Archive for the ‘Twitter’ Category
20 More of the Best Twitter Tips, Tactics and Tools of 2012
Monday, February 11th, 2013As the fourth-largest social network, and the fastest growing in 2012, Twitter has emerged as a serious platform for business professionals to share breaking news, promote thought-leadership content, and engage with customers, prospects, peers and industry influencers.
As noted here in a preliminary summary of the best Twitter articles and posts of 2012 last fall, “Twitterers collectively post a billion tweets every three days. 62% of the Fortune 500 companies have at least one Twitter account, and the average Fortune 100 firm maintains 10 separate Twitter handles to support different product lines, divisions, functional areas and geographic regions.”
How can you grow and maintain an active, relevant Twitter following? Spend your time more productively there? Most effectively use Twitter advertising? Get retweeted more often? And among the expanding universe of third-party Twitter tools out there, which are most worth checking out?
Find the answers to those questions and many others here in 20 of the best Twitter guides, tools and reviews of 2012.
Twitter Tips and Guides
9 tips for managing Twitter in just 20 minutes a day by Nashville Business Journal
Writing that “One of the chief complaints I hear from business owners about Twitter is that they don’t have time for it,” Laura Click offers recommendations for more efficient Twitter account management, such as setting up searches to track specific brands or topics, using tools like Twellow and Listorious to find new potential followers, and using automation tools to pre-schedule selected tweets (just be careful not to over-do social media automation).
Twitter Rolls Out Cover Photos: How to Add Yours Today by HubSpot
Corey Eridon walks readers through the process of setting up the “new” Twitter profile page (okay, it’s been a few months now but a lot of Twitterers still haven’t done it) to add a larger header image, then highlights some creative examples from various media outlets, brands and organizations.
50+ Creative Twitter Headers for Your Inspiration by Social @ Blogging Tracker
Writing that “Twitter has officially joined the ‘visual’ club by allowing users to create a personalized Twitter header to boost their brand visibility,” Wong Ching Ya shares more than 50 examples of creative Twitter headers for creating brand awareness, expressing one’s interests and personality, showcasing a portfolio, publicizing an event and other purposes.
15 Reasons Why You’ve Just Been Unfollowed On Twitter [INFOGRAPHIC] by All Twitter
Shea Bennett reveals the most common reasons that Twitterers unfollow others on the social network, including “too much self-promotion (48 percent), posting spam (47 percent), being uninteresting (43 percent) and too much repetition (29 percent),” as well as the top reason for unfollowing.
How the New Twitter Search Will Change the Way Brands Tweet by Ignite Social Media
Win Pratt offers details on how Twitter’s enhanced search functionality works (“Twitter will now also take your search query and give you options for similar search terms. For instance, if I search for ‘Social Media Strategy,’ it might suggest that another good search option is ‘Social Media Agency.’ This can be very handy when trying to discover new content or follow a trending topic”) and how brands are likely to respond to this through targeted use of hashtags and keywords.
Two new features for self-service advertisers by Twitter Advertising Blog
Andrew Chang outlines how new features in Twitter help advertisers track audience growth over time ( a feature which should arguably be available to all Twitter users but is reserved for advertisers currently) and select specific tweets for promotion.
6 Tips to Get Retweeted More Often by Search Engine Journal
Astutely noting that “there is a little of that grinning six-year-old in us all” when we get retweeted, frequent best-of honoree Ann Smarty offers half a dozen tips for making it happen more often, from learning the right times for tweeting to mentioning your more influential Twitter followers.
8 Twitter chats you should check out today! by Creative Ramblings
Want to showcase your expertise and grow your following on Twitter? Cendrine Marrouat advises participating in Twitter chat, and reviews eight popular social media-related chats hosted by Twitter rock stars like @Atomic_Reach, @MackCollier and @prsarahevans. For those (like me) who have trouble making it to scheduled chats and are interested in the “human side of business,” another one to check out is #TChat, an ongoing virtual chat hosted by @TalentCulture.
Twitter Cards: How Savvy Marketers Get More Out Of Twitter by Marketing Land
For those who really want to get their geek on, John Lincoln provides an explanation of what Twitter cards are (they “make it possible for you to attach media experiences to Tweets that link to your content. Simply add a few lines of HTML to your webpages, and users who Tweet links to your content will have a ‘card’ added to the Tweet that’s visible to all of their followers”), how to implement them, and a few “common” examples.
Optimizing Twitter for Lead Generation by Marketo B2B Marketing and Sales Blog
Jason Miller details three specific strategies for generating leads on Twitter, including messaging: “do not use Twitter to only promote your company…if you never contribute to the conversations taking place, if you never offer something personal or fun or funny, you are missing the prime opportunity unique to Twitter…as with anything, a little self promotion is good for business but if your entire tweet history is only about you and your company, you’ve got it wrong.”
Twitter to be ‘hero’ social media channel for media brands in 2013 by The Wall Blog
James Matheson outlines 13 social and online trends for 2013, beginning the list with “Twitter is only going to get bigger…The head of social at the FT (Financial Times) described it as the ‘hero’ social media channel for next year. In a world where media brands are competing for attention, Twitter is the strongest channel for media brands to focus on for people’s discovery of news and information.”
Twitter Tools
6 Awesome Twitter Tools for Brands by DreamGrow Social Media
Jeff Gross reviews half a dozen of the “elite of Twitter tools,” from Commun.it (which “makes it really easy to see who you are interacting with, who is mentioning your brand and to determine the potential leaders and influencers: the tool suggests you which people you should follow, as well as the inactive members to unfollow”) to Twylah (a service that helps you create awesome looking websites and widgets out of your tweets”).
21 Amazing Twitter Tools for Brand Visibility and Time Management by Social @ Blogging Tracker
Wong Ching Ya (again) provides illustrated reviews of nearly two dozen “wonderful time-saver tools that (help) regularly in making full use of tweets shared and received,” including TwitFlink for managing your Twitter stream, Embedly (link destination previews) and Hashtracking (Twitter chat capture and stats).
10 Tools for Managing Twitter Engagement by Practical eCommerce
Paul Chaney serves up reviews of 10 tools designed to “to keep up with followers, steer clear of spam, or know if your Twitter engagement is paying off in ways that are meaningful to your business,” such as TweetReach, Twellow, SocialBro and Twitalyzer, which “provides a range of metrics including influence rank (shown as a percentage), social relationships with other Twitter users, and topics and communities where the Twitter user is most actively engaged.”
Free Tools to Archive Twitter Search results by DoFollow.Net
A primer on using Google Reader, Google Docs or HootSuite to back up your Twitter archives.
7 Tools For Monitoring The Effectiveness Of Your Tweets by SocialMouths
Noting that “By monitoring what happens to your important tweets you can begin to understand what works and what doesn’t work and make improvements,” Ian Cleary reviews seven tools that “are useful for monitoring the effectiveness of your tweets,” including Tweetreach, Monitter, and Tweeteffect, which “displays your recent tweets and shows if you got new followers or lost followers around the time of the tweet.”
Hashtag Discovery Tools by LunaMetrics
Dan Wilkerson spotlights tools “that can help your brand discover hashtags and conversations that fit your message and values,” including Hashonomy.com (“This site also allows you to search for terms and see popular links shared on twitter related to your search along with their related hashtags underneath. This can be useful both for searching for tags for your own content and for competitive analysis”) and Tweetreach.
Getting Started With HootSuite by Social Media Sun
Sandy Stachowiak serves up a detailed, illustrated review that explains “the features that made me a HootSuite fan,” with step-by-step guidance on setup; navigation; tweets and posts; and details about features like scheduling, approvals and RSS feeds; as well as acknowledgement of the tool’s limitations and issues.
Social Recruiting – The Ultimate Twitter Strategy Tool by Social-Hire
Tony Restell presents a detailed review of TweetLevel, which he calls “the ultimate Twitter strategy tool” for its ability to report on user influence within a specific context (i.e., celebrities like Oprah don’t just automatically get the highest scores), as well as to offer “insights into the type of Twitter user they are so that you can focus your attentions where they will be most beneficial.”
Your Twitter Archive by Twitter Blog
Mollie Vandor explains in this concise but helpful post how to “download your Twitter archive, so you’ll get all your Tweets (including Retweets) going back to the beginning. Once you have your Twitter archive, you can view your Tweets by month, or search your archive to find Tweets with certain words, phrases, hashtags or @usernames. You can even engage with your old Tweets just as you would with current ones.”
102 Compelling Social Media and Online Marketing Stats and Facts for 2012 (and 2013)
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013With 92% of companies now incorporating social media into their marketing efforts, it’s no longer sufficient to just “be there” on social networks. Today’s most effective marketers are optimizing content across channels, coordinating search and social marketing activities with traditional PR, and measuring their web presence and performance with sophistication.
The first step to improving digital marketing results is to understand the emerging trends and best practices. This post, along with 79 Remarkable Social Media Marketing Facts and Statistics for 2012 and 87 More Vital Social Media Marketing Facts and Stats for 2012 previously published here, provide a solid foundation for that understanding.
What do buyers really want from social media marketers? What’s the key to generating more inbound marketing leads? What is the source of the largest share of social traffic to websites? (It’s not what you almost certainly think.)
Find the answers to these questions and many, many more here in over 100 engaging and intriguing social, search, content, inbound, email, mobile and other marketing stats and facts from the past few months.
25 Social Media Facts and Statistics
1. While 76% of marketers believe “they know what their consumers want” in terms of social media content and interaction, only 34% have actually asked those buyers. (e-Strategy Trends)
2. At least on the B2C side, there is a disconnect between what marketers think consumers think is important and what consumers actually value. Marketers believe the highest consumer priorities on social media are insights for buying decisions (59%) and customer service (58%). Consumers actually place the highest value on deals and promotions (83%) and rewards programs (70%). (e-Strategy Trends)
3. B2B buyers are most likely to share useful vendor content via email (79%), followed by LinkedIn (53%), Twitter (39%) and Facebook (18%). (Earnest Agency)
4. While three-quarters of marketers consider measurement of social media impact important, 70% say that measuring those results is difficult. (Marketing Charts)
5. 79% of marketers measure website traffic from social media, and 68% track engagement metrics on social networks, but just 26% measure the relationship of social media activity to leads and sales. (Marketing Charts)
6. Just 4% of marketers said their companies were “very effective” at measuring social marketing in 2012. While 47% felt somewhat good at social measurement in 2011, just 38% said the same in 2012. “Nearly half of respondents (47%) feel they or their companies are either not very good at social marketing measurement, or do not measure well at all.” (Marketing Charts)
7. Ever feel frustrated and less productive than you’d like to be at work, even though you’re working hard and putting in a ton of hours? There’s a reason for that! Interruptions (like email and social media) are messing us up. Consider:
- • The typical worker is interrupted once every 28 minutes on average.
- • 28% of the average work day is spent on interruptions and recovery time.
- • 45% of workers believe they are expected to work on too many things at once.
- • And tasks done in parallel take on average 30% longer to complete than those performed in a sequence.
8. Everyone knows women vastly outnumber men on Pinterest, but how about on other social networks? Women make up the larger share of users on Facebook (58% to 42%) and are a slightly larger share on Twitter (52% to 48%) while men are the predominate users of LinkedIn (63% to 37%) and Google+ (71% to 29%). Furthermore, half of all Google+ users are under 25 years old. (iMedia Connection)
9. Social CRM is still confusing. Only 16% of companies say they currently have a social CRM system in place. 21% plan to implement such a system in the coming year, but another 17% “don’t know what a social CRM system is and why businesses need it.” (Convince & Convert)
10. Only a quarter of all U.S. small businesses (20-99 employees) and a third of midsized companies say they use social media “to engage with customers and prospects in a strategic and structured way.” Another 20% of both groups say they use social media, but in an ad hoc manner. (eMarketer)
11. Despite growing interest in the concept of social business, less than 20% of U.S. companies have integrated social media with their customer service, sales, or product development processes. (eMarketer)
12. Worldwide, 86% of companies have a presence on Facebook and Twitter, while just over half use YouTube and Linked and only slightly more than a third have a presence on Pinterest and/or Google+. (eMarketer)
13. More than 80% of small to midsized businesses (SMBs) plan to increase their use of social media in 2013. Not suprising, considering that 87% of SMBs say that social media has helped them either somewhat or a great deal in th past year. Of those using this channel, social media accounts for 32% of SMB marketing activities. (Marketing Charts)
14. Okay, so most marketers have now embraced social media. But why? 84% of marketers say they use social media to “reach customers at multiple touchpoints,” while 62% want to reach customers where they spend time and 56% say that “customers expect them to be on social media.” (Marketing Charts)
15. Still, not every small business should be using social media—or at least not using it as they are currently. 79% of small business owners on Twitter post just once per day or even less frequently, yet one out of three want to spend less time on social media. These business owners would be best advised to either spend their time on other tactics or hire someone who knows and enjoys social media to interact on their businesses’ behalf. No deposit, no return. (Leaders West)
16. Social media may be good for 99 things, but lead generation ain’t one of them. According to research from MarketingSherpa, just 12% of marketers rate social media as “very effective” for lead gen while 27% say it is “not effective.” The only tactic that fares worse is print advertising (9% very effective vs. 30% not effective). (B2B Lead Blog)
17. Which social network sends the largest share of website traffic? The answer is…unknown. Literally. The well-known social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit account for, combined, on average, less than half of all social traffic. The majority (as much as 70%) is “dark social”—links shared through email or instant messaging that generally get lumped in with “direct” traffic in analytics programs like Google Analytics. (The Atlantic)
18. The most popular social media sites for distributing B2B content are LinkedIn (used by 83% of B2B marketers), Twitter (80%) and Facebook (also 80%). After that, it falls off sharply; 61% use YouTube, 39% are on Google+, 26% utilize Pinterest (really?) and 23% share content on SlideShare. (MarketingProfs)
19. Using social media boosts website traffic: companies gain a 185% lift in Web traffic after achieving 1,000 Facebook likes, and businesses with 51 to 100 Twitter followers generate 106% more traffic than those with 25 or fewer followers. (MarketingProfs)
20. 92% of U.S. companies now use social media in their marketing efforts. (Heidi Cohen)
21. Different social media channels serve different purposes. Blogging is generally seen as most valuable for SEO, YouTube for content marketing, and social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn most helpful for branding and engagement. (Heidi Cohen)
22. Globally, eight different social networks have now reached the 100 million user mark. Three of those (Weibo, the fourth-largest social nework, RenRen at #5 and Badoo at #7) are primarily used by non-English speakers. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
23. The average user spends nearly seven hours per month on Facebook, but just 21 minutes on Twitter, 17 on LinkedIn, and only three minutes on Google+. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
24. Social media now accounts for 18% of all time spent online, and the average American spends 6.9 hours per month on social networking. But we are spending less time on the phone, sending/reading email, and watching TV than we did just a few years ago. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
25. One-third of CEOs fail to consider their compananies’ social media reputation when making business decisions. (The Backup List)
12 WPO, Inbound and Content Marketing Stats
26. Leads from inbound marketing cost on average 61% less ($135 vs. $346) than outbound marketing leads. (Earnest Agency)
27. Though it varies across industries, of course, 24% of overall marketing spending last year was on digital/online marketing. Social media and SEO together account for 70% of that spending. (iMedia Connection)
28. Blogging generally gets the largest share of inbound marketing budgets, followed by social media, SEO (if calculated separately from blogging) and PPC advertising. Most outbound marketing spend is on telemarketing, followed by direct mail and trade shows. (iMedia Connection)
29. 57% of companies say they generated sales through their blogs, and an identical share have closed business through LinkedIn. 48% have generated customers through Twitter and 42% through Facebook. (iMedia Connection)
30. Why web presence optimization metrics are vital: half of marketers say tightening integration between social media and traditional marketing is a key goal for 2013, yet nearly a third identify that as one of their top social marketing challenges, and a whopping 57% way measuring social ROI is a challenge. (Convince & Convert)
31. 9 out of 10 marketers say they measure social presence (e.g., number of followers and fans) and social media-driven website traffic, but only about half measure share of voice and sentiment. (Convince & Convert)
32. Need more evidence that measuring social media ROI is hard? While about 90% of all companies do some form of social media marketing, just one out of eight measure the revenue impact directly from social media. (eMarketer)
33. The two biggest challenges faced by B2B content marketers are producing enough content (cited by 29% of marketers) and producing the kind of content that engages (18). Only 2% of marketers say that finding trained content marketing professionals is a big challenge. (MarketingProfs)
34. More content = more leads. On average, companies “with 51-100 web pages generate 48% more traffic than companies with 1-50 pages.” What’s interesting though is the differential is larges for very small companies (those with less than 10 employees), likely because larger companies make greater use of lead gen tactics like tradeshows, webinars and video. (Polaris B)
35. Lots more content = lots more leads. Companies with 101-200 web pages generate 2.5x more leads than those with 50 or fewer pages. More landing pages and more blog posts also mean more leads. On average, companies that have published 200 or more total blog posts generate 5X as much traffic as those with 10 posts or fewer. (Polaris B)
36. Inbound marketing leads cost on average 62% less than outbound-generated leads, and the “big three” inbound channels—blogs, social media and SEO—all cost less on average than any outbound channel. (Polaris B)
37. The financial services (75%), insurance (50%) and software (50%) industries are the most advanced when it comes to having separate content marketing strategies for each channel through which they distribute content. Companies in these industries are also the most likely to have formal content marketing editorial calendars. The automotive (14%) and banking sectors (14%) were the least likely to have separate strategies in place. (MediaPost)
8 SEO Stats and Facts
38. SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation for B2B companies. 59% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on their lead gen goals, followed by social media (21%) and pay per click (20%). Not surprisingly, 98% of B2B marketers plan to maintain or increase SEO budgets next year. (Marketing Charts)
39. SEO also has the biggest impact on B2C lead gen. 49% of B2C marketers rank SEO tops for impact on lead generation, followed by pay per click (26%) and social media (25%). (Marketing Charts)
40. Agencies do SEO better. 21% of marketers who work with agencies on SEO report being highly satisfied with their program performance, compared with 11% of those who do SEO in-house. (Marketing Charts)
41. 78% of Internet users say they use the web for product research, and almost half (46%) of all searches on the average day for information on products and services (iMedia Connection)
42. Search is as popular as ever, but the percentage of searches actually done on search engines declined slightly in 2012 (by about 1%). More searches are taking place on websites (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and on Amazon.com, which is the top destination for product search). Still, organic search on search engines drive 50% of all referring traffic, compared to less than 8% for social media. (MediaPost)
43. SEO is rated as the most effective lead generation tactic, with 34% of marketers calling it “very effective” while just 7% say it is not effective. The next-most-effective lead gen tactics are paid search (32% vs. 9%) and webinars (30% to 6%). (B2B Lead Blog)
44. Demand for SEO skills has never been greater. SEO job postings on job board indeed.com increased 1900% last year and people with ‘SEO’ in their LinkedIn profile have increased by 112%. Still, few SEO jobs pay six figures. (Conductor Blog)
45. The largest number of SEO job openings are in New York and San Francisco, with Boston at #5, Austin at #11 and my own Minneapolis at #12. (Conductor Blog)
3 SEM Facts
46. Think AdWords isn’t important? For “commercial” searches on Google, actual organic links can take up less than 20% of the screen real estate and links. (Founder’s Blog)
47. Agencies do SEM better. 20% of respondents working with agencies for PPC report being highly satisfied with their program’s performance, compared to 15% who manage pay-per-click programs in-house. (Marketing Charts).
48. Search (paid and organic) is a leading driver of new customer sales, while email matters most for repeat business. Social media isn’t a significant driver of either type of sale, though of course it is vital for support SEO, brand image (which leads to higher PPC click-through rates) and customer service. (Marketing Pilgrim)
3 Email Marketing Stats
49. There are 62 billion emails sent every day. The average worker receives 112 emails and spends 28 of his or her time on email each day. (Visual.ly)
50. Email is the most common lead gen tactic, used by 81% of marketers. (MarketingSherpa)
51. SEO drives traffic, but email drives conversions. While 43% of marketers say that organic search drives the greatest volume of traffic to their websites, only 29% say that traffic converts at the highest rate. On the other hand, though just 22% cite email as their largest web traffic generator, 25% say those visits convert at the highest rate. (MarketingSherpa)
7 Business Blogging Stats and Facts
52. Just 139 of the Fortune 500 corporations maintain public-facing blogs, only 29 more than in 2009. (e-Strategy Trends)
53. Only 185 of the Inc. 500 (fastest-growing companies) had a blog in 2011, down from 250 firms in 2010, despite the fact that 92% of all companies with blogs say it has been successful for their business. (e-Strategy Trends)
54. Meanwhile, 55% of small businesses have a blog. (Leaders West)
55. On average, companies that publish 15 or more blog articles per month generate five times more Web traffic than companies that don’t blog at all, and those that blog 9-15 times per month generate three times more traffic than companies that don’t maintain blogs. (MarketingProfs)
56. Companies that publish new blog posts just 1-2 times per month generate 70% more leads than companies that don’t blog at all. (MarketingProfs)
57. 57% of companies that blog have acquired a customer through their blogs. (Polaris B)
58. Blogs are the core of social media marketing. Among companies that use social media in their marketing efforts, 59% rank their company blog as critical or important to their business, higher than any other social sharing site or network. (Heidi Cohen)
8 Facebook Facts and Statistics
59. There are one billion posts per day made on Facebook. The average user spends nearly 7 hours per month on the social networking site, and one out of every five pageviews on the Internet is on…Facebook. (Visual.ly)
60. Three out of four American moms use Facebook. (iMedia Connection)
61. Facebook accounts for one out of every five pageviews on the Internet. It’s used by more than half of all people in North America, more than a third of all citizens in Australia and New Zealand, and more than a quarter of the population in Europe. (iMedia Connection)
62. Of Facebook’s one billion-plus users, 57% access the site at least occasionally from mobile devices. The most popular operating systems for mobile Facebook access are iOS (26%) and Android (21%). (Jeff Bullas)
63. Among Facebook marketers, 64% have used Facebook Events to inform fans about online or offline events, making this a far more widespread tool than display ads and targeted posts. (Marketing Charts)
64. 90% of small businesses are on Facebook, and roughly two-thirds post more than once per week. (Leaders West)
65. All of the Ad Age Top 100 Advertisers have now established Facebook pages for their brands. (WordPress Hosting SEO)
66. Facebook grew 18% in 2012 and accounted for more than half of all social content sharing. (AddThis Blog)
6 Twitter Stats
67. There are 400 million tweets per day on Twitter. A million new Twitter accounts are opened each day. The average user spends nearly and hour and a half on the site each month. (Visual.ly)
68. Twitter now has more than 500 million users worldwide, including more than 100 million in the U.S. Twitter’s second-largest user base is in Brazil. (Jeff Bullas)
69. Almost two-thirds (64%) of Twitter access is via Twitter.com (web access), while 16% of use is mobile and 10% is via Twitter clients like HootSuite and TweetDeck. (Jeff Bullas)
70. What’s the most popular marketing tactic on Twitter? 30% of marketers report using hashtags tied to specific campaigns, while 26% use Promoted Tweets. (Marketing Charts)
71. Twitter grew 55% in 2012 and accounted for 15% of all social content sharing. (AddThis Blog)
72. 42% of companies have acquired at least one customer through Twitter. (Polaris B)
6 LinkedIn Facts
73. LinkedIn has more than 150 million users, but less than 20% have reached the level of having 500 or more first-degree connections, and only 8% are using the paid premium version. (Jeff Bullas)
74. Also, only 51% of LinkedIn users have “complete” profiles, and just 52% spend two hours or more per week on the site. (Jeff Bullas)
75. The most popular use of LinkedIn is for researching people and companies (77%). Other popular uses include building relationships with industry influencers (50%), finding job opportunities (38%) and increasing brand recognition in the marketplace (37%). Just 28% of companies say they have generated identifiable business opportunities on the site. (Jeff Bullas)
76. The most popular marketing tactics on LinkedIn are the use of LinkedIn groups (cited by 33% of marketers) followed distantly by InMail messaging (14%), LinkedIn Events (13%) and LinkedIn ads (10%). (Marketing Charts)
77. LinkedIn is the most powerful social site for driving B2B sales. Pinterest is most valuable for driving B2C business. (Heidi Cohen)
78. Want to connect with top-level executives? 26% of Fortune 500 CEOs are on LinkedIn. Less than 8% are on Facebook. o% use Pinterest. (Heidi Cohen)
3 Google+ Statistics
79. Google+ has more than 400 million users, with 100 million accessing the site each month. The typical user is a male in his late 20s with a technical position or background. (Jeff Bullas)
80. Google+ users tend to be more technical than Facebook users. The top three brands on Google+ are Android, Mashable, and Chrome; on Facebook, the three most popular brands are Coca-Cola, Disney, and Starbucks. (Jeff Bullas)
81. 12 of the top 15 interest categories on Pinterest are related to commerce, including jewelry and accessories (#1), flowers and gifts (#2), food (#4), books (#7), travel (#8), apparel (#11), home furnishings (#14) and toys (#15). (Jeff Bullas)
3 Pinterest Facts
82. Mothers are 61% more likely to use Pinterest than the average American. Pinterest ranks as the #1 “family and lifestyle site” for moms – ahead of Disney Online. (iMedia Connection)
83. Pinterest’s user base is 79% female, and Apple-centric. The iPad is the most device for mobile access (55%), while an additional 17% of mobile access is through the iPhone. (Jeff Bullas)
84. Pinterest grew an astounding 379,599% in 2012. The biggest driver of growth was pins of food photos. (AddThis Blog)
6 B2B Marketing Facts and Stats
85. 9 out of 10 B2B buyers say when they are ready to make a purchase, they will find a vendor. 81% use search, 59% look for peer recommendations, and 41% read content from “thought leaders.” (Earnest Agency)
86. For purchases over $10,000, 70% of buyers review four or more pieces of content before making a decision. (That actually sounds quite low, doesn’t it?) The most popular type of content: white papers, read by 88% of buyers. (Earnest Agency)
87. Traditional marketing tactics are not dead. 74% of B2B marketers rate direct mail as very effective, while 72% say the same about live events and 71% call email marketing critical. (Earnest Agency)
88. 75% of B2B marketers use SEO for lead generation. 72% utilize social media, and 54% have embraced content marketing, while just 15% of marketers say they are using mobile marketing. (MarketingSherpa)
89. B2B marketers are spending more on content marketing. “On average, B2B content marketers are spending 33% of their marketing budgets on content marketing (in 2012), up from 26% (in 2011, and) 54% plan to increase content marketing spending next year.” (MarketingProfs)
90. The most popular B2B content marketing tactics are the use of social media other than blogs (used by 87% of B2B marketers), articles on their own websites (83%), eNewsletters (78%) and blogs (77%), followed by case studies, videos and externally published articles, all at about 70%. On the other end of the scale is gamification, used by just 11% of B2B marketers. (MarketingProfs)
3 Video Marketing Statistics
91. 75% of senior executives watch videos on business sites every week. 65% go on to visit a vendor’s website after watching a video. (Earnest Agency)
92. 71% of American Internet users watch online videos; 28% do so on a daily basis. (iMedia Connection)
93. YouTube is the world’s second largest social media site, with 800 million unique monthly visitors, and the second largest search engine. (Heidi Cohen)
6 Mobile Marketing Stats and Facts
94. Of the four billion mobile phones in use globally, more than a quarter (27%) are smartphones. Half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices. (iMedia Connection)
95. The top online uses of mobile phones are gaming (61% of users do this), checking the weather (55%), maps and search (50%) and social networking (49%). (iMedia Connection)
96. Despite the growing popularity of local mobile search and social activity, only 3% of U.S. small businesses use geolocation services. (eMarketer)
97. Mobile marketing is “becoming mainstream” for small to midsized businesses (SMBs). 18% said they were “very likely” and 31% “somewhat likely” to incorporate mobile elements in their advertising and marketing efforts to reach potential customers in the coming year. Meanwhile, 7 in 10 plan to either maintain or increase spending in this area (Marketing Charts)
98. Is mobile marketing effective for lead generation? The jury is still out. In a recent survey, 15% of marketers rated mobile marketing as “very effective” for lead gen while an identical share said mobile is not effective. (B2B Lead Blog)
99. 30% of all the time spent on mobile device use is on social networks. (MediaPost)
And Finally, 3 Other Miscellaneous Online Marketing Stats
100. While 45% of all B2B businesses have now implemented some type of marketing automation software, less than 20% of SMBs have done so. However, smaller companies that have embraced marketing process automation are nearly 50% more likely to report revenue growth above plan than those that haven’t. (MediaPost)
101. Half of all employed people in the U.S. have been with their current employer for less than five years. The average tenure for all employees is 4.6 years. Professionals in architecture and engineering (7 years) and management (6.3 years) tend to have the longest tenures, while occupations with the shortest tenures include food service (2.3 years) and sales (3.4 years). (westXdesigns)
102. Social media crisis management in crisis? More than 10% of companies report they will not take any action to respond to a damaging article or social media post. Worse, less than two-thirds of B2C executives and just 43% of B2B leaders even believe their companies could respond to a negative post within 24 hours. (The Backup List)
28 (of the) Best Twitter Tips, Tools and Tactics of 2012 (So Far)
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012Twitter isn’t just for the birds anymore. According to recent social media research, Twitter now has more than 165 million users, and is attracting nearly a million new users each day. Twitterers collectively post a billion tweets every three days. 62% of the Fortune 500 companies have at least one Twitter account, and the average Fortune 100 firm maintains 10 separate Twitter handles to support different product lines, divisions, functional areas and geographic regions.
How can you stand out among all the chirping, build your Twitter presence, grow your following, and get your content promoted?
Find the answers to those and many more questions here in more than two dozen of the best Twitter how-to guides, resources, tools and reviews of 2012 so far.
Twitter Tips for Newbies
A Beginner’s Guide to Twitter and the Twittersphere Culture by Creative Marketing Channel
Catherine Lockey helpfully walks new Twitterers through the process of getting started and building a following on Twitter, from opening an account and creating lists through DMs, retweets, hashtags, post frequency, following back and more.
Beginner Tips For Your Corporate Twitter Publishing Schedule by Social Fresh
Writing that “Twitter provides an opportunity to mix structure and spontaneity in your business communication,” Brad Shorr offers guidance on scheduling tweets without going overboard on automation, from picking the right scheduling platform to categorizing the content you want to tweet to using repetition (carefully).
How to Grow Your Twitter Following
4 Ways to Grow a Twitter Following That Matters by Social Media Examiner
To grow a relevant and productive following on Twitter, Rich Brooks recommends avoiding shady tactics and shows how to do it right, starting with creating a strong profile (including your real face, detailed bio and physical location) and using third-party tools and directories to find interesting people to follow, and progressing through promoting your Twitter account through other channels (your website, email signature, etc.).
10 Ways to Build Your Twitter Following Like Big Brands Do by iMedia Connection
Contending that “it doesn’t take a big team and millions of dollars to get attention on Twitter,” John Manoogian III recommends emulating 10 strategies used by big brands, such as polishing your image: “Customize your background with something that fits you. Use a large image or a tasteful pattern. Check out Themeleon or Pixelgirl Presents for ideas.” Also on his list: staying positive. “Big brands typically emphasize positive things and never go on a stream of consciousness rant. When necessary, present thoughtful criticism but keep it professional.”
WTF? Twitter Abbreviations
OMG! Over 40 Twitter Abbreviations You Should Know by Social Media Today
If you’ve spend any time on Twitter you know what an RT is, and you’ve perhaps responded to an amusing one with LOL or even LMAO, but are you familiar with MT, OH, OMW, SMH and HtH? If not, check out this big list of Twitter abbreviations from Tammy Kahn Fennell.
Top Twitter Abbreviations You Need to Know by Social Media Today
Want even more Twitter shorthand? Bliss Hanlin provides a list of about 140 (how appropriate) examples of Twitter shorthand ranging from the obscure (CX = correction) to the borrowed-from-the-military (SNAFU, FUBAR) to common hastags (#FF for follow Friday).
Tips for Twitter Brand Pages
4 Ways to Leverage Twitter’s New Brand Pages by iMedia Connection
David Clarke explains four ways that businesses can capitalize on Twitter brand pages, including enhanced customization, “turning Twitter into a more sustainable channel of its own. It’s easier to promote hashtags, Twitter chats and special promotions specific to the brand.”
New Twitter Brand Pages – Guideline and Examples by DreamGrow Social Media
Mart Prööm explains half a dozen things companies can do with Twitter brand pages, such as using calls to action and promoting limited time offers, and includes 12 examples of famous brand pages including Disney Pixar, Audi, Pepsi and Red Bull.
4 smart tactics for brands on Twitter by iMedia Connection
Jon Elvekrog details “four concrete strategies to use social advertising to deepen your brand impact on Twitter” for brands, among them getting your content “in front of connected fans. These Twitter users are active sharers — spreading ideas, offers, and messages among their own followers and people aligned with their interest graph. If you get your paid campaign in front of influencers, they’ll spread your messages for you — and bring them to many more people than you originally targeted.”
17 Examples of Twitter Brand Page Backgrounds to Inspire You by HubSpot
Noting that “first impressions matter. So if you’re trying to build a remarkable social media presence, you can bet that the look and feel of your brand pages in social media will make an impression on new visitors who know nothing or little about you,” Pamela Vaughan showcases examples of brand pages that visually capture the reader’s attention including Spotify, Target and Zipcar.
General Twitter Guides, Tips & Tactics
How To Build Your Professional Twitter Brand by Heidi Cohen
According to research cited by Heidi Cohen, “the most positively received tweets are asking your followers questions, sharing useful information, and letting people know you’ve just created new content…By contrast, the least liked tweets are those that let the world know what you’re doing and broad greetings with no added information.” Among her top 10 tips for building your Twitter brand: dress your Twitter profile for success, offer meaty Twitter content, and give digital shoutouts to colleagues and others.
How To Optimize Twitter: Be Real, Profiles, RT, Hashtags & More by Search Engine Watch
Noting that’s it’s getting tougher to stand out on Twitter now than it was in the less-crowded early days of the platform, Lisa Buyer provides several tips for brands and individuals, such as “keeping it real” (showing personality as well as business content), optimizing your profile (with specific best practices), and using hashtags carefully.
Rocking the A to Z of Twitter and Tweets by Resume Bear
***** 5 STARS
Shirley Williams creatively offers 26 Twitter tips alphabetically, from A (“Audience – Followers that connect with you because they believe you do interesting things and/or have interesting things to say”) to Z (“Zed Carpet – …Listerious is a great site to get acquainted with the Who’s who of Twitter by all kinds of categories”).
Secrets of Becoming a Pro B2B Tweeter by Social Media Today
Do you wonder how your Twitter presence looks to others? Kevin Jorgensen recommends using TwitCleaner (a recommendation I strongly endorse) to check your own Twitter profile for sins like excessively retweeting, too many links, too much self-promotion, too much use of automation and other sins. Then he provides several tips for improvement such as participating in Tweet chats and actually conversing with people.
The Top 10 Reasons You Need to Use Twitter Lists Now by Bad Redhead Media
Rachel Thompson offers 10 reasons for using Twitter lists, such as that you can use them to categorize up to 10,000 followers, they can help increase your Klout score, and “Lists are a perfect way to attract followers to your stream. People are flattered you’ve added them to a list. It means you care enough to take that extra step (which takes seconds). It’s like you invited them to an exclusive party.”
Tailoring Twitter: The ROI of Curating Content on Twitter by Successful Blog
Liz Strauss explains the benefits of curating content on Twitter and how to do it well, closing with “The ROI of curating content on twitter is the influence gained from incrementally staying in sync with the tools and the culture while still listening.”
6 Data-Backed Tips for Getting More Retweets [Research] by HubSpot
Wondering what type of information, timing or tactics will garner the most retweets? Dan Zarella shares half a dozen research-based tips for maximizing pass-along on Twitter, including “Say Something New. When I compared the ‘commonness’ of certain words in retweets versus the ‘commonness’ of words contained in a random sampling of non-retweeted tweets, I found that retweets tend to contain much rarer words. People don’t want to retweet the same things that everyone else is saying, they want their tweets to stand out!”
Twitter Tool Reviews
4 Twitter Analytics Tools For Your Business by Social Fresh
Amy Moczynski provides helpful, detailed reviews of four tools for Twitter analytics: SocialBro (which she calls “the most comprehensive tool for analyzing Twitter data that I’ve found…after entering your Twitter log in information, prepare for your mind to be blown”), TweetStats, TwentyFeet and PostPost.
Want Guest Post Links? Find Them Via Twitter [TOOL] by The Daily SEO Blog
If you’re ready to get your geek on, this post from Ethan Lyon presents a tool and instructions for finding blog guest posting opportunities via Twitter. The tool pulls an RSS feed into “Google Docs, finds all of the t.co URLs, enlarges them, eliminates duplicates based on domain, and presents them in a nice package.” For the slightly less ambitious or technical, try Blogger LinkUp.
The Top 20 Twitter Clients being Used in 2012 by WindMill Networking
Neal Schaffer serves up brief reviews of the top tools for tweeting. Not surprisingly, HootSuite, Tweetdeck, and Twitter itself top the list. I would have expected Buffer to show up a bit higher than #13, though as Neal notes, it’s not strictly speaking a Twitter client but rather “a perfect complement to help you schedule your posting on Twitter.”
12 Most Clever Twitter Tools by 12 Most
The ebullient Peg Fitzpatrick reviews a dozen top Twitter tools for various functions, including Tweepi for cleaning up your Twitter following with following/unfollowing help, Formulists for organizing and managing your community through smart Twitter lists, and Twitalyzer for analyzing the Twitter influence of anyone on Twitter.
5 Best Analytics Tools for Twitter Search by DreamGrow Social Media
Tom Chu offers brief reviews of five Twitter analytics tools including The Archivist (“This tool works in just the way it sounds. You download the desktop app and it archives search results for you to go through later. The search will find as many results as possible, and then you poll those results without you having to monitor it”), Twitter Counter and What The Hashtag.
A Silver Lining In This Cloud by THINKing
Harry Hoover recommends using SocialBro to create word clouds revealing the terms that your friends and followers tweet about most frequently. “You might discover new topics with which to engage your friends and followers. Further, you can drill down by tags to find out specifically which friends or followers are talking about that word.” You can also use TweetCloud to see which terms you use most often.
More Twitter Tools
Per the website, Itweetlive’s “Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) search engine uses advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) and clustering tools to gather similar status updates, provide response suggestions based on real-time Twitter analytics, and measure engagement levels. In this way, we build a smart conversational tree that actually suggests the best statistical responses for status updates received in the future.” Basically, it lets you use statistical rules to talk “personally” to many people at once. Interesting concept.
A slick little low-cost tool that enables you to store up to 25 different search phrases for Twitter, identify potential followers / people to follow based on those searches, manage your follow/unfollow activity, and direct message any or all followers (up to Twitter’s daily limits).
A free or low-cost Twitter management tool that provides Twitter use statistics, weekly email digests, scheduled tweeting, conversation tracking, sorting of friends and followers, and an activity feed. Paid versions add features like bit.ly integration and the ability to manage up to 60 Twitter accounts.
The original hashtag wiki. Search for any phrase and see a collection of hashtags associated with it.
One Final Twitter Stat
Social Media Infographics & Stats
Andres Silvaa shares an infographic from Klout which shows the expected half-life of a tweet based on the tweeter’s Klout score. For users with Klout scores under 40, activity tends to die off after 25 minutes and a handful of retweets, while those with scores of 75 and above can expect hundreds of retweets over three to six hours.
The Top #Nifty50 Women in Technology on Twitter for 2012
Monday, September 10th, 2012A year ago, the #Nifty50 honored 50 remarkable men and women on Twitter. This year, colleague Cheryl Burgess and I changed things up a bit, opening the award to nominations but focusing specifically on outstanding men and women who work for technology companies and are active on social media.
These women are executives, thought leaders, bloggers, authors and role models for younger women with an interest in technology. Not only leaders in their professional lives, nearly all these women use their social profiles to express their passions outside the workplace, which range from NASCAR, art, travel, billiards, wine and music to community service, politics and, of course, family.
Among the women profiled below, Emily Gonzales notes that “women in tech are doing really cool things,” while Padmasree Warrior is “passionate about helping women in tech.” True, and important, which is why this year’s #Nifty50 is focused on the technology field.
We’ve also expanded the focus of the #Nifty50 this year to include an element of social good—the #Nifty50 Kids project. Although the idea captured the imagination and interest of several brand-name organizations, the timeframe was just too tight this year to line up sponsorship. That will be our top focus for next year.
Next year, Cheryl and I tentatively plan to honor #Nifty50 Women and Men Writers, including bloggers, journalists, authors, and PR professionals. As with this year, we will be asking our community to nominate their favorite leaders in this field.
This year, we’re pleased to honor 50 women (below) and 50 men (in an upcoming post on the Blue Focus Marketing Blog) who are among the top social media connectors and engagers in the technology world, representing technology vendors as well as related venture capital (VC), advisory and analyst firms. These are the leaders in the information and communications technology sector who truly “get” social media and social business.
We’re proud to acknowledge these 50 women from 41 different organizations as the top #Nifty50 women of technology on Twitter for 2012.
Stacey Acevero
@sacevero
Stacey is flat-out awesome: Social Media Manager for Vocus/PRWeb as well as serving her country as a U.S. Air Force auxiliary 2nd Lieutenant and Mission Scanner. She’s a self-described “social media nerd” who loves “NASCAR, steak, rock music and XBOX360 .” ‘Nuff said.
Abby Bailey
@AbbyBailey
Based in Minneapolis, Abby is Senior Manager Creative Services at Best Buy, and also Board President at FamilyWise, a non-profit organization that provides programs for families that encourage self-determination, self-sufficiency, and healthy family lifestyles.
Cindy Bates
@Cindy_Bates
Active across social networks, Cindy leads Microsoft’s small- to midsized-business sales and marketing efforts as Vice President U.S. SMB and Distribution. The 10-year Microsoft veteran is also a graduate of Harvard Business School.
Susan Beebe
@susanbeebe
Austin, Texas-based Susan Beebe works in Corporate Communications – Social Media Management at Dell. Calling herself Dell’s “first listener,” Susan also welcomes the opportunity to “learn from others and develop things; including new projects, especially those that improve the world and deliver on the promise of ‘social good.’”
Valerie Bianco
@valeriemichelle
Now a Business Information Analyst at The Mint Partnership, Valerie has an extensive background in the architecture and engineering industry. She currently lives in Newport Beach (been there), once worked for a pizza company (done that) and is a graduate of San Diego State University (love that town).
Meghan Biro
@MeghanMBiro
As the CEO and Founder at TalentCulture Consulting Group, Meghan connects talent with technology companies as well as being an accomplished speaker and author. She also hosts the talent chat (#TChat) on Twitter Wednesdays from 7-8pm eastern time.
Linda Boff
@lindaboff
New York-based Linda Boff, Executive Director Global Digital Marketing at GE, is “passionate about all things digital, specifically new digital media and concepts that fuse design and technology.” She was named B2B Magazine’s 2012 Digital Marketer of Year.
Liz Bonilla
@LizatDell
Senior Manager Social Media and Community at Dell, Liz is a strategic marketing professional with over 10 years of proven success who lives in Austin, Texas. And congrats on being a new mom!
Liz Brenner
@lizbrenner
Living, working and tweeting out of West Chester, Pennsylvania, Liz is Senior Director, Talent Marketing at SAP. Her background includes stints in management consulting and the energy industry. Liz also writes the Lead With Intuition blog.
Sandy Carter
@sandy_carter
As the Vice President of Social Business and Collaboration Solutions Sales and Evangelism at IBM, Sandy Carter plays an integral role in driving the company’s Social Business initiative. Sandy is an active thought leader in helping businesses transition into an era of social business, as well as the award-winning author of two best-selling books: The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0
Blair Christie
@BlairChristie
Blair is Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Government Affairs at Cisco in Silicon Valley. Her integrated marketing and communications organization is responsible for positioning Cisco’s growth strategy and cultivating opportunities in new and existing markets through market and customer insight, corporate positioning, branding, and advertising.
Beth Comstock
@bethcomstock
Another New Yorker, Beth leads GE’s growth efforts including sales, marketing and communications and innovation platforms. Prior to being named GE’s first Chief Marketing officer in more than 20 years, she held a succession of roles at GE, NBC (including President of Integrated Media at NBC Universal), CBS and Turner Broadcasting.
Carrie Corbin
@thealphafemme
Carrie Corbin leads the employment brand initiatives, recruitment marketing & media strategy as Associate Director – Strategic Staffing & Talent Attraction at AT&T. Carrie played a key role in launching the enterprise-wide integration of social & mobile recruiting, breaking some of the traditional boundaries of HR in the process. She has been named one of the top people to follow in Social Media Recruiting, and has been quoted in publications such as The New York Post & Workforce Today. Carrie is also active in community work, including work with tornado relief and local sports charities.
Colette Cote
@ColetteCote
From Darien, Connecticut, Collete leads Corporate External Communications at Pitney Bowes Inc. as well as serving on the Board of Directors at Person-to-Person, Inc. Her varied background includes corporate roles (B2B and B2C), agencies, non-profits and startups. She’s a rock star on Twitter and also speaks French.
Lisa Cramer
@LisaJCramer
Lisa Cramer is President & Co-Founder of LeadLife Solutions in Atlanta, a provider of on-demand lead management software that generates, scores and nurtures leads for B2B marketers. LeadLife is designed to increase qualified leads while shortening sales cycles and decreasing the cost of sales. Lisa also recently authored a guest post here on web analytics and lead scoring.
Elyse DeVries
@Elyse_D
Chicago-based technology marketer Elyse DeVries most recently worked as Marketing Manager, Demand Generation at The SAVO Group, and prior to that did stints as Marketing Manager, Social Media at Alterian (owner of the former Techrigy SM2 social media monitoring product) and Marketing Specialist, ERP USA at Comarch. And she’s amazing.
April Dunford
@aprildunford
Based in Toronto, April is currently Vice President Marketing, Enterprise Products at telecom services provider Huawei. She previously worked in marketing roles at Nortel, DataMirror Corporation and IBM. A marketer who’s an engineer by training (I can relate to that), April has a broad range of marketing experience that encompasses messaging, media relations, lead generation, email marketing, content marketing, social media, analyst relations and sales enablement.
Ale Espinosa
@aespinosa
A graduate of the University of Puerto Rico, Ale now lives in Los Angeles and works as Senior. Director, Marketing, Communications & PR at EndPlay, Inc. EndPlay is a leading provider of SaaS content management, engagement and monetization solutions delivered in the cloud. Ale is, in her words, a wine & art enthusiast at night, beach girl over the weekends, and music-lover every single second.
Laura Fitton
@Pistachio
Boston’s amazing Laura Fitton is an inbound marketing evangelist for HubSpot, founder of @oneforty, and co-author of the best-selling Twitter For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
Deb Frey
@DaVinciDeb
Deb is Vice President of the DaVinci Institute, a non-profit organization near Denver, Colorado, responsible for Member Relations, event planning and marketing director for the DaVinci Institute. She teaches one-on-one classes to small businesses on Twitter, and when she has “a few extra moments,” serves as a contributing editor to the Impact Lab, a DaVinci Institute blog billed as “a laboratory of the future human experience.”
Jeanette Gibson
@JeanetteG
Jeanette leads the Social & Digital Marketing team at Cisco. Our group is responsible for setting the strategy for the company’s global digital brand presence on cisco.com, social web sites and mobile. Before joining Cisco in 1998, Jeanette helped launch push-technology pioneer PointCast, and worked at public relations agency Copithorne & Bellows.
Emily Gonzales
@EmilysHere
Emily is Chief Technology Officer at Bookigee, an early-stage startup that builds online analytics and marketing applications for the Book Publishing Industry, in Miami. Her Twitter profile notes that “women in tech are doing really cool things” (which is why Cheryl and I chose to honor 50 of the top women in technology on Twitter here).
Christine Herron
@christine
Christine Herron is a Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur. She is currently a Director with Intel Capital and a Venture Advisor at 500 Startups. Previously, Christine was a Principal with First Round Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, where she worked with companies such as BillFloat, Double Verify, Get Satisfaction, Mint, and Xobni.
Alex Hisaka
@alexhisaka
San Francisco-based Alex Hisaka is Growth Builder at Desk.com, part of the Salesforce.com family. She gains valuable insight about your audience through Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and social media marketing. She also rocks on Twitter and shares her thoughts on The Fresh and Only.
Ilene Kaminsky
@ilenealizah
Ilene is a “content creationist” whose background includes stints as Director of Marketing and Director of Strategic Development at IBM, Alliance Director at eGain Communications, and Managing Director at Lumina Consulting. She also writes the Techronicity blog.
Katie Keating
@ThingsSheSaid
Based in Los Angeles, Katie is the social business manager for IBM Cloud Computing, which involves running the @IBMCloud Twitter handle and other social media venues for IBM Cloud, as well as overseeing a global team of IBM cloud community managers. Before joining IBM she worked with Fleishman-Hillard and the Dallas Museum of Art.
Margaret A. Kelliher
@MAKMinnesota
Margaret serves as president and CEO of The Minnesota High Tech Foundation, which provides leadership on science, technology, engineering and match (STEM) education in Minnesota and works with high-tech businesses in the state on talent pipeline issues. She’s also a former speaker of Minnesota state house of representatives and a Harvard grad.
Katrina Klier
@KatrinaKlier
New York-based Katrina is the Senior Director / VP Worldwide Digital Marketing for Microsoft. In her role as Chief Digital Officer for the OEM division, she leads the digital brand and marketing functions worldwide, and has delivered strategy, plans and results for partner, B2B and B2C marketing. She’s a self-described fashionista and blogger.
Lisa Larter
@LisaLarter
Splitting time between Ottawa, Canada and Naples, Florida, Lisa is owner of Parlez Wireless as well as a sought-after social media strategist and speaker. Lisa was raised by a single mom in the small town of Haliburton, Ontario, Canada. Though a high school dropout, she became a self-taught sales guru and worked her way up the corporate ladder in sales for a Fortune 500 company before starting her own company.
Ann Lewnes
@alewnes
As senior vice president of global marketing at Adobe in the San Francsico Bay area, Ann Lewnes is responsible for the company’s brand and integrated marketing efforts worldwide. Before joining Adobe in 2006, Ann was vice president of sales and marketing at Intel Corporation. In 2010, she was honored with a “Changing The Game” Award by the Advertising Women of New York (AWNY) and in 2011 Ann was named a “Woman of Influence” by the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
Monica Liming-Hu
@MonicaLimingHu
With her background in International Management and Marketing at AT&T, Monica Liming-Hu has been a stalwart of the marketing world for the better part of the past two decades. More recently, she has focused a great deal of her attention on sustainability, whether in business or the environment—or both. Monica gives the credit for this shift toward developing a strong corporate conscience to her two daughters and their encouragement to “go green.” Outside of the active realm of social marketing, Monica writes fiction under two separate pen names, and often frequents writer’s conferences and workshops. Her thoughts on writing and the creative process can be found on her blog Positive Reverie.
Marissa Mayer
@marissamayer
Marissa Mayer has come a long way from her childhood home in Wausau, Wisconsin. A Stanford grad with two degrees in computer science, Marissa is known for long tenure at Google, where she was the company’s first female engineer and later served in different VP roles. She was recently named CEO of Yahoo!, making her the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company and one of just 20 female CEOs in that group. She’s actually the second woman from Wisconsin to lead Yahoo! as Carol Bartz was also a cheesehead. And Marissa announced in July that she is going to be a mom—congrats!
Kelly Meade
@KellyMMeade
Kelly is a Public Cloud Solutions Rep at IBM in Dallas, responsible for IBM Cloud Services and Offerings in the Eastern U.S. Originally from Iowa, Kelly’s loves include her family, traveling and reality TV. You can check out her video profile on the IBM site here.
Erin Mulligan Nelson
@erinclaire
Erin is the Chief Marketing Officer for Bazaarvoice, a brand engagement and social data integration platform, in Austin, Texas. Before joining Bazaarvoice in November 2010, Erin served as Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Dell Inc. Her background also includes positions with Procter & Gamble, A.T. Kearney and PepsiCo.
Ory Okolloh
@kenyanpundit
Ory is Policy Manager Africa for Google in Nairobi, and co-founder of Mzalendo/Ushahidi. Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, is building a platform that crowdsources crisis information, allowing anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form. She’s former editor of Global Voices and a graduate of Harvard Law School.
Paige ONeill
@paige_oneill
Based in the San Francisco area, Paige is Vice President of Marketing at Aprimo, a fast-growing Saas marketing automation software company acquired by Teradata in January of 2011. Her responsibilities include communications, demand generation, web/seo/ppc, events, customer marketing and social media. She also blogs at Social Media Paige.
Lee Anne Orange
@LeeAnne_Orange
Lee Anne has served as Special Projects Manager at AMT-The Association For Manufacturing Technology, in Washington DC, since 1999. For a year prior to that, in her own words, she “bounced around the association for a while. Started in Statistics Department and moved to Administration (HR) for 5 years. Then I was recruited to work in the Exhibitions Department. Been there ever since.”
Maria Pergolino
@InboundMarketer
Senior Director of Marketing at marketing automation software provider Marketo, Maria writes for several marketing blogs, and is a frequent contributor to Marketo’s award winning blog, Modern B2B Marketing. She’s a frequent presenter at industry conferences, author of guides to B2B social media and lead scoring, and a past judge of the Stevie, BMA B2 and B2BTOTY awards.
Janine Popick
@janinepopick
Janine is founder and CEO of VerticalResponse, a leading provider of email marketing, social media marketing & event marketing for small businesses based in the San Francisco area, and writes the popular email marketing blog. Before starting VerticalResponse in 2001, Janine worked with NBC Internet, XOOM.com and FileMaker.
Maria Poveromo
@mariapoveromo
Maria leads Adobe’s Global Marketing Social Media program and Center of Excellence. She established the organizational framework and strategic direction for social media activities across the company. With her team, Maria directs a cross-functional social media council to foster knowledge sharing across different groups. She’s passionate about her family, balancing work and home life and advancing the role of women the technology industry.
Kishau Rogers
@kishau
A technology innovator and engaging Twitterer based in Richmond, Virginia, Kishau Rogers the founder and President of Websmith Group, a company that provides web based software systems for healthcare and research organizations. She holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, and her expertise includes software and database development, data analysis and computer modeling/simulation technology.
Kathy Sacks
@kathysacks
As VP Communications at Infusionsoft in Phoenix, Kathy leads a team dedicated to spread awareness of the company’s next-generation email marketing software. She is is responsible for defining and managing Infusionsoft’s communications strategies, including planning and execution, public affairs and media relations. She’s also the founding editor of bizSanDiego Magazine and ran her own PR firm from 2005 to 2008.
Gina Trapani
@ginatrapani
San Diego-based Gina is the creator of ThinkUp, a social media insights engine, and Todo.txt apps, a text-based task manager. She hosts In Beta, a podcast about open source, web-based, mobile and social apps, and This Week in Google, a web show which covers the latest news about the cloud and Google. She’s also the founder of Lifehacker and author of four tech books, and blogs at Smarterware.
Ellen Valentine
@EllenValentine
Ellen is Evangelist at digital marketing software developer Silverpop in Atlanta, where she writes and speaks about marketing including marketing automation and email marketing. She holds a computer science degree from Penn State University and her background includes positions with Evergreen Direct Marketing, Applied Software and CIO Partners of Atlanta.
Czarina Walker
@CzarinaWalker
Czarina is Founder and CEO at InfiniEDGE Software in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a custom software developer of mobile apps and provider of UI design services and web development services for industry and government clients. Before founding InfiniEDGE, she served on the board of the Ascension Chamber of Commerce and worked with IBM and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
Angelina Ward
@angelinaward
Angelina is Director of Social Media and Content for LexisNexis in Atlanta. Her duties include establishing a social media framework and standards for revising company guidelines and policy, creating and lead training workshops for internal employees on strategic social media communications, and overseeing day-to-day operations of social media communications including LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and YouTube.
Padmasree Warrior
@Padmasree
As Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at Cisco, Padmasree helps define the company’s technology strategy and works closely with the senior executive team and Board of Directors to drive innovation across the company. She has more than a million followers on Twitter and as her bio notes, she is “passionate about helping women in tech.” Unquestionably nifty.
Courtney Wiley
@wileyccoyote
Courtney is Director of Digital Marketing Strategy & Innovation at Oracle in Dallas. Her thought-leadership writing has been published in places like ChiefMarketer.com, MarketingProfs.com, IEEE.org, iMediaConnection.com, and eBizQ.com, and she speaks at national conferences. Courtney is also an SMU grad and mom of a Junior Olympian.
Bryony Zasman
@ZOOMcatalog_Bry
Bryony is co-founder and Vice President at ZOOMcatalog, a provider of B2B cloud catalog management and distribution for print catalog dependent industries, based in Denver. She holds a marketing degree from the University of Colorado.
Merryl Zdatny
@Zdatny
Merryl is the Senior Product Marketing Manager, Identity Solutions at Verizon Enterprise Solutions Group in New York. The objective of this group is to “give the right people access to the right information – where and when they need it.” Prior to Verizon, she worked in marketing roles at technology and art-related enterprises. She describes her educational background as “Marketing, Art History, Billiards at The University of Texas at Austin.” Interesting mix, but the degree in billiards is particularly impressive.
There you have it, the #Nifty50 Women of Twitter for 2012. As with last year, to keep it to 50, we had to leave off some deserving names and excellent nominations—it was a tough call. But next year will have a different focus and some of those names will no doubt resurface.
Watch next month for the top #Nifty50 Men in Technology on Twitter for 2012 on the Blue Focus Marketing Blog.
What Could Kill Google and Facebook
Wednesday, July 18th, 2012Imagine that you walk into a restaurant and there’s no one there to take your order. You can’t even find anyone working in the place. Or you are waited on and place your order, but have to repeat it to three different people, because the servers won’t talk to each other. Or you’re told shortly after placing your order that you’ll need to choose a different item, because the menu has changed in the last five minutes. Twice.
You’d probably rip the place on every review site you can think of and then never return to that establishment. Yet we tolerate exactly that type of behavior from leading search and social media sites every day, and even reward them with growing traffic and more of our precious time. Why?
A potential Google killer, Facebook killer or even Twitter killer may not do it with superior technology, but simply with a better user experience.
One of the biggest complaints about Facebook is of course its constantly changing interface, and its convoluted privacy settings have also repeatedly come under fire (as have changes to its privacy settings). The constant changes are a problem for brands not only due to the expense of keeping up to date, but also because the newest (Timeline) layout has reduced tab engagement.But the most appalling shortcoming of the world’s most popular social network may be how un-social it is.
Granted, even with its never-ending UI changes, Facebook is easy enough to use even for technophobic grandmas. But imagine that you did have a question, or something wasn’t working quite right, and you wanted to contact Facebook for assistance. Try this: go to Facebook and see how long it takes you to find any way to contact the company: phone number, email address, even a fax number. I’ll wait. Let us know in the comments below how long it took.
Given these issues, it’s little wonder that Facebook has the lowest user satisfaction rating of all the major social media sites. And Facebook’s size may be no defense against ultimate demise; it wasn’t all that long ago the MySpace was the largest social network, and the experience of social news site Digg—once valued at $100 million but sold recently for just 5% of that—is a cautionary tale.
Google not only accounts for 85% of all web searches but controls an astounding 44% of the global online advertising market. It’s the 800-pound gorilla of the web, and acts like it with increasing frequency.
The search giant has annoyed everyday users with moves like dropping popular tools (Picnik, Knol, Gears) and presenting search challenges when it sees an “excessive” volume of searches from a single IP address (yes, this was designed to thwart automated rank-checking tools—though it isn’t clear why those are a problem—but can be triggered by a much lower volume of searches; my daughter has had these thrown up while doing research for high school English papers).
Google has thumbed its nose at businesses, advertisers and SEO professionals as well through a series of recent moves like hiding a significant share of keyword data in the “not provided” category within Google Analytics, eliminating the Website Optimizer tool in AdWords, and the recent Panda and Penguin algorithm updates, which were designed to eliminate webspam but caught a lot of innocent sites in their wake.
The leading micro-blogging tool isn’t as friendly to other web services as its cute little bluebird icon would make it appear. Last year it stopped sharing tweet data with Google (bad for the SEO results of Twitter users) and more recently the company eliminated the ability to automatically share tweets on LinkedIn. And after six years, the platform still doesn’t offer simple and obvious functions like the ability to download one’s followers and tweet history.
These web giants are assuming we’re so addicted to their services that we won’t quit or go elsewhere, no matter what they do, change, or eliminate. But the next Google killer or Facebook killer may very well not be a better search engine or social network, but simply one that treats its users with respect. And listens.
