of their total marketing budget will allocated to social media in the next 5 years.

Looking more broadly at the market, Forrester projects social media marketing as the fastest growing interactive marketing category. Growing at a 34% CAGR and expected to go from a mear $716M in 2009 to $3.1B+ in 2014.

EConsultancy conducted a survey looking at budgets in 2010. They found that 86% of marketers plan to increase their social media budget in 2010 while only 1% plan to decrease their budget.

As Twitter adoption grows, so too does Spam. It comes in many shapes and sizes and we’ve all experienced it on Twitter. Watching the stream at 140 Twitter Conference was an interesting case study. A tweet from Mashable entered the stream followed by a massive influx of retweets. It took over the #140tc hashtag. I was sitting next to Chris Pirillo at the time and he raised a great question: “I wonder how much of that is spam or bots?”

Let’s take a look at the data…

The velocity of tweets in the first hour was dramatic. It’s clear how this story was able to take over the #140tc stream.

Following/Followers Ratio. One way to identify “questionable” accounts is by a high friends to follower ratio. Looking at the people retweeting the Mashable post on #140tc, show 11% with a ratio of >1.5 and 4% over 3.

Blank Profiles. Users with little or no profile data is another potential sign of a spammer or bot. In this sample data, 12% had blank bio, and 14% had a blank location. While 9% had both fields blank.

So What?

Neither of these measure are a perfect way to identify Spam — both provide a directional analysis. The spammer and bot issues on Twitter suggest that look at who is responding can be important, particularly when content gets picked up by big publishers like Mashable.

I had the pleasure of attending my second 140 Twitter conference in Seattle yesterday. Keeping up with the LA Event, Parnassus Group put on another great conference. We used 20 Decibels to track, measure, and export the #140tc hashtag data. Our campaign captured tweets for the 2 days leading up to the event, the event itself, and ~12 hours following. We used Steve Broback’s favorite Twitter app, Microsoft Excel, to turn the export into charts. The Parnassus group will be following up with a sentiment analysis of this data shortly – I’ll update here with a link.

The #140tc hashtag was very active – there were 5,489 tweets from 1,445 people in the period tracked. Ben Parr’s opening keynote generated a high point in activity. Later at ~5pm Mashable tweeted a story about Hootsuite integrating Foursquare. This generated another wave of activity as Mashable Retweets took over the #140tc stream. Chris Pirillo noted that many of these were likely spam bots (we’ll cover that in a future analysis)

Not surprisingly, conference attendees are active twitter users. The follower numbers for this group are impressive. Over 1/3 of people have over 1,000 followers, and 7% have over 5,000 followers! The average number of followers is 3,830.

The average person tweeted #140tc 3.8 times in the period tracked. However, there some stood out from the crowd. To make the top 20 list, it required 247 tweets! The top 20 were Jaxx_Magee, Kathy E Gill, Alecia Sullivan, Jonathan I. Ezor, Ray Prock Jr., Rich Harris, Brian M. Westbrook, Kathy Gill – Live, Sarah Fosmo, Nansen Malin, John Knight, Craig Sutton, Seattle Wine , Mike Tallent, Jeff Fowle, Eric Earling, nazila, Shona Milne, Damon Cortesi, and dakini_3. Special props to Kathy Gill (@kegill) for having 2 handles in the top 20 list

Last week at Socia Media Breakfast, I learned that AT&T has 15 Customer service reps and a full-time analyst dedicated to Twitter. This got me thinking about how businesses organize, scale and manage a large Twitter presence. I looked at 5 case studies for 5 different approaches:

1.) Organize by Customer Services Reps: AT&T

AT&T sends ~1,000 tweets per day per rep (15 full-time customer care reps). They have 14 Twitter Accounts for service plus a handful of content specific accounts (e.g. @ATTNews, @ATTmusic, @BizSolutions). Each customer service rep has a personalized account with the rep’s photo and bio. They add new Twitter accounts for each new customer service rep. (We previously talked about how brands use Twitter for customer service)
Others Examples: Comcast, Charter

2.) Organize by Product Group/Business Unit: Microsoft

Microsoft organizes and scales Twitter by product or business unit. This strategy helps Microsoft target content and messaging to the unique audiences across a broad range of product groups. You’ll see a very different approach if you follow XBox vs. Office vs. Sharepoint, matching the diverse audiences.
Other Examples: Intuit, Oracle, Cisco, Dell

3.) Organize by Store Location or Geography: Whole Foods

Whole Foods has a massive Twitter presence with more than 200 total handles. These accounts are organized by city and store locations. Whole Foods also maintains one central account which has over 1.7M followers. Given the local nature of their business, Whole Foods can cater content specifically to local customers. I suspect we’ll see the approach as other retailers and restaurants scale on Twitter.
Other examples: Four Seasons Hotels

4.) Organize by Content Type: BuddyTV

Although BuddyTV is considerably smaller than the other case studies, they have a large and highly effective Twitter presence. BuddyTV has 18 accounts, each with a unique content focus for a single TV show. They also have one central account for general TV related updates (@BuddyTV).

5.) Put the Entire Company to Work: Best Buy

With their unique (and well publicized) Twelpforce initiative, BestBuy basically put the entire company to work on Twitter. The company is represented by 2,000+ employees. Each employee tweets for themselves, but also uses the channel to connect with customers, answer questions, and help solve problems. Best Buy even publicized the initiative with TV spots.

Follow-up Questions

• How will companies organize and scale social media internally? How will social media fit into the org chart?
• What tools will be needed to help organizations manage social media at scale?
• How will scaling occur… top down vs. bottom up?

I woke up bright and early this morning for SMBSeattle’s February event. Tac Anderson from Waggener Edstrom and Neil Beam from AT&T led a discussion on Social Media ROI. The discussion provided great examples of how social media value can be measured in large corporate settings. I was impressed to learn that AT&T has 15 customer care reps and a full-time analyst dedicated to Twitter!

Yesterday afternoon I set-up a campaign to track the conversation around #SMBSeattle on Twitter. Here is what I found. I also made a TweepML to follow participants (let me know if you want to be added).

Not surprisingly, activity on Twitter peaked during the event. There was a steady stream of discussion the night before and the morning leading up to the event.

Content was evenly mixed between conversional tweets and general tweets.

The top ten (plus ties) most active users during the short time range analyzed where: FrankCatalano, SMBSeattle, dakini_3, RichendaG, warrenss, NW_Mktg_Guy, seattlewinegal, WriteforWine, colleencar, schoeny (your truly, jaremy, and foleymo

Thanks to Tableau Software and Microsoft for sponsoring the event and to Warren Sukernek, Heidi Miller, Colleen Carrington, Cheryl Nichols, Brian Crouch, and the rest of the SMB Seattle team.

Two reports circulating this week got me thinking about social media ROI – survey data from Mzinga and General Sentiment’s Media Value Report.

Take-aways: 1.) we aren’t there yet – social media adoption is now mainstream, but measuring value & ROI is lagging. 2.) There are several methods marketers can and should use to quantify the value of social media (a few ideas follow).

The Mzinga survey shows that we aren’t there yet - 79% of respondents are not measuring ROI in any social media programs. Not all companies will be ROI driven, many will be branding driven. However, all companies will seek to assign value to their social media marketing efforts and compare to other channels.

5 Ways to Measure  Social Media Campaign Value:

1.) Equate to Cost per Click. I had a recent conversion with Warren at Lift9 about this method gaining ground. It is a simple approach – track clicks, tie your campaign to keywords, and use keyword CPC market rates to estimate the traffic value.

2.) Equate to Cost per Impression. Calculate the impressions generated from your campaign and apply the market CPM rates to reach the same audience with a traditional media buy.

3.) Track to eCommerce Transactions. On an ecommerce model, you can track social media campaigns to purchase with a specific coupon code and web analytics. Dell does this, and many airlines, hotels, and online retailers are using this approach.

4.) Survey your Customers. Why not ask your customers to qualify the impact of your social media campaign? Did it impact their awareness or decision making process? With a few assumptions, these insights can be modeled to value.

5.) Tie to Established Internal Metrics. Are you reducing churn? Are you increasing the lifetime value of a customer? Customer satisfaction? Can we start to draw a line from social media efforts to a well established operating metric?

General Sentiment’s report takes an impression driven approach by looking at the volume of buzz about a brand and their products and the sentiment. They found the following value for the top brands:

We spend our time looking specifically at how Twitter campaign analytics can be used to model value. What other approaches do you think are effective for measuring social media value?

Seattle has hundreds of great business and organizations active in social media. With Seattle Social Central, we’ve been tracking many of these great local organizations on Twitter. We took a closer look at 10 businesses and organizations that have caught our attention. They come from a range of categories, from non-profits to travel to retail. All of these Seattle organizations are having success using Twitter to connect with the community. Check them out!

Cupcake Royale (@CupcakeRoyale). The delicious local cupcake bakery has fun with their Twitter presence. Their snappy copy and laid back personal approach caught our attention. Lately they’ve been promoting the “Deathcake Royale” with giveaways – you can even “Blow Somebody The Kiss of Deathcake” via Twitter.

Hotel Max (@Hotel_Max). The boutique downtown hotel is a fixture in the local social media scene. Their account has tons of personality, great events, contests, and a special Twitter room rate. As evidence by the number of @replies and RTs sent per week, Hotel Max is one of the most engaged local businesses we’ve found. Given their large following and great community, I would guess that their efforts are leading to material benefits for the bottom line.

King 5 News (@KING5Seattle). An excellent source for local news and events. While many news outlets just push an RSS feed to Twitter, King 5 has real people behind the account. In addition to local news coverage, King 5 has created several Twitter lists to help find other relevant people and news sources.

Seattle University (@SeattleU). Twitter appears to be taking hold in the education space. Seattle U has a very active approach providing information about all things in the Seattle U community – sports, class info, new, events, etc. They are actively answering questions and engaging with their community on Twitter.

Avelle (@Avelle). Seattle-based start-up Avelle (formerly Bag Borrow and Steal) offers specials, contests, and information for their community. Avelle is a good case study for effectively scaling Twitter beyond one account. The primary account is managed by their EVP of Merchandising, their CEO and VP of Creative tweet, and they have several content specific accounts.

Swedish Medical Center (@Swedish). Swedish helps us navigate the noise in the healthcare space with useful information and news. They engage their audience when appropriate and help create awareness for other relevant non-profit organizations.

West Seattle Blog (@westseattleblog). Hyper Local FTW! The West Seattle Blog is provides a TON of useful, targeted neighborhood information (nearly 50,000 tweets in total).

The ACT theatre (@ACTTheatre). If you’re interested in theater, the ACT is worth checking out. They provide information about events at the ACT and around Seattle. Like many of the others we’re highlighting, they have a very personal, conversational approach.

Brooks Sports (@brooksrunning). Brooks is a Seattle-base business with an national audience. Brooks offer specials and product information, but the bulk of their activity is connecting with runners and customers. They have started scaling their Twitter presence with multiple accounts.

Jolkona Foundation (@Jolkona). The Jolkona foundation is Seattle-based not profit organization. Of the companies mentioned, they are the newest to Twitter, but appear to be off to a great start. They recently raised over $2,000 in partnership with the Social Media Club of Seattle at the January event.

**Data from 20 Decibels Twitter Analytics tool and the Seattle Social Central Index.

Funnels are popular way for marketers to measure campaigns. Can a funnel approach be applied to social media campaigns? We think so (in many, but not all cases). The paper below includes a basic funnel approach for measuring Twitter campaigns and a sample analysis based on one of Dell’s recent tweets. We created this paper with the Social Media Society for distribution at OMMA Social last week and Social Media Week 2010 in NYC. Let me know what you think about this approach – what metrics do you include in your funnel?

Here is the full paper. Click here to download as a PDF.

Bill Gates sent his first tweet just over one week ago. The world’s richest man immediately drew a huge following and media attention for his new Twitter presence.
Let’s take a look at Bill G’s first week on Twitter by the numbers…

1.) Reach: Bill Gates has 365,000+ followers and counting and has been added to 13,056 lists. His following grew rapidly after sending his first tweet. He has a whopping 14,600 followers per tweet sent, but only 7.3 followers per million dollars of total net worth (~$50 Billion)

2.) Activity: Bill has sent 25 tweets at a pace of ~2.8 updates per day.

3.) Response & Clicks: Bill’s tweets generate a very high click through rate. He has tweeted 12 links to 6 unique sites with a total of 160,161 clicks.

4.) Engagement: In additional to high click through rates, Bill Gates audience engages with his content frequently. For example, his recent Tweet promoting the Gates Foundation annual letter garnered 818 Retweets on top of 13,500+ clicks.

5.) Who Follows Bill Gates? Bill has not only attracted an instant following, but a relatively influential crowd. Analyzing his 300K+ followers shows the following activity and reach amongst his audience relative to Twitter averages reported by Hubspot. In other words, the average @BillGates follower updates more frequently, has more friends, and more followers than the average Twitter user.

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Twitter analytics aren’t just for the rich and famous. Join the 20 Decibels beta to start managing and measuring your company’s Twitter campaigns.

We have a passion for social media data and we’re always excited to find new research in the space. A recent survey conducted by Alterian shows continued interest and investment in social media marketing. The study surveyed 1,000+ marketers, agencies, and service providers and included questions focused on attitudes and expectations for social media for business. The full report can be found here.

Top 5 Take-Aways:

1.) Attitudes toward social media are highly positive. 68% called social media increasingly important or critical for success while only 4% called social media not important at all.

2.) Social media marketing is outpacing all other new marketing categories. 66% of respondents are currently investing or planning to invest in social media marketing.

3.) Budget shifts from traditional marketing activities to digital or new media are significant. 40% of respondents anticipated a shift of over 20% of their budget from traditional direct marketing towards digital, interactive, or social marketing in the next 12 months.
4.) Although companies are placing more budget and focus on social media marketing, they generally feel unprepared for the shift. Only 25% said they were well prepared or extremely prepared.
5.) In addition, most respondents did not feel that a high percentage of their current marketing staff are well equipped to lead social marketing initiatives. Only 17% said most or all of their existing team had the necessary skills.

Related Posts:
Social Media for Business: 31 Stats and Anecdotes
Social Media Adoption at US Companies