As we see more and more ad dollars move to online, everyone is rushing to make their mark in the webspace. Of course, the current source of online media right now is social marketing, and one of the most common question for brands in this area is which to use: Facebook or Twitter?

Keep in mind that not only are these two different platforms but that you're also reaching slightly different audiences with each. That being said, depending on your product or service, both or either of these community sites could be a great way for consumers with a common passion for your brand to get together and have you push news to them. Consumers joining your Facebook page is a voluntary move that is incredibly welcome in an age where people are more and more weary of spam and secretly paid sponsorships.

In a nutshell:

Facebook
- There are about 125,800,000 accounts open in the US. Of that:
12.7 million are 13-17 (10.1%)
31.1 million are 18-24 (24.7%)
31.4 million are 25-34 (25%)
21.8 million are 35-44 (17.3%)
28.8 million are 45+ (22.9%)
43.4% are male, 54.6% are female (the rest of the accounts are not specified)

Twitter
There are 100+ million registered accounts (most, however, are outside the US). According to ComScore, 30% of their users were under 25 at the end of 2009, with that number having increased about 10% since 2008. Like Facebook (and most social media sites in general), Twitter is slightly more female, but the discrepancy between female and male users isn't as large.

The few facts above touch the surface of what kind of research can be done on these sites, but it is a good start. Things are changing rapidly in the internet world; for example, on Facebook, the 35+ age group is growing the fastest.

Social media is a great tool if used effectively: dog lovers unite under the Dogasaur Facebook fan page, and the health-conscious as well as moms join the Lovin' Scoopful page. Oh, and another thing: it's easier to target peripheral audiences, like supporters of the Special Olympics, using social media if it is done correctly. A couple of months ago I contacted the marketing person running the Special Olympics Facebook page and asked him if the Special Olympics and Lovin' Scoopful could trade shout-outs just because I knew that the Special Olympics has a very broad audience and supporters would like an ice cream brand that donated to a cause they are passionate about:

Users engage by commenting on, “like”-ing and retweeting status updates and pictures while seeing relevant information that they opted in to receive. Tailor your messages to your specific audience via the specific medium; even if your entire audience is a certain demographic, your social media audience may or may not reflect the same. With the internet becoming increasingly available and portable and networking sites growing bigger and bigger, you may want to use the data above to determine how much time you should spend expanding your brand image in these areas.

It's been four long years since the last world cup took place in Germany, when Italy beat France for the prestigious cup! This Friday the referee’s whistle will mark the beginning of the first world cup of this decade, hosted for the first time in the African continent. The 2010 FIFA World Cup will be in its 19^th edition and it’s scheduled to take place between 11 June and 11 July 2010 in South Africa. Soccer mania is seen everywhere: outdoor advertising, print, radio, mobile and online, with media spends this year higher than any other year.

Some of the biggest soccer stars today like: Messi, Torres, Ronaldo, Kaka, Beckham and many others will take part on the world's most-watched sporting event. According to the 2006 FIFA World Cup™ / Infront Sports & Media, billions of people watched the World cup, and a good chuck of it did so in 2006 via online, from which we can only speculate that those numbers will rise tremendously this year. Here are the 2006 numbers: FIFAWorldCup.com became the most successful sports event website in history with 4.2 billion page views from June 9 - July 9 — more than double the traffic recorded during the 2002 event. More than 125 million video streams, and more than 73 million page views on the mobile web portal after FIFAWorldCup.com went mobile for the first time. So, this clearly demonstrates that the online medium has grown quite a bit and that there is a huge market that can be prove to be high lucrative to tap into.

New and existing brands that support FIFA are beginning to spend more time and money in online marketing and have come up with many different ways to capture the loyal soccer fans attention to grab a piece of the pie. It’s all about making a good and long lasting impression, capturing the most eye balls and highest participation possible. Smart branding for an event of this magnitude and scale is key!

But before taking a look at the participating brands involved in this whole marketing game, let’s see how the hosting nation is branding itself to impress the world.

In preparation to this worldwide event, South Africa spent billions of dollars to brand itself the best way possible. Five new stadiums were built for the tournament and five existing venues have been upgraded. In addition to the stadiums being built and upgraded, South Africa has also improved its current public transport infrastructure within the various cities, with state of the art transportation systems and projects. Hotels, restaurants, parks and many other hospitality establishments have also spent millions preparing for this big event to be ready to accommodate visitors to full capacity.

South Africa has also implemented safety and security measures for local and international tourists attending the largest event in the world. Overall, the country has invested almost $10 billion, in four years leading this event, which they hope to be a great success and view the whole thing as an investment in the long run. That’s a lot of money for a developing nation struggling with so many internal problems like health and crime. Let’s just hope that what happened to Greece at the Olympics doesn’t replicate here a few years later!

South Africa has put a lot on the line in the name of branding itself to the world the hard way, but are they investing money in social media channels the same way World Cup sponsors have?

Let’s now take a look at how well some brands are doing branding themselves particularly in the online side of the business.

Official FIFA sponsors and sports/soccer centric brands have invested a great deal of money in social media for this World Cup. All of the official World Cup sponsors (and many non-official sponsors too) have been busy working on the newest application that can connect fans with a global social media audience via Facebook and their mobile phones, the most engaging viral marketing campaign and the most fun and simple ways to engage audiences and get them to participate.

Here is a list of brands that are present at this edition of the World Cup (some of them long-standing sponsors): McDonald’s, Powerade, Continental, Sony Ericsson, Coca-Cola, Adidas, Visa, Budweiser, Emirates, Nike, Puma, Umbro, and many others. However, not all of these made the cut on my short list of brands worth mentioning that have done a great job branding themselves at this year’s World Cup with solid online marketing campaigns and should capitalize from social media. These top player brands include: Sony Ericsson, Visa, Adidas, Coca-Cola and Budweiser.

Sony Ericsson - One of the long-term sponsors of the World Cup.

Power of Twitter - With Twittercup, Sony has proven to keep it as simple as possible, with a smart Twitter campaign that tells us social media and sports are a natural fit. The Twittercup collects and counts fan tweets, creating a competition among attending nations. The good is that since its launch in December 2009, the Twittercup has already amassed 43,000 tweets, the bad is that I cannot seem to easily find this on Twitter only the Sony site.

Visa – They have replicated a social application format used during the Olympics that proved to be highly successful called: social media match planner.

Facebook App – Visa’s game planner application with ability to share with friends and leave match related comments, scores high in terms of fun and functionality.

Adidas – A World Cup sponsor heavy weight in so many levels, Adidas has been a sponsor of the game since 1954.

TV Soccer Celebrity Ads – Adidas is relying heavily on a big budget TV ads with soccer celebrities like: Kaka, Michael Ballack, Messi, Villa and Zidane called: Fast vs Fast featuring their F50 adizero boots and trying to spark social media conversation on Facebook. At almost 80,000 views thus far, the video count is quite low for a big player in the game known for killer creative ads.

Nevertheless, Adidas has a huge advantage for being a close and strategic partner of the cup with the match ball for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, manufactured by them and provides with boots and wear to many of the players and teams, giving them perhaps the most direct exposure and appeal to a fan.

Coca-Cola – Another brand heavy weight and present at the World Cup since 1974.

Funny UGC YouTube Video Contest – Coca-Cola has taken inspiration from Roger Milla’s 1990 corner flag dance to encourage users to upload their own unique celebrations on to YouTube, the winner of get to go to the World Cup. UGC funnies have proven to be very successful and the simplest the better, so Coke scores high here. Additionally, Coca-Cola is perhaps the largest brand on Facebook with 5.5 million fans and a huge following on Twitter, where the contest is nicely supported.

Budweiser – A well-known brand with a long standing history of success on branding and a sponsored of the World Cup since 1986.

YouTube Reality Show: Budweiser United – Budweiser held a global audition via YouTube to find 32 fans from respective World Cup countries who will live together in South Africa “Real World” style. Once the Cup kicks off Budweiser will create a YouTube reality show documenting the fans as they play out their rivalries en masse. As their team is eliminated so the house member will be kicked out. The two final fans will go to the World Cup final and the winner will present the Budweiser man of the match trophy to the best player. Facebook will play a supporting a strong supporting role.

This one can prove to be the most creative social media campaign that promises to have a lot of legs, since it uses the two strongest channels in social media to replicate a reality show that was very compelling and successful among fans altogether, and may take reality shows to a new level and platform.

What do you think?

Who is faring the best in Social Media?

How well has South Africa done preparing for this colossal event? Have they neglected social media?

Share your thoughts!

The ROI on unpaid media is much harder to measure than the ROI on paid media. Even with that being said, paying nothing for something should definitely be in your marketing mix.

Consumers are the most weary of advertising ploys as they have ever been. Unpaid media gives consumers another reason to trust the product. When we're low on budgets, we're forced to create something out of very little. Getting in contact with bloggers is a be a big strategy we always turn to. Example: Dessert Darling reviews Lovin' Scoopful. Talking to bloggers is quite risky because they are obligated to make it known we contacted them, and then there's also the slight chance that they don't like your completely-awesome-how-could-anyone-not-like-it? product. Other examples would include the obvious Facebook and Twitter pages where users opt-in to receive your updates. I've even seen Facebook page URLs at the end of movie trailers and on storefronts, as production studios and brands are trying to turn paid media into unpaid media. It's hard to avoid the Facebook logo nowadays (unless you're living under a rock, of course). What was previously an icon just on the web has traversed into our real lives too: it seems like every brand wants us to be visit their site, be a fan on Facebook and follow them on Twitter. The best audience is one that actively comes to your brand for information, which opens up more time for you to seek out those new customers.

And wouldn't you know it — might you reconnect with those who love your product and then found you two years later online? An honest-to-goodness-unasked-for review of one of your clients' products is almost priceless.

Ugh. Ok, so I tried giving this topic a few weeks to sink and see if I could calm down about it but, no, I'm still not happy. Usually I'm all about new technology, online services, gizmos, gadgets and digital products that make my already considerably cushy life just that much cushier. Particularly, little things like Amazon remembering who I am everytime I come back, recommending books and holding all my credit cards on file, or Google's slightly big-brothery-I-know-exactly-where-you-are-and-no-don't-bother-clearing-your-cache-'cause-we've got-your-click-pathing-profiled-already tweaks to Google Maps, search ads and every other product they've built. Seriously, who doesn't want their map to zoom to your current location on load? Maybe I've just become used to that level of creepiness.

But Facebook, man. Holy crap. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love technology. I loves me some technology, but this is getting a bit much. I seriously, absolutely, positively do not want to show up on some site for the first time and see my entire friends list laid out in front of me with message and product suggestions tailored specifically to my own unique brand of stupid Facebook comments. There's stuff all over my profile that I wouldn't want showing up when visiting another site in any circumstance - voluntary or not.

Now some people might say I'm splitting hairs. Amazon, among others, tailors their product offering directly to you based on your usage patterns - searches, favorites, purchases, etc - but that's a sort of walled garden of hyper-specific marketing. I have to sign in to access this data, at least once when setting up my account and possibly every time I return, to get all these targetted offerings. Facebook, on the other hand, is proposing to just sign you up. Seriously. You've never been there but you're signed up the second you land on the page.

“…we’ve also explained the possibility of working with some partner websites that we pre-approve to offer a more personalized experience at the moment you visit the site.”

Is this the end of the world? Well, no. But it certainly feels like an invasion of privacy and a betrayal of trust. [More on trust in a minute.] I'll give you an example that I don't find to be far-fetched at all. Let's say I go to Sports Illustrated for the first time because I've just got to get a Swimsuit Calendar for my wall. Why? Maybe I'm lonely. Maybe it's none of your business. Oh, snap. That's just it! It is none of your business. But my good buddy decides to go to Sports Illustrated too. Maybe he's there for the same calendar or maybe he's there to read an “article”. Haha. Anyway, he might see a great, big picture of my face saying, 'Hey Buddy, your friend Ryan just bought a steamy Swimsuit Calendar.' Probably because he's lonely… That sucks. You see where I'm going with it though.

Is Facebook going to protect users from situations like that? Will they stop it at merely signing you in to a site you've never been before and restricting the “general information” from spreading out in concentric circles of shame and irritation? I doubt it. Facebook has betrayed our trust before. Beacon anyone? New opt-in-only privacy settings? Facebook will of course give users the usual convoluted privacy settings but make no mistake, you'll be opted in until you find the stupid setting to turn it off. I hope…

I realize the web - and mobile for that matter - are travelling in this direction at break-neck speed but I feel like the old man in the corner going, “Back in my day, the web was anonymous! You could go anywhere and do anything without fear of persecution - or at least embarrassment. It was private dammit!” I'm just tired of having my personal information sold and traded about without my permission. And, NO, telling me you're going to opt me in ahead of time doesn't count. Couldn't Facebook start us opted-out and convince (read: bribe) us to turn it on?

Ok, so I never made that my Facebook status. If you are in the dark about all the “I like it” Facebook statuses that started happening this month, women are writing about where they like it. Their purses, I mean. Where they like to put their purses. (Duh.) It's for Breast Cancer Awareness month. Supposedly.

…wait, what?

Well, now I have some questions:

1. How does telling the world where I like my purse spread awareness about breast cancer especially if it's in such a cryptic form? This sounds more like a “girls only” club, where only girls are allowed the privilege of being in the exclusive club. Doesn't this contradict the whole point of SPREADING awareness?
2. Why does it have to have a sexual innuendo? Would that be considered disrespectful to survivors and non-survivors of breast cancer and their families to make a joke out of something serious?
3. The answer to #2 is probably that if it didn't have a sexual innuendo, it probably wouldn't spread so fast, which brings me to the next question, which is do we really need to concentrate efforts on bringing awareness to this issue? I'm pretty sure everyone knows about breast cancer (thank yous go out to the month of October, pink ribbons and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. For Angelenos, there's also the annual run/walks in downtown LA, which, even if you are not a participant, you're very likely going to be aware of them due to the massive traffic that ensues after the organizers block off miles of street). If anything, I would argue that being aware of breast cancer in October is hard to avoid. I think that a more effective way to take a stand against breast cancer is to help find a cure, like donating to the aforementioned Susan G. Komen for the Cure or taking part in a run/walk for breast cancer such as one sponsored by Revlon or Avon.
4. Not a question, but something else I thought of: I am totally going to break into everyone's house and steal purses that I know are kept on the nightstand, on the floor of the bedroom right up against the wall and on the kitchen counter (that is, until that boyfriend moves it to the top of the dryer).

You probably remember earlier this year when women were writing the color of their bras also supposedly to raise awareness for breast cancer. I highly doubt that these two viral Facebook status updates actually started off as trying to raise awareness for breast cancer. I cannot find a single credible source on the internet that shows me where either of these two started. Would this same thing work for men? For men, prostate cancer is the second biggest killer out of all cancers. What if men wrote the color of their boxers or where they like to put their wallets or satchels or murses (man purses)? First, would it spread, and second, would that raise awareness about prostate cancer?

Ok, end of rant. Sorry for being a Debbie Downer. I just don't see the point. On the other hand, maybe this would remind women to do their monthly checks for lumps or get that mammo they've been putting off.

The question bigger than, “How did this start?” is “how did this spread?” The answers might help you try to apply this free and viral strategy to your brand.

1. Rumors overall agree that this started by email chains. Email chain forwarders usually have long lists of email addresses that they normally forward funny/interesting/useful emails, thus making them the “influencers” of email. The first step in any social marketing plan is usually to target the big influencers, and in this case, it's the annoying email chain forwarder.
2. Point #2 relates to Question #1 above that states that this was a secret for for girls to keep. The exclusivity was appealing, as was snickering when boys commented on statuses asking for clarification. Feeling special and included makes people want to hop on the bandwagon that much more.
3. Barrier to entry was very low. It seems that today, my own mother must be the only person without a Facebook account. All one had to do was to write a color or a place, and she automatically became a member of this “club,” a player in this exclusive, secret game, leading back to Point #2. It didn't take more than 2 seconds, so it's not a huge inconvenience to update something that is most likely already open in your browser.
4. The (fabricated) tie-in to breast cancer awareness made people think they were contributing to a good cause, further increasing the incentives for participation.

Obviously, this isn't easy. It has to be something sassy and something that makes other people wonder enough to do some research to find out what it's about (or at least question publicly). Efforts will be hit-or-miss, but since it's all free, there's very little monetary loss.