The report also lightly touches on the value of social media for hotels. Unsurprisingly, the inherent difficulty any company encounters getting real, measurable profit from social media is present for hotels, too. If selling directly to consumers is important for business in any industry, social may superficially appear direct, but does not deliver the results expected from direct communications with consumers.

One of the chief hurdles for companies seeking to make money by using social media actually comes from the various social media entities. Offering services for free supports rapid adoption and growth, which in turn creates bulging technology costs for expansion and sustainability. Paradoxically, the value of social media for business is to leverage the audience that already exists, as hosted by the social media entity. If Facebook or Twitter, for two examples, must begin charging the public for use, then businesses would be less inclined to advertise or use social because audience volume is dramatically reduced. In short, it’s risky to ask consumers to pay to use social media. Marketers gravitate toward eyeballs, and social media will have fewer eyeballs in a pay-for-use environment.

Interestingly, while social media seems to masquerade as a direct channel, its most broad application and usefulness is found in mass awareness. Social media allows large numbers of consumers to interact with a single message, but creating profit from those interactions is still a cumbersome process and a drain on resources.

Marketers must also remember that expectation setting for any new marketing channel is vital from day one. Social media still qualifies as a new marketing channel. A business that uses social media exclusively for creating awareness of special offers and discounts only is conditioning its “fans” to expect that out of any interaction with social media. Therefore, any attempt to use social media in a different respect will likely be met with criticism and attrition.

The point is, when it comes to direct digital marketing and opening a direct line of communication with consumers, the primary direct digital marketing channels of email, Web (specifically the website) and mobile are still the best bet for real, measurable profit. Social media is tempting, but it is difficult to make a strong argument for its value as a direct channel.

Going into the event I had really high hopes for the success of the contest. I knew that we kept the contest under wraps from the public and that it is interesting to test word-of-mouth value plus Twitter. I also knew that the Shop.org Annual Summit is a trade show full of technical people looking for the latest and greatest digital solutions in the retail space. My expectations for entries were pretty high. I was thinking that around fifty people would participate in the contest. Other people at Knotice did not have any expectations for participation in the contest. For them, it was a first time trial and they did not know what to expect.

The first night of the show, my expectations of around fifty people entering the contest via Twitter were quickly re-aligned. The Knotice booth staff was told numerous times by Shop.org attendees that they did not Tweet or did not see Twitter as useful. When asked to create a Twitter account for the show to enter the contest, the response was that attendees refused on the grounds that Twitter was a “waste of time.”

The reaction was completely opposite from what I originally assumed about the online marketing space and how people in professional positions use Twitter. A lot of people Knotice spoke with at the event may have a Twitter account, but few use it. If a person was not on Twitter, it is pretty safe to assume they are not seeking out what others are saying about different products or services on Twitter. I have found out that updating and using Twitter takes a lot of time. Staying current about industry-wide happenings and tweeting about relevant things can be time-consuming.

After a search for professionals that use Twitter, Knotice found just six people willing to participate in our contest. For those that did elect to participate in the contest, the chances of winning were very high.

Another issue that Knotice encountered during the event was the fact that the Knotice Twitter account was hacked. The worst part about this was, that the hacker sent out direct messages to people that were following us, telling them about a money making scam. It was an obvious hack that did not annoy our loyal followers, but it was frustrating nonetheless.

After quickly resolving the hack on our end we discovered that Twitter’s response to the hack was not at all helpful. They told us to change our password and to check out our computer and to make sure that we only had the right parties authorized to use the account (duh, we did not need their guidance to figure that out). Even asking different questions to the Twitter customer support team received the same automated response over and over again. It would have been nice from a customer service perspective to see that if someone had a legitimate question about their account, the response was pertinent to the question.

Our conclusion about using Twitter for business is that Twitter is a valuable PR tool to spread the message about recent company news, upcoming events, new customer wins, industry developments, new ideas, etc. Using Twitter to help build brand can be helpful, and is where Twitter’s primary value lies.

Knotice is giving away a free Netbook to one lucky Twitter user. We are curious about how many show attendees are willing to tweet the message that we have come up with as the “entry form” to our Win a Netbook Twitter contest. We are also very interested to see how quickly the message catches on, and how many people become interested in some of our product offerings as a result of this contest.

However, at Knotice we are putting a new spin on tweeting to win (you know we have to shake things up someone). We are making our Twitter contest completely viral. The only way a person can find out what special message they must tweet to enter the contest is to be at the Shop.org Annual Summit in Las Vegas. An interested person must stop by the Knotice booth (#619) and find out what the tweet is. I will be there along, with other contributors to The Lunch Pail (Bryce Marshall, Brian Deagan, and editor Josh Gordon) – so there will be some friendly faces to chat with!

We will be announcing the Twitter contest winner along with the other contest winners during the morning networking break on Wednesday September 23 at 10:30am (during the Shop.org Annual Summit). Hopefully by running our Twitter contest this way we can cut down on the amount of people just looking for freebies. Oh, and the Twitter winner must be present at the Summit in order to win.

So, if you are attending the Shop.org’s Annual Summit, make sure you check out Knotice’s booth (#619) and find out about direct digital marketing and the secret Twitter phase to win a free Netbook.

There are a many social networking sites out there besides Facebook and MySpace. Orkut, the social networking site run by Google, has 67 million users and beats Facebook and MySpace in Brazil and India. There are more than a few social networks that rival the populations of small countries. Social networking sites Bebo and Xanga have 40 Million users each. To help put that in perspective, Canada has a population 34 million. Hi-5 and Friendster have around 90 million users each. Combined, that is more than the population of Japan.

So yes, MySpace and Facebook are the biggest players out there. But, they are not the only players. In the international marketplace, not everyone watches the same movies and television shows. They don’t stay in touch or up-to-date with the same social networks, either.

If you want to find out more information about all the available social networks – with notes on international and demographic focus – check out this article on Wikipedia.

So what is the right campaign for Facebook? Will a Facebook page have the same impact as a home page take over on MySpace? Well, no. But you probably also would not buy a Super Bowl ad to promote your coffee shop, realty business, or custom tee-shirt website.

What’s the best way to get the most out of this free service? Knowing the audience you want to attract, using some clever marketing ideas, and throwing in some good old-fashioned elbow grease to get some eyeballs on what you’re promoting. For example, calling your page “I am addicted to caffeine” will attract more folks than “Bob’s Coffee Shop”. As people start becoming “fans” of your page, they automatically let their friends know about you in their news feed, giving you a built-in and automatic word of mouth. Once people are fans of your page, as you add events, update photos, and add stories, Facebook will automatically notify your fans in their news feed. The more you update, the more your fans will be engaged.

If you need help drumming up interest in your page, Facebook also offers (reasonable) targeted pay per click and impression (CPM) ads (http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?ads). They allow you to target on geographic territory, demographics, and even keywords. You can design your own ad easily in a step-by-step process, and they even allow you to tie in social actions. You make your own budget, so you only pay what you want. It even comes with free analytic and optimization tools to get the most out of your ads.

So, is Facebook the right marketing platform for you? Well, it fits any budget (starting with zero), it has a nice set of tools for targeting your audience, and it has built in notifications that can help spread the word. It may not have the same impact of a page takeover on a major website, but, that’s not always apropos. I’ll write on when and how to use MySpace soon!

MySpace was started on the idea of self-promotion, where your profile was your public face to the web. It should be a place to promote your band, your comedy, your videos, or whatever. You can create networks by “friending” fans, or similar artists. Facebook was started with the idea of, well, a “collegiate face book”. It was a place where you would join a network, and find and meet people on that network. Initially these networks were colleges, and then came high schools, companies, and finally it was opened to the public. You can only see the profiles of people in your network, or that are explicitly your friends. After being out in the world for a couple of years each, these two rivals do have some crossover, but they are becoming more and more different.

MySpace has become a Social Media Portal. It’s where people come to discover bands their friends like, watch the latest trailer to some independent movie because their favorite band did a song on the soundtrack. There are games to play, even karaoke. It’s a destination to browse and discover. It has become a social media content provider that is becoming more of a movie studio, record label, magazine, or television studio.

Facebook has become a Social “Hang Out” Network. It’s a destination to see what your friend’s are doing, find old friends from high school or college and catch up. It organizes and aggregates activities, comments, events, causes, and photos. There is not as much browsing but more reading and commenting. Where MySpace is a content provider, Facebook is a gigantic conversation between millions of users.

Each site offers similar marketing possibilities. MySpace offers custom communities/profiles as a pay service. It allows fully customized and branded web pages hosted on MySpace and tied into their social network (Example: http://www.myspace.com/harley-davidson). Facebook also provides a similar feature called a product page which is free, but does not allow the same customization (Example: http://www.facebook.com/harley-davidson). Both MySpace and Facebook offer a “pay-per-click” ads that can be target to specific demographics. But, some would say all the “ad noise” on MySpace makes these ads get lost on the page. For big ticket marketing, MySpace offers page takeovers. This will allow a campaign to sponsor and theme a complete page (like the homepage) and take over multiple ad spaces on the page. Currently Facebook has nothing similar to this.

So where do you market your next campaign? Well, that depends on the tools you need, your target audience and your budget. These two rivals both supply the tools (each one has its strength), and each one has a huge audience (each one there for a different reason). It just a matter of which is right for your campaign. In a follow up post I will give some reasons why one website is better for certain campaign types, and the other is better for other campaign types. I’ll provide some examples, too. Keep checking back, or post a comment if you have a specific question or point.