Strategies and best practices for social media
Social Media
I saw a very good question today on LinkedIn Answers (great place to ask, answer and learn about things in your industry!) and thought it was worth writing about in my blog. The question was “Why aren’t more companies testing social media marketing?“ I thought about it for a few minutes and crafted what I thought was an insightful answer. Hopefully you will agree!
What are the barriers to Social Media Marketing? In addition to legal (liability? truth in advertising)? and brand management issues (what if our tweets violate our brand guidelines!), I believe there are three primary issues that impede companies from leveraging Social Media:
1. The Business Case for Social Media
While most intuitively believe social media is a low-cost way to extend your reach, build your brand and drive new business, most need hard data to justify the investment of time, energy and resources (people). And in this climate, few are going to stick their neck out to try something that isn’t embraced by CXOs. BTW – I heard there’s a very insightful presentation available for viewing on the Business Case for Social Media.
2. Limited Understanding and Resources
In my experience, most brand marketers are overwhelmed and confused by social media. They usually don’t know what to do, where to start or how to plan and budget for it. Ask 5 members of your team what you should do, and you’ll probably get 5 different answers. In better times, brands would hire an agency to help them figure this out (psst – I heard this agency rocks), but when dollars are tight and the risk threshold is low, it’s easy to push this off until the business climate improves.
3. Lack of Capabilities
There is a lot of noise in the social media space, and no shortage of self-proclaimed SM experts. But don’t forget great players are not necessarily great coaches. While there are thousands of individuals who have used social media to build their own brands, I believe most are very tactical in their approach. They can create a Twitter account and show you how to Tweet, but few have the knowledge and skills to develop a strategic plan that defines the audiences, objectives, resources, tactics, tools and metrics for measuring and optimizing results. When your goal is to build your brand and grow your business, you need a strategy. As reported last week in one of many articles I read, “Twitter is a tool, not a strategy”. I couldn’t agree more.
As the market matures and the economy improves, more marketers will dip their toe into the Social Media stream (excuse the pun!). This creates opportunities for those who can secure C-level support, develop a solid plan and execute against defined objectives. IMHO these cases are quite rare these days. But there is always hope!
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Steve Latham
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Last week I put together a summary of stories that I thought would be of interest to those who are in the interactive marketing industry. Here are some other clips relating to Social Media that I think are interesting and informative. Hope you enjoy. Feel free to share and comment!
UniLever CMO Throws Down the Social Media Gauntlet
Takeaways from speech recently made by UniLever’s CMO about the importance of Social Media to brands. Includes his “5 New Rules of Marketing”. Great to see one of the world’s largest companies embracing social media. I hope they can make it work!
Facebook Overtaking MySpace
Facebook is now the most trafficked global social network. Claiming 200 million users, it now reaches all demos and ages. Now it needs to figure out how to make money in a way that doesn’t infuriate its large and vocal community.
Facebook Grows Up Fast!
Glad to know that my group (26-44) accounts for 41% of all Facebook users. But surprised to find women over 55 are the fastest growing group on Facebook. Will being friended by your mom make you leave Facebook? Maybe… or maybe not. I think the new design is a bigger risk.
Teens on Social Networks
This just in: teens are heavy users of social networks! Okay you may know that. But did you know that 60% acknowledged that the things friends wrote in their profiles could harm their careers and that 38% said they regretted some of the items that had already appeared on their pages. Hopefully they will learn from public examples of how your personal views can blow up in your face… Like it did for this chucklehead!
Mommy Bloggers On the Rise! (AdWeek)
At the “Meet the 21st Century Mom” event, BabyCenter.com released results from a 25,000 person survey showing that 63% of women reported being active on social networks (vs. 11% in 2006). Women with new babies cut back on media consumption by as much as three hours, with print taking the biggest hit. According to the report, 49 percent of respondents claim to read magazines less after giving birth, and 46 percent said the same about their newspapers.
How Edelman Manages Mommy Bloggers (AdAge)
Great interview with Edelman Chicago’s senior VP for consumer brands social media, Danielle Wiley on how they manage 2.0 digital (aka Social Media) practices and strategies for big name clients. I especially like their views on refusing to pay bloggers to write favorable reviews of their clients’ products. I wish more agencies upheld the same standards.
Twitter Soars, but Does It Stick? (AdWeek)
Pop quiz – how many users will be on Twitter by 2010? Answer: a lot! The good folks at eMarketer report that 18 million of my closest friends (10% of Internet users) will be on Twitter by 2010 (read the article). If Ashton Kutcher has 1.5 million followers and Oprah is gaining ground with 700,000, the number may actually be higher. However… the jury is out as to how many will actually stay on Twitter. Nielsen recently reported that Twitter’s audience retention is only 40% – meaning more than 60% of its users fail to return the following month (read the article). So will Twitter last or is it a flash in the pan? I believe you can make a case for either outcome.
7 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid on Twitter
Good article by Rodney Rumford (hola So Cal!). Or you can eliminate the “don’ts” and learn 7 Tips for Succes on Twitter. Either way it’s a good way to learn how to use Twitter as a branding channel.
Be Careful What You Tweet!
You can’t help but laugh at the irony of this story. A social media consultant may have ruined his career with one errant tweet (if you haven’t heard about the FedEx / Memphis story, click the link above). The lesson: be careful what you tweet. Anything and everything you write is public, and it may be taken out of context.
All for now folks! Please share your thoughts, questions or comments. Just keep it clean and constructive. And if you like what you read, please share it with others!
Steve Latham
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Social media is hot. Everyone’s doing it and everyone wants it. But how many marketers have figured out how to use social media to build their brand and drive revenue? Unfortunately, not nearly enough. I believe one of the hurdles to pursuing social media as a marketing program is the challenge of creating a compelling business case that frees up the resources (budget) needed to fund it.
I recently spoke to a group of business executives about how companies are using (or planning to use) social media, and how to build a business case for it. In my presentation I also included some new data on how the Inc. 500 is using social media, 5 reasons to pursue it, and a methodology for measuring ROI.
You can view the presentation below or find it at slideshare (note: sorry for some of the formatting issues caused by slideshare conversion).
I hope it’s helpful and that you’ll provide some feedback for improving it. And if you have any good data points to support the case, please send them my way!
For more info you can use, view our blog. And for updates follow me on Twitter!
So you want to make money from a Facebook App…
At the recent Barcamp Houston event, I attended a session titled “Facebook App Brainstorming Session”. I had been thinking about how Facebook Apps could be used from a marketing standpoint, and was excited by the prospect of discussing it with others. Unfortunately, the guy leading the session was mainly interested in telling the audience about the idea he had for an app. Being a strong Type A personality, I interrupted the impromptu focus group and asked if anyone wanted to have a more general discussion about Facebook Apps. Since most of the people in the room also thought that was the subject of the session we were in (kudos to the organizer for drawing a crowd!) a lot of hands were raised. Convinced I could have a discussion w/ more than a mirror, I left the room and scheduled my own session [if you don't know how Barcamp works, the attendees decide what to discuss - you just find an open slot and put your subject and name on the board].
We had about 30 people show up for our brainstorming session. i kicked it off by posing 2 questions:
1. Can you actually make (real) money from a Facebook App?
2. Can a Facebook App be used for marketing purposes?
Unfortunately, no one in the room had actually developed a Facebook App. However, there were some smart people in the room and we had a great discussion. Here are the takeaways:
Question 1: Can you make real $$$? While it’s theoretically possible to earn some income from cpm-based ad revenue sharing, we agreed it’s hard to make real money from an App. Don’t get me wrong – Fun Space formerly known as Fun Wall is cool, but I use it mostly as a video viewer than an App. Michael Dalesandro had the right app at the right time with Where I’ve Been, but those examples are rare. Like the domain squatters of 1997, they showed that first movers can sometimes win. Earlier this year I had dinner w/ the guys (nice kids from Austin) who created the Vampire and Zombie Apps. They admitted they had just recently started to see some income from the millions of underworld fights they created, but recognized it wasn’t going to last long. The nights of the Vampire were fading and that they needed to come up with something new, pronto.
This week Techcrunch reported that to date, a mere $8 million has been paid by Facebook to App developers around the world – not much considering the (hundreds of) billions of page views Facebook has had. However, the article also reports there are some app developers who are making real money (six and seven figures each month) from their apps. But these aren’t from the traditional cpm revenue shares – read the article to learn more.
Okay, so you CAN make money with a Facebook App. And new members LOVE APPS! Who wouldn’t want to receive a cupcake??? Well, as much as virtual cupcakes enrich our lives, the novelty eventually wears off and they become a nuisance. If you’re like me (and at least 499 others in the Facebook group “Stop Sending me damn application requests or I’ll go ape shit on your ass“), you’ve probably removed most of the apps you added when you joined Facebook.
The implications are twofold: 1) Apps have limited lives, and 2) you might want to shoot for the over 30 crowd, as that seems to be where the growth in Facebook members is occurring (ask a 22-year old which apps they are adding these days, but be careful!).
Question #2: Can Apps be used as a marketing vehicle? As above, the answer is “yes, but…” which means it’s possible, but becoming harder and harder. First, as mentioned, the adoption of apps seems to be inversely correlated to time spent as a member (starts off high, goes down fast). Second, more and more people are figuring out what all that privacy talk is all about. I you know that a server knows who you are and is tracking how often you visit “Hot or Not” to see what others think of you, it may be a little settling.
But like all things, there are exceptions. The Causes App has been very successful for many… causes. Another example is Dell, which jumped on the Green bandwagon (scoring a perfect landing before rumors surfaced of being too young to compete) with its Regeneration contest. The eco-centric campaign relied heavily (and benefited greatly) on the Facebook Graffiti application. I saw the case study at Ad-Tech and was pretty impressed with how Dell whipped a bunch of environmentally-friendly propeller heads into a graffiti frenzy to promote its contest. BTW – my entry “Dude you’re getting a Tree!” was not sel
ected as a finalist.
The lesson: why create an app when you can leverage an existing app that is already being used by millions? This was another one of the pearls that came from our Barcamp discussion.
Charitable Donation?
While there are a few Facebook apps that make money, and others that serve as effective marketing vehicles, those are few and far between. I’m hopeful that all other apps were conceived, built and distributed with an altruistic, “share-the-fun” objective. If on the other hand they were built for a commercial purpose, hopefully the owners are business-savvy enough to deduct the cost of building them as a charitable donation to society.
Comments? Questions? Let’s hear from you!