Twitter's and Facebook Marketing Campaign

Twitter see's the highest adoption rate in social media marketing while customer reviews rank number one for increasing sales and customer engagement, according to a study released Thursday!  Retailers are revving up their social media marketing efforts as the past six months show aggressive adoption of the emerging trend with Facebook and Twitter leading the way, according to the report.  The trend coincides with the uptick in the community base of these sites and Facebook just passed up the three hundred million mark providing a large audience for retailers to tap with branding efforts.  Still, Facebook and Twitter aren't the only social media being employed by marketers to promote their brands. The other top tools include Twitter Publishing with sixty five percent saying they currently use it, customer reviews and blogs followed by viral videos with fifty percent.
In addition, the study found three-fourths of the 117 survey respondents have accelerated their use of, and commitment to, community and social media in the past six months.  First, brands want to be involved to put their own spin on their products and services from consumers already using sites such as Facebook.  Second, retailers want to be seen as up to date in their online presence so as not to appear as using old marketing techniques. The third reason cited by participants in the study is the fear that their customers will leave their e-commerce site for others that are more socially engaging.  These motivators, drove the last wave of social media adoption, will also be driving the next one in the coming year. Over the next 12 months, 31 percent of study respondents say they plan to adopt Facebook Connect while 26 percent say they will employ customer reviews and 26 percent will begin offering product suggestions.

Congress Streams live on Facebook

On Janurary 4, 2011 the US Congress made its live broadcast debut on Facebook with the legislative body's first session was streamed on the social networking site.  House Speaker John Boehner annouced the descion to do so on "Pledge to America" Facebook page and were able to watch the House of Representatives transition over to Republican control.  Online viewers were able to watch all the floor proceeders and Boehner's first speech as Speaker of the House and had the ability to comment on the ideas and events as they occured on the networking site.  Boehner's director of ditigal media Nick Schaper told CNN that the real time stream would help set the tone for a new majority that will continue to find new ways to listen and better represent the American people.  With all this being done it will help to better improve the involvment of American citizens with questions and comments they may have with on going issues and situations going on in society today.  Boehner and his active team of soical media users have a blog on their website which currently features a post about the live stream and future live streams to come not only on Facebook but on Twitter and Youtube alike!  He has also said he will change his Twitter to help reflect his new position and hopes other leaders will also switch to this new line of Congress stream for the 112th Congress's official start.  I think this is a great development for Congress to take the steps nessacary to get the American public more involved with situations that need to be addressed and getting them taken care of  in the near future.