Best Practices, Research•
on January 28th, 2010•
A trend we’re noticing in Social Networking services (i.e. Facebook or Bebo) and how people are behaving is a move to more specifically focused social networks. Perhaps the first to start this was Ning a few years ago, and Ning has steadily increased. We’ve seen the addition of services like Ning, such as Qlubb, Flux, Grouply and well, here’s a list.
When you compare this to real-world social behaviour, it’s not at all surprising. We all have our hobbies and activities; sports, travel, photography, community service. A number of social technology companies have seen this, it’s nothing new from an availability standpoint.
What is new as a trend we’re seeing is that these services are expanding. It’s changing how broad social networks like Facebook, are being used. We call social networking services like Facebook “Open Loop Social Networks” – meaning they are more open. You can form groups in Facebook, with group and fan pages. There are millions of them, from the sublime to the ridiculous to the activist.
In our analysis of these communities and social group behaviours online though, we’ve seen a 42% increase in use of “Closed Loop Social Networks” over the past 6 months from a sample size of 54,000 profiles. Facebook will always see such group and fan pages being built; but we note that 96% of Facebook groups that are formed are active for only 3 weeks on average. Highly active group pages in places like Facebook tend to be those that are more focused; such as kayakers or mountain bikers.
Specialty group social networking service like Grouply or Ning however, are much more active since the participants are all like-minded. For those looking to market to those groups, look beyond just Facebook and look at other Closed Loop Networks to truly reach your target.
From Ebonics to Standard English (SE) to regional dialects, accents and contractions – all are elements of our daily lives in an urban setting.The larger the city you live in, whether it’s the U.S., Canada or Europe, the more ethnic groups we find and the bigger the challenge in Social Media engagement. Executing a Social Media campaign in one language is hard enough, crossing multiple cultures in one urban area is another. read more
Thunking, Uncategorized•
on November 12th, 2009•
Before the advent of Social Media, even the Web as a whole, there was argument that Western television was destroying other cultures. Yet the most popular shows in Brazil (still are) are called Telenovela’s made in Brazil, by Brazilians and watched daily by more than 60 million Brazilians – more than ever watched American TV shows produced in the U.S.
Step forward to today. Internet access reaches over a billion people around the world. With the advent of Social Media, we can create content and distribute it globally in just seconds. Never before, in the history of mankind, have we been able to do that. read more
When we think of and mostly talk about, Social Media crises, we tend to look at the bigger stories; United Breaks Guitars, Motrin Moms, JetBlue. Let’s face it, they’re juicier and hit a broader audience. These stories bring together traditional and social media. But smaller, mostly “hidden” issues can create PR nightmares for a business.
As we experienced with a client today. For obvious reasons I can’t name them, I like having clients and don’t like making a painful issue worse. The issue didn’t get broadcast across Twitter or Plurk or similar microblogging channel. Nor did it wind it’s away through Facebook.
This crisis took place across three “closed” forums. By “closed” I mean that it was in semi-moderated forums focused to a particular topic/industry. Someone posted a topic in a forum, within a short while, others joined in, discussing a product and their feelings about that product. It started only 3 days ago, but by this morning had reached a significant volume and resulted in a large volume of calls to a contact centre and began migrating up to senior management.
We monitor for this client monthly. Which helped. But the challenge of automated Social Media monitoring tools becomes quickly apparent – most of them are locked out of these forums. And this is a huge gap in Social Media monitoring.
Although this issue was “localized” and didn’t hit broadcast Social Media levels, it still caused a drop in sales in just 2 days of 8% and forced a mid-size business to focus many hours of senior management and people resources to contend with it. Fortunately it was kept localized and didn’t seep over into more public forums.
So what are some take-aways for a situation like this?
1. Don’t rely on Google Alerts or basic monitoring services.
2. Find out where “discussions” are going on in closed forums like newsgroups, chats or discussion forums and check in weekly to see what might be going on.
3. A crisis can occur in Social Media in closed loops and cause as much damage as if it hit the more public forums.
4. Engage in these discussions (be open and disclose who you are, trying to pretend your a customer is dangerous) and stay engaged.
5. Often times, these “hidden” sides of Social Media can be of more value than more public forums.
So what do you think? Have you had a similar experience? What steps do you take in this type of issue?
(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director)
I’ve had 2 calls in the last week from businesses looking to build their own Social Network and over the past several months, similar inquiries. When I ask them if they have about $40 Million to invest in getting it going I either get dead silence or a nervous chuckle. My advice is “forget it and invest elsewhere.”
The space is well established now. The leaders are Facebook and NetLog followed by MySpace and MyYearbook among others. Perception-wise Facebook is leading internationally. The others vary by country (these come from a simple but good site for this data.)
One might and I emphasize “might” succeed with a micro-Social Networking site that caters to a specific ethnic, cultural or special interest group. But often those are well supported by services like Ning. Of course it’s one thing to build it, then you need to attract people. Even in ethnic/cultural group terms, they’ve tended to have found their piece of turf inside Facebook or other services. For clubs and organizations there’s services like Qlubb – well, there’s over 60 of them out there. In the business world it’s a fight now between LinkedIn and FastPitch.
Only about 5% of people spend more than a few hours a week inside a Social Network and less than 3% belong to more than one Social Network (our research, March 2009). Once they have established a presence and entered their personal data and made connections, it’s very hard to move them. Porting the data over is hard enough to do, but porting their connections? Almost impossible.
Venture Capital companies are not financing Social Networks. Raising debt to finance them is personal financial suicide. And quite frankly, you’ll need at least $40 Million to build a presence. If you can figure out a very compelling reason to switch for a person (porting over data and friends included) then you might have something. Over time, opportunities might present themselves. The one sector we see some opportunity through our research is better ethnic/cultural focused Social Networks in countries like America, Canada, England and Europe. Possibly. But there are services for those markets (BlackPlanet and Migente are two) and the revenue opportunities may be limited based on demographics and adoption.
Our advice then is, work within a Social Network to build community if that’s your goal (here’s an example). For big brands, I’ve yet to see a sustainable model – the reality is, once the brand has accomplished it’s marketing objective, are they really going to want to spend the money required to maintain that presence? Not likely.
Are “consumers” dead? Is our consumptive society changing. No and not quite, but it’s interesting to see what is being said as we hear more and more the term “citizen” as a replacement for the consumer. In the strict sense of the word “consumer” it is a post-industrialist term for people who buy products and services made by businesses. A business does not see a “person” it sees “consumers” who are simply sliced and diced into various buying categories – demographics and in the late 90’s “psychographics” became a marketing meme.
I started hearing the word “citizen” as a replacement vernacular for “consumer” a year or so ago and decided to put our research engine on it. Researching over 300 prime blog entries where this has been discussed, the “volume” of discussion over the past 12 months has increased by 78% over August of 2008. A significant uptick happened just after the primary market crashes last year.
Based on reading 46 of the 300 blogs I tagged here’s what it seems “citizen” has come to mean. Essentially, the “consumer” is now able to self-define who they are and what they want. Social Media tools like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Ning etc., have given the Post-Industrial defined consumer a voice. This “voice” has caused significant upheaval in the traditional marketing and communications aspect of corporations in the developed world. The Motrin Moms issue, the most recent Honda/Facebook mess and more. CEO’s have lost their jobs, stocks have plummeted or shot skyward.
As the population increasingly engages on the Web, they are drawn to Social Media tools. About 3 years ago some research by PEW Internet showed people went online to browse, buy products (consume) or do research. There’s was little to actively “do” there. Now, with Social Media tools and services, people are finding there voices.
As a result of this, consumers are re-defining the way they have been seen by the Corporation. Yes, we are still in the true sense “consumers” for we buy. This is changing, but it is far too early to truly define “how” and to what degree – we simply lack any historical or empirical evidence. Yet.
The other word that “citizen” is replacing is the old early computing days term “user”; people don’t see themselves as “users” they are (as we’ve called them for years now) participants. Should we perhaps use the term “neo-citizen”? To describe the rise of the New Citizen? Or are we just ignoring reality and we’re still just the same old consumer with a fancy name?
So the concept of “citizen” has become a societal meme; we say citizen because in this wonderful democratic world of developed nations, the concept of “citizen” implies having a voice and rights.
From my anecdotal research and not being a social anthropologist, what the evidence points to is a significant shift in consumer perceptions – the “people” do not want to be voiceless consumers anymore. The general population that is connected and has shared, created, collaborated, has begun to define themselves.
This is perhaps a “tipping point” for corporations and any large organization to be cognizant of. I don’t presume to have any suggestions on exactly how things will turn out…but I’m sure that together, as citizens, we’ll figure it out.
(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director)