Businesses on Twitter Double Their Leads

A recent eMarketer post showed evidence from HubSpot that small businesses on Twitter can double their monthly lead generation figures. The "Twitter effect" was consistent whether businesses generated 1-10, 11-50, or more than 51 leads per month, and also held across company size. The Twitter effect was stronger for businesses targeting consumers (B2C companies) than business to business (B2B) organizations.

The amount of Twitter followers is critical to increased lead generation. Companies with a Twitter reach between 100-500 followers generated 146% more median monthly leads than those with 21-100 followers. Interestingly, companies with more than 500 followers did not show any increased gains, suggesting that the quality of interactions, as opposed to quantity of followers, should the backbone for a good Twitter strategy.

Blogging also increased lead generation for small businesses. Unlike Twitter, the effect was similar for both B2C as well as B2B companies. For blogs, the crucial component for increased lead generation was the amount of content produced. According to eMarketer, 24-51 posts are the minimum "tipping point" at which increased lead generation occurs.

Additional benefits of Twitter usage and blogging include better search engine visibility. Blogs increase the number of indexed pages for a business, and every 50-100 incremental indexed pages on Google can lead to significant growth. Twitter, which is now being crawled by Google and included in their results, can also impact search engine visibility.

McKinsey Report Shows Business Impact of Social Media

McKinsey & Company released the results of a global survey in the McKinsey Quarterly. The survey polled companies about the effectiveness of "Web 2.0" tools and their impact, both within the company and externally. The study revealed that many technologies were not only useful in relationship building with clients and external partners, but also with employees.

Internally, video sharing was the most effective, with 48% of respondents seeing benefits. However, blogs were the most useful tool for external relationships, with 51% claiming to have benefited for customer-related purposes as well as for working with external partners and suppliers. Social networking also ranked high, with 48% seeing customer-related benefits and 49% reporting benefits related to external partners and suppliers. RSS, wikis, and podcasts ranked above 35% in all categories.

52% of respondents said Web 2.0 tools increased marketing effectiveness, 43% reported higher customer satisfaction and 38% said Web 2.0 reduced their marketing costs. The high-tech/telecom industry (unsurprisinly) reported customer-related benefits most frequently (65%). However, business/legal/professional services firms were not far behind, at 60%, revealing that the benefits of social media can and do extend beyond the tech industry.

Lesbians and Social Media

According to a recently released Harris Interactive study, lesbians use social networks with greater frequency than gay men or the heterosexual population (note: the study did not separate heterosexual men and women, only providing the combined results.) In a nationwide survey of 3000 US adults, 65% of self identified lesbians were members of Facebook, compared to 50% of gay men and 46% of heterosexuals. Over half (55%) of the gays and lesbians surveyed read blogs, as compared to 38% of heterosexuals. Also, 20% of gays and lesbians use Twitter, as compared to 12% of heterosexuals.


Despite their high level of involvement, there is room left for growth. Although more lesbians than gays are members of social networking sites, more gays (66%) than lesbians (60%) visit social networking sites at least weekly. And both gays and lesbians reported higher levels of dissatisfaction with the ads on social networks than heterosexuals.