Companies are also benefiting from Twitter, where 20 percent of the tweets contain requests for product information or responses to the requests, according to Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State.

“People are using tweets to express their reaction, both positive and negative, as they engage with these products and services,” said Jansen. “Tweets are about as close as one can get to the customer point of purchase for products and services.”

he team looked for tweets mentioning a brand and why the brand was mentioned — to inform others, express a view on the brand or something else — and found that people were using tweets to connect with the products.

About 20 percent of the tweets contained product information in the form of asking and providing, thus giving companies a “rich source” of information concerning issues and questions that customers have regarding their products.Read more at live.psu.edu

According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 Internet consumers from 50 countries, recommendations from personal acquaintances or opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising worldwide. 90% of consumers surveyed said that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trusted consumer opinions posted online.

Read more at www.mediapost.com

Forms of Advertising in Which Consumers Trust “Somewhat” or “Completely” (April, 2009)
Advertising	Percent of Respondents Trusting
Recommendations from people known	90%
Consumer opinions posted online	70%
Brand websites	70%
Editorial content (e.g. newspaper article)	69%
Brand sponsorships	64%
TV	62%
Newspaper	61%
Magazines	59%
Billboards / outdoor advertising	55%
Radio	55%
Emails signed up for	54%
Ads before movies	52%
Search engine results ads	41%
Online video ads	37%
Online banner ads	33%
Text ads on mobile phones	24%
Source: Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey, April 2009

Three Useful Points to Consider in Social Media Marketing and Measurement

1) Clarity is key: define your success

2) Keep measurement simple and familiar

3) Control is not the point, listening isRead more at blog.comscore.com

There is some good news and bad news about workplace social media.

The good news, according to Deloitte, is that nearly one-third (30%) of executives said social networking is a part of their business and operations strategy.

Now for the bad news: There can be some serious downsides to using social networks—which even enthusiastic users admit.

Nearly three-quarters of employees agreed that it’s easy to damage a company’s reputation on social media, including 24% who strongly agreed.

See more at www.emarketer.com

The latest Ad-ology Research study, “Advertising’s Impact in a Soft Economy,” analyzes consumer perception about businesses that continue to advertise, and those that do not, in the current economy.

More than 48% of U.S. adults believe that a lack of advertising by a retail store, bank or auto dealership during a recession indicates the business must be struggling. Likewise, a vast majority perceives businesses that continue to advertise as being competitive or committed to doing business.

Other key findings: 40% of consumers use coupons more now than a year ago Most consumers are as willing or more willing to pay more for ‘healthy’ or ‘organic’ products than they were a year ago A ‘deeply discounted price’ was the number-one factor that would make consumers more likely to purchase a big-ticket item (+$1,000) TV, newspaper, direct mail, and Internet top local media from which consumers saw/heard an ad within the last 30 days that led them to take action Store Web sites ranked second only to search engines as the way consumers research products and shop online Read more at www.marketinginsightstoday.com

If Americans’ search behavior is any indication which way they’re leaning towards voting for the next American Idol, it looks like it’ll be a runaway victory for Adam Lambert. Compared to other contestants Kris Allen and Danny Gokey, Lambert generated a whopping 78% of all searches for the three finalists during the week ending May 10, according to comScore Marketer data. (Incidentally, Females Age 35-64, who apparently have a track record of predicting the annual Idol winner, gave Lambert a slightly higher 80% of the vote.)

See more at blog.comscore.com

See more at en-us.nielsen.com

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Package-goods brands are still cautious about social media, figuring that the return on investment can’t be accurately measured. After all, marketing on Facebook or MySpace might generate a conversation but not necessarily a sale. Now, however, a method is emerging to relate one to the other, potentially eliminating a major impediment.

Generally, the ROI tool of choice for consumer package goods — marketing-mix models that rely on econometric analysis of changes in retail scanner data — can’t pick up the impact of the relatively small five- and six-figure outlays package-goods brands make on digital media.

Recent research from ComScore, MySpace and Dunnhumby presented at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:Think 2009 conference in late March suggests that even relatively small outlays on social networks by package-goods brands can result in offline sales impact and deliver positive return on investment.

Read more at adage.com

What it reaped

MySpace marketing ROI for unnamed personal-care brand: Total consumers exposed: 76.9 MILLION Percentage of internet population: 40% Total impressions: 1.1 BILLION Media outlay: $1 MILLION Offline sales generated from campaign: $1.28 MILLION Sources: ComScore, MySpace, Dunnhumby

SAN FRANCISCO — The first reaction many people have to Twitter is befuddlement. Why would they want to read short messages about what someone ate for breakfast?

It’s a reasonable question. Twitter unleashes the diarist in its 14 million users, who visited its site 99 million times last month to read posts tapped out with cellphones and computers. Individually, many of those 140-character “tweets” seem inane. But taken collectively, the stream of messages can turn Twitter into a surprisingly useful tool for solving problems and providing insights into the digital mood. By tapping into the world’s collective brain, researchers of all kinds have found that if they make the effort to dig through the mundane comments, the live conversations offer an early glimpse into public sentiment — and even help them shape it. Companies like Starbucks, Whole Foods and Dell can see what their customers are thinking as they use a product, and the companies can adapt their marketing accordingly. Last week in Moldova, protesters used Twitter as a rallying tool while outsiders peered at their tweets to help them understand what was happening in that little-known country. And over the weekend, Amazon.com learned how important it was to respond to the Twitter audience. After one author noticed that Amazon had reclassified books with gay and lesbian themes as “adult” and removed them from the main search and sales rankings, a protest broke out on blogs and Twitter. The company felt compelled to respond despite the Easter holiday, initially saying the problem was due to a “glitch in our system” but later blaming a “ham-fisted cataloging error” that affected more than 57,000 books dealing with health and sex. Soon, machines could twitter as much as people. Corey Menscher, a graduate student at New York University, developed the Kickbee, an elastic band with vibration sensors that his pregnant wife wore to alert Twitter each time the baby kicked: “I kicked Mommy at 08:52 PM on Fri, Jan 2!” Mr. Menscher is now considering selling the product. Read more at www.nytimes.com