Web analytics provider, Omniture has further secured their partnership with Facebook by announcing today that customers can now purchase, automate and more thoroughly track their Facebook ad buys.

The announcement is targeted towards marketers who are looking to get a better understanding of the performance of their Facebook media buys. The custom report options will offer a complete look at the analytics, effectiveness and customer engagement generated by campaigns.

In the past year, the Adobe-owned company has supported Twitter analytics and the Facebook application measurement, making the addition of Facebook ad measurement the next logical step.

With the majority of Facebook’s projected revenue for 2010 coming from ad buys, it’s clear to see why both Omniture and Facebook would want to help marketers better analyse, optimise and spend more on their campaigns.

Today’s news also included the addition of display ad optimisation, more mobile analytics and an expansion to the company’s partnership with Experian.

As social networking becomes the ‘in’ thing, people are beginning to question where that leaves the use of email. You’ve heard the saying, ‘video killed the radio star,’ so is this a case of history repeating itself? Is email about to fall victim to social networking?

Well, no we don’t think so. From a Ph. point of view, we just don’t buy this theory that “email is dead,” and there are plenty of reasons why:

• People still send hand-written letters
• Nearly all websites that require registration request an email address
• Email notifies you of updates from your social networks
• Email is universal, social networks are not
• Many people have no interest in joining social networks but will use email
• Email is still improving
• Even social networks recognise the importance of email
• More social media use means more email use
• As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well

Businesses should be merging social aspects with their email programs to not only expand the reach of their offers, but to maintain customer loyalty and ultimately grow their database. So if you’ve been questioning the life expectancy of email, stop now. Keep in mind that about 50% of content is shared through email and social media is a great way to get subscribers.

In case you’re STILL not convinced, here are some final thoughts for you;

• Mobile apps will continue to keep email relevant in the mobile world.
• Google recently released its own social media product, Buzz, which the company decided would fit best with Gmail.
• Microsoft Outlook only recently started integrating social networks into the inbox.
• The social networks themselves are creating email services - Facebook is said to be working on its own...and we know how popular Facebook is.
  

As the web becomes more mobile and social, we’re starting to see apps filling voids that were mostly left empty throughout the history of search and social media. People are increasingly sharing their locations with their friends, certain apps, certain sites, and even the world.

As people and businesses share their locations more and more, you might say that this is becoming a major part of search marketing, and we're not just talking about Google.

Sharing your location has become a way of sending out a generic query, and local businesses have some tremendous new opportunities as a result. Potential customers sharing their locations mean that businesses can provide a real-time call-to-action to get them inside their establishment while they're nearby.

So if you're about to start building up your content they try adding a field to your database around lat/long (latitude/longitude). You’ll then be able to deliver content based on that location information, whether that’s news, deals, coupons, tips, recommendations, etc.

When you can get to your customer this way, you can give them more relevant content, which is what search is all about.

The use of social media has grown significantly over the past two years but new research from E-Consultancy indicates that most businesses are still in the experimental stage when it comes to their efforts.

61% say they have experimented with social media, but not done that much whilst 90% say they expect social media to take up more time in the next year. Only 2% expect less time to be spent on social media next year.

Whilst it seems most businesses are still only experimenting with social media, the future looks set in that direction.

Facebook is most commonly used in social media, with 85% of companies surveyed using it as part of their marketing strategy. This is followed by Twitter (surprisingly) at 77%, LinkedIn at 58% and YouTube at 49%.

Over 60% of respondents say that the amount of money spent on social media has increased since last year and 81% of companies expect social media budgets to increase over the next year. So whilst the majority of companies are experimenting for now, they must be seeing results otherwise why would they forecast such increases?

Do you agree with these results? How important is social media to your business?

Let us know…

A growing number of resort and spa destinations are spreading their wings and reaching a wider customer base via social media. With the help of social networking platforms they are broadening their branding efforts and connecting with potential customers that they might not have reached through traditional advertising.

World-famous mountain resort company Vail Resorts now pours 80% of their marketing budget into a social media strategy. With this, the company has launched three new websites each with their own Twitter account. Each website targets a slightly different audience but the one thing everyone shares is a love for skiing and snowboarding and now Vail Resorts has provided an outlet to keep everyone updated with their news and events.

‘The Canyons’ began using social media two years ago by launching an employee-run blog in conjunction with Twitter and Facebook accounts. They began to understand the power of social media when they held a contest giveaway on Facebook. Overnight their number of fans grew so quickly that they started to think about more social media strategies.

Vail Resorts, ‘The Canyons’ and many other resorts are now realising that social media is the only realm where anyone can do effective branding. With advertising space, you’re limited by size and cost whereas with social media you can actually talk about all things relevant to you, as much as you want and for very little cost.

The click of a mouse may now be just as powerful, if not more so, than word of mouth but just don’t forget that successful social media strategies do require dedication and consistency.

When it comes to quality versus quantity, quality should always take precedence. ‘The Canyons’ take on social media was growing with substance and that’s more important than growing in numbers, because numbers don’t guarantee staying power. Whilst you want a lot of online followers, you only really want to communicate with people who are genuinely interested in using your service.

Above all, know your audience. Like with any individual or company leveraging social media, resort owners must accept that they’re no longer in complete control of their brand. However, research and attention to detail goes a long way in monitoring how a business is perceived.

Twitter is testing an ad platform, which is expected to be released next month. When the product does launch, it will be made clear when sponsors have paid for ads, and the ads themselves will be "relevant and useful, so the user doesn't think of it as an ad."

Twitter recently released a Super Bowl Chart that showed people tweeting throughout the game about the game itself and tweets about specific advertisers.

Following this, it is possible that Twitter's ad platform will tie into this "what people are already talking about" kind of thing, but that would seemingly make it much more difficult for a lesser-known brand to have any kind of advertising success.

At the moment nobody knows exactly how Twitter is going to present its ads yet but the question is - how will they do it in a way that users won't think of it as an ad?

We think it's probably going to involve some real-time engagement on the part of the advertiser, which leads us to wonder how is this different from any other unpaid, branded tweet?

That could be a difficult problem to address, one that we’re sure Twitter won’t have ignored, so if they're planning on launching next month - they must have a pretty good solution.

It seems that companies on the social web are trying to create better consumer relationships by doing good deeds. Their social media efforts are creating incredible new ways for companies to partner with customers, resulting in a wide range of initiatives including contests, giveaways and fundraising events to benefit communities.

Here are two initiatives that represent some of the best corporate “social media for social good” campaigns to date. Take note and be inspired:

Ford Helps Invisible People across America

What matters in these campaigns is visibility and impact, just look at Ford’s sponsorship of Mark Horvath’s drive across America. The company simply provided a Ford Flex and a company-promoted social site to Horvath’s virtually unknown “Invisible People” campaign.

In the end, Ford managed to make homelessness a primary issue. Furthermore, the 11,263 mile effort legitimised Horvath’s “Invisible People” campaign online. Since last summer Mark Horvath has become a national leader in the battle against homelessness.

 “Ford’s support of the Invisible People project was never one of lead generation; it was mainly because we believed in Mark’s mission and because it aligned with our own strategic initiatives,” said Scott Monty, Ford’s social media lead.

“We felt that Mark’s project was a way to extend that and to give some additional exposure to some of our strong products.”

The Pepsi Refresh Project

Although Pepsi Refresh is still in the works, there is no question that Pepsi skipped this year’s Super Bowl ad to reallocate $20 million to the crowd sourced community giving program. The fact that it was a weak year for Super Bowl ads only helped make Pepsi’s decision look even smarter and gave the company a tonne of publicity.

The reason these campaigns work is because it’s not just about writing a quick cheque but it’s about launching a programme that can make a huge impact over a spread out period of time.

Pepsi also did the smart thing of getting people involved with how the money is invested. Remember it’s not just about supporting good causes; it’s about letting your customers help decide which ones are worth supporting.

A new study has revealed that the majority of consumers react positively when companies respond to postings on social media sites. The response indicates the value of social media as a new way to engage people and build your company’s image, reputation and brand.

The study found 55% of consumers felt positively when companies responded to a social media posting, with only 5 percent reacting negatively and 40 percent remaining neutral.

The study included feedback from 27,000 consumers about their use and impressions of social media whilst 22 companies provided information on their social media policies to see how it compared.

Whilst the results reinforce the value of monitoring social media sites, companies should also be aware of the fine line between using social media to connect with customers and constantly selling to them.

Other highlights of the survey included:

•    60% of consumers engage in social media sites (62% women, 57% men).
•    The percentages by age closely mirrored the general population with 35 year olds and younger using social media 80% of the time or more and 36 to 50 year olds using it an average of 60% of the time. Of those consumers in their 70's and 80's, 21% are visiting social media sites.
•    Slightly more than 85% consumers utilise on Facebook, where all the participating companies have a presence, 38% on YouTube, 19% on MySpace, and almost 13% on Twitter.
•    One in ten consumers who did contact consumer affairs departments from the 22 companies polled posted dialogue to a social media site. 58% percent of the women posted a positive comment, compared to 49% for men. 35% of the males posted a negative comment versus 26% of women.

Social media marketing campaigns are proving to be goldmines, rich with customer engagement offering an insight that companies wouldn’t normally have. Companies like Pepsi have been going to great lengths to adopt this kind of collaboration with fans, and the rewards have been worth it.

Pepsi’s Mountain Dew division is several stages into its DEWmocracy campaign — a plan to launch a new Mountain Dew flavour with the public’s involvement at all levels of the process. The aim being to integrate consumers more closely with the brand.

The first DEWmocracy campaign, which launched in 2007, allowed consumers to choose Mountain Dew’s new flavour, colour, name and graphics, and resulted in more than 470,000 people voting and an overall 1 million people taking part in some phase of the process.

In July 2009, when the second DEWmocracy campaign was launched, die-hard Mountain Dew fans had to narrow decide on a new flavour to become a permanent part of the Mountain Dew family, using social media platforms Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

Every part of the campaign involves the fans and the public — from picking flavour names, to voting on the best user-submitted ad campaign. Pepsi needed their customers to be involved throughout.

This type of marketing is less about crowd sourcing and more about collaboration. Pepsi recognises that DEWmocracy has been driven by word of mouth and this way doing business, rather than an ad campaign, recognises the passion consumers feel for Mountain Dew.

Pepsi is now looking at social media as the best way to directly communicate with their fans and we think giving your customer ownership of your brand is a fantastic idea.

With all this talk of Twitter, Facebook and social media, you may think that blogging is a thing of the past. Well don’t! Blogging can in fact be a part of social media because the ability to comment on blog posts leads to engagement between the author and user.

Blogs can still drive big-time traffic to websites and an example of this has recently been illustrated by the launch of e-commerce site, Alice.com.

Alice.com sells everyday household items right from the manufacturers, rather than through middleman retailers. When it launched in June 2009, by July it had doubled its traffic to 387,000 unique visitors, according to Compete.

Guess where the majority of that traffic came from? Well, according to Compete, it came from word-of-mouth from blogs. In fact, its number one traffic source was Blogger.com. Not Twitter. Not Facebook. Not search.

Blogger accounted for 18% of Alice.com's referral traffic in July and on top of that, Compete says Alice's conversion rate jumped to 3.5% in July as well.

Of course, you have to give bloggers something to talk about to get valuable blog traffic. It's no different than getting people to talk about you on social networks or through any other form of word-of-mouth marketing. It starts with your product. Clearly Alice.com, had something that many people wanted to talk about.

As long as you can keep your bloggers (consumers) happy, your business too could enjoy a successful future.