The score according to the study? Twitter followers are more likely to recommend the brands they follow to friends (33% vs. 21%) and to buy from them (37% vs. 21%).

My interpretation: This is misapplied competitiveness. I'm the first to egg on arm wrestling, cage matches and ego over ability efforts but these channels serve different purposes. Consumer expectations and interactions vary accordingly. The channels can amplify and augment each other. I will be using this data to make the case for each channel independently.

That said, I'm going to cheer on Forrester's winner with three of my favorite Twitter examples. Share these with your creative team to spark ideas. After all, both mediums need ideas to survive.

Uniqlo's Lucky Counter: Every tweet means the price gets cheaper. For a set time in September Uniqlo posted a collection of clothing with the simple call to action - more tweets, lower prices. Flash sales meet GroupOn with a twist of simplicity.

World Cup Cheering: Yay open API. The Guardian in the UK created an interface to visually watch the tweets affiliated with each World Cup game. It brings new excitement to goals. Ghana vs. U.S. is my personal favorite.

Diane von Furstenberg's Fall Collection: In a convergence of social and shopping Diane von Furstenberg integrated iconic lip rollovers on their imagery to let users Tweet or Like in context. (Click on "Shop the Catalog")

Reminder: Social media is on the agenda at ad:techNY.

In the Super Bowl of social marketing these campaigns are shiny trophies on the virtual shelf. They are what clients cheer for, what they want - for their own.

But these are not the answer for everyone. Me-too is not enough. And the rules of the game are shifting as we all stand on the field. Fun.

Social marketing game changers for 2011? My bets are on these areas:

1. The reveal of the real deal on "likes:" We are liking bacon, brands and pairs of jeans. We are liking on Facebook and off of Facebook. Liking is bound to be the new Xerox or Kleenex - the name for an action independent of Facebook.

In 2011 we start to get smart about what liking really reveals. We cater content according to it, we track competitors and we create experiences based on products people have liked. The personalization we've been talking about since 1996 gets closer to fruition. The implications for search are exciting.

2. eCommerce take backs: 2010 was the year ecommerce innovations and models were driven by upstarts. Groupon, Gilt, RueLaLa. In 2011 we start to see retailers take back this ecommerce innovation. eBay is doing it via their strong play in fashion, Ralph Lauren has The Vault. Exciting things are in store (sometimes literally).

3. The end of the quest for 1M fans: The quest for 1M fans will cease to exist. Celebrate now. Brands will shift their metrics to reflect a greater level of engagement. I'm convinced there's a reason why Facebook doesn't report repeat visitors to brand pages - and it's not a positive one. Quality will be queen. And fans will gain a value that models what we've had in email CRM for years.

I'm counting on ad:tech NY to liven and further the debate. It's very nice to meet you all.

Take care out there,
Amy

PS. I secretly hope 2011 brings us more inanimate objects with voices via Twitter. If Gap had a social strategy behind their new (now old) logo I think it's brilliant. @GapLogo on Twitter would agree. Think it was planned?

Debra Aho Williamson will be speaking on Earned Media, the Real-Time Web, Twitter Automation, Lead Gen & Social CRM at the ad:tech SF  “Marketing Masters” series.

Here's a Q&A between Debra and Susan Bratton, Marketing Master of the Social Media track,  covering her latest insights.

You recently published 8 "Insight Briefs" on Social Media at eMarketer. What were the topics and some of the key findings you can share?

Every day, businesses want—and need—to know more about social media marketing. They want to know how to do it, how to measure it, how to manage it and where it’s going. The Social Media Insight Briefs answer the most common and most pressing questions that businesses have about social media marketing.

The eight briefs covered these topics:

• 10 Best Practices for Success with Social Media
• Social Media Marketing by the Numbers: Key Stats, Trends and Indicators
• Five Reasons Why Marketers Need to Have a Social Media Strategy
• Where Does Social Media Fit Within an Organization?
• What You Need to Know About Earned Media
• Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media
• Social Media Misfires: How to Head Off Trouble Before It Hits
• The Future of Social Media Marketing

You wrote, “In 2010 and beyond, a substantial portion of marketers’ expenses will go toward creating and maintaining a fan page, managing promotions or public relations outreach within a social network, and measuring the impact of a social network presence on brand health and sales. Paid advertising will not be the primary focus, but it will serve to drive traffic and engagement with the larger social network presence.” How does this bode for Facebook revenues?

Facebook is developing several revenue streams so that it is not solely dependent on brand advertising. It already gets a healthy portion of its revenue from its self-serve ad system, where advertisers can buy ads targeted toward various demographics. It is also working toward establishing concrete revenue from virtual gifts and e-commerce.

When marketers build a presence on Facebook, they don’t necessarily have to buy advertising on Facebook to be successful. They can send messages to fans via the News Feed. They can buy advertising on other Websites and in other media to drive traffic to their Facebook page.

In the long term, advertising will still provide a portion of revenue for social media sites, but I believe the strongest business models in the future will incorporate analytics. What marketers will ultimately crave from social media marketing in the future is information. They will want information about their customers, certainly, but even more so about the thousands or millions of noncustomers whose opinions are being shaped by the social interactions and commentary of others.

When do you think Twitter will start to generate revenue?

Twitter will start generating revenue this year, but it’s anybody’s guess how successful it will be. Search seems the most realistic as a revenue generator. There will be challenges, however: How does a marketer insert itself into a short, time-sensitive conversation without disrupting the flow of that conversation and alienating the user?

In 2010 specifically, it will be the social media marketing year of _______________."

MoLoSo: The intersection of mobile, local and social. Social media marketing will soon showcase that where you are is nearly as critical as who you are. Mobile marketing, social media marketing and local marketing will come together, providing new opportunities for businesses to reach people. Mobile provides an always-available connection, social adds context from friends and associates, and local offers proximity.
The one thing that's fundamentally broken about social media marketing is ___________________."

I don’t think there’s any one thing that is fundamentally broken about social media marketing. Look how far we’ve already come in just the past few years. This year, based on the surveys I’ve reviewed, more than half of all marketers are using some form of social media marketing. And many of those have already made it an integral part of their company’s overall marketing strategy.

I do think there are areas that need work. One is the need for measurement tools that compare the effectiveness of social media marketing with other forms of marketing. Right now there are dozens of firms that will monitor and report on social media activities—Twitter passalongs, Facebook mentions, etc.—but it is difficult to assess the value of that activity relative to the rest of your marketing. Did those 1000 mentions on Facebook drive more traffic to my store than the ads I bought on other websites? Do the people who saw those Facebook mentions now have a better image of my brand than those who saw yesterday’s TV commercial? That sort of thing.

Standardized success benchmarks is another area that needs more development. In e-mail marketing, for example, you can compare your delivery rates, open rates and click rates against others in your industry. There really isn’t any of that in social media marketing. I am sure these things will be created over time, because they are really necessary.
You are going to be briefing the ad:tech attendees on five key areas of social marketing: Earned Media, Real-Time Web, Twitter Automation, Social Lead Generation and Social CRM. What do each of those terms mean?

The media landscape can be divided into three spheres: What you own, what you pay for and what you earn. Earned media is everything consumers are saying about your brand on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and elsewhere.

The Real-Time Web is the steady stream of blog posts, tweets and status updates that appear in social media.

Twitter automation is the ability to schedule tweets, manage followers, track keywords, and deal with @replies and DM’s in an efficient way.

Social lead generation and Social CRM are two sides of the same coin. Social lead gen is using social media to find potential new customers. Social CRM is using social media to manage and interact with your existing customers, so they stay happy and satisfied.

Where is the sweet spot of opportunity for marketers in each of these segments?

Earned media: The goal for earned media should be to have authentic, sincere third parties talking about your brand and getting your message out for you, without relying on paid placements alone. To achieve that, marketers must establish three things in their social media fan base: trust (so that people will be more willing to believe what you are saying and feel comfortable spreading messages on your behalf); deep engagement (more than just clicking a button to become a fan, but interacting with the social media content in some way); and passion (finding those passionate, positive fans and reward them for talking about your brand).

Real-time Web: The real-time opportunity is only now emerging. It offers an incredible opportunity to marketers that can act quickly. If they notice a trending topic on Twitter, they might want to link advertising to it. If there is a subject generating a lot of discussion across the web, wouldn’t it be great to be able to buy advertising that reaches people who are engaged in those discussions, at that moment, on many different websites? These things are still in development, and they will be a true test of just how nimble marketers can be.

Twitter automation: The sweet spot for marketers using Twitter automation is that it makes it faster and easier to use Twitter. Social media can be an enormous time-drain; it is laborious to figure out what to post when, how to respond to queries and which followers to engage with. Marketers need to automate many of the tasks so they can focus on creating interesting content and promotions and measuring the impact on their bottom line.

Social lead gen and social CRM: Not many marketers are using social media for lead generation as of yet, but I believe there’s a decent opportunity. Think about it: every person who shares your brand message or talks about your brand on a social network is speaking to hundreds, thousands or even millions of potential customers. Marketing to those people should be top priority for companies.

The social CRM opportunity is much more clear: In many cases, the people who fan or follow you are already your customers, and they appreciate using social media to stay in touch with what your brand or company are doing. Marketers need to be very focused on these people because they are often their best brand advocates.

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• Facebook and Twitter Making a Major Impact on Purchase Decisions [STATS] (mashable.com)
• Social Media Questions and Answers (chris.pirillo.com)
• 5 simple ways SMB's can readily adopt social media and get rolling in one day (directmarketingobservations.com)

There I said it. It is a financial calculation that is better left to finance managers and accountants, and not marketers. Most people who quote some type of ROI calculation don't really mean ROI in the true sense of ROI.

In its basic form, ROI is simply the return or gain, minus the costs or investment, divided by the costs/investment which results in a percentage. The "return" that marketers want to measure is…wait for it…. The Sale.

As a marketer, I hate ROI as a metric because it is simplistic, often unrealistic and sometimes even overstated. It implies a linear process and most purchase decisions are far from linear. It also implies that you can isolate with precision the impact that one event had on a sale.

Maybe before my time it was simpler, when there were less products on the shelf, 3 major TV networks, a handful of popular magazines, no satellite radio and no internet. Was it really that simple "back then?" I doubt it.

Yet, people will see a great case study on, say Google Adwords, or Facebook and they will ask, "What was the ROI?"

Without a complicated algorithm that factors in some type of weighting scheme for each influencer along the purchase decision making process path (which is hardly linear), how can anyone with good conscious suggest ROI? You can't.

The other problem with ROI is that, in theory, it has a beginning and an end. Take for example my purchase of an HDTV for my home. Do they calculate the ROI of my previous experience with their products? Or, is the ROI they want to know the influence that review sites had on my decision? Do they consider the fact that it took me over a year a make a decision?

This is where social media and ROI do not mix, and good luck convincing me otherwise. Don't get me wrong, social media for brands has plenty of upside (as well as pitfalls), such as improved customer service, market research, engagement, branding and CRM just to name a few.

Granted, I realize that the small taco stand on the corner is popular on Twitter and every time Mr. Taco Maker tweets a deal out to his followers they flock to his stand. But, if his product wasn’t any good, they would never be Twitter followers in the first place, or Facebook fans or…you get my point. Further, something (proximity, word of mouth, advertising) had to influence them to become customers in the first place, and it must be the product that keeps them coming back for more.

Here's a suggestion: take the amount you are investing in social media and add it to your overall marketing spend. Then, subtract the overall marketing spend from your sales, and divide that number by your marketing spend. But, you have to assume all other factors remained constant from the previous year to get a true analysis. I'll bet they haven't.

As marketers, we need to find something else. If anyone has suggestions, I'd like to hear it.

A world, to many, without games, Facebook updates, tweets, or FourSquare status is one full of chaos and unknown.  Consumers, myself included, have become dependent on WiFi and the data they can consume as a result of this high-speed connection. In fact, consumers are spending an average of 44% of their time outside the home or office, and are relying on WiFi hotspots to stay connected during this time away. Technology is enabling a huge increase in consumer utility and “connectedness”. The continuing surge in smartphone saturation and the rush of new devices into the mobile market (laptops, netbooks, eBooks, gaming devices, etc.) is drastically changing the rules of engagement between marketers and consumers.

As a result, audiences are always shifting and moving, and brand marketers are tasked with rethinking their approach…to change their strategies for reaching these dynamic consumers. The question for marketers has become “How do I reach this on-the-go audience across ever expanding array of Wi-Fi devices?” As a marketer myself, I find that I ask myself (and my team) this same question on a weekly, if not daily, basis…

Thus, I’m looking forward to ad:tech to hear how marketers & agencies are working internally to figure out how to best approach this fragmented landscape.  I am excited to learn and share best practices for bringing DOOH, Digital, and Mobile to an intersection where reaching an audience becomes more relevant than an advertising distribution channel or a device.

Today, Utopia can mean many things to many people – listening to waves crash on the beach, enjoying a yoga class, decompressing with a spa massage - but one thing that we all have in common (when we do need to stay connected to the “day-to-day”) is our enjoyment of using the convenience and speed of Wi-Fi connectivity to get the job done efficiently and effectively!

The old inbox

I still remember the days when the inbox meant internal email only. I was in Southern California at a technology company with about 100 employees at the time and everyone had access to Microsoft Outlook and used it for internal email and for scheduling internal meetings. The external world was not "visible" to internal employees. There was no internet, if you can imagine. Only a few people had access to MCI, and a few others to Compuserve. These privileged people were able to connect to the external world but still had to go through hoops to do it.

The new inbox

Then came the internet and suddenly the "new" inbox was born. The new inbox is connected to the whole world. This brought amazing opportunities and also an unprecedented email overload. Every person ended up with a handful of email inboxes ranging from work, to personal, to "throw-away" ones just to keep unwanted messages out of the way. Soon after came the invasion of the mobile devices and email on-the-go. Consolidating messages into one email application and/or synchronizing between multiple applications and devices became necessities and many of us have done some degree of consolidation and synchronization along the way.

And now meet the "new new" inbox: The Social Media Inbox

Then Web 2.0 snuck upon us! Now we are all part of the creation process and part of the conversation. Like never before, we the people can share information, participate in conversations, and build our own social networks. We are in direct contact with the people who once were invisible. Suddenly, we are no longer just in our email inbox(es). We are now as often or even more often in our new and expanded inboxes: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, YouTube channels, del.icio.us bookmarks, StumbleUpon articles, and you name it, which all together I am calling the Social Media Inbox.

This inbox is emerging as a powerful force and even the most authoritative search engines are re-inventing their search approach to include the Social Media Inbox.

So what does it all mean? What are opportunities and the challenges?

The Social Media Inbox brings some unique opportunities and some rather unique challenges as well. On the opportunities side:

• We are connected with 100s of millions of people and are able to have real-time conversations with them
• We are learning what they are like and how they think (market research)
• We are discussing our brand and the value that we bring to the table (marketing)
• We are influencing their buying decisions (sales)
• We are exchanging ideas and building on each other's ideas (innovation)
• And the list continues!

On the challenges side:

• We are faced with more information overload than ever before
• We are constantly interrupting our core activities to keep up with what is going on in the world
• We are not necessary leveraging this new inbox to the extent that we could
• And the list continues!

What does your Social Media Inbox (SMI) look like and how are you managing it?

If you haven't yet expanded your definition of the "inbox" and explored the social media world, this is the time to do so. Some exciting opportunities are awaiting you. If you have, this is the time to reflect further on the opportunities and challenges and how they can be managed to help us be more effective in the workplace and beyond.

As we continue to explore this topic and explore best practices to manage the SMI, we need your help! Please share your thoughts below or fill out this short Social Media Inbox survey (5 to 10 minutes) and we will share the survey results with you.

Take the Social Media Inbox survey and become part of the conversation!

This was a great panel moderated by David Carrel, Senior VP Strategy and Analysis, Digitas. Panelists were Kay Madati, VP, Audience Experience & Engagement, CNN Worldwide, Bonin Bough, Global Social Media Director, PepsiCo, Kent Schoen, Product Marketing Manager, Facebook, Jeff Fleischman, Chief Digital Officer, TIAA-CREF, and Pete Blackshaw, Executive VP of Digital Strategic Services, Nielsen Online.

United breaks guitars. CNN misses breaking news. TIAA-CREF saves your retirement. Social networking can be a powerful tool—or quicksand if you handle it wrong.

When United was unresponsive to Dave Carroll’s broken guitar, he wrote a song and put it on Youtube. One week later it had 1 million hits. Now it’s at 6 million. One person can create a global phenomenon, good or bad, for your company. Watch out!

In February 2009 a plane crashed in Buffalo. It was on Twitter within 2 minutes, CNN affiliates carried it an hour and 54 minutes later.

Getting on Facebook and Twitter made TIAA-CREF 15 years younger.

Social media is a focus group on steroids, a platform that’s infinitely revealing of brand value. The strategy in the space has to be fluid. What are the influencers saying? How do we filter out the noise to drive messages that drive the bottom line. How do we plug those things into an existing channel? A limited time offer coming from Twitter needs lots of other channels to test customer interest. On the internet, we can see it happening in real time.

The conversation about all of our brands has been going on for a long time now. In the last political season, audiences told CNN they not only wanted to be informed, but involved. They also corrected CNN when it got facts wrong. Social media democratizes your brand.

Social media penetrates consumer feelings. There’s something around consumer emotion that finds unparalleled liftoff online. There are certain talk drivers that consistently drive the conversation. A lot of marketers are surprised by this. Twitter gives real insight into what makes consumers tick. Word of mouth is now visible, before we couldn’t see it. Pepsico found out problems with moms’ perceptions of G2 through social media.

Brands now belong to consumers more than to marketers—the job of the marketer is to fulfill the consumers’ needs. It’s not just about looking at conversations but identifying advocates and activating them.

What can we do to build advocacy? First and foremost, identify the advocates and analyze the conversations they’re having. Empower them. Digital tools require digital currency, so provide them. Pepsi does that with Twitter promotions, unique opportunities communicated via Twitter—including access to the Yankees tickertape parade on Friday,

The medium is the message, so how do you get your advocates? There has to be a certain degree of openness. TIAA-CREF had a lot of clients that lost a lot of money with others. TIAA-CREF outperformed the market, so there is a lot of trust. TIAA-CREF’s aid with social media to their clients generated huge benefits and credibility.

There’s lots of positive feedback, not just negative. Advocates are there to help you as well. The Toyota Prius Facebook page is an example. A lot of people wanted to use it as a forum on how to use their car. Toyota brought their community over and created a separate area for car owners as well as one for people interested in green issues. Share promotions, be authentic, create a good experience.

The extreme example of doing this well is the Zappos model. They are incredibly open from a participation perspective. Zappos does things we see in marketing as operationally impossible. That’s where they get advocates online. There is an opportunity to contribute everywhere on Zappos.com. Amazon bought Zappos because they didn’t know how to do customer service like Zappos.

You can’t manage this stuff, you can only participate and be relevant. Social media provides an opportunity to change a “badvocate” to an advocate. “Mea culpas” do work. Jeff Fleishman worked for Amex for a long time. Amex customer service’s job is to make sure the customer is happy. United was dismissive. Be transparent and hope for the best. Hands on is good, and humility is really important.

This data can inform every piece of the marketing mix. Sense and respond. Digital brings a new sense of agility. In the old days one couldn’t change things in the marketing mix. Now one can take early signals and optimize.

Consumers expect openness. You need to listen then respond fast. Iterate and optimize, discover and analyze your audience. Build connections. Consumer affairs needs to be at the center.

If you do it right, it’s very powerful. Mess up and you’ll be sorry.

Highlights from The Next Frontier in Advertising — Widgets, Apps, and Viral Video:

From Ro Choy of RockYou…
Build Fan pages — it’s by far the most cost efficient way to amplify your reach across Facebook’s user base. Also consider CPC ads on Facebook: there’s no better place than social media for performance marketing. At one point, Facebook might even be Google’s biggest competitor.

Greg March, Wieden+Kennedy…
The most important thing to do before (and during) a social media campaign is to clearly communicate its role in the big plan to senior management and to clients. You know what you’re going to achieve, but they don’t always know how to draw that straight line between the campaign and the big picture objectives, or business goals.

Also, don’t expect conversions. For all intensive purposes, catching people at the point of intent (i.e., searching for a product/service or information about it) is better place to close the deal. Social media will increase the number of fans and spread your message, but won’t make instant sales.

Chris Cunningham, appsavvy…
Totally agreeing with March: Social media is a conversation, and people don’t want to be interrupted from it to buy something. Because of this, the old metrics simply don’t work. Use new “key performance indicators” (KPIs) to find out the effectiveness of your social campaign. For example, track fans or video views, not clickthroughs or conversions.

Also, don’t standardize social media. The IAB apparently told appsavvy to “run with” their current development and not to try to fit new technology into any kind of bucket. An audience member adds, That’s great. We shot ourselves in the foot 10 years ago by standardizing ad units. Let’s not strangle innovation with doing that again.