The line between PR and social media has been getting fainter and fainter for a good year or two. The integration of advertising and social media, on the other hand, seems to be a more nascent development, sped on by Facebook and LinkedIn advertising, as well as Promoted Tweets and Trends.

While some advertising agencies have begun experimenting with social media in their ad campaigns (e.g. Trident’s full-page ad showcasing Twitter messages from its customers or the Old Spice YouTube videos created by the ad agency, Wieden + Kennedy, with the help of social media consultants), social media firms seem a bit more cautious incorporating advertising into their marketing campaigns. This may be due to the distrust people generally feel toward advertising, which makes its introduction into a community-oriented social media channel rather tricky.

However, advertising can work especially well in social media due to the high engagement level of social media users. Page One PR has run Facebook ads, Twitter ads, and even placed ads on message boards and newsletters for our clients. The ads we ran can be divided into two objectives: to increase the reach or engagement level of a channel and to increase direct sales and downloads of a product or service.

What worked and what didn’t?

Message boards and newsletters tend to cater to audiences that are not being targeted by traditional forms of PR and marketing. By locating message boards and newsletters that are relevant to a client’s market, we can identify a niche audience that is very likely to be interested in a product or company. Though we may be reaching a smaller audience, it is one that is pre-vetted and predisposed to listen to our client’s message. The target audience is narrow but deep.

In contrast, running ads on Twitter-specific networks garners a very wide audience, but it is one that is primarily interested in Twitter. Even though an ad may be seen by a great number of people and can lead to a huge spike in followers, the viewers are rarely “quality” leads. As a further detraction, we have noticed that a significant number of followers generated from Twitter network ads drop off after a short period of time. The target audience here is wide and shallow.

We’ve generated better results from Facebook ads, though the outcome depends largely on the goal of the campaign and the “call to action.” We’ve found that ad campaigns that keep fans within Facebook’s platform lead to better returns. In one instance, we created and ran an ad to drive new fans to a Facebook Page. The number of fans grew by 44% with a gain of nearly 1,000 in one month and a conversion rate (percentage of people who became fans after clicking on the ad) of 30.3%. In contrast to Twitter network ads, fans generated from these campaigns did not drop off.

However, the results have been negligible for ads that require a user to leave Facebook’s site. We created a Facebook ad to increase attendance to an event. Though a high number of viewers who clicked on the ad ended up purchasing tickets to the event, the total number of clicks on the ad remained relatively low. This could indicate the keyword triggers and other ad filters were too well targeted to appeal to a large enough audience. A second Facebook ad offered a white-paper download from a client’s website, again taking the audience away from Facebook’s site and again leading to unspectacular results.

The last is also an example of what happens when ads are not integrated with an interesting marketing campaign. For instance, we ran an ad in which viewers were asked to share their funniest customer requests regarding a specific product. Perhaps not surprisingly, the results far outshone those from the ad that offered a whitepaper download. At a very basic level, the call to action should be more than just “buy now” or “click here.”

What’s on the horizon?

Social media at its best consists of both give and take – users generate and promote valuable content, while building relationships and engaging with communities. In contrast, consumers of traditional media and search engines are accustomed to a one-way street of communication. Because social media users tend to be more engaged, it signals a greater likelihood that they will interact with an ad, especially one which develops their relationship with a community further.

We’ve found the conversion rates from social media ads have been high, especially relative to more traditional forms of online advertising. In future, we plan to run more ads targeted at driving community interaction, specifically ones that keep an audience on Facebook’s site. We will also begin incorporating LinkedIn ads in our marketing campaigns and continue tweaking our campaigns on Twitter-specific advertising networks to generate better results. While care must be taken to ensure results are not offset by the cost of the ads, we have witnessed enough promise to continue using advertising in our campaigns where appropriate and we see this trend continuing for social media marketing as well.

Not many people, even those who are active on Facebook, are aware of the social networking site’s strict promotions guidelines. As Page Wonder Paulina Singhapok referenced in her recent blog, Facebook published a long list of legal do’s and dont’s in December that restricts the housing of promotional contests on a Facebook Page.

I first got word of Facebook’s new guidelines when I considered designing a Facebook contest for a client. After getting in contact with a Facebook employee, I learned creating a custom tab to promote a contest would cost me an ad buy of $10,000 per month.

$10,000? Facebook contests used to be free, simple, and spur-of-the-moment campaigns. Long gone are the days when any Page could ask trivia questions to their fans via wall post, and the Page would pick a random winner from the answers they received in the comments. For marketing professionals, contests and giveaways are a great way to attract new fans and encourage existing ones to interact with a brand. But now, only companies with a substantial advertising budget can use this method of increasing their fan following on Facebook.

Part of Facebook’s appeal to me is that it’s a great outlet for small businesses, new brands, and indie artists to build a loyal legion of fans. $10,000/month is out of their reach. I understand Facebook needs to make money. But once upon a time, Facebook also started out as a small start-up. They too spread virally through word-of-mouth because they found a niche market and provided a useful service. Now that they’re a big gun, I hope they don’t forget about the little guys that need them the most.

I’ve always declared myself to be (in an admittedly blissful manner) somewhat of a social media purist. For me, social media’s biggest value is that it facilitates relationships – for both the big corporation and for the local indie band. Social media is most effective when a brand is able to connect with consumers on a deeper level that is never achieved with traditional advertising or marketing campaigns. The basic framework of social media platforms allows for instant feedback, interaction, and engagement. When it comes to using contests as a strategy to quickly attract and engage fans, Facebook’s promotions guidelines give an unfair competitive advantage to large advertising budgets.

To reiterate, the new guidelines are a smart way for Facebook to make some money, and to cover their bases when it comes to liability. But I think the $10,000/month price tag is too steep, and I guess I can’t help but root for the underdog. I confess, I don’t have a solution that will make both parties happy. I’ll give it some more thought and will hopefully have some concrete conclusions in my next blog installment. But until then, there is always Twitter. Zing!

Since Twitter came onto the social media scene in 2007, almost all social media marketers have started using it to gain an edge in marketing campaigns.  Silicon Valley companies we work with like Cisco, McAfee, and SAP all use Twitter extensively.  Twitter typically takes up about 25% to 60% of the social media campaign budget.  These companies are at the cutting-edge of B2B marketing and their commitment to Twitter is an indication of the value of Twitter in B2B marketing programs.

Unfortunately for marketers, Twitter guidelines can be confusing.  The guidelines are often vague and enforced suspension can be handled by automated algorithms.   It’s possible for accounts to get suspended during the middle of a campaign due to a misinterpretation of Twitter guidelines.

Here are five important points social media marketers needs to know about doing business and advertising on Twitter:

1) Avoid aggressive following.

- Any user can follow 2,000 people total, but this does not mean that you cannot have more than 2,000 followers. After 2,000 followers, Twitter will pay close attention to your “follower-to-following” ratio. For example, if you are following 5,000 people but only have 100 followers, Twitter will consider that “aggressive following” and will send an error message because you have reached your limit for your account.  Repeat violations or overly aggressive following may result in account suspension.

2) Avoid spamming.

- Do not post the same update multiple times on the same day.

- Do not post the same update on multiple accounts (this is not the same as a retweet, or RT, this is if the same company owns multiple accounts and posts the same tweets on each account to garner more attention.)

- When Twitter users constantly follow and un-follow many users, this is what Twitter calls “aggressive follow churn.” The only automated function Twitter allows is auto-follow, which, when enabled, simply means that your account automatically follows any user who first follows you.

- Do not “squat” a username for more than six months. After six months, Twitter can remove that username. Selling usernames is not allowed unless you have arranged a separate agreement with Twitter.

3) Remember to stay within the limits.

- In addition to aggressive following, Twitter has a few other limitations to an account on a daily or timely basis:

a. Direct messages are limited to 250 per day

b. API requests are limited to 150 per hour

c. Updates are limited to 1,000 per day (including retweets)

d. Changes to account e-mail are limited to 4 per hour

e. Followers (daily) are limited to 1,000

4) Third parties are not allowed to submit paid tweets into the Twitter API.

- Promoted Tweets are the only paid tweets allowed. Twitter says that the reason for this is that third parties do not have Twitter and twitterer’s best interests in mind, andTwitter emphasizes the preservation of “long-term success for all advertisers, users and the Twitter ecosystem,” and also want to encourage creativity and innovation.

5) Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends

Although this doesn’t impact account suspension, marketers need to know about these new tools for businesses on Twitter, weighing the costs of paying Twitter directly for promotion versus paying your staff to run campaigns.

Page Wonder Hartley blogged about the benefits of promoted tweets, as well as places where promoted tweets could use some improvement. Although it has not yet been released to all advertising companies, Twitter has given us a few pointers on how promoted tweets work.

- “Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses want to highlight to a wider group of users.” – Twitter Business Help Resources

- Promoted tweets rely heavily on resonance, a platform Twitter is developing currently to determine which tweets will become promoted by measuring a company’s interaction with its customers (“@replies, re-use of hashtags, avatar clicks, hashtag clicks, in-Tweet link clicks, views after Retweet and more”). This indicates that all tweets begin as regular tweets, and Twitter’s resonance algorithm will determine which tweets are eligible to become a promoted tweet.

- Promoted tweets will appear at the top of relevant search result pages, and a “promoted” button will indicate promoted trends.

Although this isn’t an explicit rule in Twitter’s terms of service or guidelines, it is best for businesses to try  to keep up with their followers and fellow twitterers: monitor what is being said about your company, pay attention to #hashtags and @replies, and connect with the people behind the brand you are trying to reach out to. Tweet more than just links and promotions. Twitter strongly believes in a friendly environment, and I believe social media marketing on Twitter can and should fall under that category.

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Research and writing assistance provided by Paulina Singhapok of Page One ( Twitter @sf_paulina , paulina@pageonepr.com)

We tend to write about Twitter a lot on this blog.  We’ve reviewed promoted Tweets and trends with online advertising, walked through step-by-step  case studies and example campaigns and have discussed how to set up a Twitter strategy, among many other topics.  When the agency first started running social media campaigns a few years back, Twitter was one of our most successful avenues for message distribution.  We measured our early successes through increases in Twitter followers though.

Today, Twitter still remains one of our more popular social media services, but our measurements have shifted to measuring engagement with top influencers.  We now look to capture Twitter metrics like influential @replies or retweets, traffic or clicks to marketing collateral like white papers, videos or specific pages on the client’s website, downloads of free trials or products and positive comments about our clients.  In order to increase these metrics we make sure our follower base is made up of influencers and then run a series of campaigns or activities that are designed to encourage interaction with these followers.

Below I outline three techniques we have been using recently to help increase engagement on the VMware vCloud and SAP Crystal Reports Twitter feeds we are managing:

1. Twitter Polls. For both feeds we have recently run a series of Twitter polls aimed at increasing engagement with our followers.  You can use a free service like TwtPoll to easily set up the poll and then promote it on your Twitter feed to collect responses from your following.  Usually your followers will take the poll and also help you promote by retweeting it to their followers or @replying their responses.  Not only do these polls help you interact with your followers, but you can also select questions that provide valuable research data.  For example, on @crystalreports we polled our following to see which Crystal Reports products they would like to try out.  Based on the results of this poll we now have a better idea of the type of products we should give away on the feed when we run a product giveaway contest in the future.

2. Twitter Contests. Another great technique, although a little more work to pull off than a Twitter Poll, is to execute a Twitter-specific contest on the feed.  There are many different types of Twitter contests and frankly I could write an entire blog post about this topic alone, but in general the best Twitter contests are ones that are easy and fun to participate in.  The whole goal is to run an activity on the feed that entices your followers and gets them involved in some type of game or giveaway, ultimately achieving some pre-identified marketing goal.  Most Twitter contests are designed to require the Twitter user to retweet a specific phrase that includes a unique hashtag or bit.ly link or requires the Twitter user to follow the feed and then be direct messaged an instruction or prize code.  For VMware we wanted to collect use cases so designed a Twitter contest that asked vCloud users to submit their use cases on a contest microsite, follow @vcloud and then tweet the phrase: “Hey, @vCloud I just submitted to @Bluelock’s developer contest to win an iPad! http://bit.ly/dsXfI1 #cloudmonkeys” to be entered to win a prize.  Contests like this help promote the feed and specific marketing content, but also provide a means to interact with the following.

3. Twitter Q&As. This is a relatively new technique we are trying out, but the preliminary results look interesting.  For SAP Crystal Reports we have identified a long list of business intelligence and Crystal Reports influencers, some of which have rather large social networks.  In order to tap into those networks we have selected a few of the top influencers and will be facilitating Q&As with them on our Twitter feed.  We are currently running our debut Q&A with a prominent author of a top rated book on Crystal Reports and are asking the community to submit questions via Twitter or Facebook to be responded to by the author.  We are hoping to execute a series of these influencer Q&As with members of Crystal User Groups and other technical communities in the future.  A series like this can provide our Twitter following with access to Crystal Reports “superusers”, which will serve as a valuable resource and make our Twitter feed a go-to site for Crystal users.

These are just a couple of the ideas we have been using recently on the feeds we manage.  Since social media is in a constant state of evolution, I’m sure we will be using different techniques in the near future.  What’s important to keep in mind though is that a good Twitter feed will provide both valuable content and engage with it’s following, either through conversation or techniques like those outlined above.  Let us know what techniques you are using to stimulate engagement on your Twitter feeds!

Much like the FTC, Facebook’s advertising and promotions philosophy keeps the users’ experience in mind. Facebook has become a useful tool for advertising and promotion through social media marketing, especially for targeting specific audiences. This tool, however, does come with rules. Since Facebook can shut down your campaign if they find any violations, it is essential to understand their guidelines. In addition to following Facebook’s Privacy Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, here are a few important things you should know about Facebook’s advertising and promotion guidelines:

1) Mind the platform:

2) Be Clear and Honest:

3) Take Full Responsibility:

4) Be Proper:

By abiding by these general points, marketing and advertising on Facebook shouldn’t pose a problem to your company’s campaigns. Facebook just wants to ensure users still have a good user experience while advertisers are promoting their company or product to a targeted audience. You should always be cautious when handling tools – Facebook is no exception. Use it wisely, and you will get results.

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Research and writing assistance provided by Craig Oda (coda at pageonepr.com, Twitter @codawork)

After announcing the upcoming revisions in October, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released their guide for advertisers for the first time since 1980 in December with some notable revisions. With fines up to $11,000 per penalty, companies and endorsers engaged in social media campaigns have to be a lot more careful.

The FTC is cracking down on social media endorsements. From celebrities to tech bloggers, if the relationship, or “material connection,” between the endorser and companies using social media is not obvious to consumers, the endorser must disclose this information. The FTC has the consumers’ best interests in mind, but places the responsibility on advertisers to know what consumers take away from their ads and promotions.

Although the guidelines state that the connection between the company using social media and the endorser must be disclosed, they do not say specifically how or where it must be disclosed. The FTC does hold the endorser responsible for disclosure, but both the endorser and the company can be liable: “The Commission believes that the endorser is the party primarily responsible for disclosing material connections with the advertiser.  However, advertisers who sponsor these endorsers (either by providing free products – directly or through a middleman – or otherwise) in order to generate positive word of mouth and spur sales should establish procedures to advise endorsers that they should make the necessary disclosures and to monitor the conduct of those endorsers”(“Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”, Federal Trade Commission, 39).

How will these new guidelines affect social media marketing? Andy Sernotivz of AdvertisingAge says the FTC’s new guidelines work to social media marketing’s advantage: “Now we have the clarity to properly invest in social media, without having to guess about legal risks,” and Dallas Lawrence of Mashable and Bulletproof Blog suggests that “there isn’t much companies should be doing now that they shouldn’t have been doing before these rules went into effect.” Here at PageOne, we excel in our social media marketing campaigns, all while complying with the new FTC guidelines.

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Craig Oda and Paulina Singhapok ( Twitter @sf_paulina)