Social Mediarology

While there were several great presentations during ExactTarget’s Connections 2010 Conference, one of my favorite sessions was the Subscribers Fans & Followers: Cross Channel Success With Email, Facebook and Twitter session hosted by Jeff Rohrs (@jkrohrs) and Morgan Stewart (@mostew) on the last day of the conference. You can check out my previous posts about ET’s SFF research here and here. Below are a few videos I took during their presentation.

Mythbusting with Jeff and Morgan:

Throughout the Subscriber, Fans & Followers research, Jeff and Morgan were able to identify some really interesting information. Some of that information was picked up by local and national news outlets, but like with most research, you can make it say whatever you want it to say. Some news outlets ran tiny portions of the research, skewing some of the data. That’s where Myth #1 comes into play.

Myth #1: Email Usage is Dropping:

In the video below, Jeff and Morgan talk about how Nielsen just came out with data saying that email usage has dropped significantly in recent years. In short, the Nielsen study, only includes email accessed via the web – Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc – but it doesn’t include email accessed via mobile platforms or even Outlook!

Myth #2: Facebook Fans are worth 136.38 dollars:

Some recent research said each Fan a brand has on Facebook is worth roughly $136. While that may be hard to prove one way or another, during the SFF research, participants were asked: Are you more likely to purchase from a brand after becoming a Subscriber, Fan or Follower? The results were different than you might think.

Only 17% of Facebook Fans said yes, while 27% of email Subscribers gave the same answer. The real kicker is that a full 37% of Twitter Followers said they’d be more likely to purchase from a brand after following them on Twitter. Obviously, this question only asks about intent and there aren’t any hard dollar figures behind it, but the fact that more than a third of Twitter Followers would be more likely to purchase from your brand after following should encourage you to start using Twitter.

Myth #3: Twitter is Dying:

2009 was a great year for Twitter and it became the fastest growing social media channel ever. At some point, the rate of growth was going to have to slow down a bit. Even though we’ve seen some higher profile users quitting Twitter recently (John Mayer, Demi Lovato), Twitter is far from dying. Jeff and Morgan remind us that Twitter users create six times more content online than non-Twitter users. So, while a few celebrities may come and go, the real influencers on the web still use Twitter heavily.

Did you attend the Connections 2010 Conference? What was the biggest takeaway you got from the conference?

While there were several great presentations during ExactTarget’s Connections 2010 Conference, one of my favorite sessions was the Subscribers Fans & Followers: Cross Channel Success With Email, Facebook and Twitter session hosted by Jeff Rohrs (@jkrohrs) and Morgan Stewart (@mostew) on the last day of the conference. You can check out my previous posts about ET’s SFF research here and here. Below are a few videos I took during their presentation.

Twitter Users as Content Creators:

Through their SFF research, Jeff and Morgan discovered that Twitter users end up creating six times as much content online as the typical online consumer. This is extremely powerful news and should be a wake-up call to marketers – just because only 5% of online consumers follow a brand through Twitter, those consumers are some of the most influential people online today.

In the video below, Jeff and Morgan talk about the tremendous reach and influence of Twitter users.

3 Follow-up Points to SFF Research:

The final report in the SFF study was released just before the Connections 2010 conference and Jeff and Morgan talked about three follow-up points to the research. First, SFF’s are long-term assets, not short term sales opportunities. If you only look at the short term, you’re overlooking the true value of your SFFs. Second, SFFs must be integrated and optimized. Once you’re involved in email, Facebook and Twitter, you must continually work to integrate and optimize the content across all three channels. Finally, leadership must unify email and social marketing – don’t look at email, Facebook and Twitter as channels in separate silos.

Keep an eye out for another post of videos from the SFF talk later in the week. Were you at the Connections 2010 Conference? What was your favorite session?

Connections 2010: Fuel The Conversation

I was fortunate enough to attend and speak at ExactTarget‘s Connections 2010 conference this past week in Indianapolis. In addition to meeting some great people, the lineup of speakers was fantastic. From Sir Richard Branson (@RichardBranson) to Twitter’s COO, Dick Costolo (@dickc), the conference was packed full of great information and ExactTarget did a great job of highlighting some of Indianapolis’ best venues: the Indiana State Museum was the host to a Taste of Indiana event and Conseco Fieldhouse hosted another dinner and a private Train concert.

My Session:

I spoke on a panel with Troy Burk (@TroyBurk) of Right On Interactive (@ROI_Marketing), Dave Morse (@DaveMorse) of Delta Faucets and Bo Lowery (@LoweryB) of Wild Birds Unlimited. Our session focused on how our respective companies are nurturing and scoring leads using Right On Interactive’s Customer Lifecycle Management dashboard. My portion of the session focused on Indiana Tourism’s Fall Leaf Cam/Foursquare promotion.

Conference Highlights:

Some of the most interesting sessions were some of the panel discussions I attended. From a panel featuring some of the founders and key players at CoTweet (recently acquired by ExactTarget) to a panel featuring an employee from Twitter, McDonald’s CMO and others; there was a wealth of information at the conference.

My favorite day, by far, was the third day – really just half-day – which featured further discussion about ExactTarget’s seminal Subscribers, Fans and Followers research (see my previous posts about the research here and here), a great panel discussion about the future of digital and social media and a keynote session from Twitter’s COO – Dick Costolo.

I took some video of a couple of sessions throughout the conference, and I’ll be posting them throughout the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned for more information about Connections 2010.