You’ve jumped into Twitter as a company and it’s tying back to your blog or microsite so you can track visits and ideally, conversions to whatever your converting them. Great. So like any good marketer you’ve looked at the related cost of spending all that time “tweeting” and getting followers. Then you discover an automated solution to get followers and push out your message. You just failed Social Media engagement 101.
All these services are designed to enable a marketer to become a broadcaster. The point of Social Media is building relationships through dialogue. Broadcasters are one to many. The ability to forge a relationship is lost because you’re not really asking, questioning or engaging. You’re telling. This is what TV, newspapers, magazines and online ads are for.
While an automated “follower” service for Twitter might seem enticing, you’re actually putting your brand into a deficit and at the very least not building brand engagement. Just awareness. Followers will quickly unfollow you. Automated DM’s (Direct Messages) back to people can have the same effect.
Building followers in Twitter or fan’s on Facebook and connections on LinkedIn or any Social Media application lose effectiveness when you attempt to use them as a broadcast medium. In some cases, some individuals such as Seth Godin or Guy Kawasaki do become broadcasters; but from time to time they do engage and respond. A large part of the reason Dell has been successful with Twitter is that they engage and connect with people one on one.
If your brand is good and your message is good, if you engage, then you will pick up followers. That is a much more real measure of success.
This post came as a result of a great lunch conversation with my fellow Social Media practitioner Carman Pirie over at Colour. We covered a lot of interesting ground, this being one of the highlights.
(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)
She got your brand out all over Twitter, to the tune of many thousands of followers. He built a huge presence on Facebook and NetLog for you. Nary a negative word was said about your organization. It was all great, until they resigned. She got a plum offer from a PR agency and he got hired by your competitor. Now what? And just who were all these people engaged with? Your brand or the person behind it? Both really.
So. Now what? One was an intern the other was a junior. Yes, they were building positive vibes for the brand, but conversion to sales wasn’t really there yet, or you’d only just started to define success metrics for engaging in Social Media. We’ve seen this with a few clients. It creates a difficult situation. A few quick do’s and don’ts based on our experience:
Don’t:
- Leave The Kingdom Doors Open: Make sure you change all the passwords to the accounts. Just to be on the safe side.
- Drop it Cold Turkey: If you assume all those followers were a bunch of teens and 20-somethings who don’t care, you’ll be in for a little Social Media crisis. If you want to wind down your engagement in Social Media, then plan it carefully.
Do’s:
- Have a Transition Plan: Have the person’s supervisor develop a plan to transition to a new person if possible, or plan disengagement. Carefully, with solid, honest messaging.
- Be Open: Let the person who’s leaving talk about in a positive manner. If it’s possible, have them introduce the new person.
A little forethought when a situation like this can save a whole lot of grief down the road. It’s also good practice for the senior manager in the organization to “listen in” on what’s being said on a regular basis. To make sure the message is clear and on target.
(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Partner @webconomist on Twitter)
In the pre-Social Web days, a brand and it’s components and assets could be fairly well managed. The company determined the design elements, packaging, promotion, channels of communication and shaped the message. In large part a company could also control the message. Feedback to assess effectiveness of the marketing was via focus groups, various forms of surveys and sales.
Ultimately however, the consumer shaped the brand. But there were controls in place for the brand owner to shape the perceptions and expectations of the brand. Not anymore. Once a brand decides to engage actively in Social Media, a conversation begins. This means a two-way, far less controllable medium. This situation also means more work to manage the brand. As social media usage increases brands big and small, will have no choice but to engage. The days of didactic one-way advertising only are fading. Some claim brands are dying altogether.
This puts some inherent new issues for brand values and management on the brand owner. I see this as two key areas;
1. Expectation: By engaging in a conversation (whether I’m conversing or just reading/viewing) as a consumer of a brand, the brand is now setting a certain set of expectations.
2. Anticipation: Now the brand ha engaged with the consumer, a certain anticipation about what will happen with the brand in the future is set.
These are two huge considerations for a brand looking to engage in Social Media. But they have little choice as social media usage grows and consumers want to engage the brand.
(Author: Giles Crouch, Principal)
A social media channel going “uncool”? I’m talking about something like, well, Plurk as an example. Plurk is a microblogging channel and well, it’s losing it’s cool factor. As are other social media services, including MySpace (as Abrams Research recently found.) With the evolution of social media moving quickly and growing, the “tools” are perhaps more at risk of losing value, quickly, than any other form of product in history. Including the Chia Pet and Pet Rocks.
Here is an often undiscussed business risk of engaging in a social media channel. MySpace is already feeling the pinch of becoming “uncool” as advertisers shift their spending to more popular Facebook. Plurk is seeing outward migration to Twitter. Some smart companies still haven’t engaged fully in social media, and that may not be a bad thing.
Walgreen’s didn’t move onto the Web until 2000, preferring instead to watch the mistakes of the first movers then capture that space. They did, and they did it well. The risk today is not just a service becoming “uncoll”, it’s also that the service may shut down due to lack of a business model and subsequent funding.
So, you might say, just move to another service. Certainly, but not easy. Again, you have to “listen” to see where those people you were engaging or marketing to have gone. Then you have to build up your presence again…all of which takes time.
Is there a way to know what’s becoming “uncool”? If you’re listening to the chatter, there are signs as people move, and usually they’ll tell their freinds. If you have a good rapport with them, likely they’ll tell you as well. It’s bound to happen, but by always listening and having a contingency plan, a move to a new service can be a little less painful. What would you do?
Thunking, Uncategorized•
on February 3rd, 2009•
The World Wide Web is a conversation. The Internet and the Web as a whole became what it is because of many conversations. We often tout “social media” and “Web 2.0″ (so tired of the 2.0 thing) as being this incredible new platform of people being able to create their own content and share etc. But really, it was disparate and broken conversations that created what the Internet today is in the first place.
The “Social Web” of today is just the evolution of technology, as the result of conversations, that enables those who are not very technically inclined to join in the conversations that were already going on. No single corporation built the Internet. In fact the primary Web servers and protocols that enable all our wonderful content to be shared are Linux Apache servers – software built communally and open source. Built as the result of conversations.
If Microsoft, IBM or Apple had tried to build the Internet, would it be here today? Would it be as open with so many cool applications and choices? Probably not. This whole point is not new, it was touted in the Cluetrain Manifesto book back in 2000.
Upon reviewing it again, 9 years later, that although much of the technology has evolved, this single point of the Web having been built through conversation struck me as really important.The “Social Web” is the evolution of the conversation that more people can participate it, the conversation driven by people who have many visions of how technology might work to advance mankind. And we’re all just getting started to figure this out.
(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)
Thunking, Uncategorized•
on January 28th, 2009•
When you live and breathe the Social Web everyday, spend hours on Twitter and looking at data, it can be a surprise when you stumble upon a business that has no website or Social Media engagement and well, really doesn’t need it. At all.
What business could this be? a shoe repair store. The Christmas tree sitting inside the door has been up for at least a decade based on the layer of dust on the ornaments. Magazines from 1989 sit on some shelves and shoe shine packages from the 1950’s sit on the slightly tilted shelves on a far wall. So one would naturally expecte a wisened elderly gentleman to be at the counter. Quite the contrary. It was the owners grandson, just shy of 30 years old who’d taken over the store three years prior. He had not changed a thing. Eccentric? Perhaps.
But why would this little shop need a website? He was in a prime business district, surrounded by theatres, restaurants, fine shops and coffee houses on one of the busiest streets in the city. The store is 45 years old and about 20 feet wide and 60 feet deep – what we might call “a hole in the wall.” Even the floors are lopsided, the linoleum the original, well worn and torn.
He has all the business he wants. His clientelle are loyal, they consider his work of high quality (a business does not decide if it makes quality products, the buyer decides that.) His prices reasonable. He has no stress and a part-timer who keeps the books in order and the cash register is older than the first abacus.
The lesson I learned was that Social Media, and the Web as a whole, is not a defining of the modern business. At times we have to remember that technology is not always necessary. Sometimes a friendly chat, face to face with someone interesting provides more insight that analytical tools or networking platforms.
(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner – Twitter: Webconomist)
It was noted today that Twitter surpassed Digg for traffic this past month. What is this a trend indicator of? Well, we view Social Media as two primary types; 1) High Engagement and 2) Low Engagement. Although both enable engagement, the level of engagement varies, and most vital to these two are the cost of the transaction.
Low Engagement: Here we clump Mixx, Digg, Newsvine and similar as well as Social Bookmarking. We label them as “Low-Engagement” since the transaction cost is rather much higher than active Social Media services that encourage broader engagement. They are “passive” because discussion of an issue is not easy, and spreading the word is also not easily done. They are based on “voting” principles rather than true “sharing” such as Microblogging services like Twitter. The stories lie relatively dormant until people find them. These services are far more passive.
High Engagement: A prime example here is Microblogging, as well as SMS, IM services and Forums. Once registered, the transaction cost is low and the engagement level is high. Services such as Twitter are instant and generally very viral since “Re-Tweeing or RT” is easy and sends the “content” across broader reach faster than Digg or Mixx. Witness the US Airways crash last week, the terror attacks in Mumbai and even the small earthquake that hit LA last summer – the news was out on Twitter before traditional news media picked it up in all cases. This is highly-active and sharing audio, text and video is simple and fast – low-cost to the user. More is shared faster. This is highly-active.
So what does this mean? It means another “shift” in how people are deciding to use Social Media tools. Services like Digg and Mixx will be where content might reside, but Highly-Active services like Twitter or Identi.ca will become the primary distribution channels, perhaps more so than email.
(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)
Twitter. We’ve seen it touted in election coverage on mainstream news, mentioned in news articles and discussed ad nauseum on blogs…and on Twitter. It has an entire “ecolosystem” of add-ons and tools. Many agencies (PR, Advertising, Marketing) push clients on. Wrongly so in many cases.
Twitter is not a new “marketing channel” and this is why it is failing for companies urged by thier agencies to use it as such. Twitter is a conversational tool, it is a communications channel. Twitter can be a viable way to engage with current and potential customers – when used in the correct way from the correct approach.
As Beth Harte so rightly and effectively says ” social media is about sharing and discussing information. It’s communications, not marketing.” This relates very much to Twitter.
Effective Social Media projects for business rely on 3-core-sm-principles 1) Promise, 2) Tools and 3) Bargain. The “tools” vary depending on the campaign, goals and objectives. We applied these most recently to CarShareHFX and it delivered results. Twitter became a viable medium because they were “communicating” with, mutually, an interested audience. Other tools were used – as a communications strategy, bringing in traditional PR tactics.
Using Twitter to push your own agenda results in, well, no results. Used to share, discuss and engage with your audience, it works. This is the approach Dell, among others, has taken – and it is working. Because they use it as part of their communications. As a result they have more loyal customers and yes, subsequently it helps sales, so it becomes an element of Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC.)
Be careful when a Social Media consultant or agency says “you must be on Twitter.” We’ve counselled more clients NOT to use Twitter than we have to use Twitter.
(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)
We’re often asked by a client “can you ghost write for me, cause we a) don’t have the time or b) no one here is a good writer.” Our answer is that we’re happy to do some writing, but never as a “ghost.” It would certainly be easy to do so, we’ve seen it done. We’ve also seen how it can bite back. Hard.
There are several ramifications to ghost writing for a company blog. Some of these we note are;
- Legal: As a ‘ghost” writer you are “representative” of the clients “voice” and there are potential legal hazards that could lead to trouble for the writer and the client. This should be discussed with the client and indemnification written into a contract if this avenue is pursued.
- Consistency: if you’re ghost writing for a blog, how long will the client want you to write for? There may be issues around the consistency of tone & manner, length and detail. Once you stop, and a client may not have the patience required for a blog to become effective, there can be consistency issues.
- Honesty & Reputation: Social Media is about emotion (see a good post on Collective Thoughts on this issue) and as such, when people read a blog and discover it was a ghost writer, especially for a business, they may feel “spun” and you may subsequently be coaching a client through a Social Media crisis situation. This perhaps, is the most important point, for reputation is everything and this is compounded in Social Media.
In our case, we are open about who we are when writing on a blog for a client, and why we’re doing the writing. We engage in the discussion and if the client is just engaging in Social Media it puts a more human face on the client, avoiding the One Way communication syndrome pre-Web 2.0 days.
What might you add to this list? Do you disagree? What is your experience?
(Author: Giles Crouch, Managing Partner)
Failures in a new product launch, new process or software implementation can cost both small and large businesses a fortune. Hence there is a lot of analysis before heading into such initiatives. It’s called risk mitigation and that’s sensible. Today, Social Media can have a measurable impact on reducing those costs of failure and provide more opportunity. Such approaches could be very useful in a down economy.
So how then? Social Media can reduce the cost of failure in the areas of marketing, sales, software implementations and product development best. By employing the right tools, a company can “float” ideas for a marketing campaign internally (i.e. via a Wiki) or externally via Twitter or a blog or newsgroup discussion. It’s key to remember that in these cases it’s not about a large volume of participants; it’s about the right size group that makes it viable to gather feedback.
If a company is looking to launch a new product feature and has cultivated a core group of loyal customers through a blog, Wiki, Twitter or newsgroup, then it has a ready source of fast feedback participants. A few questions can be floated and feedback monitored. The result may be realizing the new feature is not necessary or recommendations may result in reducing manufacturing or development costs. This is a measurable and impactful way to using Social Media tools and groups to reduce the costs of failure.
Internally, a company might use similar tools to float general questions and queries. Responses can be gauged. In terms of a sales initiative, production can have input to an upcoming planned sales initiative. This way, the production team is aware that a ramp-up might be necessary, or they can suggest additional features that may make a product sell better. Either way, the cost of failure is reduced, and there is greater cross-team functionality put in place.
In this current economic climate, the costs of failure will be weighed even more before decisions are made on expenditures. Social Media tools and practices can help avert those failures much earlier, likely leading to improved products and productivity and best of all, better bottom-line impact.