ComMetrics weekly review: Smarter tweets and shopping

by Urs E. Gattiker on 2010/11/08 · 16 comments 9,959 views

in a dos and don'ts,social media diary,white papers research

Social media monitoring DOs and DON’Ts: social media marketing, social media metrics, social media monitoring tools, benchmark test, Twitter monitoring, luxury branding, and other happenings we came across while surfing the internet, bloggingand posting on Facebook, Identi.ca, Google Buzz, or Twitter.

Check previous ComMetrics weekly review posts for tidbits, insights and intel.

In this post, we share some interesting things we learned about research dealing with online shopping, Twitter tricks, two new Facebook features worth mentioning another Google FIRST, and other major brands’ trials and tribulations.

    Christmas shopping

Image - Table with data from study - release 2010-06-29 - Nielsen says, '44 percent of online consumers say they spend less than 5 percent of their monthly spending online and 29 percent say they spend 6 - 10 percent.'

Early holiday sales offers abounded this weekend across the US. Stores such as JC Penney offered discounts of up to 60 percent on some items until 1:00 pm, Saturday, while Amazon started its offers last weekend. It also added a two-day electronics sale for the weekend to match Best Buy and Walmart.

In light of all this, I found the findings of a Nielsen study about what people might purchase online this Christmas particularly interesting. As expected, the data show that purchasing books has become a rather common eCommerce activity for many consumers, while a third of the respondents said they had purchased air travel or hotel accommodations over the Internet.

What I find surprising is purchases of clothing, accessories and shoes. In my experience, what may look great on a mannequin may look awful inside or not fit properly when I try it on, so I tend not to risk purchasing such things online.

Do you shop for clothes or shoes online?  What has your experience been?

    Tweet smarter

Twitter replies are sometimes less ‘noisy’ than simple re-tweets that use RT.

To illustrate:

    @WhitePapers tweets: “Wow, found a great research paper!”

Note that this is a ‘reply’, which is only visible to ComMetrics (AND @WhitePapers‘ followers who also follow @ComMetrics), because it starts with @ComMetrics‘ username.

By contrast, every single one of @ComMetrics‘ followers gets an RT (i.e. “RT @WhitePapers, you forgot to send the URL.”), making it a lot noisier and potentially annoying than replying, so make sure you only use it when you REALLY want ALL of your followers to see it.

    New Facebook group features

You may know that Facebook is offering ‘new’ groups, but unfortunately old groups cannot simply be converted to the new format, even though any group launched from now on with have these features. Two of them stand out.

Group chat: Until now users could chat one-on-one, but now users in a group can chat with others group members that are logged into Facebook at that time, allowing people to can run Q & A sessions and so forth.

Update group by email: Any group member (this can be changed by the administrator) can now share with the group via email by sending to xxxx@groups.facebook.com and the content is then shown in each member’s news feed.

The rest is pretty much the same as old groups, including being allowed to post pictures, videos and events. However, there is no longer any discussion area.

    Another Google FIRST: Blocking Facebook’s access to its users

Google will no longer let other services like Facebook automatically import their users’ contact data. The move was prompted by Facebook’s refusal to offer a reciprocal service.

Since these rivals are trying to build walls around the information they consider most valuable, this skirmish seems like the first of many.

By the way, as a result, users will now have to manually add their Gmail contacts to Facebook by using Facebook Connect or exporting Gmail contacts to their hard drive first.

What is your take? How do you see these issues? Please let us know in the comments!


Tagged as: benchmark test, best practice, consumer behavior, developing countries, high speed internet, internet penetration, kids online, mobile internet, purchasing power parity, social media marketing

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  • Sara

    UrsnnThanks for this post. I find the Twitter tip particularly helpful.

    • http://My.ComMetrics.com Urs E. Gattiker

      SaranI am glad you liked my Twitter tip. Always helpful to reduce the flood of unnecessary tweets so people following you can focus on those that really add value (e.g., providing a great link to an interesting post or a white paper to download).nnI prefer to interact with people not via Twitter except as outlined in the tip above but, instead, via e-mail or else using Google Talk to chat or talk on the phone.nnLooking forward to your next comment and feedback is always helpful. Merci.

  • Martina

    Urs nI was not aware of the changes Facebook made for groups. But it is an interesting change and improves it a bit. I am just worried that I cannot use these features with my old group.nThanks for having this change pointed out in your ComMetrics weekly review this week, as usual very informative.

    • http://My.ComMetrics.com Urs E. Gattiker

      MartinannI was not aware either of the changes Facebook made to groups. What puzzled me the most was the fact that these features cannot be used with ‘old’ groups.nnBut maybe Facebook will still bring these things in the not so distant future.

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  • Fcmall

    i find that web shopping works very well for us. nnThe way we do it you can find here: http://www.hichinashop.com

    • http://My.ComMetrics.com Urs E. Gattiker

      Smarter tweets and shopping – thanks for commenting. nnI went to check your website and it is an interesting one that seems to be selling clothing of all types. The study we quote in the blog post shows that 36% of respondents are ready to shop for cloths online. Maybe this in part explain the success you are having but surely that is not the answer alone.nnFor instance, I surfed around your website and I was wondering who your target audience was? US consumers based on pricing and type of clothing you offer would be my first guess. But then how would you narrow it down further? nnAlso to get a better idea how your site applies to this post would be getting a better understanding including some answers regarding issues such as:nn- are you using Twitter in any way to engage customers and/or drive traffic?n- what about Facebook groups or Tencent chat & tools – used in any way to engage customers?nnI would love to have you write the answer to these questions in a reply to my comment below. It would surely be very insightful to my readers as well to find out.nnFcmall, thanks so much for sharing.

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