If I told Sony Pictures marketing president Marc Weinstock that social media didn’t provide any ROI, he’d laugh in my face.

That’s because Sony Pictures just took the #1 spot on Ad Age’s Entertainment A-List, an annual ranking of the top entertainment brands, after netting the studio’s first $2 billion year.

While other studios tried to ride sequels and remakes, Sony rode new and untested properties like District 9 ($210 million), Paul Blart: Mall Cop ($183 million), Zombieland ($102 million), Julie & Julia ($129 millon), and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs ($235 million) to box office dominance.

What’s most startling about the numbers is that most of the big money makers for Sony barely featured any “A-list” stars. Rather than rely on big names, Sony actively used social media to help spread the word about their releases.

District 9′s extensive viral campaign led back to an online experience that was shared by consumers through social media and created early buzz for a “weird” sci-fi movie with a no-name cast and no-name director.

Zombieland had a “Zombify Yourself” website, Twitter account, and a “Rules for Surviving Zombieland” video series that earned nearly 2 million views on YouTube.

And Sony is convinced that social media had a huge hand in creating its success.

Having a buzzworthy film has also proven to work more in Sony’s favor than most, due to an early presence on Twitter (Sony has more followers than any other movie studio) and an adaptive marketing strategy that keeps conversation around its films active even after the opening weekend.

‘The judgment day comes a lot sooner now. You used to get to opening day or the second day to see whether the audience really liked the movir or not. But when you hype one thing and deliver another, [negative social media chatter] is the immediate penalty these days.’ [Sony Pictures Chairman of Worldwide Marketing] Jeff Blake said.

Universal Studio knows too well about that after they saw box office sales plummet for Bruno following its opening weekend because of how quickly word spread through Twitter from consumers telling friends “not to bother.”

Meanwhile, other studios like Paramount have used social media to push obscure homemade movies like Paranormal Activity to $193 million worldwide. NOTE: There’s an extensive case study about that film that I worked on in the upcoming book microMARKETING by Greg Verdino.

Social media’s impact on sales is getting harder and harder to deny these days, and those of us who continue to study how the medium works are going to be instrumental in creating the marketing campaigns that are necessary in this networked world.

Welcome to my new post series: Best of Social Media. I plan to share the best ideas, examples, and stats I see every week. Definitely let me know what you think in the comments.

Cheezburger CEO on What Makes Internet Culture Viral

Obviously humor is at the heart of what drives the viral spread of content on the web, but Cheezburger Network CEO Ben Huh explains that those things that go viral most often and for much longer are remixes and mashups of existing content. Take a look at the Kanya/Obama video, which takes two independent clips, marries them, and creates something wholly more viral than the source material.

Even viral content can spawn more viral content. Take a look at Charlie Bit Me and the remixes such as the “Charlie Bit Me (Auto Tune)” which spread the video through the web again.

The key, Huh believes, is to take something familiar and put it into a new context or give it a new meaning. The question is, how can brands do that?

Domino’s Pizza Holdout “Bounty” Social Campaign Soars

Domino’s, just a little over a year ago, was hurt more often than helped by social media. A video of two employees flinging snot and messing with orders in other disgusting ways drew millions of views and mainstream press coverage. Domino’s was forced to close the location where the incident took place and a company spokesman said it definitely attributed to a fall in sales:

The company had been on track to see a profit in the second quarter of this year, McIntyre said, but saw a 0.7 percent decrease. “Because we were trending positive, all things being equal, that was the one thing we could point to and say that impacted us.“

Since then, Domino’s has done tons of great stuff to build its brand through social media. Ramon De Leon, a Chicago franchisee, revolutionized relationship marketing for the company through Twitter, built the most profitable Chicago store, and has been sharing his insights with other Domino’s franchisees. And now they’ve taken their “Pizza Holdouts” TV campaign to social media through an interesting new concept.

With Domino’s “Taste Bud Bounty” consumers hunt down friends and place a “bounty” on them via the Taste Bud Bounty Hunter game.

For each bounty placed, the friend in question is gifted with a coupon for a free pizza (with purchase of a second pizza. The bounty issuer also gets a coupon in turn (first time only). Should the friend order with your coupon (before any others), you “capture” their taste buds. After ten captures, you’ll earn a coupon for a free large one-topping pizza.

The “Taste Bud Bounty” game will run through June 27, and the player with the most captures will win free pizza for a year. The game has already been quite successful. If you look at the bounty hunter wall, 5,860 people have already participated in the first week.

As an extension of a sampling campaign to get customers to try the brand’s new recipe, it seems like it could do exactly what Domino’s wants in spreading awareness and trial.

Vitrue Launches “Social Page Evaluator” To Measure Fan Page Value

Vitrue, a social media management company, has released a free tool that determines the value of a brand’s Fan Page by measuring number of fans, posts per day, number of interactions, and other miscellaneous data.

It’s an interesting, if questionably accurate, way to help determine the value of a fan page. The formula is proprietary and how it calculates value is unknown, but it works off the premise that every fan and interaction it worth a certain dollar value. For example, since the average CPM rate online if $5, one of the factors it seems to use is calculating the impressions a fan page is earning through posts and interactions. So if you generate 1 million “earned” impressions, it’s technically equivalent to spending $5,000 on ads.

Try it out. It’s obviously all theoretical, but still interesting

Consumers Embrace Mobile Ads

A new study by mobile audience media company JiWire surveyed 1,000 smartphone users to find out their responsiveness to mobile ads. Here are the key findings

• 52% claim they have acted on an advertisement in an app.
• 18% have made a purchase directly from an ad in an app in the last month.
• 53% said they were willing to share their location to receive more relevant advertising (interesting news for apps like Foursquare)
• 40% spend more than one hour per day using apps
• Average smartphone owner has 22 apps on their devices

Interesting and Unknown Facebook Stats

• Of the 400 million monthly Facebook users, 50% sign on every day
• 70% of FB users live outside the U.S.Facebook is the #2 web site by traffic. Google is #1, Youtube is #3 and Twitter is #11.
• Facebook users spend a cumulative 8.3 billion hours per month on Facebook
• There are 550,000+ active applications
• Women aged 55+ are the fastest growing demo on FB in America
• Facebook has become so popular, psychologists have identified a new mental health disorder: “Facebook Addiction Disorder”
• After netting about $650 million in revenue is 2009, FB is expected to make $1 billion from FB Ads

All the Stats You Need To Know about Social Media Usage

• Only 7% of the population is aware of location-based services (Foursquare, Gowalla, etc)
• 7% of population uses Twitter. Up from 2% in 2009
• 33% of Twitter users are on every day, 37% of Twitter users are on only once a month or less.
• Twitter demo by race:
  • 51% White
  • 25% African American
  • 17% Hispanic
  • 3% Asian
  • 5% Other
• 52% of users are 25-44 yrs old, only 29% are 12-24 yrs. old
• 86% have at least some college education
• They believe the recession has passed. 32% said financial problems have gotten better vs 18% of gen population
• 54% update their status on social media sites multiple times per week from their phones
• 42% use Twitter to learn about products and services
• 41% use Twitter to provide opinions of products/services
• 31% use Twitter to ask for opinions about products/services
• 49% of Twitter users follow brands, only 16% of all social networking users follow brands.
• 44% of Twitter users feel they’re early adopters, trying new products before most people
• 73% of Twitter users feel the Internet is “most essential” to their lives. Only 13% feel the same way about TV
• If forced between choosing TV and the Internet, 79% would eliminate TV and keep the internet.

Social Stats: How Business Leaders View Social Media

2,700 readers of the business management e-mail newsletter “SmartBrief on Leadership” gave these responses to Social Media Issues

• Are their companies currently using social media/social tools?Getting there: 51% of respondents say their companies are actively using and exploring social media in a number of business areas.  Another 30% are in pilot test/consideration mode.  Only 27% say they are not using social media now and won’t be in the future.
• Is social media just a marketing fad?Social media is here to stay:  While many leaders say they see social media as somewhat “over-hyped,” 63% of respondents say they disagree with the notion that it is a marketing fad.
• Falling behind the competition: 40% of respondents say they fear they are falling behind their competitors in using social media. Also, 25% admitted that they did not know what their competitors were doing in the space.

The Benefits of Linking Customer Loyalty with Social Networking

NYTimes has this very interesting report about social media and mobile networking apps.

A phone is a simple replacement for a wallet stuffed with loyalty cards, but the real appeal for stores is in the location information provided by Foursquare and other location-based applications. Retailers can track when customers actually enter their stores. Such data can be used to learn things about store traffic, such as when men visit versus women. And it’s easier to note when the most loyal customers visit.

“If you check into work, then you leave work, you check into a bank and then you check into a store, that’s a behavior that, in aggregate, we might use to transform the way we market to you in the offline world,” Mr. Bough said. “We might see dayparts that are more likely for you to check out of some place and go to the store, and we might do advertising during that specific daypart in that specific place.”

Pepsi, in addition to beginning a Foursquare program, is also introducing a location-based iPhone application called Pepsi Loot through which customers can collect points toward free music downloads.

“We believe it’s a real, new opportunity to transform loyalty programs in a way that we haven’t done before,” Mr. Bough said.

Tasti-D-Lite wove Foursquare into its loyalty-card program this year. When someone registers the card online or visits the loyalty Web site, she can click to connect the card with her Foursquare account (along with Twitter or Facebook). Whenever the card is swiped after that, the customer accumulates Foursquare check-in points and Tasti-D-Lite loyalty points at once.

“Imagine the amount of data we now have in order to make better marketing decisions, in order to make loyalty decisions, about our customers, as opposed to the paper punch cards we had before that didn’t do anything for us,” said B. J. Emerson, social technology officer for Tasti-D-Lite.

This next quote is particularly interesting given my observation in 7 Keys To Measuring Social Media ROI, that the brands that have seen the most direct and measurable benefits from social media usage have been those that control their retail environment, like Dunkin Donuts, Tasti D Lite, Naked Pizza, and Dominos.

Pepsi’s Foursquare program will begin running in June. While the company is still working out details, Mr. Bough said that he expects that when a Foursquare user is near a Pepsi retailer, an offer to enroll the person in a Pepsi rewards system will appear. Once people are enrolled, whenever they check in at a grocery store or drugstore selling Pepsi, they will accumulate rewards points or badges that they can redeem for products or offers or donate toward charities. Restaurants can layer in offers, too — Shakey’s is giving $3 off a large pizza for people who show the Pepsi Loot app, for instance.

Five Steps for Consumer Brands to Earn Social Currency

Very, very interesting article from FastCompany that I can’t even summarize. You should just read it. It’s formatted like an infographic, so it’s easily digestible.

Some of the topics?

• How Dunkin Donuts trumps Starbucks in social with far fewer followers/fans.
• Why not every brand, like mass market brands, are built for social media
• Social tools are a means, not an end
• Gimmicks marginalize trust

What are some of the social media or general marketing articles that stood out to you this week?

So last week I sat in on eMarketer’s “Seven Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media” webinar and there were some interesting things to take away from it along with my own opinions.

Before we get into the nitty gritty, let’s get pumped. Let’s start with this great video called Socialnomics

According to one study by R2Integrated, the biggest barrier preventing marketers from incorporating social media into their marketing mixes is the lack of analytics and measurement. What’s interesting though is that 50.4% of respondents do feel that social media will generate quantifiable results in 2010, demonstrating a positive sentiment toward social media despite their wariness of current measurement tools.

And, there are studies showing results. Take a look at this slide.

So how do we get from confusion to clarity? How do we try and quantify results like this?

Let me start with a caveat. A lot of this is still conceptual and even the host had a hard time mapping it out. But there’s a lot of food for thought here.

#1. Establish clear marketing goals, and then identify social metrics that directly support those objectives

The biggest problem with establishing ROI metrics is that marketers don’t know what they’re trying to achieve with social media. Are they trying to retain customers? Are they trying to generate leads? Are they trying to make sales? In which case, what can we measure to determine if we’re accomplishing this? Most marketers look to see what impact their presence has on visits to their websites, and how many of those visits convert.

It is possible to track social media results at a very granular level. For instance, I’ve noticed that many brands who control their retail environment have tremendous success in social media by connecting with local customers and converting them into sales.

Domino’s is a big brand right? They’re nationwide, but they’re also franchised. So one franchise owner in Chicago named Ramon De Leon used Twitter to increase business for his local Domino’s restaurant. The results? He had the highest-performing store in the Chicago area and Domino’s had him consult franchise owners around the world on how to use Twitter for their businesses. There will be more detail about Ramon’s story in Greg Verdino’s upcoming book microMARKETING (Full Disclosure: I did research for the book)

There’s also the case of NAKED Pizza on Twitter, whose 1-to-1 connections with local customers generated so much response they actually made “Twitter” a checkout option on their cash registers. They even found that an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion on April 23, 2009, brought in 15% of the day’s business. And of course, there’s Dell and Best Buy’s Twelpforce.

But all those businesses have something in common. They control the retail environment and so their objectives were to connect 1-to-1 with customers online and lead them to their stores mostly by engagement and customer service. But what would you do for a brand like Fuze, whose products sit on shelves in dozens of retailers alongside 10 other competitors? The objectives have to be different because the barrier to measurement is greater.

For brands like Fuze, what you’re ultimately hoping to do is build loyalty, increase engagement and brand exposure, and hope it all translates into more purchases. But how do you measure that? What metrics could you use to determine if your social initiatives are having any effect.

Studies have shown that 34% of social media users search for a brand on Google after being exposed to it through social media. So, you can measure search volume using Google Trends. You can measure the number of brand mentions on Twitter, especially versus competitors.

And of course, there’s more.

#2. Organize your metrics into a logical framework

The image of the slide is missing for this one, but it had three buckets: Exposure, Engagement, and ROI/Outcomes. This was the least defined of the 7 points, but this is the general idea.

• Exposure: How many people are seeing my brand through this channel? This is more easily measured on Facebook with their Post Insights, but it represents a similar and familiar metric: impressions.
• Engagement: After being exposed to the brand, how many of them engage with the brand? Are they interacting? How are they interacting? What’s their sentiment? What is the % of engagement?
• ROI/Outcomes: This wasn’t explained as well, but it’s the idea of how many of those who engaged performed a desired action, such as visiting a website.

The idea is to create this link from exposure to engagement and finally to action. But he didn’t quite explain how to do that and I’m not sure how you would do that either.

#3. Take a long-term outlook with social media interactions and measurements. It’s a commitment, not a campaign.

This idea is simple, and one we all understand. The effect of social media relationship building can only be measured over time. You can do this by measuring the lift in comments and other interactions from month-to-month.

You could also check a competitor’s social presence and hand count their lift in engagement (at least on Facebook). This relates to tracking Google Trends and Twitter mentions, as noted earlier. You could’ve done something similar with Facebook Lexicon, which worked like Google Trends. Unfortunately, Facebook is killing it (and hopefully replacing it with another option).

#4. If hard ROI metrics are difficult to track directly, consider a range of softer metrics that can be linked back to desired outcomes.

We’ve already covered this concept in previous steps. It’s all about measuring “soft” engagement metrics versus business results. Check out this conceptual graph for an idea of what this means.

But within this are other thoughts from a variety of marketers. I’ll present the ideas as quotes

“Using a variety of hard and soft ROI metrics can absolutely be accomplished. I would offer that volumes of conversation over competitors, sentiment, the level of influence of those interacting with your brand, etc, are but some of the metrics that can be used to construct a dashboard of success.” - Blake Cahill, Visible Technologies

And…

“Many argue that a fixation on hard numbers could lead companies to ignore the harder-to-quantify dividends of social media, such as trust and commitment. A Twittering employee, for example, might develop trust or goodwill among customers but have trouble putting a number on it. “There is this default assumption that return on investment is the correct measure for everything,” says Susan Etinger, senior vice president at Horn Group, a San Francisco consultancy. “Everything needs to monetize within 12 weeks so we can understand that we’re successful. But frequently their measuring is misleading. Why? Because if someone on a blog or social network is trashing your brand, what is it worth to you if one of your passionate brand fans speaks out on your behalf?” - Bloomberg Businessweek, December 2009

Isn’t it more powerful when a brand advocate you’ve developed a relationship with through social media stands up for a brand or speaks highly of that brand? It’s much more powerful for a person to advocate for a brand rather than a brand extolling its own greatness. What is the value of that?

#5. Determine a dollar $ value for customers who choose to opt-in and engage with your brand via social networks.

It’s a great quote from Papa John’s, but hard to understand how they measured the percentage of Facebook fans who convert to customers. Perhaps you could create an arbitrary percentage, and maybe you can potentially tie their Facebook account to the Papa John’s site to measure their frequency of visits when they make an online order.

But semantics aside, ideally you could assign a dollar value to a fan through sentiment or self reporting. For instance, your Facebook fans might say “I buy Product X everyday!” and you could calculate that out. Or you could calculate a number based on sentiment. “I love Product X!” = $5/month.

And you can always invoke other correlated work of social psychologists like Leon Festinger and the dozens of others who came after him, who all studied the theory of cognitive dissonance and how much more likely we are to reassure ourselves of our loyalties. If you buy a Toyota, you’re more likely to gravitate toward news stories about how great Toyota’s are and tell your friends about how great your Toyota is. This manifests itself constantly in the form of customers that some people call fanboys, those people who stick to their purchases through thick and thin.

The general idea has already been somewhat proven within social media.

So is it likely that people who’ve never purchased your brand’s products will sign up for your brand Fan page? No, it’s unlikely unless there’s a strong incentive to do so, typically through a promotion. But it doesn’t mean it’s all a waste. What you’re doing here is constantly communicating, solidifying, and nurturing brand advocates who are key to sustained business and business growth. If those brand advocates can then get their friends to try your product and like it, then, voila… new fans and more advocates.

#6. Listening can save your market research $s

This is another way to look at social media ROI: It can save you money elsewhere. While typical research is more fine-tuned by questioning a wider swath of consumers, social media can help you measure how people are talking about your service.

• What aspects of your business are talked about most?
• Which are talked about least?
• What words are used to describe your products, and how can you mirror that for your own advantage in communications?
• What parts of the sales funnel are they missing? For example, I was working with a retailer who had fans on their Facebook page post that they were having a hard time with the online checkout. Some couldn’t even find the checkout! Those fans alerted the brand about an issue that ultimately helped them save lost sales.

And the second image of the HP CMO is particularly interesting. You can view conversations on social media to determine the impact of your traditional ad campaign. Are people responding to it and talking about it on social media? If so, why not? How can that inform future campaigns? If they are talking about it, is your brand getting its desired result?

#7. Build the technological capabilities to measure your customers’ complete digital footprint – in real time.

The host admits that this is the most conceptual and aspirational step. Essentially, it’s about connecting the dots between your multiple digital channels.

• How is social media effecting search volume?
• Can you alter your search keywords and ad copy based on listening?
• How do you measure the social connections? For instance, this person on the Facebook page who posted this great comment has 302 friends. This person wrote a wall post that was commented on by another person who has 212 friends. This brand tweet was retweeted by this guy with 1,200 followers. How far is your reach and sphere of influence?

One Last Thought

He also had some comments about branded vs personal accounts, which is a constant debate among marketers who want to leverage Twitter. But first, we must revisit an earlier slide.

If TRUST (or liking) is the primary “weapon of influence” used in order to succeed in social media, then how can customers trust a talking logo with no accountability?

“We can’t have carefully tailored messages from a brand entity. That’s why brands are putting their own people on social media to respond to consumers and engage. In trying to leverage TRUST, branded accounts have a hard time doing that. Frequently, brands start with a brand account and move to personalities, especially on Twitter.” - the webinar host, Geoff Ramsey (eMarketer CEO)

Your Feedback

This is obviously a big topic among marketers looking to use social media. What are your thoughts on the subject? Are these steps helpful?