A Week For Getting Social
I was fortunate enough to be involved in two social media gatherings this week. First was the Wichita American Marketing Association’s “Social Anxiety: Social Media Meets Corporate Policy” seminar which dealt with the impact that social media is having on corporate culture, corporate policy and corporate law. Second, was breakfast with the editor of the Wichita Business Journal, which brought together a group of local social media enthusiasts for discussion related to achieving business objectives with social media. Two sides of the social media coin explored in the span of three days – my head is still spinning.
While the topics varied significantly, there was a constant takeaway from each. Whether you are developing a policy for addressing the many issues of social media use in the workplace or trying to generate more sales through marketing via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, you need to begin by assessing your organization’s objectives.
For instance, a social media policy can be designed to promote responsible use of social media tools, restrict the use of these tools, or a bit of both. The policy should flow from the relationship social media has to your organization’s objectives. Is your objective to empower employees to build relationships with existing and potential customers? Or, is your organization trying to protect proprietary technologies? Each of these objectives can impact policy related to how social media is to be used.
From the marketing side, companies that want to measure the effectiveness of social media need to start with measurable objectives, not tactics. Before asking, “Do I need a fan page for my business?” you should ask, “What are my overall objectives and measurable indicators of success?”
If you have the objective of increasing revenue by 5%, a measurable indicator that could lead to this outcome may be the number of leads that you generate. The more leads you generate, the greater the opportunity to close more sales and reach the growth goal. With lead generation as a measurable indicator, you can develop a strategy that includes using social media as a source for new leads.
Bottom line: as in all business endeavors, success comes from a strategy built around core objectives.
Discussions on these topics are continuing online and at upcoming events like Free State Social. You can join in the conversation by connecting with the following people on Twitter, each of whom were involved with one or both of this week’s gatherings:
A Dead Statistician Has Some Advice For Your Marketing
If you stayed awake in your college businesses classes, the name W. Edwards Deming might ring a bell. He was a genius at improving manufacturing and management processes. Consulting with Japanese and American companies throughout his career, he helped improve the quality of products, limit defects and boost profit margins. A big part of his scientific philosophy involved developing and refining processes. He once said “If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing.”
That statement doesn't just ring true for manufacturing widgets. It also applies to Web design and marketing. One of the big objectives we have at Webstratics, and something we have been working on for a long time, is developing better processes for the work we do. With Web design, this means we are looking at each project and asking how the process can be improved. We want to produce great sites that get results. That starts by creating a process that results in great work.
We realized that the process starts long before a Web designer fires up a program. We we start by laying out specific objectives, identifying key audience groups, thinking through desired visitor actions, assessing the creative necessities, identifying key technology requirements and laying out an executable plan. It is quite a bit of work, but the results make it worth it.
Web design is just one example, but really all advertising and marketing activities should have a describable process of how you get from where you are to where you want to be. If you can't figure out the process, then, Deming would say, don't spend money on it.
How about your marketing? Do you have a process? One way to find out is to try writing it down, step by step. If you can't do that, you don't have a process. And if you don't have a process, the man so cool that his middle name is plural says you have a problem.
Getting personal with social media marketing
It is understood that social media is changing the way that people communicate, both personally and professionally. From a business standpoint, it can be very difficult to determine the appropriate way to engage in social media for marketing purposes. I am always looking for research that goes beyond the raw data of users and reach to provide real insight. Studies like Prompt Communication’s survey of 300 Boston consumers on their uses of social media fits this bill.
Among the surveyed group, 96% said that they use Facebook regularly to keep in touch with friends. This trailed the telephone (99%) and beat out both texting (93%) and email (91%). Think about it. A social network has become a preferred form of communication between friends.
This certainly supports the trend of widespread social media adoption. But more importantly, it brings into focus the role social media is playing in consumer’s lives. Social networks are being used for very personal reasons.
As organization’s look to leverage social media as a marketing channel, it is important to keep in mind the very personal nature of sites like Facebook. People, by and large, are not there to be sold to or marketed to. They are there to connect with people.
Does that mean that Facebook is a bad place for brands? Not necessarily. Products, services and brands can be the shared interests that we as people connect through. People are connecting and organizing around shared interests in brands like Harley Davidson, TOMs Shoes and the television show Lost everyday.
The key to appropriately placing your marketing messages in this personal space is to be very relevant to the consumer. Vitaminwater used a Facebook fan page to give their customers a voice in product development. Their flavorcreator app enabled fans to help create a new flavor of the beverage, engaging their brand ambassadors in a fun way. Their wall area is not just a listing of posts about how great the drink is, but rather updates on events the brand is involved with—events that their target audience enjoys—like concerts and the ESPN X Games. It is less a forum of promotional broadcasts from the company, and more a shared space for their customers.
When you think about starting your organization’s Facebook fan page, make sure you consider your audience and think through how you can play a role in their online social lives, not just inundate them with sales messages. Be a facilitator of connections, not a barrier to connections.
Super Bowl advertising that has nothing to do with TV
The Super Bowl and advertising go hand and hand. For many of us (even die hard pigskin fanatics) the TV commercials that break up the onfield action are a major reason we tune in. But, there is another side of Super Bowl related advertising that illustrates the power of search engine marketing. An article in the New York Times entitled "Super Bowl Merchandise and the Bets Behind It" tells the story of how FootballFanatics.com leverages search marketing to sell t-shirts of the winning Super Bowl team to fans across the world.
There are some strategic gems that Internet marketers of all stripes can take away from this article:
- Keyword lists are always in flux. Your search keyword strategy should never be written in stone. Always be evaluating the performance of your current keyword strategy and look for new words to test. Like FootballFanatics.com, which finds keywords by scanning for the signs that fans hold up during the game, you too can get creative with your search terms. The beauty of search marketing is that it is scalable and efficient; you can test new words and phrases without breaking your budget.
- Search trend analysis can help determine demand. FootballFanatics.com monitors the online conversations regarding teams to help them determine which fan bases represent good customers. Are you tuned into the conversations that are going on about your business, products or industry? Listening to online conversations can provide huge insights, and it doesn't have to be terribly expensive. Free tools like Google Reader and Monitter and sites like Technorati and Digg can help you sort through the online social space to get a sense of what people are saying about you.
- Focus on keywords that drive conversions, not traffic. FootballFanatics.com makes it a point to stop spending on terms that are expensive and not yielding customers. They go beyond measuring traffic. The real success measure for online marketing should be conversions, or how many people actually take the action that you wanted them to take (make a purchase, sign up for your email list, download a coupon, etc.). You should invest more heavily in activities that are generating desired actions, not just driving traffic.
- Know your market. Online success still hinges on the basics of sound marketing, like knowing your customer inside and out. FootballFanatics.com has clearly defined their market as displaced fans. They use search analysis to more clearly define this market. Who are you going after? The more you know about them, the better you can tailor your online strategy to reach them.
You don't have to be selling t-shirts to sports fans to benefit from these insights. Regardles of whether you are a B2B manufacturer or an online retailer, these are best practices to incorporate into your online marketing strategy.
Social Media By The Numbers
All of the major social media players have seen strong to explosive growth over the last 12 months. Mainstays of the social media world, MySpace and Flickr have produced modest to flat growth. Latecomers Facebook and Linkedin posted strong triple digit growth over the last 12 months, with Facebook overtaking MySpace, in terms of unique visits, in December 2008. Currently, Facebook leads all social media sites with over 90 million unique visits in the month of March 2009. However, the story of the last 12 months is Twitter, whose explosive growth of over 1,000%, bringing their May 2009 unique visitor count to just under 20 million.
A brief snapshot of visitor trends in the major social media players.
What does this all mean?
While advertisers and marketing brand managers scratch their heads trying to figure out how to integrate social media into their campaigns, some standards of traditional marketing still stand strong. Media is judged on demographics, geographic proximity, and overall audience size. We should always strive to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time.
Not all social media sites are the same. While there are many multi-site social media consumers, it is becoming clear that the loyal MySpace user is different from the loyal Facebook user. Twitter seems to be more commonly used with the Facebook crowd. However, with no clear plan in place to monetize and buy out bids from Google and Facebook in the news every other week, Twitter's future business model is still unclear. Linkedin, though currently trailing the aforementioned in terms of monthly visitors, appeals to the niche of business, sort of a 21st century Rotary Club.
Business objectives should be considered and benefits weighed against the resources needed to establish and maintain a proper presence on any of these channels.
What to do?
Each social media site has its own strengths and weaknesses. For instance Facebook has the largest overall audience. Brands that have done the best have built a grass roots following within that network. Friends see other friends become "fans" of the brand and join in. Another powerful feature of this property is the ability to reach this audience with timely, relevant invitations to promotional events, such as a person's favorite local music group playing at a coffee shop that they frequent. In short, Facebook is not the largest because they appeal to everyone with one thing. They appeal to lots of small groups with many things. Brands wanting to leverage this property should be patient and let the grass roots nature of this site run its course.
With just under 60 million visitors in May 2009, MySpace is still a force to be reckoned with. Though their traffic has flattened out, they have a core audience that you will not find on Facebook. Their ability to target specific demographics makes MySpace a superior site for banner ad campaigns. This ability to target demographics, combined with their, still, massive audience should be appealing to most B2C brands.
As for Twitter, this is the first social media platform that has built itself upon the least common denominator of electronic communication, the short text message. The brilliance in the design of this site is the simplicity of participation, a la Google search. Brands that particiate in this channel need to be prepared for a much more interactive relationship with their audience, taking the good with the bad.
Linkedin seems to have the market in online business networking. Their resume-like profiles are an excellent way to filter and recruit new tallent into your organization. Additionally, Linkedin can be an excellent resource for figuring out if you have a person "on the inside" when interviewing for a job, or making a sales presentation.