Social Networking « Direct Marketing Observations

Posts Tagged 'Social Networking'

The social media echo is viral

David Parmet recently wrote a post that should be required reading for all of us in the social media space, for all of us on the outside looking in and for those of us who want to pretend that we are playing in the space. You see, David wants us to set our sights a bit higher.

He cites Shel Israel’s post about social media becoming a vast wasteland which I won’t go as far to say as being the case, but I can see why he said it. David also mentions Tim O’Reilly’s key note at Web 2.0 expo NYC which I attended, in which O’Reilly muses ”And what are the best and the brightest working on?” displaying a slide of the Facebook app SuperPoke, which invites you to, “throw sheep” at your friends. Essentially asking, is this what we have been reduced to?

The point being it’s time for more, we need to stretch our collective muscles amongst the group. I have to agree with David that seeing another “How to with Twitter or another “6 steps to conquer your fear of Friendfeed”, or whatever, is not going to do us any good. Especially when we are essentially talking amongst ourselves. I mean that in the sense that the readers of our blogs, are in general, industry types.

Which essentially means that the social media echo comes right back at us. But then it is spread by other N00bs who want in on the game and thus spread the same thing that we already have heard and already have come to learn. And it comes back to us. We’re seeing a push of info that is the “same-ole, same-ole”. Nothing new, just a push, that is spread virally.

So let me ask you.

Do you want to repeat what someone else says?
Do you have any original thoughts?
If you hear someone else talking about the same thing, do you feel the urge to repeat it verbatim?
Isn’t it sometimes better to look at something in a completely different way?
Are you so boring that you don’t care about formulating your own opinions and thoughts?

Don’t be a me too person. There is way too much under the social media hood here. We need leaders not followers.

Is the Forrester Groundswell biased?

Published September 12, 2008 Marketing , Social Media marketing , Social Networking , Social Networks , Web 2.0 4 Comments
Tags: forrester, Forrester Groundswell, social media, Social Networking, Social Networks

I’ve been looking at the finalists submissions for the Forrester Groundswell Awards and I’m wondering if choosing the winning entries based on proof of business value might be looking at the value proposition the wrong way. I’ve blogged about and complained about how social media sites and networks need to have a better way to monetize what they’re doing, and lets face it we all want to make money.

But, what if I’m completely seeing this the wrong way? What if the value of a social network isn’t in the amount of money it’s generating, but it’s instead about the quality of the community and the value it brings to each and every member of that community? And THAT is the true essence?

I know this completely smacks in the face of why we go to work everyday. And it also reeks of the “if you build it they will come” mindset or is that blindset? but…. Should Forrester be focusing on a bigger “world view” of social media and social networks instead of proof of business value?

I also see that Forrester has segmented out the finalists entries into a few distinct categories. Are these too broad? Or too narrow? Or too generalized?

Listening

Talking

Energizing

Supporting

Embracing

Managing

Social Impact

What would you add to this list that might make it more complete? Forrester says that they got over 150 submissions, 151 to be exact, and they have whittled it down to 128. What made the other 22 unworthy? I know, I know, lack of proof of business value. I just need to look at what justifies a win in social media and social networks. It may go back to my what’s more important question: ROI or Engagement. So what is it?

*Note Forrester has since called me to clarify that no one has been eliminated or whittled down, and that ALL entries will be judged on their proof of business value. Apparently there was an issue with one of the pages. I stand corrected.

Are you ready to become a social media “doer”?

Published September 10, 2008 Marketing , Social Media marketing , Social Networking , Social Networks , Web 2.0 1 Comment
Tags: joseph jaffe, marc meyer, Marketing, media, new media, Social Media marketing, Social Networking, Web 2.0

I was reading Joseph Jaffe’s latest post on the Agency of the future in which one of his points was that brand marketers are wanting someone or a company with more experience and knowledge in regards to the digital space.

It struck me that the majority of brand marketers are currently searching for someone who gets it. Or at least for someone who get’s it, until they get it. Which makes me wonder how many of us out there right now, could take a company where they want to go? Sure we all have an idea, or maybe a clue, at least I hope you do, but how many of you could map out a plan, that works? I’m guessing not as many, which leads me to my main question of how many of you are willing to take the lead instead of languishing in the echo chamber?

With that being said, here are 5 questions you need to ask yourself:

Are you a social media ”me too” person?
Could you sit down today and map out a social media plan that could garner results either for yourself or a company?
What are you doing to become a social media doer or leader?
How long are you going to sit on the sidelines?
Have you really tried?

Once you answer these questions, see where you’re coming up short and do something about it. You can only read and write about it so much. A great resource for ”how to’s” if you need it, is Chris Brogan But most of all, practice what you preach! Get out of the fishbowl and go do it dammit!

Are we slaves to the rhythm of social media?

Published September 9, 2008 Marketing , Social Media marketing , Social Networking , Social Networks , Web 2.0 2 Comments
Tags: social media, Social Media marketing, social nets, Social Networking, social software

I’ve been thinking alot lately how all of us are starting to meld social media into the daily fabric of our lives. For some of us, our daily routine consists of checking in or logging on to various social nets to see if we have anyone who has posted, commented, uploaded, friended or mailed anything directly to us.

We check our email, and that’s a given. We use our cell phone to surf the net and check mail and that’s a given too. But then in short succession we could log onto Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendfeed, WordPress, Ning, Bebo, Orkut, Hi5, Twitter, Plurk, Typepad, Google Reader, Feedburner, and dozens of others to check for new friends, uploads, downloads, new pics, new scoop, new mail, new comments and new widgets. We then could log onto and read more than our share of random or relevant blogs, and we even might comment on a couple as well.

Not only might we do this once, but we might do this more than a few times a day depending on the nature of our work. And even more when we get home at night. Which leads to a few questions:

Are we slaves to social media?
Does social media own us?
Are our lives more or less complicated by using social media?
Do we get more done thanks to social media?
Are we more or less social?

What do you think? What is acceptable? Frankly I try to limit my time into blocks built around the work day and even at home. But I can see where one could spend endless amounts of time building and maintaining social media personas from here to BFE and back. The question is. What is your ultimate plan or goal with social media? As a layperson and as a professional, do you have an end game result in mind? Do you have a plan?

What can you do today that can empower your customer using social media?

Published September 4, 2008 internet marketing , Marketing , Social Media marketing , Social Networking , Social Networks , Web 2.0 2 Comments
Tags: social media, Social Media marketing, Social Networking, Social Networks

“What can you do today that can empower your customer using social media”?

I was asked this by someone who works for an Amazon owned company. Their customers in this scenario are B to B but they also have B to C. The question essentially was. How can we get more ROI from our customers utilizing todays social media without going down the path of ” A blog”? What makes the best sense?

You see, their thinking is that everyone is doing the blog thing and in their industry, there is no way it will have legs, so what else is there that we can do? What will work in our space, knowing that we have to have some type of social media element? One of my points was that the B to B consumer might be slower right now to embracing the tools that social media might provide. Whereas, the B to C consumer might be more apt to utilize them. The thinking being that the B to B person is still in education mode and is going to stick to what’s tried and true in regards to traditional forms of marketing.

They seemed to think the same thing. And maybe I’m wrong, given the larger context that social media is being bandied about currently. But what does make sense for each group? Can you roll out a social media campaign for both groups that makes the best sense for both? And is it wrong to think that a blog just won’t work?

What should be the entry point? Krishna De wrote a post back in January on a similar topic, but the problem is, it was written in January. Does it still apply? Social media advances are moving at such a rapid rate that sometimes what made sense 6 months ago, might not be the case now. Jared Goralnick has some thoughts on this too but it’s more of a jumping off point for the person, not the organization who is trying to leverage social media to increase ROI.

Here’s a guest post on the My Creative Team blog site that makes a little bit more sense titled the roi of social media but the whole point is this. As a marketer you can sit across from me and educate me, but then at the end of the day, what are you going to do? With that being said Mashable has a nice post on 5 things you can do to develop a social media plan for your business. The list includes

Listen
Prepare
Engage
Go Offline
Measure Success

In conclusion: To all the social media marketers out there, this is essentially what you are going to hear from your clients and customers to be when going down the path of social media:

TELL ME WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO! and then tell me how it will impact me and how long will it take. See the below chart from Marketing Charts

The politics of social media

Published August 25, 2008 Marketing , Mobile marketing , Social Networking , Twitter , Web 2.0 , YouTube 2 Comments
Tags: barack obama, demorcratic national convention, joe biden, john mccain, political social networks, politics, poltically based social networks, social media, Social Networking, Social Networks

This past Friday I was interviewed by the AP about a blog post I did awhile back on the top political social networks. Given that the Democratic national convention was firing up this week in Colorado, the reporter wanted to know what I thought people’s current perception and usage might be of social networks for political groups and their associated impact and influence. A valid question. I told him that surprisingly enough, from what I found, the number of actual social networks devoted to politics was not as great as one would think or I would have expected, given the current state of affairs. But that’s changing, and it’s changing fast.

This is not to say that there are not tons of blog sites with political themes, or You Tube videos with political themes, or a myriad of polticians with websites, Facebook pages and or blogs, that’s a whole ‘nuther story. It’s just that politics and social media are just evolving slower than I would have thought.

But back to my point. Though there are not AS many social networks as one might think, the usage of what is available online in regards to Web 2.0 tools has never been higher. Take what Barack Obama did with enlisting his followers and everyone else to sign up for the email and text message on who his VP would be. Clearly Obama has realized the power of mobile and is using it as another way of communicating his message. A political candidate communicating in as many ways as possible. Novel concept.

No doubt we have evolved into a text messaging mad society, so this made perfect sense. Embracing social media and the micro-blogging platform, however, is something that someone in the Obama camp thought might make sense as well, and thus he is now being followed by 67,000 people on Twitter.

On the other hand, objectively speaking, it would appear that John McCain is slow on the draw given that he only has a website. With no offense meant, I told the AP reporter that it appeared the Obama was embracing Web 2.0 and McCain was embracing the Commodore 64.

I think what you might find even more interesting though is that according to Think Progress , Joe Biden is one of the most wired politician of the bunch. he currently has a presence on Facebook, MySpace, a blogsite, a website, a Flickr page, and a YouTube presence. Not sure about the Twitter presence though.

As I have always maintained, contrary to an earlier post, that social nets need to go vertical in order to be successful in their own right. For politics, this never made better sense. Eventually, what you’ll see is each social cause or political concern will have it’s own social media platform in which to engage its users, trumpet their causes, raise awareness and most of all… raise money. If anything, the emergence and usage of social media has armed every citizen with the ability and opportunity to now speak their voice via, wiki, blog, youtube video, chatroom, and social net, like they have never been before.

As the awareness levels continue to rise on just what a social network can do not only for the regular person on the street with a cause, but also for a candidate or politician, so will the number of active social networks specifically geared towards these niches. Because of social media, never before has the average American had as big an opportunity to speak and be heard above the noise. But what comes of it, still remains to be seen.

How does the user measure ROI in social networks?

Published August 21, 2008 Marketing , Social Media marketing , Social Networking , Social Networks , Web 2.0 2 Comments
Tags: micro interactions, Social Media marketing, Social Networking, Social Networks, user experience, user generated content, YouTube

I’ve been wrestling with this lately and maybe you can help. If I’m the social networking user and I frequent my favorite social network everyday, how should I measure my ROI? My investment of time to the site should be rewarded with what? The quality of my experience? What exactly is that? The number of people I meet? The real people I meet? the number of people I actually communicate with? The amount of conversations? Is it the stuff I create? The amount of personal interactions? the amount of micro interactions? The number of photos or songs I share? Is it the quality of my everyday engagement? Yes, yes, yes, and yes…..It’s all of those things. To each person, it is one of those, or all of the above.

So perhaps it looks something like this:

Do you see the dilemma though? I had previously written about user experience versus user interface, but what it really comes down to beyond the user experience is, the return on the user expereince or the ROUE. As a potential user of your social site, I need YOU the marketer, builder, architect or whomever- to show me quickly what my ROUE will be. Because lets face it, I don’t want to work too hard to engage others or create content. Perhaps it’s the WIIFM paradigm? “What’s in it for me”.

Is it the tools that are available for the user to create UGC? Is that a big feature? It is for Myspace. Is it the ability to add hundreds of “friends”? It is to Facebook. Is it the ability to network with notable people in business? It is to LinkedIn. You see each site has a different ROUE to offer the user. What keeps the user coming back in each scenario is, when we boil it down- the response, the return, the pay-off, the money shot. We are “geeked” by the response that we receive from whomever. The user investment for the user, is their time and efforts, and the reward for the user is a response from others. Write a blog and no one reads it, how much and how long will you write? It’s predicated on a response. Take nny user generated content created in a vacuum and the creator won’t be doing it for very long.

So perhaps the measurement should be Return on user effort as much as it is Return on user experience? Think about why YouTube is so popular. Well, it’s a few things. It’s the ability to create content for free, the ability to share it, the possibility of getting noticed, a return on the user generated content, communicating with others, a response. Notoriety. 15 minutes of fame.

So next time you’re evaluating the NBT of social networks, Look at the ROUE. Is the return on user experience and return on user effort very high? You should be able to determine that fairly quickly. In my follow up piece, I’m going to look at ROI and engagement and how we measure those as a barometer of social media success.

Visualizing Social Media Part 2

Published August 13, 2008 Marketing , Social Media marketing , Social Networking , Social Networks , Web 2.0 1 Comment
Tags: david armano, social media, social media diagrams, Social Media marketing, Social Networking, Social Networks, Web 2.0

I had such a good time with the visualization of what we all do, what we evangelize, what we learn and what we share on a day to day basis that it seemed like a good idea to show you a few more graphical representations of the space:

Here is Deborah Schultz’s version of the social media ecosytem

Then there is Fred Cavazza’s Social Media Landscape

Next is Deirdre Breakenridge I know its tough to see, but it was a huge file.

Or perhaps you can relate to this?

Although, I always like David Armano’s visuals.

Which ones make sense to you? What should be obvious is the interconnectivity of every diagram up there, with the exception of the web 2.0 diagram of all the social media apps currently out there. Where do you fit in? Where do you see yourself in any of these? Are you a watcher? A participator? Do you contribute?

The Conversation As Transaction

Published August 11, 2008 Marketing , Social Media marketing , Social Networking , Social Networks , Web 2.0 1 Comment
Tags: Social Media marketing, social media today, Social Networking, Social Networks, the conversations

I recently read a post titled The social media expert, Who is he? in which Jacob Morgan espoused on the question we all have been asking each other as of late and that is, just who is the social media expert? But an interesting thing happend while reading some of the responses to Jacob’s post, someone wrote that the conversation, or that the interaction on social networks, could end up being monetized or transactional.

I’m not sure how it went from talking about social media experts to dovetailing into monetizing social networks but it certainly gave me pause to ponder whether social networks could find that happy place and actually make money beyond relying on traffic and Ad dollars.

But herin I came up with some questions that not only do social media startups need to ask themselves, but even ourselves as users and readers and participators need to ask.

If you are the architect of a social media app or community, are your goals and aspirations purely altruisitc? Or do you want to make money? Your success does depend on the community, which of course is predicated on what? the quality of your apps? or the quality of your participants and the interaction of those individuals?

Its not the platform or is it?

The easier you make it for people to interact, then the better your chances are to succeed? Right? So then it is about the platform. See the catch-22? What comes first the people or the platform? or rather what drives or determines the success? The quality of the platform of the passion of the people? Or is it sales and marketing and $30 million in funding?

So this made me think that could the conversation, could a conversation be monetized? Could there be a conversational transaction? Monetizing the conversation. Putting a value on the conversation above and beyond it’s intrinsic value? Is that possible? would we go for it?

Robin Carey brings up a great point in her response to the above blog post in which she says:

I think there is a world of hurt out there around the notion of “monetization,” or “transaction” and social media. Personally, I think the hurt is misplaced. Let’s face it, people do need to get paid for their intellectual endeavors, whether that is for designing a great app or moderating a productive conversation. If you think of social media as an online, 24/7 conference, then if there is value to be had in that conference, then people are willing to pay for it. I would venture that relationships do have value, which can be monetized, but hopefully in a way that is acceptable to both parties (“transactions.”) The big change with social media is that these transactions and monetizations (if that is a word) take place in a more transparent and inter-active fashion.

So essentially what it may boil down to, is that social networks will no longer be free? Or perhaps you have to pay for your widgets, pay to communicate with your peers? Not likely. Which means this steers us right back to the value of the conversation, or the transactional value of the conversation. Yes it’s valuable but only between the people that it concerns. Above and beyond that it has zero value. And lets be honest, has anyone tried to attach value to a conversation? Beyond its personal value to you and I? I guess that means, for now, we’re back to relying on traffic and ad revenue. For now.

I guess the last question would be then: If Twitter started charging, would you use it?

Why online communities fail

Published July 30, 2008 Marketing , Social Media marketing , Social Networking , Social Networks , Web 2.0 3 Comments
Tags: conversations, new media, online communities, social media, Social Media marketing, Social Networking, Social Networks, Web 2.0

“What we’ve got here is…failure to communicate.” — spoken by “The Captain”, the imperious prison warden played by Strother Martin in the movie, “Cool Hand Luke”

We talk about how great social nets are and all of the great things it has to offer but here is the flip side to that coin, why do online social communities fail? Where is the disconnect? Here are some opinions on the matter from the blogosphere.

Here is a post in which Eric Zeman says that up to this point mobile social networking has been a big fat failure. I’ve blogged about this in the past and have basically said that the 2 issues that will slow this rush down will be lack of real estate on the hand held device and browser speed of course. What do you think? where do you fall?

Social networking 2008 Friend or Failure, did this guy get it right? To a degree he did. Of course we have this little ditty from the Wall Street Journal on why communities fail. which we did not really need to read to know why they fail. It’s the community people, its the people, people. It’s not the cash. People make communities work. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t call them communities.

John Furrier has an interesting take as well, in which he says that users want value not cheerleaders but that still doesn’t prevent him from saying that Social Media – Corporate Blogging – Most Failing? It has to be social.

Are you starting to see a trend here? As many supporters and champions of how great social nets are, there are still areas in which some if not many see shortcomings and potential for improvement in the model. Here are a few more. This one coming from the auto industry: Social Media Networks in the automotive industry are fledgling and the dynamics created inside of them is atypical of what you see in other niches.

Here’s a post from last summer, titled, Traditional marketing failing on social networks. Yes that still seems to be true though I am seeing some marketing gains in regards to companies putting the right people in place to handle new social media intiatives. But not at any acceptable levels.

What all of this is, is people looking at communities and saying they are failing, or they failed and then they start pointing fingers. Or they just count the reasons why they failed. Or maybe they are the ones, who have never participated? Bottom line should be, how do you prevent community failure in an online social network?

Here is a response from FreshNetworks in response to the Wall Street Journal article in which they are essentially saying, Branded online communities that are set up and managed correctly don’t fail. And I have to agree with them.

Here’s more on why online communities fail In a world saturated with solicitations where people have less and less attention available, most communities fail because they bypassed a few important questions, like “what are we offering users?”, “what is differentiating us from other communities?”,

And of course the online community numbers that don’t add up

Why do online communities fail? The biggest reason for failure is relying on technology – whether it’s websites, forums, Web 2.0, social media, social networks or any of the buzzwords. Too many businesses spend massive amounts of money on the technology rather than the plans and processes and people that are what make up a community. To a certain degree the technology might not fit but it’s technology that drives the process, so we have to rely on it.

The customer collective on why communities fail: The first reason is that many companies who embark on community initiatives are putting their company or product at the center of the effort. As many pointed out, that is obviously WRONG – you need to put the community member at the center and make sure that there is some passion around the initiative. Put the customer at the center, but the customer needs to know why they are there.

Three Reasons Branded Online Communities Fail Would you launch a new product or service line without an experienced person to develop and manage it? Not usually, no. The same goes for online communities.

Or perhaps, why online communities fail, Community is about community and community leaders, folks don’t be seduced by eye candy!

Why Does Corporate Social Networking Fail? Dave Allen weighs in at Social Media Today. And so does Jerry Bowles with Online Business Communities – Who’s Winning? Who’s Losing

In conclusion let’s remember the thing that people who have the cash to set these up seem to forget or overlook. It’s all about the community, the managers, the brand champions, the word of mouth people who love the site, the users who genuinely love to connect with people, it’s people who love the brand and the company, the people who would do anything for the company for the brand. Its the friendships made. Its about companies listening. Those are your community. NOT the marketers, and the tech people that built it. It’s the people that matter that contribute, and it’s the contributors that matter who matter most. What part of that do you not understand?

After reading your fair share, where do you think the burden of an online communities success should fall?

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