GlobalWebIndex has recently launched a free tool that allows users to quickly get a snapshot of their data on social media insights, this free tool was built based around the data they have gathered from Wave 2 database from January 2010. The latest data, Wave 3 from July 2009 is only available for GlobalWebIndex clients.

This tool comes very handy when you are looking to create quick slides with valuable data that gives brief understanding of online behavior for specific group of people from different regions.

I tried to embed the tool to this blog post but I failed to adjust the size of it.

Start playing with the tool now

This is the question that most Digital Marketers have thought about. In a recent research by Sherastone, only 2 digital marketing “tactics” had increased in budget in 2009; they are email and social media.

Social Media is NOT killing Email Marketing

I don’t think email marketing is dying. I think marketers need to really see social media as a strategy, and email marketing can be one of the “social media marketing tactics” when they are integrated well.

To give, not to sell through email

For example, social media as a whole is a great channel to collect relevant email addresses because it allows us to target personalities and interests through conversations, the key to be successful in email marketing is to provide value to the subscribers. Instead of thinking about what they might be interested in purchasing, marketers should think about what they might be interested in receiving. Instead of following the Direct Marketing nature of Email Marketing, marketers should use it more as a branding and community building tactic that goes hand in hand with social media.

Although measuring is way more complicated than direct marketing, there are still ways to do it with well-planned KPIs.

Email “Selling” is Dead

Direct email marketing (email selling) is dead, people don’t just “purchase” after seeing email promotions. However, with the help of social media, email marketing can still be a very powerful and profitable tactic when the message and execution is tailored to the target.

Parody in advertising can gain more attention than the original piece if it’s done well. This piece definitely went viral. Specsavers, an online glasses shop created this great viral piece that mocks an older advertisement by AXE. AXE has always been selling sex appeal in their ads, Specsavers’ ad is clever enough to take advantage of all the buzz AXE has.

The original Ad by AXE

And here’s the Specsavers’ ad

I’ve seen more and more local success by adopting social media to local SMEs, although what they do are rather tactical and advertising focused, they started to see more and more value from social media. According to a recent study by Small Business Success Index, small businesses has doubled their social media adoption from 12% in 2008 to 24% in 2009.

Many Small Biz just want to “be on it”

Leading ways small businesses are using social media include:

• 75% have a company page on a social networking site.
• 61% use social media for identifying and attracting new customers.
• 57% have built a network through a site like LinkedIn.
• 45% expect social media to be profitable in the next 12 months.

They don’t like to spend time on it

Small businesses have a number of concerns about social media, including:

• 50% say it takes more time than expected.
• 17% say social media lets people criticize their company on the internet.
• Only 6% say social media use has hurt the company more than helped it.

Other Findings

• Company web sites are a top technology investment in the next two years, with small businesses either adding new features/functionality to their existing Web sites or building one from scratch.
• The ability to showcase their products and services online to attract new customers is second in the hierarchy of technology investments small business owners plan to make in the next two years.
• Social media investments rank third in small business investments to be made in the next two years.

Oscars Academy Awards have finally ended, after all the buzz on the Internet, it’s time to round it up and see what the buzz was all about. Social media was actually a big part of Oscar, it actually predicted some of the results.

Key findings from this research:

• There are 389955 unique conversations on social media in the past 7 days (March 1st – 8th)
• In the past 7 days, 505987146 Twitter users are exposed to a Tweet about Oscar
• More blogs talked about Oscar than other channels until Twitter took over 4 hours before Oscar began
• There are 98735 unique Twitter users tweeted about Oscar when it’s happening
• Brazilian Loves Twitter, 7.5% of the Oscar related conversations online are from Brazil
• Portuguese (17.3%) and Spanish (10.5%) are the most popular languages on Oscar topics after English (68%)
• Overall, Twitter is the most popular channel for Oscar related topics (Discussions from Facebook private profiles are not included)
• Before Oscar began, more people talked about Kathryn Bigelow (59.80%) than James Cameron (40.20%) online
• Avatar still had a bigger buzz (54.80%) than The Hurt Locker (45.20%)
• Up was most talked about among other nominees in Best Animated Feature Film

Research Keywords: “Oscar AND movie”, “Oscar AND film”, “Oscar AND director”, Oscar AND Actor”, “Oscar AND Actress”, “Oscar AND award”, “Oscar AND (James Cameron)”, “Oscar AND (Kathryn Bigelow)”, “Oscar AND Avatar”, “Oscar AND (Hurt Hunter)”, “Oscar AND (Up AND Movie)”, “Oscar AND (Fantastic Mr.Fox)”, “Oscar AND (Secret of Kells)”, “Oscar AND (Princess and the Frog)”.

Photo Credit: Reuters

Me and the the 3 special guests at Tweetup

[View with PicLens]

Thanks everyone for attending the Tweetup from last Tuesday (March 2nd), also hope our 3 guests Brian Giesen, Tom Smith and Jenny Armshaw-Heak had fun. More than 20 people joined the tweetup and I’m glad most of us had a chance to meet each others. Would also like to thank the venue sponsor RED SoHo and @GeoffTwitchen for arranging the “Tweetup Corner” for us!

I will be hosting my 2nd tweetup of 2010 on March 2nd. This tweetup is going to be a little different from the previous ones, we will have 2 special guests (actually 3) this time.

Brian Giesen

@bdgiesen is my colleague in Ogilvy who’s based in Sydney Australia,  he’s is an award-winning, founding member of Ogilvy’s 360 Degree Digital Influence group and passionate word of mouth marketing practitioner. Brian is extremely experienced in the field, he will be in Hong Kong for one night and we will be lucky enough to have him in the tweetup. (Here’s his bio)

Tom Smith

Tom Smith (@tomtrendstream) is the founder of a technology and social media trend research company Trendstream. He’s also the project leader of the Global Web Index and created Wave @ Universal McCann. He will be in Hong Kong for the FutureWebAsia Event for the Asia launch of Global Web Index. Tom will also come along with another speaker from the event, Jenny Armshaw-Heak (@globalwebasia), who’s the Business Development Director of Lightspeed Research.

Join Us!

Venue Sponsor: RED SoHo (2/f, Kinwick Centre, 32 Hollywood Road, SoHo Central)

Date: Tuesday, March 2nd 2010

Time: 8pm

Admission: Free  (drinks not included)

Register Here: http://twtvite.com/ixvugx

Space is limited, registration is required, please secure your place now!

Dansk Port Teknik (DPT), garage door company recently worked with agency JWT Copenhagen this creative advertisement that really takes the most out of Toyota’s recall. This ad promotes 20% off on all garage doors, for Toyota owners only along with the broken garage door.

Marketing/ advertising industry is often cruel. It’s been only a week, Toyota loses more than $20 billion in market share and recalls couple million cars, companies have already published ads making laughs of their mistakes to generate sales.

Since the day anyone hears about Twitter for the first time, they would sure at some point think about how to gain more followers. Well, it is normal to think this way, but it’s time to stop.

People write all kinds of articles about growing Twitter followers, authors sell books about it, companies switch online tactics only to increase Twitter followers, and see the number of followers as one of the major KPIs. Truth is, does it really matter that much?

Fulfill the Desire for Power

Number of followers even slowly turns into a form of power and intelligence, also created all these “social media gurus”.  People automatically assume and feel like they suddenly have so much influence to the society they are in just because they have a few thousands of followers.

Connect it with Psychology

I’ve met people from industry networking events who are “social media gurus”, they are all so similar. They love to talk about the number of followers on Twitter, they love exposure and recognition and yet they haven’t achieved much in life. It’s all about the lack of self-confidence, their effort in other areas/ fields might not be noticed and they feel like the number of Twitter followers can somehow turn themselves into someone respectable. Virtualista actually had a great post about personal branding and social media guru.

Solution: Quality not Quantity

If Twitter is one of the channels in your company’s social media strategy, size of your audience is important, but number of followers however, does not represent the size of your audience. If you always tweet with links, the easiest way to track audience is to check the click through rates of the tweets, they are usually very consistant. To do so, you can use URL shorteners, one of the tricks that I always use is to add a “+” sign after bit.ly urls (e.g. http://bit.ly/d7PugD+ ), or simply post a twitpic and see how many views you get.

Photo Credit: KaranV @Flickr

Dolce&Gabbana has always been the leader in technology among other fashion brands. In 2005, D&G broadcasted their fashion shows live on it’s official website. In 2008, they started to get into the mobile market, established dolcegabbana.mobi to create a more interactive way to communicate with fans, then a free iphone app was developed after.

They just announced few hours ago (Feb/19/2010 12:46 PM Milan Time CET) that they are going to offer fans the opportunity to watch the upcoming Fall/Winter 2010/11 season fashion show live on iPhone and Android Mobile Devices. The live show will be available at live.dolcegabbana.mobi on February 25th 3:00PM (GMT+1).

It’s another case showing how important smartphone users are for businesses these days, can’t wait to see how they will execute it to create the buzz, I’m sure many social media elements will be included.