Facebook « Direct Marketing Observations

Posts Tagged 'Facebook'

The Takeaway from Social Media in 2010

Online privacy means a lot to us, but for a majority of us, it’s only important when we know our privacy has been invaded. In social networks and social media, every time we join a new shiny network, or register for something online, we give up a little piece of our privacy, like a sculptor chipping away at a piece of marble. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes not, we’re giving up who we are to marketers and brands.

You see, every time we create a profile we are allowing someone to glimpse a little bit more about us than most might really be comfortable with; but we do it because that’s what’s asked or required of us in order to “play”; and like I said, some of you might not even know it. Some of you might not care, because hey, “we’re living in the age of uber transparency”!

Yes we have a right to know what information is being gathered about us, how it is used and whether it is gathered at all, yet most of us are too busy trying to get on the other side of an app to be bothered with reading a EULA or a TOS agreement. Why is that?

I have a feeling that the reason is similar to when you are hearing a radio spot and at the very end of the spot you’ll hear a guy talking so fast, you have no idea what he just said, so you ignore it, Because all you really care about is the deal that was mentioned in front of the fast talking man-The carrot, the offer, the opportunity. Privacy be damned. Most marketers and companies assume correctly that making the TOS’s and EULA’s so ridiculously convoluted, that we as consumers will just get tired of reading and will click the agree button. And the devil…is buried in the details.

Facebook did the same thing when it came to compromising our privacy the first time. How many times has it changed it’s privacy policy? Most of the 500 million users probably don’t care what is happening to their data-and that’s a scary thought; but enough of them care to call Facebook out for assuming that we are ready to alter our perception of what is acceptable in data mining- and thus we’ve able to somewhat keep them in check. I am still not comfortable about the purported data leaks, or satisfied that Facebook is doing all it can to value my privacy, but then again it’s a 1000 times better than it initially was.

So let me ask you something. As we head into 2011, are you cool with giving up snippets of your personal data for the sake of playing Farmville? Or being part of Groupon? or Foursquare?Are you comfortable with that? Are you truly prepared for radical transparency? I’m not sure I am just yet.

7 Tips for Staying on Top of the Social Wave

Published October 15, 2010 social media 2 Comments
Tags: Facebook, marc meyer, predictive modeling, social media, Social Networks, Twitter

Often times you have to step in it to realize you are in it. With social media, you would have to have lived in a cave on an island in the Pacific to not know how ubiquitous it is. It’s permeating every part of our daily lives. With that being said, here are 7 “things” you should be aware of as we go forward in this digital world that can carry you and your company towards Web 3.0.

1) Look for more content to be produced by “others”. This means look for the rise of the professional content creators masking as citizen journalists. They will blur the lines so much-you won’t know where the value lies. We used to marvel at UGC, but what is it when large organization start to pass their content off as UGC? Think of Wal Mart or Astroturfing. Know the difference between “real” UGC and professional content.

There’s a reason why Twitter is killing Facebook in CTR rates. Marketers are realizing that Twitter is a consumption vehicle for content and thus they are catching on in continuing to push out content- but they realize they must disguise the content in a way that is appealing and doesn’t seem hook ladened.

2) There will be a continued increase in the value of communities but you will also see more splintering of those communities into niches. Face it, we all have a niche, and connecting to those people via an online community, certainly drives a good portion of our searches. Knowing that people are searching for their tribes will help you in your understanding of market segments. Focus on focus-Want to grow your product? Find the niche, it’s there.

3) Mobile will be THE social platform.The global mobile market is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2015. What are you waiting for? Your competitors? What are you doing about it? Get serious about mobile.

4) Social data will determine your next move in your future business engagements, don’t ignore it-Social data will be driving consumer engagement.

Companies are mining the social web to build dossiers on you. Information posted publicly on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, forums and other sites is fair game

5) Engagement strategies will be different on every channel because of the data returned from #4. Don’t assume that your social strategies will be the same across all BU’s. Each has it’s own nuance and needs. Be mindful that your social solutions will be different-understand their capabilities and their deliverables.

6) Mitigating loss of control in social media will continue to be underserved and undervalued. What seems to be common is that people don’t do anything from a crisis communication and loss mitigation standpoint until after things hit the fan. Create your social media worst case scenario plan, don’t wait.

7) Search will still rule, but social search will drive future customer engagement. How are you currently addressing the fact that people will be using a mobile device and could be doing searches through their social network of choice for products and service and companies? For starters, think local and then learn how it works.

If there were a way to etch these in pencil, I would do it. Things change so quickly in the digital social media world that nothing is finite and everything is fair game. But as an organization, agency or marketer trying to make heads or tails over what might happen-this is as good a snapshot as any to start from.

What Does it Mean When Social Media Companies Can’t Survive?

Published October 7, 2010 Facebook , social media 3 Comments
Tags: 12seconds.tv, Facebook, google, jay baer, microsoft, xmarks

In recent weeks I’ve received emails from Xmarks and 12seconds.tv announcing that both were ceasing operations by the end of the month. I was bummed. With Xmarks, I actually used it every day to keep all my bookmarks synced across multiple machines. With 12seconds.tv, I had used a dozen times or so and I could see an application or a place for it in the crowded world of social applications and services. So why did they both decide to shut the doors?

No revenues. Simple as that. They could not make any money. Both companies had traffic and users, and both applications were free, but the problem was, they could not figure out how to make a living off of a social utility. I’ve said for a long time that I can’t stand the traditional internet business model that’s predicated on traffic. I hate that model; and yet as we speak in 2010, we have 2 companies that needed traffic to grab advertisers, and to a certain degree had half of that equation, and yet still couldn’t survive.

What does that mean?

Sure we’ve had a ton of companies that have gone belly up, but what does it mean today? Back in the day, when your internet startup wasn’t tied to a transactional product, your best bet for survival was predicated on a mix of lots of traffic, word of mouth, and great service which attracted advertisers. But that still was no guarantee of survival. Especially when it basically was relying on traffic fueled ad dollars.

This morning Jay Baer wrote a post about how social media behemoth Facebook was basically suffocating the rest of the web 2.0 world. Frankly I have to agree with him. Not only is Facebook swallowing up our time, but it’s redefining our choices and driving our preferences-which means that companies that are trying to go it alone in the social media landscape, now have to compete for attention and eyeballs of people that prefer to play inside the walls of Facebook only!

Forget ad revenue from traffic as a major concern for new social startups. They now have to compete with Facebook right out of the blocks. It reminds me of the halcyon days of first Microsoft’s dominance and then Google’s. Everyone was always wondering what they were going to do next. This is Facebook’s world and we’re just living in it.

That’s what that means.

If You Could Use Only One Social Media Solution, Which Would It Be?

Published July 6, 2010 Social Networks 2 Comments
Tags: Facebook, Linkedin, marc meyer, social media, Social Networks, Twitter, YouTube

Given that most of us claim to be too busy to do anything anymore-and it is somewhat true. Traipsing in and bellowing to anyone who will listen, that the tranformative nature of social media will change the way you do business for the better, is a lofty claim.

Let’s do a hypothetical. What if you could only use one “social solution”? Which would you use? and why would you use it? Let’s say you’re a consultant, which social media solution would you suggest and why? Which one is going to have the largest impact on your company? On your business? For your client? What if you’re boss said, “Pick one”, and given that that’s a minor miracle he said that-which will give you the firm footing to do more later on down the line? The most impact? Results?

This is kind of important for a number of reasons-not the least of being that some solutions are just not a good fit for some types of organizations. The reasons could be limited resources, limited time, money or whatever-but you just don’t go and jam a generic social solution into every company just because they want one. You’re going to set yourself up to fail if you do that.

Just because a company can set up a Facebook fan page for example- does that mean that it will give them the biggest bang for their efforts? Maybe, maybe not. What is going to give them the biggest return, the biggest impact? You can only choose one.

Let’s short list 11 high level social media solutions and tools right now.

Facebook
Twitter
Linkedin
YouTube
A Ning Like community or Forum solution
A Blog
Social Bookmarking
Flickr
Podcasting
Wiki
Social Monitoring

Each of the above have specific bells and whistles that allow you to do certain things. Remind me again, what’s the goal of social media? To have conversations? To sell stuff? To grow the business? To enrich Customer service? HR? Competitive intelligence? PR? Collaboration? Which one could do all of those? I got a better idea. Maybe you should just concentrate on one specific social “thing” that will make your organization better?

Ahhhh haaaaa… That’s it! Which one can do one thing that can make your organization better at what they do? You don’t need to try or “do” every social media solution to be successful. Just one-Doing one thing really, really well, will work.

10 social media sites, blogs and links you might have missed

Published May 26, 2010 social media 4 Comments
Tags: blogfrog, Facebook, fanpage list, flowtown, jd lasica, marc meyer. toby bloomberg, openbook, regretsy, social media, Social Networks, tlists, togetherville

I haven’t done a post on stuff I’ve saved lately, and I love when others share links, articles and sites with me, so here’s a few that I’ve accumulated.

I’ve been writing and talking a lot about Facebook and children and parents lately, and the site Togetherville is at least a step in some direction. I don’t know if it’s the answer but at least someone is doing something.

I came across Tlists when I showed up on one of it’s lists of “The most listed Tweeters on 921 lists about Social Media”. Find the best tweeters on any topic.

When I participated in this innovative Twitter project by Toby Bloomberg is an incredibly smart marketer out of Atlanta, I had no idea she would make it into an ebook, but it’s a great read and was a great idea! - Social Media Marketing GPS: A New Media Roadmap For Creating A Social Media Strategy

What are the top brands on Facebook? What might be a better question is, Are you surprised at who you see on this list? Fan Page List has all the data.

From one of our weekly Tweetchats hosted by JD Lasica on Facebook and Privacy, this link was shared: Facebook Backlash Sparks Transparency Tools which has a couple of really good tools in the article.

While we’re at, have a look at Openbook

I can’t say it any better than this: Where DIY meets WTF..

Turn an email address into a social profile with Flowtown

This has some potential now that Ning has constructed pay walls; Add a forum or social network to your blog with BlogFrog

This last post was so dead on and had me laughing and nodding my head all in the same breath. 8 websites you need to stop building

Got any I might have missed?

Facebook Infographs

Published May 24, 2010 Facebook Leave a Comment
Tags: Facebook, facebook privacy policies, marc meyer

Which one of the following 3 infographs might be the most accurate?

On Trust and Children in Social Networks

Published May 10, 2010 Facebook 17 Comments
Tags: Facebook, privacy, Social Networks

So I’m at my 12 year old daughter’s softball game last Friday night and as the game is concluding I reach for my cellphone and I see a text from my wife it reads:

Your daughter is on Facebook”?

I text back

She better not be”.

As I’m waiting for her to emerge from the dugout, I decide to call my wife who is in Ohio for the weekend for my nephew’s first communion. The first words out of her mouth are that her sister Terry tried to “Friend” my daughter on Facebook. I was shocked and stunned. But there were some legit reasons why. Here’s 4 of them.

1) Not 2 weeks prior to this happening, I was on television and in front of a live audience, as well as members of the school board, explaining why I did not see the point in children (freshman to sophomores on down) using Facebook, let alone a social network at all. They’re too young.

2) I had explained to those that attended, how important it was to monitor your childrens online activities.

3) I had outlined how important it was, to explain the implications of privacy and what can happen when you are “out” there to your children.

4) My daughter saw the event on television

Apparently I suck at drinking my own koolaid. I did not do a good enough job of monitoring my child’s online activities. I took for granted that my straight A’s student, great athlete, daughter would never violate the trust that I thought we had. She had asked previously if she could get a Facebook account and I said no and I explained why.

Here’s the cautionary tale.

First off, I felt completely betrayed by my daughter,
Facebook has no idea of the challenges that parents face.
Even “good” kids will do what their ‘friends” tell them to do and what their parents tell them not to.
My daughter knew she wasn’t supposed to be on, but her friends told her to set up an account.
As smart as my daughter thinks she is, and yes she is, she still set the account up wrong, but luckily she had not put “that much” info out there.
There were dozens of other “friends” waiting for her to “friend” them back. Dozens.
Those other “friends”, were no older than 13, but the majority were younger than 13. That means that they worked around the so-called age limit to join Facebook.
Children have no clue what privacy settings are and how to set them up on Facebook.

So what’s my point? I supposedly was monitoring my daughter’s online activities. I live, eat, breath and sleep this social media stuff, and yet she did it while my wife and I were down the street trying to hit tennis balls.

The parents of the others that I saw on there? Chances are, they do not live, eat and breathe social media. I bet if I were to at least look at the privacy settings of those accounts, 90% of them would be wide open. That’s a problem. One of many.

As social networks and mobile phones continue to evolve, and as the age of innocence continues to evaporate, and entry into owning a phone continues to be lowered-issues about content, behavior, ignorance, and privacy on social networks are going to continue to escalate and magnify. Take it from me, or maybe not…

« Previous Page — Next Page »

Latest tweet

To me summer starts on June 1at and ends on September 30th. Sp guess what? 17 hours ago
Twitter is great for when your waiting for people in a bar and you don't know a soul. 18 hours ago
What an odd but good retrospective on Latrell Spreewell from @newyorker newyorker.com/online/blogs/c… 19 hours ago
It's Bubbleboy-Video Analysis of Bubble Wrap Jumps-Does he survive? wired.com/wiredscience/2… 20 hours ago
This is funny but good: Klout Is Evil, But It Can Be Saved newyorker.com/online/blogs/c… #klout #influence 20 hours ago