How Companies Respond to Social Media

A really on point post from Dave Fleet. These are the five ways in which companies typically respond to social media.

http://davefleet.com/2009/06/five-levels-social-media-responses/

B2B Marketing

Forrester and MarketingProfs conducted a survey of B2B marketers to see what’s working and where they were spending money during the economic downturn. The report itself costs $279, but they disclosed some of the findings in this press release.

Key findings in the report include:
• 47% of B2B marketers plan to increase spending on company websites and search marketing this year.
• 42% plan on increasing expenditures on podcasting or online video.
• 36% will increase their budgets for discussion forums, social networks and communities.
• 31% say they will actually decrease their budget for online display ads.

Twitter Research

Some really great data in here from Harvard about behavior patterns and Twitter.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/06/new_twitter_research_men_follo.html

Campbell's and Hunger

This is a really good case study about how to incorporate social networking into a philanthropic effort. Campbell's has launched the Help Hunger Disappear campaign in Canada and associated with that campaign is a Web site that incorporates social networking technologies.

http://www.helphungerdisappear.com/index.html

Comcast and Customer Service

One of the questions we are going to continue to encounter as we engage clients on social media is ROI. How do we demonstrate that the money we put into it didn't just go down the drain? Customer satisfaction is certainly one appropriate metric to consider, and in this case with Comcast, their Twitter efforts directly contributed to an improved customer satisfaction score.

HOWS THAT FOR ROI?

The Future of Twitter

I thought this was an interesting interview with one of the founders of Twitter on how the company plans to make money going forward. One of the most commonly held beliefs is that Twitter will begin selling ads like other popular social networks have. After reading his statements that sure doesn't seem to be the case here.

Reputation Risk and Social Media

There are some really fascinating stats in here about how employers and employees view social
networks. The study found that 60% of business executives feel that they have a right to monitor what their employees are saying through social networks, while 53% of employees disagreed.

http://www.csrwire.com/press/press_release/26972-Deloitte-s-2009-Ethics-Workplace-Survey-Examines-the-Reputation-Risk-Implications-of-Social-Networks