Facebook

We have at our disposal a wealth of software tools that all us to connect with both people we know in the real world and those that we only know in the virtual one. As we grow our connections the volume of information coming to us from all of these connections can seem overwhelming.

I have some 4500 followers, on Twitter, not a huge following compared to many. If I were to try and use just the Twitter website to stay in touch with all of them it would be impossible, so instead I use Tweetdeck. I have about 20 columns all well organized. Followers added and sorted into how they fit into my greater connection set.

Facebook is the same, with over 1100 connections on Facebook lists become essential to help me sort through all the communication. Facebook itself tries to help me by only showing me status updates from those people with whom I interact most.

Does Shouting Equal Quality?

Therein lies the problem. I interact with those people because they appear on my home page most often. I tweet with those people who appear in one of my columns. I hear those who shout loudest, but are they always the ones I should be listening to?

Is volume in either quantity or sound a measure of worth of content? If I come to a party at your house and stand in the middle of the room and shout out what I have done with my day am I adding more to the party than the individual standing in the kitchen sharing the profound thoughts with only two others?  Probably not.

With all this software that supposedly “helps” us are we in fact missing out on the good stuff. Are we missing the diamonds in a mountain of coal? I am constantly seeking out ways to find those diamonds. From adding ever more columns to Tweetdeck with less and less people in them, to creating more and more lists in Facebook. Certainly one method that I have found that has proven useful is to categorize people in multiple ways. Location, Job, Subject etc is one way to make sure I don’t miss out.

How are you making sure you don’t miss the diamonds?

The Austin Chapter of the American Marketing Association, an organization for which I volunteer, recently ran into trouble with Facebook.  The trouble began when the chapter tried to set up a couple of event announcements for events being organized in Austin for  marketers to attend.

Firstly, Facebook would not allow the word “free”, even though there is no charge to attend the event. Eventually the word complimentary was found to be acceptable. Secondly, having created two events. The page admin received the following stern warning from Facebook that the chapter:

“significantly slow down or stop this behavior. Further misuse of site features may result in a temporary block or your account being permanently disabled.”

This is surprising for two reasons, firstly, the chapter is a non-profit, it provides information to marketers who are both members and non-members, it’s fans all understand that when they become fans of the page. Secondly, the chapter only posts one or two events a month. This hardly strikes me as misuse of site features!

I checked the Terms of Service to see why Facebook would think we have fallen foul of their rules. Surprisingly there is nothing in either the General terms or the special provisions applicable to pages about the number of events you can promote in a given timeframe.

So what is really going on with Facebook? Are they trying to bite the hand that feeds it? After all if Marketers stop running ads on Facebook where will their revenue come from?

Facebook either needs to make its terms of service clearer or they need to make their messaging clearer when they rap organizations on the knuckles for “misuse of site features”.

Have you or your organization run into issues with Facebook and their terms of service?

This week I found an addition to my Gmail, Google Buzz. Like so many others of you I was surprised at the way this was rolled out. No invites, no “elite” group of users first, just open your email and there it was.

Open Rollout – Not the Google Way

A definite departure from the way Google has rolled out previous applications, including Gmail. What to make of that? Was Google not so sure that they could create a buzz about Buzz?

Having played around with Google Wave and been left with the impression that while it might be useful for groups of collaborators, as an individual it left me feeling like I had taken a trip back in time 15 years or so to the days when I was one of only a handful of people I knew that had email. I could see that this might be useful, but no one I knew used it and so for the most part it was irrelevant.

Turn Down The Volume

Google Buzz seems to be much the same type of thing. For the first time I would have to say that Google is a day late and a dollar short. Google Buzz is little more than an echo chamber, in a world that has enough noise already. Rather than bringing something new and exciting to the table, they have invented a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, namely, how to stay in touch with people I email using Gmail. The people I email using Gmail I am already connected to, on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Foursquare, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and of course via email. Why do I need another tool?

When I look at Buzz what I see is cross-posting from Twitter & Facebook, along with “Hey, how does this work?” posts. So what is the point?  That is a classic software development conundrum. Google has given me a tool, but I have no idea how or why I should use it. So I will just leave it be and not use it.

A New Tool For The Miner

If you are going to build a social tool, then at least look at what already exists, and look at the problems that occur with them. The primary problem for anyone actively involved in Social Networking is Noise. A tool that enables me to reduce the noise, focus on what I am interested in across all sites and still enables me to catch those odd alluring snippets that might otherwise be missing from my attention stream is what I need.

Tweetdeck is the nearest tool that I use that comes anywhere near that, and that barely does the job. I currently have more than 20 columns in Tweetdeck that I scroll across every day looking for the good stuff. I am an information miner, what I need is a laser, not dynamite and definitely not a 16oz claw hammer which is what Google Buzz is. Old tech, old approach.  Google I expect more from you.  Back to the drawing board you go.

Have you found a use for Google Buzz?

Avatar premiered this weekend. A multi-million dollar blockbuster and much vaunted as a game changer in the movie going experience.  James Cameron has spent a considerable amount of time and money building the technology he needed to bring to life the story in his head.

I went with high hopes of the movie and saw it in its 3D version (my full review here). What I came away with was a sense that the movie was more about the technology than it was about the story.

What Can Social Marketers Learn?

What Social Marketers can learn from this experience is that, no matter how slick your presentation, no matter what technology you deploy, if your content doesn’t meet the need or expectation of your audience the gloss will wear off fast.

Tools & Tricks Are Only Part of The Solution

Investing heavily in a great looking Facebook page, or an amazing set of Social Media monitoring tools will serve no purpose if you have no content or content strategy to back it up.

Commiting to Social Media and to providing your readers/viewers/listeners with quality content is much more likely to generate a lasting impact than having only a flashy interface.  That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth making those investments too, but be prepared for that fact that the real investment comes in the form of content, not tools.

Content Is Still King

Content has always been King, no matter the medium. Whether in print, on the Radio or Television or more recently Online, the method of delivering the message is never as important as the message itself. A slickly put together Social marketing campaign will have a much shorter shelf life than content that draws in the audience, makes them feel involved and ultimately encourages them to talk about it.

Facebook has announced new changes to the Fan pages that will have some serious implications for business currently utilizing them. Among the changes is the removal of the “Boxes” tab and the enforcing of the “Applications” Tab as the only method that brands can interact with Fans. The most common type of application tab is FBML. With the new requirement comes the need for content creators to be familiar with Facebook’s own version of XML. For small business this is something that is often out of their technical knowledge and outside of their budget to outsource.

A lot of the changes will actually allow both users and brands to interact more deeply and for fans to share their interactions with each other – in effect increasing the viral nature of Facebook fan pages.  The changes to the Inbox are a good example of this. What this means is that brands are now going to have to provide more compelling content to keep Fans engaged. Another part of this change is that users will see the disappearance of “Requests” currently shown at the top right of their homepage. These will now come via the revised Inbox.

A recent report by Sysomos showed that:

On an average Facebook Page, the administrators create one wall post every 15.7 days. Among pages with more than one million fans, one wall post is created for every 16.1 days. This suggests that wall post frequency does not correlate with a page’s popularity.

With the new changes this is very likely to change.

Perhaps the most important change to Fan pages is the ability to ask users for their email address. Quite how this will happen has yet to be decided, this feature was supposed to launch this month, my guess is it will appear early next year.

With all the changes coming in 2010 is your brand page ready?

Last week I wrote  about a particularly frustrating incident I had with my local Best Buy store. I used Twitter to promote the post and included Best Buy CMO in the tweet. Here is the interactions between us on Twitter about the post:

It has been just over a week since this exchange took place and I have received exactly the communication I expected to receive from Best Buy – NOTHING. Nada. Zip.

Read The CMO

A recent post on Barry Judge’s blog (Barry is Best Buy CMO) is entitled Buyer Be Happy. In it he talks about the new Facebook fan page that Best Buy has launched and how excited they are about it. He also  makes reference to their new “Price Plus” program where they:

” Price Plus” is shorthand for great prices plus providing the best help before and during the shopping process and then after you buy something via all our touch points in our stores, web sites and call centers.

As I wrote last week Best Buy only wants this level of relationship with you if you pay for it. So I suppose their program title is accurate – it is a Price Plus the extra to get customer service.

Social Media Failure 101

This is a classic example of an organization not being prepared for Social Media, Best Buy wants to present a “warm, fuzzy, we are here for you” image through the use of Social Media but internally they are not set up to respond to customers reaching out to them through the same channels. This is the classic failing of organizations approaching Social Media as simply another push medium.

If the CMO of Best Buy can’t get someone to respond then what chance do the rest of us stand?

This question occurred to me after I saw the new campaign from Honda – “Who Do You Know Who Loves A Honda?”. They have managed to make it a very good TV campaign and they have translated it well to social platforms like Facebook. Ford has had great success, at least at the brand awareness level with the Fiesta Movement, a solely Social Media Marketing campaign.

Any Color You Want, Including Black

It then occurred to me that the auto industry has often been the leaders in innovative marketing. They were among the first to have truly interactive websites, allowing you to “build your own”. What great marketing that is, if you “make” something, choose the options, the color etc instead of being presented with a few product shots, how much greater is your affinity to that product? how much is your desire for that product going to increase?

This is not a new thing to the auto industry, though of course over the years there have been the odd mistake made by auto marketers – Pinto anyone? (Yes I know a lot of the stories are urban myths). Overall, however, the auto industry, for all its woes in recent times seems to be working with some very smart marketers who have a great connection to the people they are trying to communicate with.

Instant Community, Just Add Car

While Social Media “experts” will drone on endlessly about “building community”, “engagement” etc, the world of the auto buyer has gravitated toward this behavior naturally. Car owners gather in flocks, either around specific brands, specific models or just generally to compare vehicles and when they do, the rest of the car owning public turns out to see them and their vehicles – instant community, instant engagement.

Does the auto industry just has it too easy? Do they have the ultimate “passion product”? I’m not sure its that simple but I’m sure that plays into it. It doesn’t explain the success of the marketing campaigns or their innate “cleverness”. For that you have to credit the marketers behind them.

So what is your answer – Why does the Auto industry have better marketers?

image from Legal Juice

Firstly, note that the title of this post includes the word “success”, its not enough to just have a plan in place for Social Media, it must include Success, otherwise its just a shopping list of things to do without the understanding of what the effects will be on your business.

I am making some assumptions with this post:
1. You have already decided that your or your organization will benefit from the use of Social Media
2. That you understand how you want to integrate Social Media into the conversations you are already having
3. That you have the organizational ability to have those conversations

Those assumptions aside here are the 5 things that your plan must include:
1. An assumption that the platforms that you are using now (Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Youtube etc) are going to be replaced and what you will do when they are.
2. A “brand monitoring” element that will keep you up to date with conversations that you are not already a part of. This can be a software tool, google alerts, a combination of both, but you should be monitoring your brand 24/7.
3. A link to the broader organizational/personal growth plan that hooks in at various growth points in that plan to accommodate success.
4. A scaling element – who will do the work, what roles will you create as the plan succeeds?
5. A transition plan for the “personalities” in front of your brand – what will you do when they leave?

There are of course other elements that your plan should have, but any good plan should have all 5 of these elements. So many organizations jump in without a plan and then are overwhelmed at the speed at which people start to engage with them. The challenge for most brands is not to get customers or potential customers to engage, its what to do with all of them when they start engaging and expecting more from the brand than the brand is setup to deliver.

Does your organization have a Social Media Success plan?

image from the Association of Personal Assistants

I came across an interesting post in my Facebook stream today. One that made me really think about why some people don’t get the “personal brand” concept and that they don’t think it through before they decide to leverage Social Networking sites to promote themselves.

How Many Is Enough?

This particular person is not alone in making this type of post, what amazed me is that they run a Social Media agency! Their post was to the effect that they were ready for facebook to allow blocking of emails and requests from certain people as Facebook was taking too much of their time. This person has over 1500 “friends” on facebook, so I am sure that they must get a lot of communication from all of those people.

My thoughts are this:
1. You either initiated or approved all of those people, did you only think it would be a one-way communication?
2. If you don’t want to be overwhelmed by the amount of communication, why build a facebook network that big?
3. If you can’t be social, why be involved in Social Media?

These questions apply as much to organizational brands as they do to personal brands. Now I understand we all have off days, when we are overwhelmed by the amount of email, tweets, Direct messages, requests etc that we receive through social channels – I have posted my thoughts on why you shouldn’t post things when you are feeling overwhelmed before. So that is not a valid excuse in my eyes, especially if you are a Social Media professional.

Don’t Complain About Success

Complaining that your network is over burdensome to me shows that there was no thought, strategy or foresight applied before the network was built. Before jumping in with both feet its essential that either as a personal brand or an organization you have a strategy in place, and that strategy at the very least should answer the question – how many fans, followers, friends can we really cope with? What are the implications of growing a successful network, of being popular?

As much as some people seem to want to be popular and crave the perceived influence that brings them, so many seem not to either understand the amount of work it takes to maintain that network or be prepared to put in the effort to maintain it.

Are you prepared for Social Media “success”?

image from The Neave

Everyone is into “relationship building” these days. It’s what we are told should be the aim of Social Media. This all sounds wonderful, but for most brands, especially large brands with multiple communication channels across multiple departments what does this really mean?

Firstly, large brands employ large numbers of people, not all of whom are focused on or empowered to build relationships. Those that are empowered are usually being chased from above to achieve bottom line improvement. Simply telling their SVP that they have improved the number of positive comments on the company blog, or been “retweeted” five times this week won’t really cut it.

Chris Brogan has a great position on this, “if your activity doesn’t move a needle with dollar signs attached to it – STOP!” I have to agree with him. Brands are not, despite claims to the contrary, altruistic. Sure they might leverage their position to make some impact for social good, but that isn’t the business they are in.  They are in the business of making money.

Managing Expectations

So how does this impact us as consumers. Brand relationship is, like any other relationship, both a personal and complex thing. What moves me in a brand, will leave another cold. Same with people, I might find someone very attractive, interesting and want to spend time with them, someone else would not see the attraction.  Where this becomes problematic, in our new Social Media age is in expectation management.

I like you, I want to spend time with you, but you give me mixed signals, you send me mailings, you send me emails, you want me to “Friend” you on Facebook, but when I try and talk to you by phone or even on Twitter, you just ignore me. Our relationship has developed over time but it seems like you are just not that into me.

This is the problem that brands in Social Media are facing. How to meet the expectation of the single customer. They have become caught up in the “popularity” metrics, if we have more followers, fans, friends, readers, then we must be popular. They have lost sight of what those numbers mean. Each number – with the exception of the bots, spammers & MLM types, is a human being. Someone who wants to develop some type of relationship with them. Each person will want a different type of relationship, some will want regular contact, some will want less. Some will want the brand to be there for them when they need them.

No Win/Win

As consumers we have created a situation in which neither the brand or us, as consumers can win. Our expectations of the relationship is too high, in some cases beyond reasonable. The ugly truth is, they are just not that into us. Its not them, its us, we expected too much. How does a brand with a million followers communicate at a 1:1 level with each of those people? Think about that for a moment, a 1:1 relationship would require exactly that, a million employees! How can a brand scale that relationship to a reasonable level? There are tools, services and techniques, but at the end of the day, how many of your followers do you communicate with on a daily basis, how many of them do you have a “real” relationship with? I would hazard a guess that it is probably a very small percentage of your total Friends & Followers base. So, if we, as individuals can’t do it why do we have the expectation that brands have the resources to do it?

The solution is that we both need to reset our expectations. Brands need to realize that acquiring a huge following in Social Media doesn’t equate to instant sales increases & increased brand advocacy or brand loyalty. Equally as consumers we need to realize that as much as we love our brand, there is only so much they can do for us, that we are just one of many, that we don’t and never will have a 1:1 relationship with them, that they are into us, just not as much as we are into them.

Is your brand into you?