What if there was a way to determine the best time to share your tweets, Facebook updates, and response-worthy content? And what if you could automate the entire process?That’s the thinking behind a new wave of companies that claim to have social media communication down to a science. Recently, I analyzed nearly a dozen vendors in this burgeoning field, which I call the “social performance” category. These firms offer software tools and methods that analyze, plan, deliver, and measure media such as ads, content, and conversations published in social channels. For a price, of course.Although the business is young, there are a lot of players out there already. New entrants include Adobe Social, which employs Adobe acquisitions Context Optional and Omniture; BuddyMedia, which is optimizing earned content to be ads with its Brighter Option acquisition; Bazaarvoice, which has introduced a solution to launch social ads outside of traditional social networks; and Webtrends Social, which tracks social content off domain, ads and their performance back to the corporate website; and finally, Wildfire which has partnered with Adaptly to measure the paid-to-owned transition.

via Why Automating Social Media Marketing Could Hurt Facebook.

C-suite executives are increasingly convinced of the benefits of engaging with their customers on social media platforms. A February 2012 survey of 329 senior executives in North America by management and digital consulting firm PulsePoint Group and the Economist Intelligence Unit found that the vast majority of companies who had invested in social media saw a positive shift in their bottom line as a result.Executives who said their companies had established an extensive social media presence reported a return on investment that was more than four times that of companies with little or no social network engagement activity.

via For Brands, Social Media Shows Returns but Measurement Hurdles Remain – eMarketer.

Could Pinterest be the silver bullet for retailers on social media? Pinterest is clearly resonating with online consumers in a big way. To put it simply, customers who find a product via Pinterest are more likely to purchase it than those who find the product via other social networks.

via Interest in Pinterest Reaches a Fever Pitch [INFOGRAPHIC].

The average Google ranking of a URL is highly correlated with the number of Tweets about that URL, says Branded3 [download page] in an April 2012 report, though close examination of the report reveals that other factors could have a major role in the report’s conclusions. The company looked at data gleaned from its Twitition website, in which users who sign a Twitition have a tweet automatically sent from their account. With a sample size of 8,528 Twititions collected on February 28, 2012, and having gathered the rankings on April 6, the company found that URLs with over 500 signatures (tweets) had an average ranking of 46. The average ranking improved to 41 for those with over 1,000 signatures, 31 for those with over 5,000 signatures, and 5 for those with over 7,500 signatures.

via URL Tweet Volume and Google Ranking Said Correlated.