Category Archives: social media

The Rub of Social Ubiquity

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Sometimes we just want to “lay low”. Sometimes we just want to pull back and do nothing. Sometimes we just don’t want to post, share, update, comment, tweet, or chat. We just want to be.  However, as each day goes by, we’re starting to see that social doesn’t sleep. The digital footprint isn’t necessarily in sand.  

Social ubiquity, unfortunately doesn’t know what laying low means. With the advent of Google+ and Facebook’s landgrab of all things social, we’re edging towards an age where we all can be found at any time. Our digital footprint is becoming one which isn’t etched in sand but more like one cast in clay and concrete. What we all need to understand though, is that Google, Facebook and Microsoft want to keep us in network, 24 seven 365.  This starts with a social network and then extends to email, to docs, to phone calls, to commerce, to video and beyond. Every one of these “actions”  has or will have a social component attached to it. If it hasn’t already.

So where do we go once we’re reached that saturation? We “retreat” and we “treat” social as a utility. It becomes part of the fabric of our lives that we use in moderation knowing that we CAN use it 24 seven 365, but we don’t. We will eventually become more identified by the social networks that we use all the time but right now we’re still deciding what camp we want to be in, while the big 3 try to figure out what we want.

Value Drivers in Social Media

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Sometimes I’m not so sure I always know what that means. Value drivers.  It’s sort of a corporate speak type of thing to essentially describe the capabilities of your company isn’t it? But really the dumbed down version of value drivers is a  term to describe the competitive advantage(s) of your company.

But what if we say you are a “social company”? What are the value drivers of your social company? What should they be?

  • You are social, you are participatory and you are producing content? (That’s a given right?)
  • You engage frequently? (Assumed)
  • It permeates your organization? (Imperative)
  • Business is derived from your social activities?
  • You are measuring your activities?

Does your organization think like this? Does anyone think like that when it comes to social business? When we all start to think like this, then we get to move beyond the the “bright new shiny thing” stage of social.

Three Plateaus in Social Media

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For those of you who are new to the social space, this post does not entirely apply to you, though it perhaps eventually will.  So you can keep reading to see what will might happen to you.

Plateau #1

  • You’ve created half assed personas in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Linkedin
  • You’ve added and perhaps bought followers, fans, likes, subscribers and contacts
  • You’ve created a blog and have added a few posts
  • You have pushed out some weak, self serving content on all of them
  • You had no strategy
  • You quit because, you see nothing gained and you claim that social media does not work

Plateau #2

  • You have done everything in Plateau #1 and…
  • You have added/bought thousands of people to your networks
  • You push out content on all of your networks but it’s over the top and self serving
  • You monitor all of your networks…sort of
  • You have engaged with people somewhat
  • Your activities have tailed off because it takes too much work and you’re not seeing the results and you’re not convinced that social media works. Pretty soon, it dies a slow death.

Plateau #3

  • You have identified and created personas in the right networks that fit your needs
  • You understand that it’s a marathon and not a sprint
  • You manage and grow all of your networks thoughtfully and effectively
  • You measure all of your efforts effectively
  • You create and meet all of your existing KPI’s
  • You adapt and you create new KPI’s
  • You create, adjust, and redefine your strategy accordingly
  • You thrive

As you can see, the 3 plateaus are fairly well defined and quite different. Most of you have done all or parts of each. Those that can get to the third plateau can certainly speak to the other two. Those that have quit after one or two, certainly know why they did. What’s your smell test?

Recommendations have nothing to do with loyalty!

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Just saying that out loud sounds crazy but check this out.

So let’s get this straight. If a brand hooks it’s customers up with coupons, and a customer takes them, because that’s what they are demanding, does that mean they are telling you or us that you can have their business? I think so.  It means so long as you keep rewarding the customer- they will be your customer for life. Or at least until a better offer comes along. What does that have to do with loyalty and recommendations? It means as a consumer I will recommend your product as long as you reward me. It means I will be loyal to you as long as you give me free stuff, or coupons, or a deal. It means that I may recommend you solely on the basis of how much you give me and not necessarily on how good the brand experience was. I may recommend you because of customer service, but loyalty has nothing to do with it. It means and it has meant for quite some time, that loyalty can be bought and our “likes’, our follows and “friendships” can go to the highest bidder.

Social will give you the opportunity to nurture and marinate the customer experience but if you don’t give today’s consumer something, then they will walk. And you thought people on Facebook just “liked” your brand because they liked your brand? Please.

Search Drives the Purchase, Social Influences it… A Little

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The impact that search and social media have on a consumer’s purchase has never been disputed. I have always maintained that they were always joined at the hip. In a recent GroupM Search and comScore study this has pretty much been verified. Search drives the intent or consideration to buy, and social locks up or seals the intent and turns it into a conversion.

Interestingly, the research show that search alone is still a powerful tool in online buying intent, behavior and research. Always will be IMO, but what really caught my eye though was how little online buyers relied on social alone as the primary driver to a purchase. The internet is too broad and delivers too much information in regards to research on a buying decision to just rely on a social recommendation. Why? Because we still want the best deal possible. Relying on one piece of info, i.e. a recommendation from Twitter or Facebook isn’t enough for today’s savvy online customer. We start with search, we add social in there and then we finish with search.

The results from the survey/study revealed the following.

What does this really mean? Ignore the power of search at your own peril and relying solely on social to drive consideration and conversions is a risky proposition.

Does Social Media Own You?

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Recently I was asked by a school administrator whether Facebook should be used as the platform for communication with another school in another part of the world. Great Idea but I can think of a better one and here’s why.

This morning I was reading an article by David Rogers about whether it was time to shut down your website and go social instead. He measures the benefits of having a social presence versus  just a static web presence. Yet one of the points that he made and its one that I have maintained for a while now is this:

Social might be the cool new alternative to a static web presence but what If Facebook, Twitter and Youtube go away tomorrow? I know it seems farfetched, but the point is, what would you do? To Rogers point he states the following as a benefit to the old school web site. And it’s simple really. Own the data.

Social media platforms are owned by the companies that run them, and, as such, they are the only ones holding all the data on your customers and your interactions with them. On your own website, you own all the data.”

The point I made to the administrator was this. Facebook is cool but why not create a proprietary channel in which you own and control the data? Create a profile that is more indigenous of the classroom, the subject matter and the student instead of relying on a profile that reveals  whether a student is in a relationship or not.

We need to take our lips off of the baby bottle that is the big 3 of Social Media(Facebook, YouTube and Twitter) and own the data and own the channel. We need to quit treating Facebook like a crack pipe that no one seems to be able to put down. Own the data and control the channel and the better you can control the platform.

The Silos are still there-How can you change that?

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Do silos ever come down? Over the past five plus years it’s been said an inordinate amount of times that-

“In order for social media to be effective internally within an organization, the silos have to come down“.

But do silos ever actually come down? Drive down any back road in any rural American town and tell me how many old silos you see. They’re still there. And they’re still being used in some cases. They’re built to last and withstand the elements.

You could spend the majority of your time within your company trying to get buy in and roll out a social media initiative and get nowhere because of “the silos”.

How do you break down silos? In a literal sense, you could take a wrecking ball to it. You could blow it up or you could start at the foundation and topple it. You could even start from within and dismantle it. Geez… The analogies are endless aren’t they? They all make perfect sense too from a descriptive, figurative sense of what you could do. But who really does that?

Most farmers or people who do not use silos anymore just leave them be and go in another direction. Silos either have outlived their use because the farmer has sold the farm or they build a bigger one, a stronger one. But they don’t come down.

The fact of the matter is that the larger the organization, the larger the silos are and the amount or number of silos. I see it everyday in organizations with employees that number in the tens of thousands.

Don’t focus on something that you can’t bring down. You can either go around them or last time I checked-there is an opening somewhere. What goes in must come out right? It’s up to you to devise a way to work with the immovable object.

When Should Brands Establish Credibility in Social?

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The answer to the title of this post is now, but how are they supposed to do that? What does social credibility look like on the brand side? Is it a Facebook and Twitter presence? A Blog? An internal social media strategy? A go to market strategy? Hiring a social media director? What should credibility look like for a brand in the not so new social space? Is it  accruing  a massive numbers of followers and fans? At what point is a brand legit in social media?

There is an old adage that goes like this-To get a job you need experience, with the response being… “but how can I get the experience without the job”? So how or when is a brand supposed to go about establishing credibility in social media? What does that look like? What is the line of demarcation for when a brand is accepted as being social. We need to ease up on the castigation of brands that move too slow in social media. Let’s let it marinate first. I know some will say if not now then when but…

At some point you were new to…

Qualify the Why

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Why do people buy your product?

Why do you buy one product and not the other?

Why do people hate you or your company?

Why do people love your product?

Why do people quit using your product?

Why do people talk about your products and company?

Qualify the why and then you can begin to understand the motivation of intent.

Should Companies Play it Safe in Social Media?

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What does that mean exactly, to play it safe? Is that creating a Facebook page just to satisfy the critics and the bashers? Is it creating a Twitter profile “in case” someone maybe be talking about you so that you can claim that you and your company are proactively listening to the conversation?  Or is it a blog that has 3-4 posts over the span of 6 months?  Maybe, possibly, and perhaps?

One of the easiest ways to opt out of the social media revolution is to do just enough to satisfy the hacks that may be looking at your social efforts who then may be writing, speaking or commenting about your stuff and trying to poke holes at it. To be honest, if I was a company who didn’t have money, resources, or time (weak excuse) to dip a toe into the waters of social, I might do the same thing. Of course doing the barest of minimums also sets you up for the hacks who love to point out the companies who…do the barest of minimums. Or…doing the barest of minimums sets you up for nothing.

So what’s happening here?  Call it paralysis by analysis. Fear of talking, orRO-myopia. But the fact of the matter is that some organizations are so fixated on social but so unsure of what to do, or so obsessed with a wait and see mode, that they end up doing nothing or prefer to just sit back and do very little. Ironically they then claim that they are social, or that they’re doing nothing, because they’re waiting for things to sort themselves out.

Does either strategy ( I use the term lightly) work? Not really. Does it buy you time compared to your comptetitors? Maybe. You see, the easiset way that you could  measure your efforts in social would be to first measure how you’re doing compared to the competition. When I coach basketball and baseball- I want to know who is the best and why. Amazing players aside, preparation can go a long way. Once my teams are suitably prepared, we measure where we are by competing. Then I know exactly where to focus my practices and future game plans.

You’re in business to make money and you’re in business to compete against others that do what you do and sell what you sell. Do you scout them? How do you compare to them? What are you doing to improve what you do, as it compares to what they do? What makes you better than them? What are they doing with social media that you are not?

Playing it safe in sports means playing for ties or not caring whether you win or lose. If that was what mattered, then we wouldn’t have to keep score or root for any teams. In business we keep score by making money and surviving.  Social used the right way, could determine both.