In days of old, advertisers had to buy TV airtime, magazine placements, or radio spots to send their ads out to reach customers. Usually one of the largest chunks of cost is the media placement, followed by “creative” development and content creation.

What if there was a way to cut out most or all of the media cost?  And what if we could also substantially reduce the cost of “creative development” and “content creation?”  Look at the JetBlue example below.  On Twitter, JetBlue has nearly 600,000 followers.  Each of these followers has basically “opted in” to receive their updates, often multiple times a day (“costless media”). There is no “media cost” for getting these messages out. Compare this to what it would cost to air a TV ad that reaches 600,000 viewers (assuming all the viewers wanted to receive the ad, and were sitting there in front of the TV watching the ad when it was aired).

Also, the cost of content is nearly zero too. JetBlue has their customer service people (and fans) help create content by tweeting. These tweets range from customer service (“twitter customer service”) , to service notices (e.g. dense fog in NYC area airports causing delays, etc.), to tips from frequent travelers. This type of content is more “real,” valuable, and trusted than an advertisement. And there is no cost of “creative development” because the content does not need to be dressed up into a glossy ad for TV or print — it’s just 140 characters of text at a time. It’s more effective AND lower cost?!  Imagine that!

Finally, notice in the “bio” area on the upper right of the screen shot that it reports who is currently on duty — “Morgan and Lindsey” — this gives the normally faceless customer service system a name and a face and perhaps even a personality.  JetBlue’s twitter is a great example of social marketing done awesome!

What is the ROI (define) for social media? It’s zero. That’s because there’s no such thing as “social media.”

People’s conversations are not media; they can’t be purchased as such by advertisers. In other words, people don’t talk whenever advertisers want them to and they won’t say whatever advertisers tell them to — so it isn’t “media” like TV, print, and radio.

If you treat people’s conversations as media, you’d be doing it wrong. Social marketing done right means asking for and respecting people’s conversations and giving them a public place to talk so others can hear. If the advertiser’s product is already great, much of the conversation will be positive. But even if it isn’t the advertiser will have the benefit of free “product research” because people will give them ideas for improvement. 

Untargetables are hard to reach. Unreachables are not reachable by traditional advertising media or channels. 

read more about the ROI of social media on ClickZ … http://www.clickz.com/3633341

if you had a dollar to spend today, where would you spend it? on paid advertising or on social marketing? why?

Paid advertising – it’s over once it’s aired

Social Marketing
1. peers telling peers – a lot more effective and trusted by modern consumers than a paid ad
2. archived conversations – when people take social actions like rate, review, comment, recommend, and share, these actions are archived for everyone to see online (valuable to future users doing research)
3. it yields a continuously increasing stream of free traffic (enhances SEO efforts)

So whatcha gonna do?

http://www.webkitchen.be/2009/02/18/adobe-on-twitter/

Adobe on Twitter
By Serge Jespers 18 February 2009 at 11:02 am
I thought it was a good idea to compile a list of Adobeans on Twitter. It was quite surprising to see how big this list turned out and I’m pretty sure there must be even more of us on Twitter. If you know of someone not on the list, feel free to add them in the comments!

Flash Platform evangelism

Duane Nickull: http://twitter.com/duanechaos
Tom Krcha: http://twitter.com/tomkrcha
Mihai Corlan: http://twitter.com/mcorlan
Greg Wilson: http://twitter.com/gregorywilson
Enrique Duvos: http://twitter.com/eduvos
Daniel Dura: http://twitter.com/ddura
Kevin Hoyt: http://twitter.com/parkerkrhoyt
Andrew Shorten: http://twitter.com/ashorten
Lee Brimelow: http://twitter.com/leebrimelow
James Ward: http://twitter.com/jlward4th
Ryan Stewart: http://twitter.com/ryanstewart
Serge Jespers: http://twitter.com/sjespers
Raghu: http://twitter.com/raghunathrao
Harish: http://twitter.com/hsivaram
Anirudh: http://twitter.com/anirudhs
Sujit: http://twitter.com/sujitg
Mihai “Miti” Pricope http://twitter.com/mpricope
Cornel Creanga http://twitter.com/cornelcreanga
Terry Ryan: http://twitter.com/tpryan
Flash Platform

Michele Turner: http://twitter.com/mturner
Robin Charney: http://twitter.com/Rcharney
Mike Chambers: http://twitter.com/mesh
AIR

Ethan Malasky: http://twitter.com/emalasky
Rob Christensen: http://twitter.com/robchristensen
Christian Cantrell: http://twitter.com/cantrell
Flex

Matt Chotin: http://twitter.com/mchotin
Cocomo

Nigel Pegg: http://twitter.com/nigelpegg
Fang Chang: http://twitter.com/fkchang
Varun Parmar: http://twitter.com/vparmar230
Pixelbender

Kevin Goldsmith: http://twitter.com/KevinGoldsmith
Samantha Bailey: http://twitter.com/upperleftcorner
Adobe Core Tech

Jim Hong: http://twitter.com/jimhong
John Metzger: http://twitter.com/metz123
Kevin Stewart: http://twitter.com/kstewart
Mike Houser: http://twitter.com/tharkad
ColdFusion

Adam Lehman: http://twitter.com/adrocknaphobia
Products

AIR: http://twitter.com/air
Pixelbender: http://twitter.com/pixelbender
Flash Platform: http://twitter.com/Flash_Platform
ColdFusion: http://twitter.com/coldfusion
Buzzword: http://twitter.com/Buzzword
Adobe Reader: http://twitter.com/Adobe_Reader
Dreamweaver: http://twitter.com/dreamweaver
Spry: http://twitter.com/AdobeSpry
Developer relations

Ed Sullivan: http://twitter.com/esulliva
Rachel Luxemburg: http://twitter.com/rlux
Ted Patrick: http://www.twitter.com/AdobeTed
John Dowdell: http://www.twitter.com/jdowdell
Stacy Sison: http://www.twitter.com/ssison
Creative Suite evangelists

Paul Burnett: http://twitter.com/pburnett
Karl Soule: http://twitter.com/KarlSoule
Greg Rewis: http://twitter.com/garazi
Jason Levine: http://twitter.com/Beatlejase
Rufus Deuchler: http://twitter.com/rufusd
Flash Catalyst

NJ: http://twitter.com/rictus
Rob Adams: http://twitter.com/robadams
Cory West: http://twitter.com/corywest
Adobe After Effects

Dan Wilk: http://twitter.com/DanielWilk
Michael Natkin: http://twitter.com/michaelnatkin
Chris Prosser: http://twitter.com/cprosser
Open source

Dave McAllister: http://twitter.com/dwmcallister
Creative Suite

Doug Winnie: http://twitter.com/sfdesigner
Scott Fegette: http://twitter.com/sfegette
Marc Kubishta: http://twitter.com/kubischta
Connect

Mark Blair: http://www.twitter.com/markblair
Randah McKinnie: http://www.twitter.com/randah
Guillaume Privat: http://www.twitter.com/gprivat
Brant Strand: http://www.twitter.com/BStrand
Adobe Nordics

Anna Bouveng: http://twitter.com/annabou
Mattias Jonsson: http://twitter.com/mjonsson
Andreas Hollstrom: http://twitter.com/hollstrom
Adobe UK

Emma Wilkinson: http://twitter.com/emmawilkinson
Adobe Netherlands/Belgium

Klaasjan Tukker: http://twitter.com/ktukker
Bert Hagendoorn: http://twitter.com/berthagendoorn
Adobe Usergroup NL: http://twitter.com/adobeusergroup
Adobe Romania

Bogdan Ripa http://twitter.com/bogdanripa
Alexandru Costin http://twitter.com/acostin
Irina Huzum http://twitter.com/irinah
Adrian Spinei http://twitter.com/aspinei
Cosmin Lehene http://twitter.com/clehene
Andrei Dragomir http://twitter.com/adragomir
Sorin Sbarnea http://twitter.com/sbarnea
Mihaela Barbu http://twitter.com/mihabarbu
Adrian Tanase http://twitter.com/atanase
Horia Galatanu http://twitter.com/horiag
Ovidiu Eftimie http://twitter.com/eovidiu
Gelu Blanariu http://twitter.com/gelu11
Gabriel Dobritescu http://twitter.com/GabiD
Catalin Anastasoaie http://twitter.com/acatalin
Dragos Georgita http://twitter.com/drageo2000
Remus Stratulat http://twitter.com/rstratulat
Cristian Ivascu http://twitter.com/ivascucristian
Adobe Germany

Sven Doelle: http://twitter.com/sdoelle

2009 is the year of the “open agency model.” Many of the largest brands have declared that they are going “open agency mode” in search of lower cost, greater efficiency, and possibly better work. But while this idea may be good in theory, it is very difficult in practice. Having run a “virtual company” since 1996, I know of the challenges, as well as the upside. And the conventional wisdom of “you get what you pay for” holds very true here. I’ve outsourced to China and India to varying degrees of success and usually it took more time to communicate and re-communicate, do and re-do to get things right. And it ended up costing more overall, despite lower unit costs. Furthermore, most clients are brand experts of their own brand, but may not have the depth of experience in managing complex, global deployments … or perhaps even experience in managing photo shoots. Although it may be fun to go on photo shoots, but that doesn’t mean clients can manage that themselves. And having an inexperienced, small agency do it may not be that much more efficient either.

Anheuser-Busch Whacks Retainers for Its Agencies

http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=134630

2009 has also been declared the year of search and social marketing. Many of the biggest brands now realize they must do something in search in order to be found when users are out looking for something. Knowing that 80% of online journeys begin with search (Forrester April 2008), it is more important than ever to be “findable” — after all, if they can’t find you, you don’t exist. Companies are also looking for efficiencies in social marketing — literally having people carry forth their message or amplify it for free. This is a good move because most modern users trust their peers far more than they trust an advertiser’s ad message anyway, according to countless studies.

in a budget-constrained environment, the best thing an advertiser can do is shift more attention (notice, I didn’t say money) to social marketing and stimulate social actions among target users and customers. While paid media used to just get people to some place (like a website), social marketing is about stimulating social actions — so the people actually do something — share, rate, comment, recommend, etc. These actions lead to an accumulation of value over time such that future visitors will get the benefit of all of the actions that went before (e.g. I only watch the highest rated or most viewed videos on YouTube; I don’t have to wade through and find the good stuff myself). Furthermore, social actions are free to the advertiser — think “advocacy.” When real people carry the message forward to their friends, it is free amplification for the advertiser — social amplification.

examples include Amazon (reviews of reviews) and MyFaveThings Facebook app (users show what they have and what they want so their friends can simply “buy what he bought”). The concept is simply that modern consumers turn to their peers (instead of advertisers) to get ideas (awareness), advice (consideration), and recommendations (choice) during their purchase process. This can come from direct friends, from experts, or from collections of total strangers. The social actions of these groups help move the potential customer closer to the purchase expeditiously.

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social networks – the places where people go online to socialize

social actions – the act of socializing on social networks

social intensity – the frequency and quantity of social actions; this can/should be a new KPI (key performance indicator) for marketers to assess whether digital marketing efforts are working and yielding positive results against business objectives

social networks – the places people go to socialize like Facebook, MySpace, etc.

social actions – the things people do when they are on social networks

social marketing – the act of stimulating more social actions that yield awareness, purchase, and advocacy/loyalty for brand advertisers

social media – it’s NOT media, so stop using the word media! (see Social Networks Aren’t Media – http://www.clickz.com/3631391 )