BarnRaisers

90% of the data in the history of the world has been created in the last 2 years (source: IBM).

It’s given rise to an industry, Big Data, and a significant portion of it comes from social media chatter.

Does it make sense for brands to listen to social media data? What kind of insights are revealed? Does it result in better decision making?

Here are 8 case studies that show the predictive power of social media listening.

1. CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS: In the 2010 California governor’s race between candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown, a study from Activate Direct social listening proved the ratio of positive to negative social sentiment to be very much in line with the ratio of favorable to unfavorable ratings shown by traditional polling and on-going focus group. But social media listening identified potential crises earlier, faster and for less research money.
2. DELL: Uses social media chatter for cross-departmental team collaboration. Over 90,000 employee quickly and easily collaborate and listen in 11 languages in places like the company’s Listening Command Center. What has they found> In the US, Twitter chatter has a positive impact on their reputation and gained positive coverage in Mashable and Fast Company; in Germany, social media chatter among employees helps monitor the success of internal conferences; in China, blogposts have a direct effect on coverage with Sina, RenRen, microblogs and forums.
3. HEDGE FUND MANAGERS: “Analyzing social media conversations can provide insights, ‘like X-Ray vision’, about a company’s performance in between their quarterly financial reports.” That’s the point of view of the McAlister Study and how hedge fund managers now listen to social media chatter when their research showed  a direct positive correlation between sales and chatter; a 5% rise of positive chatter led to a 5% rise in sales.
4. MORTON’S: You may have heard about social media consultant, Peter Shankman, who had the  good luck when tweeting a shout out about how a Morton’s steak would be just the right ending to his flight arriving in Newark. The consultant with 150,000+ Twitter followers was greeted at the airport by a man in a tuxedo sent by Morton’s to deliver a complete steak dinner. Social media listening enabled Morton’s to pick out advocate from the crowd and create influence at a low cost. It probably didn’t hurt Shankman’s influencer rating and visibility either.
5. NIELSEN: The gold standard for assessing the performance of TV programming, has started collecting social media chatter for TV rating. The Nielsen company said that one in three people using Twitter in June of 2012 sent messages at some point about the content of television shows, an increase of 27% from only five months earlier.  Nielsen also estimated that 41% of tablet owners and 38% of smartphone owners used their devices while watching television.
6. QUENTIN TARANTINO: His violent Nazi revenge fantasy Inglorious Basterds pulled in more than $37 million domestically in its opening weekend. A good portion is thanks in part to Twitter. After a $14 million opening on Friday, the film picked up steam over the weekend as the positive tweets kept rolling in. Research service, Trendrr, showed the number of tweets about the movie climbed steady through most of Saturday before tapering off early Sunday correlating directly with movie receipts.
7. TOYOTA: At the beginning of 2012, the company faced very negative press due to revelation of recalls and announcing them late to the public. Toyota launched a large “transparency” and “apology” campaign using social media outreach. The company had four official Facebook pages, which saw a 10% fan base growth between late January and early March. USA president and chief operating officer, Jim Lentz, also participated in regular Twitter Chats. Toyota experienced a 41% increase in March 2010 sales, compared to March of last year. The company can’t prove a link between social media outreach and the sales boost, especially considering the unprecedented sales incentives and discounted leasing deals and mainstream media appearances by executives on such outlets as NBC, ABC, and NPR. But it certainly didn’t hurt Toyota to be transparent through social media and was a very smart part of a successful integrated campaign.
8. UNISYS: A 100+ year old company, Unisys understandably has had some obstacles to overcome when adapting social media to their corporate culture. With several top executives leading by example, departments began to openly share communication using internal social media applications. But success stories within the company show huge innovative payoffs aided tremendously by the open sharing of information available through well-constructed social media platforms and corporate adaptations.

To be transparent, not all brands are benefiting from social media listening. Coca-Cola reports it has yet to see any sales lift from social media buzz, even though the brand has 61,000,000+ fans on Facebook but the company continues to listen.

In the music industry, Tom Silverman reports: “My new take is online media is the propagation channel through which attention waves travel.  Bieber and Kutcher have huge attention waves so they travel far and fast.  Speed of propagation is greater on YouTube than any other social platform due to the sticky video content. Media is not necessarily neutral.  Great images and videos drive engagement faster than words for example. But we keep learning from real life stories. His New Music Seminar is this week in NYC.

Do his case studies prove the predictive power of social media listening? Do you need help finding insights in the chatter for your brand?

Nowhere do the words, Fan Engagement, have greater relevance than in the music business and social media.

The music industry, the first media business to be consumed by the digital revolution, has experienced profound change. But in 2012, for the first time since 1999, sales increased. They went up 0.3%, to $16.5 billion, a far cry from its $38 billion peak in 1999 (source: International Federation of the Phonographic Industry).

Although it may not be time to party like it’s 1999, the music business is growing again. Social media is helping the transformation. That’s why from June 9th through 11th, you’ll find me at the NMS New York New Music Festival. It’s dedicated to help artists and players break through in this difficult market by providing the knowledge and connections they need to succeed.

The New Music Seminar (NMS) began in 1980 and ran through 1994. In its 16-year run, the first series of seminars annually attracted more than 8,000 participants from 35 countries. In 2009 NMS was revived because the music business was in crisis after a decade of dropping album sales. Label executives, agents, promoters and artists needed find ways to break away from the traditional album-based business model.

The #1 goal in the music business today is monetization. That’s why social media plays a prominent role. Here are 10 case studies that prove Social Media ROI in the music business.

1. JUSTIN BIEBER: Owes much of his fame to social media. One example is when he created a huge PR buzz in a seemingly innocent way from a rumor he spread that the music video, ‘Baby,’ was to be deleted from YouTube because it had 1.5 million dislikes, and millions of Follower tweets poured in to protest. Today, “Baby” on YouTube has 836,039,006 views.
2. BONNAROO AND CMA FESTIVAL: Are two big festivals that occurs every year in Tennessee. A local SEO, SEM and Social Media Monitoring software company, Raven, captured the social attention the festivals were getting with Infographics (one is shown at the bottom of this post). The Infographics were featured in the Tennessean’s Business Section and USA Today. From the publicity, the agency secured new business from a regional tourism entity, an international record label and and an international entertainment television network.
3. MATTHEW EBEL: A Boston-based singer generated 26.3% of his income from 40 hard core fans.  Matthew used social media to drive his super fans to a susbscription based website. He sold packages ranging from $5/month to $15/month, as well as annual options.  He offered a wide range of perks are including members-only parties, VIP seating at shows, access to new music as soon as he creates it, new live concert recordings every month, broken apart tracks ready for remixing, behind-the-scene sketches and drafts.
4. KING ISSA: A rising hip-hop turned to a  unique, first-of-its-kind mobile app: an iPhone application that delivered a musician’s mixtape with exclusive in-app content. In one week, the app received 50,000 download and live tracking and analytics data from over 35 countries that were used to secure iTune sales and depth of Fan Engagement for repeat purchase.
5. LADY ANTEBELLUM: Integrated exclusive social sales offers, such as their “Own The Night” flash sale, where the band offered fans an exclusive bundle offer for a zip-up hoodie and an autographed photo. By combining the exclusive offer with social commerce apps that enabled fans to click through and complete their purchases within the Facebook Newsfeed, the deal sold out in an hour, with 85% of sales going to new customers. Another flash sale in Facebook Newsfeed that same night sold out in just 10 minutes, proving the value of social media as an effective sales tool when used intelligently.
6. LIVE NATION AND SMASHING PUMPKINS: The Smashing Pumpkins took over Live Nation’s Twitter Feed for 7 hours. In that time, they answered 200 questions and had 570 engagements with Fans and Followers. The real time engagement generated 12,280,000 impression generated in that time.
7. NEXT BIG SOUND: An analytics and insight company that tracks billion of social signals to help record labels, artists and brand managers make better decisions did an analysis on the key factors impacting digital sales of iTunes. In order, they were: 1) Radio Spins, 2) YouTube Views, 3) Facebook Fans and 4) Twitter Followers.
8. AMANDA PALMER: On a boring Friday night, Amanda managed to make in $11,000 in just two hours. It all started with her tweeting about how she was alone, again, on a Friday night sitting in front of her computer. Others started chiming in and began claiming how “we are all losers.” Dialog continued and grew at a rapid pace. A faux organization was started called, “The Losers of Friday Night on their Computers.” Amanda created the hashtag #LOFNOTC and thousands joined the conversation. A follower suggested the group create a t-shirt. Amanda quickly decided to run with it. She took a sharpie and made a t-shirt design. A website was thrown up that night with the t-shirts available for $25 a piece. 2 hours later… $11,000.
9. ROXY: The legendary Sunset Strip music venue uses social media to measure Fan Engagement. They use TweetReach to measure the number of people their tweets reach, as well as the number and quality of retweets. They also like Klout, which helps them compare their efforts to similar businesses.  TweetReach demonstrates to a talent agent that they could reach a larger potential audience through Twitter so they should stop advertising in certain local publications. Print advertising is expensive, but Twitter promotion is a free.
10. “SOCIAL STRIP”: is the name and social umbrella that lives over the Sunset Strip for all the entertainment venue (e.g. Comedy Store, Roxy, Viper Room. It’s part marketing, part information and part online community. One of their events is the the Sunset Strip TweetCrawl. The TweetCrawl is a bar and restaurant crawl using Twitter to promote specials and other prizes and encourage participants to patronize multiple business on the Strip. The first TweetCrawl was in July 2009. It has been an annual event ever since.

These case studies show how important listening, analytics, monitoring and partnerships are in the music business. They also show how many different types of music or music-related businesses can benefit.

Do these case studies prove Social Media ROI in the music business for you? Will you be going the the New Music Festival in NYC this June? Will you give me a shout if you’re there? Here is the Bonnaroo Infographic.

Big Data is is going to be big deal. Follow this trend line from Google Trends. It shows how often the keywords, Big Data, have been searched in recently.

Big Data gets its name because that’s what it is – data that exceeds the processing capacity of conventional databases. It comes from web-browsing data trails, social network communications, sensor and surveillance data for enhanced insight and better decision making.  It’s often stored in the cloud reducing server storage.

But it’s not the data, it’s what you do with it. Last week, we reported on 38 big facts on Big Data every business leader should know.

Are companies doing something with the data? Here are 6 case studies that prove return on investment (ROI) of Big Data.

1. HERTZ: With over 8300 locations worldwide in 146 countries, Hertz keeps its finger on the pulse of its customers with customer satisfaction. The problem? How to collate the information and understand what customers were trying to tell them through these surveys? By applying advanced analytics solutions, the company was able to process the information much more quickly–in half the time it previously took, while at the same time providing a level of insight previously unavailable to the company. An example? While evaluating the solution, Hertz was able to identify a potential area for improvement in Philadelphia: surveys and measurements indicated that delays are occurring for returns during specific times of the day. By investigating this anomaly, Hertz was able to quickly adjust their staffing levels at the Philadelphia office during those peak times, ensuring a manager was present to resolve any issues. This enhanced Hertz’s performance, and increased customer satisfaction…all by parsing the volumes of data being generated from multiple sources.
2. HOLLYWOOD BOX OFFICE RETURNS: It’s one of the great mysteries that movie studios face: how well will their next release do in the box office? To date, the answer to that question has been a lot of guesswork, and “gut checks”. But with the advent of social media sites, as well as big data analytics, for the first time, studios have a way to measure sentiment by accessing multiple big data sources. The solution: Examine how social media data feeds could be analyzed in order to better understand public sentiment. Initially the idea was to track social movements using social media tools. The ability to understand how the public perceives a specific movie could go a long way towards informing the studio as to the efficacy of its marketing efforts, as well as the ability to better encourage interest. It, of course, could also give studios additional insights to help inform go/no-go decisions on everything from the breadth of distribution to whether it made sense to invest additional marketing muscle to push a movie over the public’s awareness tipping point.
3. T-MOBILE: Has integrated Big Data across multiple IT systems to combine customer transaction and interactions data in order to better predict customer defections. By leveraging social media data along with transaction data from CRM and Billing systems, T-Mobile USA has been able to cut customer defections in half in a single quarter.
4. SETON HEALTHCARE: Sought to address a need to reduce the occurrence of high cost Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) readmissions. How would Seton do this? By proactively identifying patients likely to be readmitted on an emergent basis, they applied predictive models and examined analytics through which providers can intuitively navigate, interpret and take action. The benefit? For Seton, a reduction in costs and risks associated with complying with Federal readmission targets. For Seton’s patients, fewer visits to the hospital and overall improved patient care. Seton is able to identify patients likely for re-admission and introduce early interventions to reduce cost, mortality rates, and improved patient quality of life.
5. US XPRESS: A provider of a wide variety of transportation solutions, collected about a thousand data elements ranging from fuel usage to tire condition to truck engine operations to GPS information, and uses this data for optimal fleet management and to drive productivity. As a result, they save millions of dollars in operating costs each year than before they applied data, measurement and analytics were used for this purpose.
6. H&R BLOCK: Has learned in the weeks prior to April 15th, every question that is not answered immediately is a lost sale. Tax preparation is a highly seasonal business. H&R Block had a heavy paid media scheduled but they also used Facebook and Twitter to provide immediate access to a tax professional for Q&A in the “Get It Right” social media campaign. The effort secured 1,500,000 unique visitors and answered 1,000,000 questions for a 15% lift in business versus the prior year when there was no social media in the marketing mix.

Do these case  studies prove ROI of Big Data to you? Do you believe Big Data results in better decision making?

Viral marketing is programs designed to accelerate awareness, trial and sales through a high degree of social media networking being shared or spread in a short period of time (as defined to Wikipedia).

Successful viral social media marketing campaigns deliver big media exposure and buzz for a relatively small investment. But one of the biggest dividend occurs in how viral marketing programs encourage others to share.

Here’s what 6 viral marketing case studies teach us.

1. ACNE FREE: Decided to generate awareness of a new product, Therapeutic Sulfur Mask, through sampling and sharing on social media, not that traditional route. Through their Facebook page, the AcneFree fan-gated welcome tab featured a form for fans to fill out as well as a share and tweet button on the offer. The goal was to gain 30,000 “Likes” by launch. The page had 41,000 “Likes” with only $1,100 spent on advertising. The deal was shared on Facebook over 500 times and tweeted over 1,000 times. The “Talking About This” metric was the highest in the catetory and the Facebook page now has 101,000 “Likes.

2. BLENDTEC: Is a company that manufactures blenders for industrial use (Starbucks uses Blendtec blenders to grind coffee beans). They decide to sell direct to consumers through commercials on YouTube that cost $1,000 each. CEO Tom Dickson blends golf balls, broom handles, iPhones and iPads in a Blendtec blender in these commercials to prove the blender’s effectiveness. Many of the commercials receive 10,000,000+ views, the Blendtec website receives 120,000,000+ visitors in the month the commercials launch and Blendtec sales increase +700%.

3. CHRISTIAN DIOR: As viral marketing has evolved, it has been integrated with mass marketing. In May 2012, Christian Dior released a YouTube video called ‘Secret Garden – Versailles’, supported on the brand’s Facebook page, Twitter profile and magazine, DiorMag. to generate awareness for the Fall collection. A ‘Making of’ video was  issued 10 days later with similar social media support. The 1st video received 17,000,000+ views; the follow up video received 5,000,000+; social network enrollment experienced a huge increase; all for a marginal investment relative to traditional marketing.

4. FORD FIESTA: Selects 100 socially vibrant individuals who are provided with the European version of the Ford Fiesta 18 months prior to it being manufactured and released in the USA. These socially media aware fanatics are encouraged to share their experience with the Ford Fiesta over the 6 months on their Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube channels. The effort generates 11,000,000 social media impressions; 11,000 videos uploaded, 13,000 photos posted and 50,000 “hand raisers” or “leads” who want more information; 97% did not currently own a Ford.

4. OLD SPICE: “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” featuring Isaiah Mustafa attracted 19,000,000+ views to date across all platforms according to Visible Measures. Perhaps more interesting is the level of engagement demonstrated by the number of responses the video received within the first 24 hours compared to other historic videos.

5. TOYOTA: Toyota in the UK put together a social media marketing program that saw two bloggers attempting a 500-mile road trip in a Toyota iQ, all on a single tank of petrol. The trip would take the two drivers to 18 UK cities and every step of the journey would be shared through social media. It resulted in 64 blogs, including Wired, the New York Times and Treehugger reporting the attempt. Toyota reaching a potential audience of over 105 million readers worldwide. It reached a possible 3.7 million in the UK alone. Traffic to the Toyota iQ blog increased by more than 212%

What all of these case studies teach me is one of the most critical planning point for a viral social media campaign is how it will be shared. What do these 6 viral social media case studies teach you?

Permit me this brief self-promotional message. I am doing a webinar on Secrets of Social Media ROI (register here) on 10/16 (Tuesday) at 11 am EDT. It’s free.

This 1/2 hour webinar examines key insights from the eBook, 166 Case Studies Prove Social Media Marketing ROI, which was written for anyone interested in learning by example how social media marketing drives businesses and builds brands. The eBook can be downloaded on the side bar of this website. There are no information requested or forms to fill out; just click “download.”

The webinar is being brought to you by Biznology, a top-rated business and digital marketing blog as ranked by AdAge, HubSpot and TopRank. Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Webinars work because they shorten the sales cycles, increase leads, reduce marketing costs and enhance a brand’s positioning and thought leadership. Although webinars occur online, they bring a level of personal touch, interactivity and hands on training that is associated with offline learning; all without ever leaving your desk, office or home.

But webinars don’t achieve these results unless they teach something news and establish a connection of relevance, credibility and trust. When they work, they reinforce a fundamental truth about relationships: People like to do business with people they know.

Do they work? Here are 6 case studies that prove ROI of webinars.

1. AVON: Markets through 3 million representatives in 131 countries. Avon established a webinar channel for reps, youravon.com, to enable offline reps to be eRepresentatives and grow revenues, increase productivity and reduce costs while maintaining control for the Avon brand. Avon estimates they have seen a $10,000,000 reduction in operating costs.
2. INSPIRED MARKETING: Sells digital materials and online training programs about using social networking tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to create and market a successful business. In 2010, the partners presented more than 300 webinars (both their own and through other people). They investment could be tracked to over $2.5 million in sales for 2011. “In January 2011, we had sales of $250,000 from just seven GoToWebinar events,” says President and Co-founder, Lewis Howes.
3. LUMEDX: Is a small healthcare technology company with 100 person staff. It needed to stand out in the face of large brand competition. Lumedx used webinars to cost effectively build awareness of its cardiovascular information and imaging systems product, drive lead generation campaigns and build customer rapport. Lumeds increased contact with over 500 clients, gained competitive edge over much larger companies and drove over$600,000 in annual sales.
4. MARKETO: Is a leading provider of marketing analytics software. The company recognized webinars as a key piece in the marketing tool kit to promote thought leadership and generate leads. As with many webinars, people registered but didn’t always attend. They used a simple, recorded phone message reminder in addition to email. Although th ephone reminder added $2 for every registrant, it increased conversion of people who attended  from 26% to 48% and, according to Marketo, was well worth the investment in terms of sales results according to a company rep.
5. PINPOINTE: Is  a provider of on-demand email marketing automation services for mid-market and large enterprises. Pinpointe depended upon free,15-day trials of its service together with traditional sales outreach to generate leads and win new customers. However, the company wanted to find additional ways to increase awareness, leads and sales. When webinars were added, 1000 new leads per month are added; 25 become customers who each generate $200/month in Pinpointe services adding $6,250 and $75,000 to the bottom line.
6. SEAGATE: Is a a large 52000+ staff technology company, Seagate wanted to bypass traditional B2B channels and market its new product directly to end users. Webinars facilitated a B2C product launch and attracted 1500+ attendees with zero advertising budget. Seagate also used webinars to assemble far-flung speakers for webcasts without travel costs. Seagate exceeded initial sales unit goal by 300 percent, doubling sales forecast within one week of launch. Once they put the webcast on YouTube, a viral marketing effect created 38,800 within 4 months.

From B2C and B2B, companies that operate door-to-door to the highly automated, webinars can be a highly effectively tactic in any company’s marketing tool kit. They are a great example of CRM in action but, in my opinion, work best when they balance new technologies with old-fashioned relationship values. At least, that’s what I hope you’ll experience if you attend “Secrets of Social Media ROI” on 10/16.

Do these case studies prove the ROI of webinars to you?