In a previous post, I described how social media can provide millions of unearned impressions for brands. In this post, I’d like to show how Target did just that as part of its Bullseye Gives campaign.

To raise awareness of its charitable programs, Target wanted to give stakeholders the ability to decide how the company would divide $3 million between ten national charities. Context worked with Target and AKQA to build an interactive voting application on Taret’s Facebook page that allowed users to vote for their favorite charity once per day.

Diving traffic both within Facebook and from external sites, a media buy kept new users coming to the page. The application’s viral elements, specifically the news feed items, gave Target a huge lift, leveraging their media buy with social advocacy.

To give an idea of just how effectively social media leveraged Target’s campaign (and do so without disclosing proprietary information), we can use publicly available information to estimate how many additional impressions Target earned through its use of social media. There were  approximately 290 thousand counted votes, (also meaning 290 thousand possible news feed items distributed). We also know that the average Facebook user has 120 friends, and that 50% of Facebook users visit at least once daily, so we can estimate that each of these news feed item were seen by 60 of a user’s friends. Assuming between 50% and 70% of people whose vote counted (that 290 thousand) actually chose to publish their results (a conservative estimate, given our experience), we can calculate that Target earned between 8.7M and 12M additional *advocated* impressions.

That’s not a bad ROI for a small technology investment.

With Twitter becoming a household name used around the world, it’s no wonder businesses are working double- time to develop there “Twitter Brand” and “Twitter Marketing Plan.” Twitter originally started out as a site seemingly created for friends to share what they were doing in short updates. It has now evolved into a huge marketing tool for companies to easily reach their consumers for free.

Because of this newfound freedom when reaching out to consumers, there are many ways companies can both build and break relationships.

Here is a list Twitter Best Practices when establishing your brand on Twitter:

1.    Have a plan
You’ve created your Twitter account, filled out the profile information, chosen a picture and a background, maybe even picked up a few followers.  Now what? Now, you’re stuck. It’s important to have a plan when configuring your Twitter account so it furthers your specific needs. Do some research. Look around at other Twitter accounts. Gather a few followers and see what kinds of tweets interest you. See what kinds of tweets drive you crazy. By doing this, you will be able to determine what kinds of tweets you should publish so you can successfully reach your target audience.

2.    Interact with your followers
Every tweet counts. Make sure you are taking each one seriously and thinking before you click “send.” It is absolutely crucial to interact with your followers in order to build constructive relationships – and that’s what Twitter is all about. If someone asks you a question, make sure you answer it. If someone asks for your advice, give it to them honestly. If someone says something insightful about you, your product, or something you’re interested in, let them know. With all the capabilities of Twitter – @ reply, Direct Message and Re-Tweet – it is essential to communicate with your followers and potential consumers.

3.    Keep it professional
It is important to maintain the difference between a personal Twitter account and a professional one. Especially when it comes to a specific brand, it is important not to cross and become too personal and unprofessional. Yes, your followers want to know you are a human being just interacting with another human being; however, hearing about what you ate for dinner isn’t going to entice them into buying your product.

There are also a few things that brands should not do on Twitter, including:

1.    Do not spam
Spamming. Whether it’s in our inbox, via telephone or even in our personal mailbox, we all hate it. On Twitter, it’s the same concept. Don’t copy and paste the same tweets over and over again and don’t overload people with many tweets all at once. Instead, think of different, creative ways to get across the same message and then spread your tweets out so you can reach a wider audience and persuade more people to trust and use you for their needs.

2.    Do not hard sell
Hard selling your product is a surefire way to get blocked and destroy the relationships you have been building with your community. Market yourself, but don’t sell yourself too much. Don’t make someone feel like you are selling something – let me explain – when you’re selling a product on Twitter, you want the consumer to feel like they are making the absolute best choice possible. This is done through conversations and advice, not through shoving a product down someone’s throat. Your followers should want to hear what kinds of products you offer because they trust you and your judgment and when you say that this product is the best, they will believe you.

3.    Do not use only automated responses
Automated responses are equivalent to cutting corners and no one gets ahead by cutting corners. Yes, automated responses are useful in moderation. However, it is important to let your followers know there is a human being behind your tweets. Make them personable and make sure you are responding to what others are talking about. People know a phony when they see one.

Twitter is all about building relationships and creating a community around your specific product. There are many positive ways you can use Twitter in order to boost your sales and achieve a higher response to marketing techniques. It’s important to have proper Twitter etiquette when approaching your target audience.

All you have to do is determine your goals, how you want to accomplish them and then create a community centered around your brand.

Context Optional’s Bing Photo Contest was featured in TechCrunch today:

It may sound kind of silly, but when I talk to people outside of the tech world about Bing, the first thing brought up is usually how they like the pictures. And now Microsoft has created a contest on Facebook to let one user get their own picture featured on Bing.

The Bing Summer Travel Photo Contest is asking Facebook users to submit their best summer vacation photos. The community will then vote on them, and the winner will get its day in the sun, so to speak, on Monday, August 3 — appearing to the millions who visit Bing on that day.

Full post

Context Optional was featured in Inside Facebook’s Best & Worst Facebook Marketing Report - as a Best!  We were included for our work on Travel Channel Kidnap, the most popular branded application on Facebook.

There is additional detail in the full report.

Target gives away $3M every week to charity.  We worked with Target to let users decide where that money should go - and almost 300,000 votes later the results are in.

During the two-week campaign, Bullseye Gives generated incredible results and voter response, including:

• Target Facebook Page added 97,091 new fans
• During the campaign, the Target Facebook Page increased daily views by 4,800%
• Target Facebook Page experienced a 3,000% surge in wall posts, with more than 3,000 personal stories shared throughout the campaign
• More than 167,000 fans on Facebook voted for the charity of their choice
• St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and American Red Cross received over 53% of total votes

The results are in, and St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital is the winner of the Target Corporation’s “Bullseye Gives” contest on Facebook, in which 10 charities vied for votes from the social network’s users. St. Jude’s, founded by the late actor Danny Thomas, garnered 26.6 percent of the 291,399 votes cast and won $797,123. Coming in a close second with 26.5 percent of the votes was the American Red Cross, which won $793,942 from the company, which gave away a total of $3 million. Contests are fast becoming an additional means for charities to raise money, but Target, too, found benefits. More than 97,000 new fans joined the retailer’s Facebook page during the contest, and daily views of its page increased by 4,800 percent.

Full article

Campaigns in social media should be thought of as long-term strategies, not as fire-and-forget impression and branding initiatives. The most successful social media campaigns are those than run over a period of months or years, not just two-day roadblocks designed to get the word out and raise awareness.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with short-term branding programs, it’s simply that it’s not an effective use of funds. Traditional media types (tv, radio, print, etc) only allowed for this type of campaign - one couldn’t build a relationship, or even reappear in front of consumers without continued purchase of media. In social media however, a media buy can lead to a brand page, and on that page one can gather fans or friends. In fact, we often see friend/fan conversion rates as high as 30% from ad click-throughs. By establishing this relationship a brand has a direct channel to brand advocates, and it’s an utter waste not to utilize this channel over time.

Put another way, one can think about the branding/impression cycle numerically.
Initial media buy: $500,000
eCPM: $5
Initial cold impressions: 100,000,000
Ad click-through: .05%
Page visitors: 50,000
Resulting page fans/friends: 15,000
Status updates / messages to fans per year: 100
Additional brand impressions among brand advocates: 1,500,000

How much would you pay for enough traditional media to get in front of brand advocates twice a week for a year? In social media, it’s free.