The Twitter You Know Is Changing Forever

Social Media Insights is a daily newsletter from Business Insider that collects and delivers the top social media news first thing every morning. You can sign up to receive Social Media Insights here or at the bottom of this post.

---

The Twitter You Know is Changing Forever (Convince And Convert)
Twitter is on its way to becoming something entirely different. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Fueled by the need to go IPO to produce returns for a lengthening list of investors, the company seeks to become a platform not a tool.

1. Twitter as a ratings service
2. Twitter as a storefront
3. Twitter as a curator and editor
4. Twitter as a conversation platform

Make no mistake, Twitter is going to continue evolving. Is it for the better? Read >>

Thirty Percent Of Top 100 Brands Improve Customer Service On Twitter (ViralBlog)

With 500 million people using Twitter, 30 percent of the Interbrand Top 100 Brands have improved customer service on Twitter and are resolving customer issues faster. In their second quarterly Twitter customer service study, Simply Measured looked at how demand has grown, how the top brands are using Twitter as a customer service platform, and how they interact with consumers. The study reveals that even among those brands that do have dedicated Twitter handles for customer service, there’s still a long way to go. Both in terms of response rate and response time: The average response time for customer support was 5.1 hours — still a long time on Twitter. Only 10 percent of the 30 brands achieved an average response time of under one hour — and none of the brands were able to maintain a response time under 30 minutes. Read >>

The Metrics Of Pinterest (Social Media Today)
Some Pinteresting stats:

• Pinterest is now either the 2nd or 3rd biggest social network, depending on which statistics you read, and is currently showing the fastest rate of growth
• There is no vertical size limit on pins, providing a great deal of scope for creativity
• Approximately 58 percent of Pinterest users are females
• Product pictures pinned with a price are more effective (that is to say they will generate a better CTR) than product pins with no price shown
• Click through and sales conversion rates are better on Pinterest than on either Twitter or Facebook
• Pinterest users tend to have a higher than average disposable income
• Some of the most popular Pinterest topics are interiors, DIY, cookery, fashion, hobbies and crafts
• Shoppers referred to a website via Pinterest spend 10 percent more money than those referred by other sources

Pinterest is an excellent way of showcasing your products and of demonstrating your passion and expertise in a particular area, and when your content engages people, they will like and share (repin) it, helping your content spread virally. This ensures that your brand reaches additional would-be customers, who might not otherwise have been exposed to your existing or usual marketing channels. Read >>

Facebook Users Share App Activity More Than 1 Billion Times/Day (VentureBeat)
In case Facebook’s partners needed more evidence that Facebook Platform has traction, Facebook is giving it to them. The company said users share their app activity more than one billion times each day using the social network.

• On average, people choose to share their app activity with their Facebook friends more than one billion times every day. As of this month, more than 400 billion Open Graph actions have been shared back to Facebook.
• As of this month, 110 million songs, albums, and radio stations have been played 40 billion times through apps integrated with Facebook.
• As of this month, 1.47 million books have been shared through apps integrated with Facebook, and a resulting 40 million actions against those book objects have been published back to Facebook.

Facebook’s message is clear: Platform is getting major results, and if you’re not plugged into it, you’re missing out on quite a bit of engagement. Read >>

What Works In Social Media Marketing (CMSWire)
The results of a recent study by Ascend2 indicate that companies are getting more strategic about their social media marketing efforts while embracing elements of content strategy.

Respondents also noted that simple things like using social sharing buttons and creating branded social networks also help, but content overwhelmingly was found most helpful, whether in the form of blogs, video, audio or whitepapers — so, content is indeed king. Read >>

The State Of Social Ads (UberFlip via mediabistro)
Social media advertising is big business— Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter combined for well over five billion dollars in ad revenue in 2012. But while spending on social media ads continues to rise — 81 percent of agencies and 75 percent of advertisers implemented social media ads in their campaigns last year— measuring the impact of these tools continues to prove problematic. Indeed, 62 percent of advertisers, and 70 percent of agencies, are either unsure or flat-out do not know how to measure their social marketing ROI. Read >>