There’s a certain term in the social media lexicon that I really don’t like. It’s not the meaning or even the use that I have an issue with. It’s the way it’s used. Overused. Thrown around. Thrown in when one is coming up dry. This word works as a shield for many folks in our industry – “Hey, what I do has value to you. Here’s an acronym we can use when I am trying to convince you of this, and the important-sounding-ness of it will put both of us at ease.” That term is ROI.

Alas, when talking about any investment, the return on that very investment is obviously something worth talking about. In fact, it’s the whole point, isn’t it? But sometimes the term ROI gets thrown around when you aren’t really talking about that. ROI at its core is about financial return, not “buzz” or “sentiment” or “engagement.” Of course, I would argue that those things can and do have real impact on the bottom line – often, a greater impact than other approaches. But while it’s valuable to measure metrics like audience growth and community engagement, that’s not really ROI. When you say ROI, you should be talking about numbers – numbers of dollars.

The good news is that as social media is becoming less of a trend and more of an expected component of a marketing plan, folks are studying the dollar value of marketing on social networks. For example, there’s a new report out: The Value Of A Facebook Fan. And as GigaOM puts it, “The key findings of the report are likely to come as music to the ears of advertisers that have been pursuing a Facebook-based social media strategy.” That’s because Syncapse, a social media measurement firm, found that each Facebook fan has a dollar value – $136.38 on average.

They came up with this number by surveying Facebook fans of 20 of the top brands on Facebook. Starbucks was one of them. At over 24 million Facebook fans, their Facebook community is worth $3.2 billion (at least according Syncapse’s conclusions). What does this really mean? Well, fans spend an extra $71.84 on average compared to those who are not fans. They are also 28 percent more likely than non-fans to continue using a specific brand, and 41 percent more likely to recommend a product they are a fan of to their friends. Now, that is some REAL return on investment.

Of course, you can’t just create a Facebook page and watch the Benjamins roll in. Syncapse is careful to point out that all comes down to how active the fans are. The top brands Syncapse studied are all excellent examples of pages that drive meaningful activity. They also use Facebook to foster customer satisfaction and loyalty – a key component to marketing ROI online and off. Still, the facts remain that there is real, measurable value to social media marketing. When you have that, there’s no need to put an acronym on a pedestal – the numbers speak for themselves.

What’s happening? This is what Twitter asks you every time you go to post a new update. Often what’s happening is that I’ve found an awesome picture on the internet or I need to inform the world that I just ate a delicious Five Guys cheeseburger. Sometimes though, what is happening is also happening to a number of other people around you. You’re at the Woman’s World Cup championship, or in the middle of a nationwide protest, or just watched the final space shuttle launch. It’s becoming more and more obvious as Twitter’s ubiquity grows that there is content being created that is worth finding, archiving and organizing in to stories. Enter: Storify.

Storify is, according to their blog, “a company building tools to help journalists, bloggers and experts curate the real-time Web.” You log in a click “Create Story.” You’re presented with a two column web app that lets you search Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Google and other places for content. The content that comes up can be dragged into the second column and ordered into a flowing story of tweets, updates and pictures. It’s awesome. It’s been used to track the protests in Egypt, showing updates from real people, reporters and commentators as things progressed. Here is one of the Joplin tornado, following updates as they tornatdo touched down, as it was going through the city and finally as people started reacting.

Storify has personal uses as well. Last weekend was my friends’ wedding and I used Storify to collect tweets and pictures from the days leading up to the wedding and then the wedding itself. It’s a fun archive for the bride and groom of what friends were saying that day. You could even having a running Storify of your favorite tweets about a particular subject or that you think are funny. The possibilities are almost endless. Storify is the perfect example of how big an impact social media is having on how we communicate, both about our lives and about what’s happening in the world around us.  Are the two even that different anymore? Or is it all one flow of news, data and vicarious experiences that are forming our global culture? #deepthoughts

Last night, I watched the very last episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show. As a life-long Oprah devotee, I felt like I was losing my best friend. I am not ashamed to admit that I sobbed to my bewildered husband as she left the stage a final time: “I’m just going to miss her so much!”

Of course, while her talk show will be gone, Oprah will not be far from us. In fact, I think she might be closer to us than ever before. Throughout her show’s 25th season, Oprah’s team has been leveraging the web to engage her devoted fans on a new level.

What’s notable isn’t that Oprah uses Twitter or Facebook – that’s par for the course these days. It’s the #OprahLiveTweets where she @replies regular fans talking about her shows on OWN, her new network. It’s the TwitVids from her home office, reading glasses and all, to prove, yes, it really is her tweeting. It’s the YouTube videos she creates, sometimes while on the treadmill, answering fans’ questions. And it’s the fact that she spent much of her last show talking back to viewers who had used social networks to reach out to her. Oprah’s understanding of the potential and power of social media engagement shows exactly why she is one of our culture’s most seminal figures.

Whether or not you’re an Oprah groupie like me, you can’t deny that she has transformed the medium of television and it’s influence over the past 25 years. But beyond the show, Oprah continues to be an innovator. Whether it’s TV, a magazine or the web, Oprah finds new ways to connect with more authenticity and relevance.

In her final show, Oprah said, “Your real job in life is to figure out what your calling is and get about the business of doing it.” It’s clear that Oprah’s taken whatever means necessary to get about her business – inspiring her followers. Are you?

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the 3rd Annual Digital Night, hosted by the American Advertising Federation of Baltimore. As a Digital Marketing Manager, it was obviously important that I was there to be part of the discussion of where digital marketing was headed in 2011.

Things in the digital marketing sphere have changed drastically over the past year. In 2010, organizations were struggling with the placement of social. Where would it live? Who would control it? Do you do it in-house? Hire a boutique agency or a large one? But over the past year, people have moved past the beginning stages of social and now are asking, “What now?”

This year will bring more specific questions than “how to.” As this form of advertising becomes more and more legitimate, there is going to be a stricter level of accountability on brands, companies, and agencies alike.

ROI & Metrics

Have we beat this one over your head enough? Metrics will become more and more important, and not just the number of fans and followers or the amount of site traffic garnered to your site. Think bigger picture – maybe how having a social media community in place can save you some dollars on a PR budget, or how your cost per lead has decreased since adopting word of mouth marketing tactics.

Consistency

Companies will start to focus on making their branding extend across multiple channels. With that taking place, we must focus on providing a consistent message or brand across those channels. Sure, the tone might be different from one platform to the next, but at the end of the day, each must feed back into the identity of the brand.

Experiences and Interactivity

Static ads or messages won’t cut it anymore. We have to involve the consumers in our ad messages. We are already attempting this on social networks by making our audiences part of the conversation, but 2011 will require marketers to step up their game. We’ve got to make the actual ad an experience. Think Tippex.

E-Commerce on Social

Facebook has become the hub for consumers everywhere. We all know that their ad network is great, and that if you break away from the norm, it can be a place for brands to live and interact with their consumers. But lately, we’ve seen actual purchases on Facebook. Marketers are beginning to understand that people are comfortable on the Facebook platform, and will bring online merchandise to them in that sphere.

What do you think? Are these the future of online? Where do you think digital marketing is going in 2011?

This morning at 8:56:28 EST the space shuttle Endeavor lifted off from Kennedy Space Center for the last time. I’m a self-professed space nerd, so this was essentially my Super Bowl. I did not, however, flip the television on to the news. Why not? Because this is 2011, why watch a bunch of jokers ramble about something they don’t understand? I’ll take my space news with a side of expertise please. Luckily, NASA also knows it’s 2011.

The first thing I did was open Twitter to follow the “pre-game” while I was getting ready for work. NASA has an amazing twitter presence. They live tweeted the whole launch procedure through their main account. They use hashtags and re-tweet others who were watching the launch. They kept up with questions people had about the launch procedure. Many of the astronauts on Endeavor’s crew have accounts and posted pictures of them getting ready. Col. Mike Fincke was tweeting pictures of himself getting suited up and eating his last meal (lobster tail!) before having to eat paste for two weeks. He’s also pretty funny. NASA are some of the best tweeters you’ll see anywhere and their million+ follower count backs that up.

Oh wait, the launch is supposed to happen right in the middle of my commute! What ever should I do? Fire up the the NASA iPhone app and start live streaming the launch, of course! I mainly listened to the flight crew and the mission control run through the various procedures, however I set my phone so I could sneak a few peaks when the shuttle finally launched. When I got to work I went to the NASA website to look at pictures and watch the post-launch news conference (don’t tell Jocelyn). All in all, it was a nerd’s dream. Tons of digital content delivered directly to my phone in real time. The craziest part? THEY’RE A GOVERNMENT AGENCY. It somehow doesn’t seem right that they are so hip with social media, but they’re surprising us all by doing it correctly. As a brand, they are providing their target audience with the goods they want. And as a member of that audience, I can say they deliver in spades.

Other brands can learn from NASA by not confining themselves to a stereotype – think outside of the proverbial box! New media tools give you a chance to reach your consumer in ways they will appreciate. So what are you waiting for? Shoot for the moon (pun most definitely intended).

A new Fast Company article reports that the average revenue bump from location-based social media campaigns (Facebook Places, Foursquare) is about 2%.

“Aw drat, guess we should throw in the towel on all that nonsense and start stapling fliers to telephone poles!”

Well not so fast. Foursquare launched in March 2009 and Facebook Places launched in August 2010. These are new services being used by a niche audience. Should we be surprised that deals on Facebook Places aren’t bringing in epic 76% revenue bumps? It’s an unfamiliar form of advertising with a small audience. We should set our expectations accordingly and continue to learn while we still have room to make mistakes.

And like the article says, “there isn’t necessarily anything risky for offering a check-in deal through Foursquare or Facebook,” so why not give it a shot?

I’m an advocate of keeping up on social media news. As a professional in the industry, I take it upon myself to be aware of all the newest toys, most up to date strategy ideas, creatively executed campaigns, etc. But lately, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to find inspiring social media news. The churning wheels have slowed, and it has become official: social media is no longer trendy. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.

Here at Cyphers, we’ve always known to count social media as just another tool in our arsenal of marketing skills (we’ve nearly given sermons on integration). Had all marketers been this realistic, they would have seen that social media would eventually become conventional and commonplace. All you have to do is look at the past, seeing how the ad world has changed. Each new fad or medium spurred creative growth, so why count this one as any different (history repeats itself, right?)?

So here we are, at the crossroads of trendy-meets-routine, and it seems that “everyone is doing it” these days. But just taking part doesn’t mean that you’re doing anything super special. In fact, it seems that the excitement and talk of all the things that social media can bring to a brand has simply boiled down to brands replicating each other on social networks. I’m not blaming brands. In fact, I think it becomes twice as difficult to be creative when you are working in an entirely new space with an entirely new set of rules. It becomes hard to think outside of the box when you’ve barely seen inside it.

But each day, month, quarter, year, brings a deeper look. As marketers, we must challenge ourselves to use social media in ways that aren’t confined to just Twitter and Facebook. Let’s not allow social networks to infringe on our creativity. Let’s take risks and be game changers for our clients. Let’s be those people who competitive brands look at and say, “Damn, let’s do it like them.” Let’s use strategy to bring value to our clients’ consumers in ways that no one has thought of before. Let’s give our clients’ consumers a reason to pay attention. Because, with a little strategy, creativity, and social media knowledge, these things can actually happen.

Do you accept this challenge? Get to it.

I came across this Ted Talk during my morning Internet perusal. It reminded me of how much “social media” has brought up the discussion of how traditional marketing topics apply in the new field. Joanna Blakely thinks about this, too, especially in regards to the discussion surrounding gender and how traditional demographics may not be applicable online. And I think she’s got a point.

Don’t get me wrong – demographics are a key part to our understanding of our consumers. But online has raised questions regarding psychographics, lifestyles, tastes, and preferences. Blakely claims that attributes like those just might outweigh traditional guidelines of who our consumers are. What do you think? Watch the video (it’s only 8 minutes long!) and let us know if you agree.

This is part one of a two-part series on Facebook ads. There was just so much to say about Facebook advertising that we couldn’t fit it all into one post!

We just started another Facebook advertising campaign for one of our clients, and we wanted to share some of the results of the first 10 days:

What do those graphs mean? The first graph shows the number of people that clicked on our ad. The second picture is a spreadsheet of some of the numbers behind the results. At The Cyphers Agency, we are always measuring our results so (1) our clients know that their money is being used effectively and so (2) we can measure our success against benchmarks, and adjust strategy as needed.

If the graph above is somewhat confusing, no worries. Here is an explanation of each term and how it plays into the bigger picture:

Impressions

This simply shows how many times your ad was displayed to the audience you are targeting. In this example, we are targeting a very specific group of people, with only a modest budget, so the impressions are relatively low. Some of our Facebook advertising campaigns see tens of millions of impressions.

Clicks

This shows how many people clicked on your Facebook ad. As you can see in the graph, with under $32 in media costs, we garnered almost 300 clicks to our client’s website! (Debbie Downer Disclaimer: the costs described here are misleading as they don’t reflect all the planning and strategy that came before this ad’s execution)

Click Rate

This shows the percentage of people that saw your ad (impressions) divided by the number of people that clicked on the ad (clicks). This gives you a benchmark to compare to other ads and other campaigns. Although each industry and audience produce different average click rates, we tend to see an average of %0.02 – %0.04 click rate. This might seem low, but when you see how cheap it can be to reach 1,000,000 people in your target audience, those 200-400 clicks can be a huge boon for business. Combine that with several different ads, or with the rest of your campaign, and you’ve got some serious traction. Of course we’d like to take this opportunity to point out our stellar .22% average click rate!

Actions

“Actions” explains how many people interacted with your Facebook ad and decided to “like” whatever you are advertising. These are powerful numbers, because they (1) show affinity for your product/service/brand, and more importantly (2) are people whom with you now have direct communication. Similar to an email list, people that “like” your Facebook page will see your regular status updates. Often “actions” can be just as important as clicks; although sending people to the website (clicks) often drives immediate revenue, “actions” drive customer lifetime value, and help stimulate word of mouth marketing. What would you rather have, 10,000 people to your website or 10,000 people that will each tell 5 people that you are having a sale? Good thing you don’t have to choose, because we can deliver both. With under $32 spent, we’ve garnered over 180 subscribers to our client’s Facebook page! (not to mention the 294 visitors sent to the website!)

Cost Per Click (CPC)

This is a way to bid on the delivery of your Facebook ad. If you choose this option, you pay every time that someone clicks on your ad. When is this method best? When you (1) can’t target your audience or (2) your audience isn’t succinctly defined. This way, you can show your ad to 1,000,000 people, but if only one person clicks on your ad, you only pay for that one click. With Cost Per Thousand (CPM), you would need to pay for each 1,000 people to show your ad to all of those 1,000,000, just to get that one click. We did not use CPC bidding for the campaign in the graphs above, but Facebook still shows us our average CPC, based on what we are paying and how many clicks we have.

Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)

Another way to get your ad in front of an audience is to bid a certain amount to show it to 1,000 people in your target audience. If you’ve narrowed down your audience to those that you know might be interested in your product/service, this can be a great way to leverage your budget. For example, if your audience size is 1,000,000 people, it will be expensive to show your ad to all of them, just to get to the 10,000 people that might be interested in your product/service. However if you use the targeting options (see “strategic targeting” and “tweaking and maintenance” below) you can start out just showing your ad to those 10,000 people. That way, you make sure that they see it, and can even show them multiple ads multiple times. We used CPM bidding in the example above, and it delivered a very good return on investment. When we created the campaign we could have paid for each click (see “CPC” above), which would have cost approximately 50-80 cents per click. But because we chose CPM, our cost per click is approximately 12 cents. This leverages our client’s budget so that we can get maximum exposure and results.

Spent

Simply put, this is the money spent for each day of results. As you can see, we earned this client an average of over 8 clicks for every dollar spent. That’s 8 people sent to the client’s page for every dollar spent, 8 people that interact with the brand, 8 people that are saying “I want to know more.” This is a strong example of how much your budget can work for you if you know how.

Do you remember the off-the-wall Superbowl ad featuring a suave, manly man describing the manliness of Old Spice? (If you don’t, the ad is embedded below.) At that point the advertising campaign was good – witty, memorable, and on-brand. But this week, the campaign evolved into one of the best advertising campaigns we’ve seen in a while.

The now-famous “Old Spice Guy” begun answering questions and comments from users that were submitted via Facebook, YouTube, and other social networks. The videos were hilarious, personal, and on-brand. See an example below. Most importantly, it wasn’t just one or two videos – over the course of two days, the team created over 100 video responses, which ended up generating well over 4 million views (and they are continuing to rise!).

Here are a few facts about the campaign:

According to Google, there have been over 7,000 blog posts written in the past week that contain the words “Old Spice Guy.”

The Old Spice Channel is now the #2 most-viewed sponsor channel on YouTube, with over 61 Million views.

The online campaign strategically responded to influencers online. The Old Spice Guy responded to celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher, Alyssa Milano, and Kevin Rose. But he didn’t forget about the little people either, and made sure to answer plenty of comments from average joes. This made sure that the messaging was authentic and engaging, but also sure to reach millions of people.

Here are some impressions from our team about the campaign:

“The pure volume of videos (183 in two days!) is astounding!” – Lucas

“The consistency of hilarity in the videos is amazing.” – Jocelyn

“The frequency of videos, at times, was mind-boggling – as fast as a video every 5 minutes. When you think about the fact that each video required finding an appropriate comment to respond to, thinking of a response, filming a take (probably several), some quick edits, and uploading the video, this is a very impressive statistic. And they kept it up hour after hour, for two days straight.” – Bailey

“I know it’s subjective, but I honestly want to go buy Old Spice body wash now. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I feel like I owe the brand for all the laughs they gave me over the past few days. Maybe it’s because I want to be like  that guy Isaiah Mustafa. Maybe it’s because I’ve always liked Old Spice, and this will just push me over the edge. Either way, this is great advertising – not because it is entertaining or well-produced, but because at the end of the day, it makes me want the product being sold.” – Andrew

“Blatant Old Spice promotion. The videos are anything but subtle, and the blatant promotion fits with the personality of the campaign. As a viewer, I was content with the promotion because it was a small price to pay for such hilarity.” – Anna

If you are interested in exactly how this was orchestrated, here is a blog (from ReadWriteWeb) post that explains how Wieden and Kennedy (Old Spice’s Agency) created such a phenomenon: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_old_spice_won_the_internet.php