Third in our series on social media optimization for the ecommerce industry; this blog focuses on advertising options on Twitter. As of January 2010 Twitter had 75 million users. The users are expected to peak at roughly 160 million according to businessinsider. Averaging around 40 million tweets a day and growing at a rate of around 17% a month. Highlighting the mobility of the platform about 80% of Twitter activity takes place on mobile devices.
It is important to note that according to The Guardian’s Digital Content Blog, Twitter already reached its full market share and peaked in mid 2009. A recent study by Barracuda Networks Inc. claims that only 21% of twitter users are actively using the platform.
Twitter offers advertisers the ability to promote their products and services through building followers and in the near future through Promoted tweets.
Promoted tweets will have one ad per page. The ads are based on keywords in Twitter search. Promoted tweets will appear at the top of the search results page, with small text indicating they were sponsored. Companies could utilize this form of advertising in order to combat negative tweets (by placing a positive tweet at the top of the page). A Promoted Tweet isn’t guaranteed to stay afloat for a long time — if the tweet isn’t tracking well in terms of replies, clicks, and a number of other metrics Twitter is calling “resonance” and it will be pulled, and the advertiser won’t pay for it. Advertisers will be paying on a CPM basis initially, with plans to adjust the model once Twitter can better gauge how people are engaging with Promoted Tweets. Initial ad partners testing promoted tweets include Best Buy, Virgin America, Starbucks and Bravo
Twitter will eventually allow third party Twitter clients to integrate Promoted Tweets, with the app developer receiving a cut of the revenue. Twitter also plans to eventually put ads into your Twitter stream even if a user did not perform a search and does not follow the advertiser. (For example, if someone has been writing posts about the Fourth of July, they could see a promoted post from Virgin America on holiday fare discounts).
A Private competitor of Promoted Tweets is Tweetup. This company differentiates itself from Promoted Tweets by ordering tweets based on relevance and not by chronology. Therefore the results feel more organic by not being on top of page. This is a self-service model, not just for the big brands.
Twitter is simultaneously expanding its reach into search engines licensing its stream of Tweets to Microsoft, Google and Yahoo —which are all using the data to add real-time results from Twitter to their search engines. The Microsoft and Google deals alone are believed to be worth as much as $25 million.
According to social-media-optimization.com advertisers who are interested in gathering followers to their Twitter accounts should aim at between 100 to 500 followers. Accounts of this size generated 146% more monthly leads than those with 21 to 100 followers. Also growing a large following of thousands of followers does not appear to generate any additional leads lift Twitter followers.
Although Promoted Tweets has not yet been activated to the general public it is still possible to utilize Tweetup to promote products and services. And contrary to popular belief a huge twitter following does not necessarily generate more monthly leads. Your Twitter account’s ROI sweet spot is between 100 to 500 followers.

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Next in our series on social media optimization this blog deals with Pay-Per-Click opportunities on DirectAds, LinkedIn’s PPC advertising platform. I am looking particularly at LinkedIn in comparison to Facebook. With the possibility of targeting audiences according to job function and industry, LinkedIn seems to be the social networking site with the greatest potential for business-to-business marketing. This can be utilized for expanding your business into a particular strategic industry or targeting high-ranking decision-makers within certain companies. LinkedIn offers social media exposure to companies either through PPC advertising or company profiles.
LinkedIn claims to be the world’s largest audience of influential, affluent professionals (the average household income of LinkedIn users is $107,278) and the statistics speak for themselves. At last count LinkedIn had 69,818,383 users and is growing at a very rapid pace – according to Mashable – faster than any other social networking site. A recent survey of business.com claimed 80% of companies in the United States utilize LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees.
The advantage of LinkedIn lies in their rich employment profile data. The site divides advertising opportunities according to budget. Campaigns of over $25,000 include image and text ad displays, direct help from the LinkedIn team and the ability to reach targeted decision-makers. For campaigns of up to $25,000, DirectAds offers precise targeting, credit card billing and the option to setup within minutes. Currently it is only possible to target the United States and Canada.
Due to company and personal profile information it is possible to target audiences according to company size, job function, industry, seniority, gender, age and geography. In order to ensure that users are targeting audiences of a minimal size limit LinkedIn allows audience targeting of up to three parameters, whereas Facebook Advertising allows targeting of even one person! Ads are highly specialized content ads posted on the right of page. They offer the possibility to include images too.
People tend to be more honest with their profile information on LinkedIn; therefore it makes it even more accurate than Facebook. Online marketers who are very familiar with demographics have a big upper-hand here.
LinkedIn suggests a bid range of between $3.12 and $3.25, but they also restrict you by setting the minimum bid at $3.00 per click or per 100 impressions. The minimum Cost-Per-Click is $2.00. Due to the high costs, it may make more sense to pursue CPC avenues elsewhere and opt for LinkedIn’s Cost-Per-Impression advertising.
Unfortunately, LinkedIn lags behind Facebook on a number of issues. Firstly DirectAds lacks conversion tracking, something that Facebook has recently added. Their inability (surprisingly) to target ads according to companies, something that Facebook also has recently added. The images in their text ads are significantly smaller than Facebook’s, as is the amount of allotted text. Facebook Advertising is also better designed to support multiple campaigns.
In Conclusion it seems Facebook Advertising has the upper-hand on LinkedIn due to its broader functionality, but the advantages of DirectAds rich (and accurate) profile data and B2B capabilities should not be overlooked.

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Online review portals continuously grow in popularity among users. Whether someone is looking for a new camera, shoes or a doctor: More and more users consult portals before buying.

Ecommerce retailers are skeptical though, because they fear criticism of their offers and services. Despite previous fears that consumers posting honest and unfiltered material could damage sales, it has been having the opposite effect in most cases.

In fact, visitors who clicked on the highest customer-rated reviews were more likely to purchase. Therefore online retailers should strengthen their presence on such sites. Only then, they have the opportunity, to use these platforms to their advantage.

7 tips for dealing with customer reviews:

1. Don’t avoid negative feedback. Nobody is perfect – and not every single customer will be content. If a company is basically highly rated this criticism is by no means a disadvantage, since it increases the companies’ credibility.

2. Resolves an evaluation in resentment, the top priority is: a deep breath. Anger is a natural reaction to subjective or provocative contributions, but should not guide your actions.

3. Try to see your company from the perspective of the customer. This will help to decide whether the criticism from the perspective of the evaluator is justified.

4. If you receive a positive critique, write a thank you. It will please your customers.

5. If you do not share the criticism make your perspective clear. Act professionally and constructively by posting a comment or writing to the author a private message.

6. If a customer is unhappy and you know that you can do better, make him an offer which will convince him. This could be in form of a discount or a coupon.

7. An evaluation is always a snapshot. You – as well as the customer – should always keep this in mind.

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