Dell Has Some Interesting Twitter Sales Numbers

It looks like Dell is having great success with their @DellOutlet account.

Dell continues to be one of the more visible corporate behemoths actively using social media, and today they’re out with new numbers to demonstrate some of the success they are having.The company tells us that they’ve now generated a total of $6.5 million in revenue from their Twitter presence, where they have nearly 1.5 million followers on their @DellOutlet account (and 3 million “connections” across all social sites).

Via: Mashable

Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign

Here is an interesting article about calculating the Return On Investment of your Social Media Campaign.

First the bad news: If you’re going to calculate the ROI of your social media campaign, you’re going to have to know math. That may come as a disappointment to people who thought social media was only about accumulating Twitter followers or monitoring Facebook “Likes,” but it’s true. The future of social media is about math, metrics and monetization.

The problem is that most companies aren’t doing an effective job of measuring the value of their social media campaigns. In fact, a recent survey by Econsultancy found that 47% of the companies it surveyed said they were “not able to measure” their campaigns and that “the jury is still out” on the value gained from their social media investment.

If you’re one of the people who isn’t measuring your social media campaigns on an ROI basis, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Here are some tips, advice, and a little bit of simple math to get you on the right path to ROI success.

Via: Mashable

Dealer Impact Systems Adds Automatic Human Voice Over Capabilities

Dealer Impact Systems Adds Automatic Human Voice Over Capabilities

Dealer Impact Systems (DI), a leading provider of digital marketing and reach solutions, is once again raising the bar for automotive dealers seeking to elevate their online inventory presence across the Internet. The company today launched their AHVO or “Automatic Human Voice Over” application, the latest addition to the company’s comprehensive suite of video and digital reach products developed exclusively for auto dealers.

DI customers can add AHVO to their current digital marketing solution with a single phone call-no onsite or system upgrades are required. Once enabled, the AHVO application automatically pulls nightly inventory information from the dealer’s videos and generates vehicle-specific descriptive commentary from an existing bank of thousands of pre-recorded voice clips. The AHVO application then auto-creates a complete human voiceover clip for the video, including detailed vehicle information, as well as geographical and dealership information.  The human voice clips not only enhance customer experience, they also boost search engine results rankings.

Voice Clips Automatically Generated

“Even with recent improvements in text-to-speech technology, studies show that consumers recognize and prefer a real human voice to computer generated speech,” said Brian Cox, president and founder of Dealer Impact Systems. ” That’s why we took the time and resources necessary to ensure that our voice bank is extremely comprehensive.”

DI has long been committed to helping automotive dealerships promote their inventory listings across the digital landscape as quickly and seamlessly as possible. “AHVO significantly shortens the time it takes to get a vehicle that’s sitting on the lot into the dealership’s Internet marketing promotions in a powerful way,” said Cox.

DI customers can add the AHVO enhancement to their current digital marketing system for $150 per video license per month. There is no set up fee.

How 7 Startups Are Building Their Online Communities

Great post about online communities and how manage/grow them.

Community management is anything but a science. But, more and more startups are figuring out early on that defining what “community” means to their business, and then working to incorporate and respond to that community is an essential element in their growth and the maturation of their products.

What follows is an in-depth look at how seven startups at various stages of development are approaching community management. For some, the in-house Community Manager is a must. For others, it’s a bit of an all-hands-on-deck approach. Regardless of technique, you’ll find that each of these startups uses a combination of support software and social media tools to ensure that even if the customer isn’t always right, the customer is always heard.

A few themes resonate throughout these examples: make users happy, listen to everything, incorporate community feedback into product development when appropriate, and stop fretting over the trolls. These may all sound like simple truths, but it’s the continual practice and adherence to these purist community ideals that make them complex.

1. Pandora: Measure Success One Interaction at a Time
2. Shwowp: Make Your Users Happy
3. Seesmic: The Community Manages You
4. Disqus: Feedback is Never Lost
5. Posterous: Community Starts at the Top
6. Klout: Respond to Each and Every Request
7. Curate.us: Celebrate the Community

Via: Mashable

Top 5 Emerging Brand Trends on Facebook

1.) Facebook Exclusives
2.) Facebook Places Experimentation
3.) Facebook Commerce
4.) Facebook Support Centers
5.) Facebook Giving

Field of Dreams may have popularized the notion that, “If you build it, they will come,” but in today’s Facebook  generation, brands are beginning to go where the masses are, instead of relying on the masses to come to them. With 500 million members, Facebook represents real-time access to the online mainstream.

For years, brands have been using their Facebook Pages to connect with customers. As Facebook blossoms, so too does brand ingenuity, and in recent months we’ve seen a surge in campaigns that inspire Facebook giving, incorporate Facebook Places and feature Facebook as a prominent part of product reveals and fan exclusives. Application makers are also building tools that small and big brands alike can use to sell their products and offer Facebook-tailored customer support.

What follows is a deeper look at how and why these five emerging brand trends are bubbling up on the world’s largest social network.

Via: Mashable

5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now

What’s the first thing young women do when they wake up? Check Facebook. How do enterprise employees pass the time at work? With social media. With so many studies highlighting ever-accelerating social media usage rates, the conclusion is obvious — social media is everywhere.

What follows are five of the hottest social media trends right now. Each are influencing our social, online and mobile behaviors in significant ways.

Entertainment checkin services are changing the way we watch television. Mobile loyalty applications are helping us connect the dots between our real-world shopping behaviors and digital rewards. A new breed of Q&A services are changing the way we search. Barcode scanning applications are making products social, and deal-of-the-day sites are giving us ways to save by recruiting our friends to the party.

1. Social Scanning

2. Q&A and Intelligent Information Discovery

3. Group Buying

4. Mobile Meets Loyalty

5. Checking-In to Entertainment

via: Mashable

Buick Is Creating Brand Ambassadors Via Twitter

In this article from Social Fresh. Automaker Buick is doing its best to create brand advocates in order to revamp and redefine its mature image. Just a quick disclaimer the author of the post is currently working as a Buick Brand Ambassador in Chicago on behalf of the brand.

In an effort to reinvent the brand, Buick knows they have a lot of work to do. They want to trade in the old fuddy-duddy grandpa image that has plagued the brand for the last decade for a hipper more modern brand impression.

In August, AdAge reported Buick was the fastest growing car brand in the US, but they are still struggling to rid the brand of their dated image. It is a large effort that General Motors has undertaken to broaden the appeal of Buick. And just as they have been doing with Chevrolet, they are reaching out to social media to help change the public’s awareness of the brand.

Via: Social Fresh

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