Social media brand monitoring platform, Simplify360, explored the relationship between the number of Facebook fans and engagement level to reveal that on an average, each new post generates 826 likes and 309 comments.
The research firm took 50 Facebook fan pages with a random mix of brands from all over the world from consumer brands, to sports teams, to celebrities.
The research defines Liking Rate and Commenting Rate as the average ‘likes’ and ‘comments’ a post would generate if the number of fans for the page is normalized to one million. Only posts by the page admin are considered for the study.
Newly proposed legislation would give parents increased access to kids’ Facebook accounts and also require sites to provide more up-front privacy options.
While Facebook gets a lot of the attention when it comes to ‘sexy’ marketing campaigns by brands, there are some great examples from Twitter, that show how brands are using the platform to their advantage, to engage with followers in new ways. We’ve put together a list of some of our favourite Twitter marketing campaigns, to provide you with some inspiration and great case studies for reference :
The Volkswagen Twitter Zoom
A great example of a live and interactive Twitter campaign from Volkswagen in February this year, to promote their sponsorship of the Planeta Terra Festival. They hid tickets to the festival all over the city, and shared the location with users via a map. The trick was however, that the map (using Google Maps) would only zoom in to reveal the locations based on how many people shared the hashtag #foxatplanetaterra on Twitter :
The campaign was a huge success for Volkswagen, as within 2 hours the hashtag was a trending topic in Brazil – not an easy feat. This campaign also worked because it was incredibly targeted to the right audience. They wanted to promote the festival to local people, and this was achieved by integrating the online element with the real-world treasure hunt. The great thing about this campaign is that it’s a relatively simple mechanic, just done really really well. There was no investment in an expensive app, just a creative an engaging campaign that got people hunting all over the city and engaging with the Volkswagen brand.
Ben and Jerrys Fair Tweets
An excellent , live campaign from Ben and Jerry’s that was recently launched to raise awareness of World Fair Trade Day. The application is run via a microsite that puts all your unused Twitter characters to good use, by filling them out with messages that promote the cause :
The site is incredibly easy to use. You simply type out your tweet as you normally would, and Ben & Jerry’s do the rest for you, populating your tweet with their messages, which decrease the more you write. The good thing about this campaign is that it requires very little from the user. Often you see campaigns that require you to connect with an app, perform a task and then auto-tweet it to promote a good cause, but this is simply fun, quick and quirky and a great way to spread awareness. The concept also resonates with Twitter users because it has such careful consideration of the platform as well. If you’re not going to use the characters yourself, why not virtually donate them to a good cause?
Radioshacks Promoted Tweets
A brilliant example here of a company using Twitter’s new Promoted Tweets product to create an engaging and personalised Twitter experience for people. Radioshack ran their sponsored tweet, asking people to upload a picture of themselves with their hand stretched out, accompanied by the hashtag #ifihadsuperpowers , for the chance to win a prize. At the time of the promotion, users weren’t really aware of why they were doing this, but given the chance to win a prize, people will surely give it a go! What came next was a surprise, as the team behind Radioshack spent the day transforming the photos to individually add a mask and a cape, and tweet the new photo back to the user :
The combination of an interactive campaign and the Promoted Tweets product clearly works for Radioshack, as it’s not the first time they’ve experimented with this. At a conference to discuss their previous Twitter ad campaign, CMO Lee Applbaum claims that the ROI was ‘stratospheric’, with a sponsored tweet receiving 65 million impressions within 24 hours. Though of course a tweet from Lance Armstrong helped as well.
Nestle Live Tweet Ads
A brave campaign from Nestle here, coming as an early example of a brand integrating Twitter into their ad campaign. In 2009, Nestle launched an innovative ad format that served up realtime tweets all across the web. They launched the ad units on different sites, and asked questions related to parenting such as ‘How do you stimulate your child’s mind?’. Users that were logged into Twitter could then fill out these ads directly with their answer. The comments then appeared in the online ads, as well as going into Nestle’s Twitter feed. All the comments were premoderated by Nestle, a fairly crucial part in the success of this campaign. This is one of the only Twitter examples I’ve seen of this kind, with a brand putting it’s ad messaging firmly into the hands of the user. It’s a great example of a company relinquishing control of their brand and deciding to let the their community do the talking. This was also a good example of a fully integrated social media campaign, as users who clicked on the ads instead of populating them with a tweet, were taken to a Youtube channel containing promotional videos, tips and advice on parenting courtesy of Nestle. They can get it right sometimes!
The Jeep Puzzle
An adventurous campaign from Jeep here, courtesy of Leo Burnett Iberia, to promote their latest model. They created the online puzzle using new Twitter profiles, which users had to follow in order to unlock clues. Each Twitter profile was following a further 12 Twitter profiles, that contained a picture clue. Each profile picture was a piece in the puzzle. This was brought back strongly to the Jeep brand, as the images were pictures of scenery only accessible with a Jeep. It might sound a little complex, so check it out in action below :
Now for some this might seem like quite a convoluted campaign, but what I like about this is that it shows a real understanding of the Twitter platform, taking an aspect we would all be familiar with (the layout of profile pictures of who you’re following) and bringing it to life in a new way. As with other examples as well, it shows what’s possible when you get creative and use the Twitter platform functions available to you, in a completely new way to entice your users into engaging with your brand.
By now it’s common knowledge that the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death broke on Twitter. Donald Rumsfeld’s Chief of Staff, the fresh-faced Keith Urbahn, was the first credible source to issue the news on Sunday at 10:24pm ET, long before President Obama spoke, and Urbahn’s tweet was the one that went viral.
All this we knew — but now, with an exhaustive analysis of 15 million tweets by New York company Social Flow, we can actually see Urbahn’s post exploding into the Twitterverse. “Within a minute, more than 80 people had already reposted the message,” the company writes in its blog post. “Within two minutes, over 300 reactions to the original post were spreading through the network.”
Social Flow’s visualization, above, also reveals a new and previously little-known player in the Urbahn tweet drama: New York Times digital media reporter Brian Stelter. He’s at the center of the second dandelion-like hub of retweets, at bottom right in the picture. Other Twitter accounts played their part in passing the news from one of these highly influential Tweeters to another, including @ObamaNews and @LaughingSquid — the latter being a San Francisco-based website full of quirky ephemera.
What can we learn from this chart? That trustworthiness, in a universe of tweeters spouting all sorts of speculation, is more important than ever. Urbahn, 27, didn’t shout about his insider connections, but enough people read his bio to understand that he was likely to have good sources inside the Pentagon. And for all the talk of Twitter making journalists of us all, it seems we still desire validation from a reporter from a major media organization.
And maybe — just maybe — the number of followers you have on Twitter matters less than who and how active they are. Urbahn didn’t have a record-breaking number of followers (who then numbered a little more than 1,000, or about 6,000 fewer than he has now), but his tweet went viral nonetheless, thanks to those followers going to bat for him. Stetler has more than 55,000 followers and tweets obsessively, but ultimately his influence was slightly less important here than Urbahn’s.
“Keith Urbahn wasn’t the first to speculate Bin Laden’s death, but he was the one who gained the most trust from the network,” writes Social Flow. “And with that, the perfect situation unfolded, where timing, the right social-professional networked audience, along with a critically relevant piece of information led to an explosion of public affirmation of his trustworthiness.”
What a difference 10 years make. In the past 24 hours, a resource we didn’t even have a decade ago has become a primary medium — not only for finding out about important news but also for sharing it and reacting to it.
News of terrorist Osama bin Laden’s death has been spreading across the social web with a speed and volume only seen in the most dramatic world events. In fact, many of you heard the news via Twitter or Facebook before turning to traditional news sources.
You might have even turned to such services to express your feelings about the news, as well.
We’ve written a lot about the social web’s reaction to bin Laden’s destruction (see list of stories below the slideshow). Here’s a roundup showing how various services were used over the past 24 hours to spread news, to connect people and to allow us to express our mixed emotions of elation, anger and — for some — doubt over one of 2011′s biggest news stories.
But not all social media users were jubilant. Sunday night, a Facebook page called “Osama bin Laden is DEAD” went viral — but the page advocates the belief that bin Laden had been dead for a long time before the raid and presidential address.
Social Media’s Reaction to Bin Laden’s Death
We all wanted to be part of and take part in the news. Path told The New York Times that 20% of pics uploaded Sunday night were bin Laden-related, and Instagram said it saw a 35% increase in uploads.
Social Media’s Reaction to Bin Laden’s Death
Monday, the White House released photos of the President and other security staffers watching reports from the raid as it unfolded. The public, anxious for more proof of bin Laden’s death, responded strongly.
Social Media’s Reaction to Bin Laden’s Death
Google Maps was updated with a (likely inaccurate) pinpoint for bin Laden’s last hideout. Maps users begin posting “reviews” to the Place page.
Social Media’s Reaction to Bin Laden’s Death
YouTube ended up being an important destination for citizen and professional journalists, as well as an outlet for the crowds gathering to celebrate bin Laden’s downfall. Organizations such as the Associated Press and ABC News were using YouTube to spread important news.
Social Media’s Reaction to Bin Laden’s Death
Some search engine stats aren’t yet available, but Yahoo revealed that a news-hungry public was searching for bin Laden-related articles.
Social Media’s Reaction to Bin Laden’s Death
Between the event that sparked our decade-long search for bin Laden and the event that ended it, we’ve come to rely on the Internet as a trusted, timely and always-on news source. Bin Laden’s demise cause a huge surge in web traffic overall.
The combination of an interactive campaign and the Promoted Tweets product clearly works for Radioshack, as it’s not the first time they’ve experimented with this. At a conference to discuss their previous Twitter ad campaign, CMO Lee Applbaum claims that the ROI was ‘stratospheric’, with a sponsored tweet receiving 65 million impressions within 24 hours. Though of course 
A brave campaign from Nestle here, coming as an early example of a brand integrating Twitter into their ad campaign. In 2009, Nestle launched an innovative ad format that served up realtime tweets all across the web. They launched the ad units on different sites, and asked questions related to parenting such as ‘How do you stimulate your child’s mind?’. Users that were logged into Twitter could then fill out these ads directly with their answer. The comments then appeared in the online ads, as well as going into Nestle’s Twitter feed. All the comments were premoderated by Nestle, a fairly crucial part in the success of this campaign. This is one of the only Twitter examples I’ve seen of this kind, with a brand putting it’s ad messaging firmly into the hands of the user. It’s a great example of a company relinquishing control of their brand and deciding to let the their community do the talking. This was also a good example of a fully integrated social media campaign, as users who clicked on the ads instead of populating them with a tweet, were taken to a Youtube channel containing promotional videos, tips and advice on parenting courtesy of Nestle. They can get it right sometimes!
