Six Social Media Myths

Myth 1: My Company doesn’t need Social Media

Many business executives can’t understand why they should devote employee time and company resources to social media, and dismiss Facebook and Twitter as fads that amount to little more than a waste of time and money. Social media is in fact here to stay. The rocketing growth of some outlets makes it foolish to ignore them. Facebook, the largest, recently reached 300 million users worldwide — roughly the population of the United States. And the largest demographic is the 35 to 49 set that most businesses are eager to reach. Businesses are participating in social media actually, whether they are engaged formally or not; it’s out there.

Myth 2: Social media is free.

Sure, Twitter accounts, Facebook fan pages and YouTube channels don’t cost a thing. But don’t think for a second that you can do your social-media effort on the cheap. Getting the most out of these tools requires time, attention and skill — none of which are free.  Think of social media as a necessary and powerful complement to your existing outreach.

Myth 3: You can own the conversation

Social media is a conversation, and conversations — more so than ads — require tact. Yes, when you listen in social media you can learn a great deal about how to participate. Those who approach this process by blasting social media connections with canned sale promotions will find that they can quickly and completely lose customers. Instead, get a feel for the vibe of the conversation, then ease your way into it, for instance, by answering general user questions, even if they don’t pertain directly to your company or its brands. Let your social-media mavens become resources for these customer micro-communities. Once your folks have earned some trust, they’ll have the leeway to advance your business goals.

Myth 4: It’s better to lock-out employees from social media

Many businesses are nervous about letting customer-service employees speak to the public through Twitter. But today most business trust these people to talk to customers on the phone or face to face. A key is to think of social media more like a call center than a press release. Consider how you corporate culture supports and values transparent relationships with customers.

Myth 5: Assume you have little to learn

Many companies have joined the social media revolution the hard way. Take Dell for example. When Jeff Jarvis, a prominent media blogger, did a series of 2005 posts on his horrible customer-service experience with Dell — posts that came to be known as “Dell Hell” — the company suddenly realized how powerful, and damaging, the voice of the consumer could be. Spurred by the public relations disaster, CEO Michael Dell blessed an effort to work his company into its customers’ conversations. According to a case study on Dell in the book “Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies,” the listening effort helped Dell figure out, for instance, that it needed to better coordinate technical support and customer service to quickly resolve customer problems.

Myth 6: ROI for Social Media can’t be measured

Solid return on investment in social media is tough to measure. If you work with a good social media agency, you can however evaluate your outreach efforts. Start by looking at simple tallies such as your number of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, or how often people visit your company’s blog. Other metrics, such as the number of blog comments and the number of times consumers shared a link to your content, can show how engaged users are with your brand. BGG can help you in this process if you have additional questions, please contact us directly at 214 821-1343 or email: makinbacon@bconglobal.com

THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA: PRODUCT RECALL AND BRAND REPUTATION

Maclaren has become the latest victim of social media activism. They have joined a growing list of companies to experience the influence and power of Bloggers and Tweeters.

I find this story interesting for a few reasons:

a. Shows the global and local effect’s of social media’s influence

b. Shows how social media monitoring should be a critical piece of your media mix

c. A PR/media “crisis” can hit you from anywhere at anytime. Companies of all sizes must adjust communications strategies to manage risk. Crossover of media can have a global wildfire effect.

Maclaren is a UK manufacturer of baby pushcarts. Last week they announced the recall of 1M baby pushchairs in the US sold by Target and Babies-R-Us. This was after 15 reports of injuries to children’s fingers. They offered US customers free repair kits. However, despite having identical products in both UK and US markets, in the UK, rather than a recall or an offer of repair kits, they simply assured parents not to worry about it.

It didn’t take long for social networks and blogging sites to react. Some created email templates to send to the firm.  Even the UK Foreign Secretary, David Milliband referenced the debate in his Tweet.

So Maclaren did a quick U-turn and has adopted an identical policy for the UK and Canada.

Conclusions

Spanning the Globe: On one hand the social media part of this is a big deal. The UK Financial Times wrote about it and the company has changed a policy that may have a huge impact on their bottom line.

Company Recovery: On the other hand, they moved pretty quickly and the real story here is the recall, not the social media impact. They listened to what was said on blogs and Twitter and were able to quickly change their policy. I’d call that good social media monitoring and pretty speedy action for a large company.

Board Room Chat: There is now one more company where social media has made it to the boardroom. They  were able to recover after taking a little time to reflect that the two policies didn’t make sense.  Every boardroom should take notice of how quickly this was fueled by diverse networks of people angered by the situation.

I suspect 90% of customers will probably not be aware of the hesitation that came ahead of the policy change. In a month’s time this will be remembered as just a recall story. And the twitter chat continues.  What do you think?

Business Survey: Your Opinion Needed

Please take a minute to respond to this business survey. Feel free to pass on to other associates. We will be publishing results to this blog. Go ahead, it takes less than a minute to respond. Thank you.

Here is the link http://bit.ly/zYTwg .

A Silver Lining in this Recession

By Sheila Bacon

One thing about a recession is that the rate of change in technology still poses serious threats to many established businesses, while simultaneously presenting attractive opportunities to entrepreneurs. Take Social Media for instance.  Or, consider one of the most widespread media channels in the world—mobile media and its impact to your business.

How your company handles the opportunity to embrace these challenges often determines the success or failure of the enterprise.  Yes, change is a constant today.   But in the midst of these economic challenges there are some attractive opportunities. For example, social media offers marketers the opportunity to obtain the same advertising reach, frequency and sales impact as traditional media — but at a much lower cost.

Mobile media allows you to engage people to solve problems such as overcoming boredom, the need to connect with something outside themselves, to relax by playing a hand held game, to enter a contest, get a coupon, find a place to eat, locate a person, watch a video, download an app or just find some news of interest.  Mobile gives you all of this and talking. Wow.  (Notice– I did not mention email access so if you are still stuck in that place where you think email is the only important part of business mobility, you may need to experiment more with your mobile device.)

We also know that several factors, many first identified over a decade ago, still represent very pressing challenges for incumbent companies and some of the most attractive ways in which entrepreneurs can successfully enter a market.

• Customers have more choices. They’re interested in the newest, best, fastest, and cheapest.
• People are talking to each other online, researching your company and what they say to each other is more trusted than your brand messages.
• There is global competition for your service
• The rate of change in social media technology is directly impacting your ROI weather or not you realize it
• Mobilization is the future
• The importance of speed

To paraphrase Will Rogers: “Even if you’re on a fast track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” The challenge is how to best handle change. There is one rule of thumb that seems to apply well to how best to handle change: speed is of the essence. Nimble entrepreneurs who are fleet of foot can often be successful against larger, well-established competitors. In turn, to successfully defend their businesses, incumbents need to react fast to entrepreneurial threats.

So in this time of recession, it is important to remember that you need to:

• Get more done with fewer resources in less time
  Almost by definition, new entrepreneurial entrants have fewer resources than incumbents, and that often translates into more flexibility and less bureaucracy. And that, in turn, translates into speed. The challenge for a large incumbent company is often how to duplicate this behavior.
• Time lost in not making a decision can never be recovered
  For the incumbent, never being able to recover lost time means the new entrant may well have had sufficient time to achieve its most critical — and deadly – advantage: market acceptance.
• Sooner is better. Right now is best
  A sense of urgency pervades successful new market entrants, for they well understand the inherent advantages of speed
• Engage with social and mobile media. Find opportunities to engage, listen, talk and learn.

The economic headwinds are causing many companies to revaluate their investment in digital marketing. What have been some of your ‘key lesson’s learned’ in this process?

Three Twitter Mobile /Social Trends: You’ll want to think about

• Geo Targeting Tweets
• Better Twitter Analytics
• Why Is Twitter is Feared?

Prof Twitter Says

Geo Targeting  with Twitter: Location-Aware is Coming

Location and location-based tweeting is one of the most interesting subjects that Twitter users and developers have been exploring.  Geo location is very important to the future of Twitter. You will be happy to know that Twitter recently announced a set of features and APIs (application programming interfaces) that will make “Twitter truly location-aware.” So when you opt-in, the new features will attach a longitude and latitude to all of your tweets, making Twitter more local than ever!

So what exactly is going to happen? Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone explains on the Twitter Blog:

“We’re gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won’t be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.”

Now you might be asking: “how is this going to work?” Well, Twitter’s Ryan Sarver gave a bit of an overview in Twitter’s Development Talk Google Group:

“The geo location API will give us the ability to attach geographic meta data to tweets to provide additional context with your update. Along with the option to tag updates, we will be able to search for nearby tweets and view the geo meta data in user timelines. The additional context allows for us to deliver more meaningful and localized experiences to users.

Location-aware tweets are a monumental development for Twitter and could position it as THE location-based social network, because each tweet will be like a check-in at your location. The volume of data around locations, places, and tweets will be incredibly powerful. The wait for location-aware tweets shouldn’t be much longer as the developer preview is already out in the wild. In the meantime, you can check out GeoMeme, Schmap.com, and Tweetmondo, for a preview of Twitter apps already toying with Twitter and location.

Better Twitter Analytics

BGG agrees that as Twitter matures, so too does the audience who uses it. Now more than ever social brands need to demonstrate more than just Twitter ROI, which means they’re going to be demanding more than quantitative data.  Happily Twitter has a wealth of data – it’s a global thought-stream on every topic imaginable.

But how do we convert that raw data into insights, trends and actionable information? How can we find the signal in all that noise?

Enterprise level Twitter analysis tools are certainly out there. To name a few, there’s Techrigy, and Neilsen products, however most of them have tacked Twitter analytics on as an after-the-fact tweet stats measurement extra. Twitter tools come in handy for measuring change in tweet fluctuations, charting follower count numbers, finding out hash tag frequency, and quantifying Twitter activity.  But now that these tools have arrived, you can expect heightened competition between toolsets to arise, and even more demand from consumers and professionals hoping to understand what’s being said on Twitter. Twitter research is only growing, and there are many more tools than the ones listed here. Innovation will breed even more useful Twitter analysis tools that can help us better understand not only social media, but how we function as a society. We know there are more great Twitter tools, so if you have one you want to share, be sure to include it in the comments.

Why Is Twitter Feared? If the relationship between sports—like the NFL and social media has taught us anything, it’s that Twitter is feared. The medium can be used to share bite size news to a public audience practically in real-time, and that can be scary for all types of businesses. Twitter has also already forced the hand of ESPN, the NFL, the SEC, and the US Open, all of whom have created social media policies with brazen Twitter clauses. It’s just the beginning.   We agree that there’s nothing wrong with having Twitter policies, in fact, we have some great tips to keep in mind should you be writing a social media policy for your company. But hopefully we’ll see reason prevail as it pertains to Twitter guidelines in the future. For now, though, you can expect Twitter to be enemy number one in many social media policies.

The Changing Face of Social Media Demographics—New importance in Swaying Buying Decisions

By Sheila Bacon, Principal at BGG

People of all ages and from all walks of life are reading review sites, Tweeting about brands and using social media to make better, more informed purchase decisions.

Social media is influencing all kinds of consumer decisions – which restaurant to eat in, what hotel to stay in, which airlines have the best deals and even what clothes to wear. And it’s not just the young and tech-savvy generations using social media to research purchases. Across all demographics, positive and negative comments were the most influential types of social media.

Banking on Influential’s.

The survey  “Media Influence on Consumer Choice” recently found that around 20% of U.S. consumers between the ages of 18 and 24 were influenced by online video when it came to choosing a bank. Over a third, were influenced primarily by social media such as social networking sites, blogs and online reviews, which spells new opportunities for bank marketing.

We know that reaching out to young consumers early and getting them to establish that first account can make them customers for life. Social media is now a clear way to reach that younger demographic and develop those lifelong relationships.

Some companies may be quick to dismiss social media as something that’s only used by young people, and not worth their effort. In reality, social media usage is growing across all demographics and can clearly be a way to reach some very lucrative and mobile audiences.

Purchase Power Recent figures from ComScore show that folk in the 45-54-age range are 36% more likely than average to visit Twitter and that the majority of its 15 million or so users are aged 35 or over. The above 45-age group typically has more spending power. So unlike what you may think, Twitter is not exactly teeming with teens, is it? Why? One reason for the rise in older Tweeters could be its increasing use within the business environment.

Explaining Twitter Growth: Some older people still do not understand how to use the micro-blogging platform Twitter, but they are experimenting, especially while at work. Twitter, has witnessed an exponential increase in unique visitors over the last year, and its speed of growth vastly outperforming any of the other sites according to the rating service Nielsen’s.  And remember, many of the stats on Twitter’s growth only reflect the web use of the twitter.com and do not take into account the mobile access to the service.

Mobility is A Key Driver for Social Media. Okay, we all know this but think about it a little more.  Here is a true story; I was sitting in the bathroom and the lady in the stall next to me was on her mobile phone using Twitter early on the afternoon of June 29^th “Oh my God, she said, Michael Jackson is dead!” Using Twitter she was reading and responding to that information apparently just seconds after it was announced.

Consumers are using Twitter in cars, restaurants and even restrooms while other social nets like Facebook are being used more from the PC or laptop.  While twittering from cars should not be applauded or even shrugged off, it is interesting to note that Twitter has become mobile more quickly than other social networks.

New Age of Content Access and Discovery. So, people get motivated and understand that this is a new fast changing age of access and discovery!  Get out there and use Twitter!  Don’t be left behind on the pretense that it is not going to affect you or your business.

A recent Crowd Science study http://bit.ly/20gwQn of over 600,000 users finds Twitter users are listening perhaps even more that tweeting. Other findings include:

• 41% of Twitter users prefer to communication via social network over phones

• Men are more likely to access Twitter through a third party application

• Twitter users are trending toward older demographics than other social net workers

• Twitter users are reported to check in on tweets more often than actually posting a note

Of course, if we at BGG can help you dissect, create content and more effectively use micro blogging like Twitter we are very happy to help.  Please feel free to let me know your thoughts and experiences.

Five New Trends in Social Media

Five New Trends in Social Media

By: Sheila Bacon, Digital Strategist BGG

The real value of social media is being able to make better decisions after listening to what is being said about your brand, in this blog I talk about a few important trends in social media.

1. More People are talking online—more of your customers, more of your clients, more fans, more friends.

Each year more and more people get online and never go off.  Forrester does research each year and in 2007 40% of people online quit after 30 days.  However, the same study done this year shows that number down to just 18%. So for those that are still new to this, use it for a month and you’ll see why millions of people love it.

2. If you’re not helping people connect to their friends, you’re in danger of being clutter. Take a page from Facebook vs. MySpace. Is anyone home at My Space; which is losing both in traffic and relevance.  At Facebook it still all action there where the number one reason people say they use Facebook is to keep in touch.  Facebook appeals to virtually every generation as noted by the chart from e-Marketer.

In fact, 90% of people over age 65 who are online use Facebook as their preferred social network. And in with recent releases like Facebook 3.0 for iPhone and Facebook Lite, they continue to make innovation a priority.

3. People are discerning – it’s more than tuning you out

Unlike traditional media which is in your face all the time with the viewer having little control,  social media users can completely opt out of your message. Social media users are in control more often. On Twitter, people can unfollow (or block) anyone they choose. On Facebook, people can unfan your page – but most likely if they don’t like the content you’re posting (frequency or subject), they will simply hide your updates and never see them.

4. Remember: Listen first

This is the essential first step. Listening is a key so dive into Facebook, Twitter, etc. by starting a personal account first to get acquainted with the technology before going full force and representing a brand. So the first step is to set up an account and participate by listening.  The next piece of listening is focus on who and what is being said.  This is called “conversation monitoring.” Leaning what are people saying about you and where are they talking is very helpful.  Just like a focus group it will allow you to craft you’re your messages, to place them effectively, and to  in use the language that best relates to your customers.

5.  If you need to measure ROI, consult a social media expert.  Why? Because at this point there are many errors when interpreting data. An example is the number of Facebook fans doesn’t necessarily indicate activity around your brand. Analytics must measure attention to active profiles not just total profile. You must look behind the numbers and understand the context. Also there is a lot of content out there and as you gain experience from daily use, you will understand and begin to be able to separate what is critical from fluff.  Remember a key to getting noticed is to be able to provide content that is relevant and respecting to your audience.

Attorney’s use Social Media

Social media is all the rage right now with Twitter providing real-time reports from hotspots and the ability to get right to the pulse of what is happening. The business use of Facebook and LinkedIn is growing rapidly, and attorneys can benefit their bottom line by learning how to use these technological innovations.

Many attorneys wonder how to leverage LinkedIn, Fix Facebook and Tweak Twitter for their Law Firm. To get started you need to plan and fully understand what can and can’t be accomplished using social media. Set your expectations and separate some of the social media fact from fiction by starting with sound digital strategies that will allow you to: (this is an incomplete list but for illustration)

* Attract highly qualified prospects on Facebook
* Build a referral network on LinkedIn
* Leverage Twitter to build an online following
* Harness the power of educational videos on YouTube

Do not wait on this one, or your learning curve will only grow. Let us know if we can help you, we would like to hear your perspective and perhaps help you succeed.

Seven Tips for Better Company Bloggs

Use Blog Sense
The natural instinct is to restrict employee blogging. But that can be shortsighted. Every employee who blogs can be making contacts with potential customers and enhancing the company brand. And this is a good thing if they have solid training on how to blog effectively. Blog sense would tell you not to engage until you have had solid blog training so you better understand what you are saying and to whom.

Don’t Fake It
Companies are eager to establish one-to-one links with customers, but they’re often reluctant to plunge blindly into the blogosphere. So they set up fake blogs. These are blogs that are created by corporate marketing departments to promote a service, product, or brand using a fake character or name. This is not good form.

These pseudo-blogs are risky because many of the most passionate bloggers view them as an affront to their community, and each one stands out like a cat in a dogpound. When the blogosphere gets hold of a fake, it can turn it into a public roasting of the company. Go back to training if you don’t get this point.

Allow track-backs
This is the easiest and most important step. First, poke around online and find the most influential bloggers following your company. Read them every day. Then do automated tracking of discussions. There are many companies ranging from startup’s to tech giant ‘s that offer services that comb through this mountain of data, turning it into market research for customers.

Why is it important to do different kinds of tracking? Postings even from small-time bloggers can get picked up by a search engine, amplified by a top blogger, and eventually break into the mainstream. Everyone remembers the story about the blog that was picked up an anonymous post in an online discussion forum from someone who boasted he could break Kryptonite bike locks with a Bic pen. Within a week the story had bubbled up to The New York Times, and Kryptonite recalled the locks.

Blogs can affect your Brand Reputation
Blogs knock down the barriers between a company and its customers. Businesses need to take this into account and adapt. If you think you don’t care about what is said about your company in the blogosphere, take another look are your search engine ranking. Think pro-actively about your company’s blog brand strategy.

When writing a blog be transparent
No hard and fast rules for navigating the worlds of blogging and marketing exist. Still, a few principles are emerging, including the importance of full disclosure. Being open about the kind of marketing you’re doing is critical. Everyday there is another story about this so take heed.

Rethink Your Corporate Secrets
In the world of blogs, you may find more value in sharing what you used to think of as secrets. Blogs are certain to make you rethink what should be squirreled away, because companies are increasingly sharing such information to win new partners and harvest fresh ideas. This doesn’t mean they don’t keep secrets or that you shouldn’t — only that you should reevaluate whether you can get more out of sharing information or keeping a lock on it.

Develop a Content Strategy
It is important to develop good solid content strategies before starting a blog. Conducting interviews, reading other blogs, surveying your audience and asking your employees on a regular basis are all good ideas. Also keeping current on industry trends. Many companies are now developing corporate blog policies based on blogger experience and legal advice, you might want to review others policies to help you develop your own policy and consider that a part of your content strategies.

Do you have any other suggestions for Company’s to consider, let me know. I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Five Tips for Monitizing Twitter

by Sheila Bacon, Principle BaconGlobal Group

Lets face it getting paid to promote products and services is an age-old tradition in capitalistic societies. Competition spurs on pay-offs whether you are a politician or just an average blogger. So read below to see some cool tips that might improve YOUR cash flow.

If a distribution channel has access to a large number of potential consumers, it was only a matter of time for companies to find ways to monetize the Twitterverse. According to the research firm PQ Media, word-of-mouth marketing increased 14 % to $1.54 billion in 2008. “Tweeting for dollars” programs hopes to capture some of those dollars.  The programs listed below allow users and advertisers to take advantage of Twitter’s vast 27 million people network.

But the proliferation of paid sponsorships online has not been without controversy. Some in the social media space deride these transactions as kickbacks. Others also question the legitimacy of bloggers’ opinions, even when the commercial relationships are clearly outlined to readers. So here are the top five ‘sponsored tweet’ programs that have started the ball rolling!  Expect more to come in the future, but hey, its a good start.  And just let me know what you think please.  Thanks!

1- Magpie

Magpie is a third-party Twitter related service based overseas in Berlin Germany that allows ads to enter the Twitter status stream through one’s own posted tweets. Twitter users can earn cash by becoming a Magpie tweeter.  In Magpie, the user and advertiser pairing is done based on the history of relevant keywords in the user’s tweets. For example, a user that always tweets about ‘cars’ will receive a car-related advertiser to sponsor in their future tweets. Magpie also allows user to customize their tweets with disclaimers to let followers know that the tweet is an advertisement.

As Magpie’s tagline states it’s easy to “convert your tweets into bling-bling.”  Users can pick a schedule that ranges from one Magpie-tweet every 200 tweets to one Magpie-tweet for every one tweet. The more Magpie-tweets, the more money you make. However, as in all Twitter messaging, Twitter followers, in general do like repetitive tweets from the same author. So one runs the risk of turning off one’s following.

On the brand side, advertisers that are interested in advertising with Magpie are able to bid on key words related to their product. Once the keywords are acquired, the deal will be offered to the Twitter users that have the best matching accounts.The users will then either accept the campaign or wait for something else.

2- PayMeTweets

Buying Influence

PayMeTweets is in beta.  Get cash from RETWEETS (TR). Here, you are either buying or selling your influence on Twitter in an exchange type of transaction, where you can sell your own content.

It’s up to Twitter users to decide if they would like to receive money for RTs. This approach will intrigue marketers, Social Media and SEO experts. You are actually buying real people, who will select the content they like and share it with their network, with similar tastes. You don’t have to build your own relevant network, because according to PayMeTweets, the infrastructure is already established. This concept is similar to the social ad program on Facebook.If you would like to buy some influence, all you have to do is add funds to your account (lowest plan starts with $23) and your balance(s) decrease as you ‘retweet.’ When you process a tweet on PayMeTweet, your posting will appear at the top of the @PayMeTweets Twitter page where twitterers following PayMeTweets can find it and If they like it, and don’t think it is spam., then they have the option to retweet it. When they retweet, money will be transferred from your account to theirs according to their influence. The more influence they have the more it costs. The tweet will stay on PayMeTweets so long as your account has money left in it or until you delete it or it is deleted automatically by the system as spamish. If you want lots of influential tweets, be sure to deposit enough funds to your account to cover them. Once your account hits zero all of your listings are deleted from PayMeTweets.

3- PayPerTweet

Values your Word of Mouth. By asking the two basic questions:”Do you Tweet?” and “Do you like money?” PayPerTweet hits the sweet spot of many Twitter evangelists who are looking to cash in on their Twitter activity. In its simplest form,PayPerTweet allows you to make money using your Twitter® account by tweeting about products and services that you like.  For advertisers, everyone knows word of mouth is one of the most effective forms of marketing, and PayPerTweet is counting on advertisers to seek them out to get to the right targeted market of Twitter users.

4- Twittad

Values of your Profile Visitors. Twittad has a slightly different take on its Twitter monetization program. Instead of selling tweets, its service allows users to monetize their profiles. Similar to how Google ads can be placed on blog sites, Twittad sees value in advertising on one’s Twitter profile page.   As real estate your profile becomes valuable based on the number of users who may check out your profile over the course of time. In so doing, the company is allowing Twitter users to make their page backgrounds available to the highest bidder. Each listing includes the number of followers, the duration, and the price.  Advertisers can then purchase the spots, with Twittad collecting a 5% commission on the sale. According to a Mashable report, “So far there aren’t enough transactions completed to estimate the average value of a Twitter follower over a given time period, but… a recent ad spot for an account with 250 followers went for $5 for one month.”

An obvious flaws in the system that perhaps Twittad will correct over time is the page backgrounds are not clickable and there is no easy way for a third-party service to track any meaningful metrics other than impressions. Further, when one is interfaced with a third-party app like Twhirl or Tweetdeck, there is less and less space to allow for advertising.

5- Sponsored Tweets

Pay for Posts

Sponsored Tweets pays users for every commercial ad or paid message that is tweeted to their Twitter followers. Launched on August 3, it is the latest entry into the pay-for-play Twitter ad programs. The Sponsored Tweets platform requires Twitters to add a hash tag like #ad, the word sponsored in parentheses or a short disclosure like “brought to you by” before any ad goes out. Twitter users who sign up to send ads to their network of friends and followers will get paid based on various individual metrics, like a person’s reach on Twitter, the ratio of friends to followers, length of time on Twitter and, of course, the number of followers. On an average, the active Twitter user with 10,000 followers could make $25 to $35 per commercial tweet.