Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
I was going to talk to you today about goals. After all, we’re now in the second half of the year (can you believe it?!) and it’s a good time to see if you’re on track and consider any adjustments that need to be made.
For decades, companies were very good at pushing messages into markets and talking at people rather than with them. Now companies are embracing the idea of two-way interaction. Monitoring conversations is becoming standard procedure as small and enterprise businesses alike make substantial investments in tools such as Radian6, Sprial16 and Brandtology. And, not only are companies monitoring conversations, they’re adopting social media management systems (SMMS) such as Seesmic and CoTweet to operationalize conversations and platforms such as Objective Marketer, PeopleBrowsr and Buddy Media to automate engagement campaigns.
There’s a difference between monitoring and listening and there’s certainly a difference between conversations and engagement. How social media is employed today promotes monitoring as a reporting function and conversations as a symptom of reaction. In many ways, the state of social media is eerily reminiscent of traditional marketing. We’re fooled into a sense of collaboration and co-creation because people can respond. But programs are not measured by functionality, they are valued by the value customers take away from the experience. It begs the question, is social media in actuality anti-social?
New media philosophies, while rich with good intentions, are confined by the culture of the organization they’re designed to help. Corporate culture is pervasive and planted. It is not anything that will change suddenly because of the popularity of Twitter and Facebook no matter how strong your case. Culture shock takes place because a business is subjected to the harsh reality that customers no longer support the way business is conducted.
If you think that the place to reach Baby Boomers (born between 1946 – 1964) is anywhere that does not include technology, think again! Boomers in the U.S. are technology-savvy enough to comprise 1/3 of all TV viewers, online users, social media users and Twitter users.
If that’s not enough to make you think twice about where you’re putting your social media marketing dollars, consider that there are 78 million Boomers in the U.S., many who have “shown a willingness to try new brands and products.” In fact, they spend 38.5% of CPG dollars! (source: Nielsen). You can’t afford to overlook them!
Kevin asked me: “Do ‘great ideas’ possess universally some sort of Wow Factor?”
The problems with this question: What does ‘great’ mean? And who decides what ‘wow’ is?
The challenge is this: lots of people think they know what both words mean in their area of endeavor, and many of them are wrong.
Consider the case of web 2.0 companies. People like Brad Feld and Fred Wilson are brilliant at understanding what wow means from the point of view of an investor. They have great taste about what’s going to pay off. They have a sense for which teams and which ideas will actually turn into great businesses.
Mobile is becoming a dominant vehicle for social networking.
More than 250 million people already access Facebook from their mobile phones and the company points out that the mobile users are twice as active as non-mobile users.
One of the facilitators of the move to more mobile activity is the increase in the number of smartphone owners, now estimated by Nielsen to be 37 percent of US mobile phone owners on the way to half by the end of the year.
And the increase in social interaction via mobile is substantial.
In 2010, 28 percent of social media users used a mobile phone to interact with social media, and that number increased to 40 percent this year, based on new research. That’s an increase from 54 million people last year to 80 million this year.
This post is for anyone who has had to ask (or been on the receiving end of the query) where did our social media marketing strategy go wrong?
The answer may be two-fold.
It is possible that things began to go awry when the primary focus of social media marketing shifted to numbers; that is, when the accumulation of fans, friends, followers and connections became the be-all-end-all measure of success.
Especially when compared to conventional media, social media affords such great opportunities, not the least of which is placing the world at the proverbial doorstep of any enterprise…without respect to budget. But the instant that bolstering numbers becomes the objective, the real strength of SM has been diminished. From the beginning, social has been about community; its dynamic growth is directly linked to the market’s desire to connect, to experience relationship, to be part of something; its lifeblood is dialogue. Go for numbers in lieu of relationships and sacrifice results.
Twitter is a great place to do business, if you follow some simple best practices. Twitter has done a nice job of outlining core advice on the subject in their welcome center:
Looking to travel from the east to the west coast recently, I decided to take a look outside my normal coast-to-coast airlines United and American Airlines.
Jet Blue, with great seats and video selections, wasn’t flying around the times I needed but noticed that Virgin America was.
Having taken Virgin Atlantic for some Boston-London flights in the past, I pondered whether Virgin America was the same, or as good as (or worse than) Virgin Atlantic.
So I turned to Twitter to ask the gang if they had any thoughts. This was my Tweet:
“Thinking of taking Virgin America Boston-San Fran, any thoughts? (Have flown Virgin Atlantic, but not America)”
One of the most common questions about B2B social media is whether or not (and how) Facebook fits into the mix. There really isn’t a simple answer and it’s best to think of it in macro vs. micro terms. There are hundreds of variables to consider, but starting with these three important b2b social media questions should help.
That said, some of the best expertise on the subject of Facebook for B2B comes from SocialMediaB2B.com’s co-founders Kipp Bodnar and Jeffrey L. Cohen. At MarketingProfs B2B Forum , Jeffrey, along with Deirdre Walsh, and Susan Solomon, presented on the topic: Facebook for Effective B2B Marketing.
Do social media technologies isolate people and promote false relationships? Or are there important benefits associated with being connected to others in this way?
The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project decided to examine these questions in a survey that explored people’s overall social networks and how use of these technologies is related to trust, tolerance, social support, and community and political engagement.
Among the many interesting findings, Pew reports that the social relationship “boost” received by Facebook users is equivalent to about half the total support that the average American receives as a result of being married.