Consumer electronics retailer RadioShack sponsors Team RadioShack riders in races around the world. For the Amgen Tour of California, held May 15–22, RadioShack wanted to incorporate Promoted Products into its overall marketing campaign supporting the team.

“We kicked it off with a promoted trend on the first day of the race, and then we had a Facebook tab that was the epicenter for all the content,” said Adrian Parker, social media director at RadioShack, in a June 2011 interview with eMarketer. “We used Twitter to spark [the campaign], but it was just one part of a bigger campaign.”

Challenges:
This use of promoted products was different from RadioShack’s previous Twitter campaigns because it was centered on a hashtag relevant only to RadioShack, #BackTheShack. The company’s previous Promoted Trend campaigns used hashtags #UNeedANewPhone and #IfIHadSuperpowers, both of which had been popular as a source of conversation on their own. This time, the conversation would be led solely by RadioShack.

RadioShack also needed to find a way to keep followers’ attention after the first day of the campaign. “A Promoted Trend is an easy way to create 24-hour excitement,” Parker said. “But the challenge is, how do you make it relevant a week later?”

Strategy:
Before the race, RadioShack worked with Twitter to get information about how users interacted on the social network during the Tour of California in 2010. “They were able to give us data and insights to inform our decisions about how to activate the campaign,” Parker said.

On May 15, RadioShack purchased the #BackTheShack hashtag. During the day, the company tweeted about the race and its team and encouraged users to go to a tab on the RadioShack Facebook page, which had interactive elements, including a contest and videos.

“This campaign was a great way for us to make RadioShack and Twitter relevant to cycling fans, but also to people who weren’t cycling fans,” Parker said. By also using the Tour of California’s #ATOC hashtag, RadioShack got involved with the overall conversation around the race and was able to introduce its Twitter feed to cycling fans.

After the promoted trend ran for 24 hours, RadioShack purchased promoted tweets throughout the rest of the week, highlighting the tweets that reminded users to enter the contests it was running on Facebook. The company also tweeted regular updates about the cyclists, announced the daily winners of the Facebook contests and replied to fans.

“Our general philosophy and approach has been to ignite and spark the campaign with a promoted trend to create immediate awareness in the Twittersphere,” Parker said. “Then we can sustain that with promoted tweets and take ownership of a hashtag or dial into whatever the trending topic is for that day. And then a promoted account can be used specifically to gain followers.”

When it comes to measuring success, RadioShack looks at engagement metrics, such as new followers, retweets and other analytics, as well as measuring conversation, share of voice and resonance.

Results:
RadioShack gained 700 followers on the first day of the campaign, when the promoted tweet ran. During the entire week, its Twitter account gained more than 1,200 new followers, while its Facebook page gained 1,800 new “likes.” There were more than 16,700 mentions of #BackTheShack and 4,000 retweets of RadioShack tweets during the week.

“We were definitely pleased with it because we were able to carry a conversation for more than just a 24-hour period,” Parker said. “A Twitter conversation for that long was something that we had never done before.”

However, the company wasn’t tracking sales or business results with this campaign. While a previous campaign for #UNeedANewPhone tracked links back to an online upgrade checker and was able to show how many people purchased products from RadioShack online, this time the company wasn’t promoting a specific product or sales promotion.

Parker said that using the combination of promoted tweets and a promoted trend reinforced his opinion that Twitter’s ad products are best viewed as a suite that work in tandem to keep a conversation going.

“Twitter’s flexibility is key for brands because you’re able to manage your investment” in real time, Parker said. A brand can monitor how engaged fans are with the content and change the plan accordingly for maximum impact.

The complete version of this case study is available to eMarketer Total Access clients. Learn more here.

Here are a few of the top stories in which eMarketer data and analysis were featured this week:

8/5: Forbes.com – How 2011 Can Still Become The Year Of Mobile For Advertisers
According to an Interactive Advertising Bureau survey, a third of affluent consumers are willing to share their information online in exchange for a more personalized experience. This is not surprising. Read more.

8/5: paidContent.com – How The Plunging Financial Markets Will Impact Ad Spending
Throughout the past six months, global ad spending forecasts haven’t been revised down that much. Meanwhile, online ad growth has continued to look resilient. Read more.

8/4: AdAge.com – Twitter Advertising: Four Marketers on How Their Campaigns Fared
Considering that Twitter did not offer advertising until it was nearly 4 years old, the company has ramped up its ad business quite rapidly since April 2010. By the end of 2010, Twitter had partnered with 150 companies for advertising campaigns on the site, said Dick Costolo’s presentation at the All Things Digital D9 conference in June. Read more.

8/4: USA Today – Web tracking has become a privacy time bomb
The coolest free stuff on the Internet actually comes at a notable price: your privacy. For more than a decade, tracking systems have been taking note of where you go and what you search for on the Web — without your permission. Read more.

8/3: Wall Street Journal – New Metrics Gauge Heft of Facebook Ads
Facebook Inc. is getting its own ratings systems, in an effort to help companies measure the marketing exposure their brands receive on the social-networking website. Read more.

8/2: MediaPost.com – Google+ Creates Data Gold Mine For Advertisers
The data Google collects from Google+ should increase the effectiveness for conversions and ad targeting. The overall result could become an increase in click-throughs and a rise in cost per clicks. Read more.

8/2: Adweek.com – Breaking Down Condé Nast’s E-Sales
Magazine subscriptions became available on the iPad this spring, and the first meaningful set of results are out, with Condé Nast announcing that it’s drawn 242,000 digital customers through Apple’s iTunes store in the six weeks since it introduced iPad subs. Read more.

8/2: Wall Street Journal – Funding Values Twitter at $8.4 Billion
Twitter Inc. said it received a “significant” round of funding led by Digital Sky Technologies, a Russia-based venture firm that has invested in other social-networking companies that have enjoyed surging valuations. Read more.

8/1: Guardian – Arty video favourite Vimeo adds small business service
There have largely been two tribes in the online video space until now: free, consumer video sharing sites and high-end, fairly expensive enterprise services. Read more.

8/1: VentureBeat.com – PayPal: 12M monthly users are paying for virtual goods
More than 12 million unique users pay for virtual goods each month, according to data released for the first time today by digital payments vendor PayPal. Read more.

8/1: AdAge.com – Why the Pipes Are Broken in Mobile Advertising
Embarking on a mobile ad buy is diving into a dark, deep sea crammed full of startups you’ve likely never heard of: Celtra, Mojiva, Medialets, inMobi, just to name a few. It’s brimming with a lot of little companies — and a couple of big stakeholders like Apple and Google — scrambling to build the infrastructure to make advertising work in a medium that some have said will be bigger than TV. Read more.

8/1: VentureBeat.com – Rich folks are suckers for digital media (and online ads)
Digital media and online advertisements are the best way to reach the wealthiest Americans, according to a study released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). Read more.

7/31: New York Post – Foursquare sets revenue plan
Foursquare is looking to cash in on all those check-ins. The social network, which has been known for having a fast-growing footprint — more than 10 million members have checked in more than 750 million times to about 15 million venues worldwide, and a healthy valuation, $600 million after its recent $50 million round of financing — but very little revenue, is now ready to pump up its top line, The Post has learned. Read more.

For more of eMarketer’s recent news coverage, click here.

According to data compiled by eMarketer from Twitter, 80% of advertisers renew their campaigns with the social network.

“Twitter offers advertisers a chance to interact with fans in real time, buy ads that look and feel like organic content on Twitter, and enhance buzzed-about events,” said Kimberly Maul, eMarketer analyst and author of the new report, “Twitter Advertising: Four Marketers Test the New Ad Platform.” “But some in the industry are still skeptical and, in order to make a serious impact, Twitter must scale its advertising, add new ways to reach users and work to make the experience seamless for both consumers and companies.”

The complete report, “Twitter Advertising: Four Marketers Test the New Ad Platform,” is available for eMarketer Total Access subscribers. Click here to learn more.

To listen and watch playback of the webinar, Facebook Marketing—Strategies for Turning “Likes” into Loyalty, click here. You can view the PowerPoint deck below.

The webinar will address these key questions:

• How are marketers using their Facebook pages?
• How do consumers interact with brands on Facebook?
• What can marketers do to encourage ongoing involvement once a consumer has “liked” a brand or page?
• How do brands such as Adobe Photoshop, Chef Boyardee, Clarisonic and Discovery use Facebook?

About Debra Aho Williamson

Debra is eMarketer’s lead analyst focusing on social media marketing and the demographics of social media users. She produces eMarketer’s forecasts for social network advertising spending in the US and worldwide and has written more than two dozen reports delivering key insights covering how marketers, media and consumers are engaging with social media. A founding executive editor of pioneering internet business publication The Industry Standard, Debra is quoted for her analysis in the business press and invited to speak at major digital marketing internet events.

Sponsored by Vitrue.

Here are a few of the top stories in which eMarketer data and analysis were featured this week:

7/7: WSJ.com – Apple Adds Flexibility to IAds
Apple is offering Madison Avenue more flexibility in getting in on its iAd mobile advertising service. The Cupertino, Calif., company has begun pitching ad buying firms on making large upfront iAd spending commitments that they can parcel out to their advertiser clients in smaller chunks. Read more.

7/7: Beet.TV – Online Video’s Troubling Ad Equation: Less Transparancy Means Lower Cost
In making online video buying decisions, marketers face the choice of spending more for video when they know where their ads are placed versus paying less when their ads are matched with videos through exchanges and video ad networks, says Vipin Mayar, Global Director of Performance Analytics for McCann Worldwide in this interview with Beet.TV. Read more.

7/7: NYPost.com – Games, tweet, games
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo isn’t playing around any more. The tweet chief, who recently landed in Sun Valley, is looking beyond advertising to boost Twitter’s business prospects. Read more.

7/7: Bloomberg.com – Apple’s IAd Mobile-Ad Service Said to Cut Prices as Clients Turn to Rivals
Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iAd mobile-advertising business has cut rates by as much as 70 percent as some marquee clients are using rival services, two people with knowledge of the matter said, signaling the company is struggling to parlay its technology leadership into success in the ad industry. Read more.

7/6: Mashable.com – Why Daily Deal Sites Are Here to Stay [OPINION]
If something is too good to be true, then it probably is. But once in a generation, an idea (or in this case, a business model) comes along that is so disruptive that the old the adage is proven wrong. Read more.

7/6: Guardian – Facebook gets even more face-to-face thanks to Skype partnership
Facebook users will be able to make free video calls to their friends through the site after the social networking giant announced a partnership with the web telephony service Skype. Read more.

7/6: ClickZ.com – Buying and Placing Online Display Ads
According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Q1 2011 set an all-time record in Internet advertising with $7.3 billion in revenues, a 23 percent year-over-year increase. Read more.

7/6: Bloomberg.com – Facebook Ad Rates Hold as Inventory Rises, Easing Price Concerns
Facebook Inc., the biggest social network, said advertising rates have held up even after it added new ways for marketers to promote products, allaying concern that prices would decline as inventory surged. Read more.

7/6: Wall Street Journal – Twitter Seeks $7 Billion Valuation
Even as Internet companies such as Zynga Inc. and Groupon Inc. file to go public, Twitter Inc. is taking a different route: It is continuing to tap private investors. Read more.

7/5: GigaOm.com – Is Twitter helping to inflate the tech bubble?
A little over six months after the company raised a gigantic round of financing that valued it at close to $4 billion, Twitter is in negotiations to close other massive round, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Read more.

7/5: Forbes.com – Online Ad Spending Jumps, Led By Video and Facebook
This year will be the best in recent memory for online advertising, which a new report from eMarketer predicts will grow more than 20%, to $31.3 billion. Search ads mostly from Google, of course, will continue to lead the way, with $14.4 billion of the total take in 2011. Read more.

For more of eMarketer’s recent news coverage, click here.