Social media is not difficult to do and it’s not really new, though the way we treat it, analyze it and talk about it certainly is. It has been a fundamental of human conduct throughout history and if I were willing to go back and examine the moment in time when Socrates chose to drink hemlock I am pretty sure we shall find that there was social media at work creating the pressures necessary for an outcome which, in hindsight, appears to be incomprehensible.
A little more recently in terms of history I took a look at the Reformation and its astounding success against all possible odds (and the forces arraigned against it were many) and again, there, social media seemed to play a pivotal role in bringing it about. I put the study and its juxtaposition with today’s social media imperatives in a video which if you have time to see will be as enlightening as it is educational.
The essence of the exercise was to use history to attain the distance necessary for valuable lessons to be learnt. Where social media is concerned the seven magic little ingredients at the heart of every successful social media marketing campaign are:
01. A focal point. This is never a product or a service, though these can be the catalysts for creating one. A focal point is always aspirational. It resonates with the public at a deeper level than just their need to change something immediate. Apple products, for instance, do not talk so much about their features (though obviously they present them) precisely because their focal point is not so much as whether they will have 10 or 20MB of extra memory or are a few seconds faster. They, instead, use the focal point of their design to unlock the aspirational desire in the minds and hearts of their target audience. This then translates into that ever so hard to define ‘cool factor’ and the rest becomes a lot more automatic.
02. Use the latest technology available. You could try to run a social media marketing campaign using the snailmail system and some posters stuck on lampposts near your neighbourhood but my guess is that it would not really work all that well. Technology and social media go hand-in-hand because the former has the ability, in each iteration, to include more and more of the latter and it is this inclusion which helps create connectivity, break down traditional barriers and bring about change.
03. Create accessibility. Make anything you publicise difficult to understand or difficult to get at and the uptake of it will be poor. Logical as this may sound human beings thrive on creating barriers, sects, cliques, societies and institutions whose very existence seems to depend upon a degree of exclusivity (just think a little how the SEO industry behaved between 2005-2010 and you’ve got a good idea of what I mean).
04. Generate engagement. When it comes to social media we all talk about engagement. How we think we do not get enough, how to get more, how others seem to be getting more than us or how we think they are getting less than they tell us they get. Our obsessions, as marketers, with engagement is such that we hardly stop to think why we should get it, which then would naturally lead us to how. Engagement happens when what we address finds resonance with a broad sector of our audience.
05. Create a meme. Memes can be any format. From an icon to a logo. From a slogan to a photograph. From a video to a song. The real requirement is that they should work in an instant and be instantly re-shareable.
06. Use Social Networks. This is a no-brainer. Yet I have been present when planners of social media campaigns the cost of which ran in the six figures were suggesting to use the wrong social network. The requirement here is not to just use a social network but to use the social network(s) which will work for you.
07. Foster gamification. This is the final requirement and it is a tricky one. You don’t nned to have an app or some kind of online badge game which will tick the gamification box. What you really need is to create a sense of ‘play’ out of the very act of participating in your social media campaign. If you manage to make your product, service or message a badge of sorts which confers implied status and a sense of fashion (think Apple products, the #Occupy movement, the ‘Yes We Can’ slogan of Obama’s election campaign) then you have the final ingredient guaranteed to help make your social media campaign, viral.
It sounds easy. It’s not. We know all the ingredients which go into the make up of a human body but the art of creating one by mixing them altogether still eludes us. Thankfully social media marketing is a little less demanding.
In my latest book, The Social Media Mind there is a chapter where I examine the importance of the Interest Graph versus that of the Social Graph and explain how the latter is of far greater value to companies, marketers and advertisers than the former.
The message that the shift I highlighted is beginning to make itself felt is signalled by the abandonment of Facebook Stores by companies as large as Gap, J.C. Penney, Nordstrom and GameStop. At the beginning of the year I drew attention to the fact that consumer studies showed there was a significant trust issues with Facebook Stores. A new report, published by Bloomberg reveals that conversion of fans to shoppers in the Facebook environment has been less than encouraging.
Gamestop, mentioned as an example, failed to gain enough traction to justify the expenditure in effort, energy and cost of its Facebook Store despite that fact that its fan page, over 3.5 million strong, had, on paper, made the move to set one up, a projected win for the company.
The reason for failures such as this may lie in the fact that the Facebook environment does not yet generate sufficient trust to support F-Commerce (as Facebook Commerce has been called) but the real culprit lies elsewhere and it has everything to do with how consumers use social networks in the first place.
As we get past the ‘shining new toy’ moment where all a network has to do is appear online and generate sufficient buzz and a fresh way of interacting, time spent in each is guided by what we like and who we know. Facebook uniquely positioned itself in the online world as the place people go to meet, online, people they already know and this now is becoming an obstacle to its expansion. If we think of Facebook as the world’s largest watering hole it is easy to see why when we are there, hanging out with our buddies, we might be resistant to a guy walking in wanting to sell us something.
This fine distinction also quantifies the difference between the social graph (which defines who we know and interact with) and the interest graph (which defines what we like and, more importantly, what we are most likely to buy). It is exactly the reason Facebook, with hundreds of millions of members, is delivering a lot less return on investment (ROI) for retailers than Pinterest whose membership base barely breaks the 11 million mark.
As social media expands further and becomes more fragmented it is the interest graph that should guide retailers and marketers rather than the social one. After all, we never buy anything just because some friends we knew from school bought it too, but the mere recommendation of people we regard as authority on a subject we are intensely interested in, is received, practically, as gospel.
Facebook is now preparing a grand launch of its new advertising approach next week in New York. According to leaked documents which was posted on Scribd via GigaOM, Facebook plans to make an upgrade of premium ad units on February 29. The documents also reveals that Facebook will leveraging on a few core principles such as making new ads social by default which means they’ll show users what brands or advertisers that their contacts have Liked already. But the most notable aspect of this new ad format is that it won’t use a customized ad copy, the new format will include content from posts on brands’ Facebook pages. What does this mean? Facebook is now ushering the rise of true social advertising using every brand’s most valuable asset: user-generated content (UGC).
How The Premium Ads Will Appear
The new premium ad units will include comment spaces and the Like button. Whenever a user’s friend throws a comment or Likes the ad, it automatically appears on the user’s friends’ news feeds and will also show on the brand’s Facebook page. The great thing about these new ad units is that Facebook is customizing each unit according to the content a marketer or a brand intends to share on the page. The six new units are labelled: Video, Photo, Question, Event, Status, and Link (Facebook driving traffic to your website).
What It Means to Brands and Marketers
Facebook will make brands realize that advertising is evolving, and will make marketers assess their budgets. This new advertising approach is actually not advertising per se, Facebook is teaching brands to improve on user engagement through an ad platform. In this age of social business, users want to be part of a conversation with a brand and this is how brands can turn users into consumers. The more you engage with users, the more they learn about they learn about what you’re selling. For marketers, it’s about time to shrug the salesman approach, marketers should learn to be thought leaders and community managers. Brands who listen to their customers get good PR, and arguably that’s better than traditional advertising. As one of the documents said “”Everything starts with great content from the Page. Paid, owned, and earned work seamlessly together.”Enter The Age of Social Advertising
Facebook is a destination-location for social collaboration. Brands know that. Marketers are aware of that. But do users have an idea what that means? Facebook’s new ad units will enable them to engage more with their favorite brands through sharing content. Ideas aren’t limited to text, Internet-friendly content like photos and videos are easily shared on mobile devices nowadays. This tells us that social advertising will continue to improve as brands embrace mobile strategies as well. The synergy of mobile marketing and Facebook’s new ad units will also bring social advertising more real-time and viral. It hits two birds with one stone: Allowing users to interact with brands while brands share more user-generated content.Do you think Facebook’s new premium ads will make a difference? Will it really improve user engagement for brands? What’s your take?
Episode 7: #SimTech10 & Social Media Policy
by Seth Odell
Related posts:
This entry was posted on Sunday, October 24th, 2010 at 9:44 pm. It is filed under Communications, Facebook, Featured, YouTube. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
From our sponsors:
A Social Media Toolkit for Admissions
by Seth Odell
RIT’s Ashley Hennigan guest hosts this special episode of Higher Ed Live and talks with Brian Apfel, Marist’s Director of Social Media, on the role of social media in admissions and what admissions professionals can do to utilize it to influence enrollment outcomes.
Thanks to our Sponsors!
OmniUpdate is the leading web content management system (CMS) provider for higher education. The company’s web CMS, OU Campus™, is secure and scalable with great tools and features, deployment flexibility, and an awesome user community.
Inigral, the creators of the Schools App on Facebook, can help you leverage Facebook to increase yield and retention. Check out their weekly webinar to learn more.
SCVNGR is a Google-funded mobile game about going places, doing challenges and earning points. Check out @scvngru’s interview with @patrickjpowers about engaging with SCVNGR at Webster.Related posts:
- Hit or Hype? Breaking Down Trends in Social Media
- Social Media and Your Campus
- Professionalism and Social Media
- Episode 7: #SimTech10 & Social Media Policy
- Higher Education and Social Media: A New Book
This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 at 5:03 am. It is filed under Communications, Featured. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
From our sponsors:
Today Facebook rolled out a limited redesign of Groups, featuring a big new Timeline-style cover image, and a prompt for users to prominently label “What should people post in this group?” See, if you’re not careful, your intimate Facebook Groups can balloon in population and stray off topic generating annoying notifications for everyone.
This redesign makes Groups feel more close knit, and will encourage them not to devolve into a chaotic array of kitten photos, political diatribes, and self-serving announcements. After all, that’s what the news feed is for.
Groups previously displayed a small “group image” that admins could upload. I bet people often chose some generic clip art or a photo that appeared too tiny to be meaningful. Now the top of Groups looks more like Timeline, with a sweeping banner image that defaults to a collage of members but can be replaced with any image. Cleverly, the default collage shows the most recent members to post to the Group.
The redesign also makes links to members, photos, events, and docs more obvious. This is the second time Facebook has increased the prominence of these links to draw usage and compete with Google Docs as a collaboration tool.
Since Groups launched in October 2010 users have been able to add a description. However, they were provided no prompt as to what to enter, and likely just noted a theme rather than a purpose. Now a prompt and input field for group guidelines are immediately visible in the right sidebar.
This little prompt to display “What should people post” might not seem like a big deal, but if you’ve ever been in a big noisy Facebook Group, you probably wanted to tell everyone to shut up until you muted its notifications. Then you ceased to be alerted to the few useful posts and forgot all about the Group.
When I started a Group called SF Socialites soon after the product launched, I knew I had to keep noise to a minimum if people were actually going to use it to hear about cool local events. So I added the description “We keep posting volume low so you can leave notifications on. Check the Docs for guidelines”, then laid out ground rules in a doc that prohibited self-promotion, asked people to comment and post only when necessary, and detailed how I’d kick you out of my sweet Group if you annoyed people.
Eighteen months later and the group now has 280 members, no spam, and has led to some epic last minute meet-ups at concerts because people don’t mute it. Hopefully Facebook users heed the new description prompt, create focused discussion and collaboration spaces, and get as much out of Groups as I do.
Learn moreFebruary 1, 2004
NASDAQ:FB
Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 845 million monthly active users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, and Eduardo Saverin to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original...
This article is written by a member of our expert contributor community.
If it’s a clear night tonight, go outside about 9 p.m. and look west at the two brightest stars, beautiful as jewels, one above the other. Low to the horizon will be the planet Venus, the “evening star,” just beginning to set. Above Venus is the planet Jupiter, the gas giant with more than 60 known moons (and still counting). Now turn around and face east. Coming up off the horizon you’ll see another jewel, this one quite reddish; that’s Mars, the Red Planet (two tiny moons). On March 3 this year, our Earth (one giant moon) will pass closest to Mars, overtaking it in our orbital race around the Sun.
The solar system is a network of planets, each of which has its own network of moons, so it provides a picturesque (if inexact) analogy for social networks, which are also networks of networks. Everyone seems to be on the social media bandwagon now, with the most enthusiastic advocates often competing to build up their networks of Twitter followers, Facebook friends, or LinkedIn connections.
But rather than counting how many moons you have in your network, what you ought to be doing is figuring out how to get the most benefit from the right ones. And despite the hype, my own informal canvassing has convinced me that most of us aren’t very strategic when it comes to the best way to take advantage of the enormous potential of our own social networks.
Suppose, for instance, you want to find a new career. Maybe you’ve recently had a job shot out from under you. Or perhaps you just think you can do better. Everyone knows, of course, that networking is the best way to find out about job openings and career opportunities (as well as most other business opportunities), but is there a smart way to use your network?
Yes there is, and most people aren’t conscious of it. Almost 30 years ago, a landmark study showed conclusively that the best leads for job opportunities are more likely to come from your more distant colleagues and friends, as opposed to your closest ones. This isn’t because your close friends don’t give you good recommendations, but because you and your other close friends are more likely already to know about the same job openings, while the job openings known to your more distant colleagues--those with whom you don’t interact very often--are not as likely to be known to your own friends, or to you.
This principle, known as the “strength of weak ties,” has other strategic applications as well. Two venture capitalists have found, for instance, that investing firms that share information with others regarding potential investment prospects tend to gain access to a wider network of candidates--essentially leveraging their weak network ties, rather than focusing solely on strong ties. They also cite another recent study by other academics that shows VC firms concentrated in the traditional tech centers (Silicon Valley, New York, Boston) do better than other firms primarily because they "cast a wide, public net," harvesting the results of their weak ties.
Or consider the question of generating new business in the B2B space, or with regard to expensive, considered purchases. If you use a straight-ahead business-development plan, you’ll develop a laundry list of leads and opportunities to be followed up. While this can be useful, the truth is that a great deal of such business comes in via the referral of others. And how can you increase your access to such referrals? You guessed it--by concentrating on your weak ties, rather than on your strong ties. By developing your own network of industry colleagues and blog or Twitter followers, for instance, you get access to their connections with others. And one of my favorite strategies for B2B competitors is to prepare PowerPoint decks about the benefits of the firm, and then make those decks freely available on your own Website for download and unlimited use. However, this isn’t a tool for persuading the people who come to your site to buy, but for helping them to persuade others within their firm. In effect, you are arming these weak-tie prospects with the tools necessary to appeal to their own networks.
And of course, the power of weak ties can hardly be overstated when it comes to generating creative or innovative ideas. All new ideas come from combining previous ideas and concepts. This is one reason why a group of people with completely independent ideas is likely to come to a better, more creative, or predictive conclusion than any single one of them acting alone, even the smartest member of the group. In essence, ideas and innovations themselves exist in a kind of network, with some ideas connected to others, clusters of ideas within other clusters, and so forth. Your best new ideas, and a company’s most breakthrough innovations, will come when you tap your weak ties by interacting with the disciplines you know less about, or the experts you rarely consult, or the people you associate with less frequently.
By contrast, the surest way NOT to have a creative breakthrough is to rely on all the experts you already know, and all the disciplines you’re already familiar with. One study of entrepreneurs showed they are more likely to have “deliberately exposed themselves to different sources of information, by striking up conversations on trains, for example, or maintaining a diverse range of acquaintances, to increase the odds of stumbling upon an interesting opportunity.”
Finally, even if all you’re trying to do is to advance your own career at whatever firm you’re working for, the “weak ties” argument will help you better appreciate which other executives you should be trying to add to your network. It’s long been thought that the best way to get ahead is to hitch your wagon to a senior star, but a University of Chicago business school professor’s book, Neighbor Networks, has debunked this myth. A summary of Prof. Ronald S. Burt’s book suggests “There is no advantage at all to having well-connected friends.” Instead, it is the managers who do the connecting that tend to earn demonstrably higher salaries. This is not because they become linchpins or hubs or gateways to power and information, per se, but rather because managers who maintain contacts in a diverse range of departments are getting a very healthy and intellectually stimulating “exposure to diverse ideas and behaviors.” According to Burt, “the way networks have their effect is not by getting information from people, but rather by finding people who are interesting and who think differently from you,” adding that it isn’t being in the know, “but rather having to translate between different groups so that you develop gifts of analogy, metaphor, and communicating between people who have difficulty communicating to each other.”
So whether you’re interested in a better job, more business clients, or simply more creative ideas, it makes sense to think more strategically about how your network operates, and how you can better operate within it. If you want to be successful, you need to strategize how to make better connections with groups you don’t know much about, or how to craft analogies by combining different disciplines--business success and astronomy, for example.
[Image: Flickr user Carl Jones]
This site requires JavaScript and Cookies to be enabled. Please change your browser settings or upgrade your browser.
Interested in discovering the top influencers within all of your online communities?
Meet Kred. The only transparent social scoring system that filters messages, sorts by community and measures your influence and outreach in real time.
“We all have influence somewhere”.
CEO name: Jodee Rich
Startup company: Kred
Location: San Francisco
Financial backers: Self-fundedDescribe your startup’s product.
Kred is a measure of Influence and Outreach in communities connected by interests and affiliations.Can you expand on that?
Based on our database of 1,000 days of social data, we find the most influential and generous people talking about any subject.How can people increase their social score?
Interactions are the most important part of Kred. You earn Influence and Outreach Points when you engage with others and they engage with you. Influence often comes from real world achievements, so we also let people add points for their offline accomplishments.
Who are your potential customers?
Little Brothers and Big Brothers who want to consume the collective intelligence.How’s business going for you?
We were lucky to start our business in 2007 at the beginning of the social media revolution. Business is going well. We expect to do about $4 million in revenue this year.Describe your work environment in three words.
Attention to detail.What do you look for in a business partner?
Open, Can see the trees and the forest, Prepared to be differentWhat keeps you up at night?
Dreaming about fuzzy unstructured data about people.What wakes you up before your alarm?
Sloppy people
Describe your typical day at the office?
No meetings, sitting with individual team members, afternoon nap.How do you pump yourself up before a big meeting?
Meditate on humility.Which company in your industry do you most admire?
Twitter. Its big open data is completely changing how information moves around the world and from person to person. Millions of Little Brothers are now competing on equal footing with Big Brother.What will the WSJ to say about your company 5 years from now?
They were ahead of their time.What life experiences prepared you to be an entrepreneur?
Cleaning fish tanks, writing code on punch cards, my mum was a spiritual guru, and my dad was a German-American capitalist.What keeps you excited and engaged when you’re not at work?
My wife, my three children, kitesurfing and bump skiing.How do you keep up with what’s going on in the start up world?
I hang out with other San Francisco force field nerds.What’s the most valuable lesson you’ve learned so far?
Detail, detail, detail.What do you consider your most important achievement so far?
Proposing to my wife.What do you consider your most important professional achievement so far?
Writing Applesoft code in 1980 for a 64k Apple II and launching Kred in 2011.
Salary aside, how else do you incentivize your employees?
Passion, listening, and building together.Do you have mentors you get advice from? If so, who?
Some of them are Porter Gale, Jeffrey Hayzlett, Tim O’Reilly and Brian Solis.What do you do to take a break or let off steam?
I bicycle to work every day. Chin ups. Spaghetti Arabiata.What are you most thankful for?
Being a human on Planet Earth in 2012 at the beginning of the social media revolution.What’s your idea of perfect happiness?
Nine hours of sleep.What else do you do to prepare for a big meeting?
Dream about it.What are the biggest challenges you face as an entrepreneur?
Being in three places at once.How big is too big when it comes to growing your business?
Too big is when team members have forgotten why they come to work each day.What’s the best advice you ever received?
Life is a roller coaster.Anything else you want to say?
Great questions.
This site requires JavaScript and Cookies to be enabled. Please change your browser settings or upgrade your browser.
Here are some key content touch points you should be using to move your audience through the customer acquisition process, and some helpful tips for guiding them every step of the way.
Leaked documents show Facebook making a radical departure from traditional online display advertising into a world where ads are conversations and brands automatically tell you which of your friends are already on their side.
Facebook appears ready to launch a new set of premium ad units, and, based on a review of documents which purport to describe them, the social network would seem to be doubling down on two core principles that mark fundamental departures from traditional advertising.
First, Facebook is making the new ads social by default, meaning they will automatically show users when their friends have already Liked the advertiser. And the new formats will draw their content exclusively from posts to brands' Facebook Pages, rather from advertising copy written independently.
Combined, these features make two statements about where Facebook believes the future of online advertising lies--at least in its particular universe. It is saying that ads based on content, rather than messaging, have a better chance of hitting home, and that ads involving tacit endorsements from the people you know have a better chance of capturing your attention.
"When people hear about you from friends, they listen," the Facebook materials say. "We'll expand your ad with stories from friends who have already connected." ("Stories" is Facebook's shorthand for a wide varitey of interactions on the site. In the case of ads, it seems to refer to the fact that the ads will display which of a viewer's friends have Liked the brand.)
Facebook has not commented publicly on the new ads (presumably they will discuss them at a marketing launch event in New York next week). But the materials describing the new units were posted to Scribd earlier this week. The news was first reported on GigaOm. The documents are below.
Facebook Premium Ads Guide Facebook Premium Ads OverviewIn the documents, Facebook says it is scrapping most of the display ad units it has offered until now, replacing them with the new formats. The previous ad units incorporated some of the social and interactive elements, but the new ones are implementing those features in a more comprehensive way.
Each of the new units will include Like buttons and places for viewers to comment on the ads. When viewers click the Like button or enter a comment, those activities will be posted to the user's friends' News Feeds. They will also be posted to the brand's Page.
Similarly, each ad will include pictures of friends who have already Liked the brand. The Facebook documents say this will happen automatically, instead of as an add-on.
While Facebook had already been moving in these directions with its previous ad units, the decision to draw ad content from Page posts is the most significant new feature--and a potentially radical departure from conventional notions of advertising.
The ads don't simply repurpose content from brands' Pages. By giving users the ability to respond to the content inside the ad, just as if they had seen the content on the brand Page itself, and then by posting those responses to the user's friends' News Feeds, as well as on the brand's Page itself, the ads are acting less like traditional broadcast advertisements and more like viral mechanisms to expand and perpetuate the conversation off into the far corners of the social network, effectively giving the brand visibility in places it might not otherwise have reached and in a much more organic way than if it had simply plastered the site with a bunch of banner ads.
"Everything starts with great content from the Page," says one of the Facebook documents. "Paid, owned, and earned work seamlessly together."
Facebook believes that this ultimately will pay greater dividends for brands than conventional advertising. According to tests the company said it performed internally, the new ads produce 40 percent more engagement (usually meaning they get more Likes, comments, and clicks) and are 80 percent more likely to be remembered.
The company documents also claim the ads produce "signficant increases" in purchase intent, and it claims that viewers of an ad are four times more likely to purchase when they "see friends interact with a brand."
If the ads truly do deliver the results Facebook claims, that could mean the social network is slowly but surely finding the marketing holy grail of "word of mouth"--at scale. And if that's the case, it could have profound implications for the advertising industry as a whole.
The six new units are based on the type of content a brand would post to their Page. The Facebook documents label them as Status (a text comment), Photo, Video, Question (which replaces the old "Poll" ad format and which allows viewers to answer the question right in the ad), Event (ad viewers will similarly be able to sign up for the event right in the ad itself), and Link (which points viewers to content outside of Facebook).
The Facebook documents say that brands will continue to be able to target their ads as they do today, choosing to place their ads in front of any of Facebook's 845 million users who fit demographic and interest criteria selected by the advertiser.
E.B. Boyd is FastCompany.com's Silicon Valley reporter. Twitter | Google+ | Email
Email is broken. There’s too much of it, no one can agree on how to use it, it’s too easy to send, which encourages a glut of CYA CCing, and there are spammers. Online IT Degree (which is apparently the real name of a real website) has ventured into this fray with a lighthearted flowchart, designed to help you decide whether it’s really worth sending an email.
I had a brilliant conversation with Justin Kozuch last evening on Twitter. If you don’t know Justin, you should. Smart, introspective, determined to find more in all of this, just like I am. I really like talking with him because he’s always looking more closely at something, which is a rare and wonderful quality in humans and it delights me when I find it.
We were talking about feeling the need to “push the envelope” more in social conversations. I’ve even said this myself, many times, about needing to step into more uncomfortable territory. But as we were talking, I realized I’d like to amend that statement a bit and refine it some.
We need willingness to embrace discomfort, yes. I stand by that. But we also desperately need to embrace the non-instant nature of having deeper, more complex discussions about the long-ranging impact of all of this stuff. Most especially the impact on people, from corporate cultures to our performance and reward systems and how we approach hiring and teaching our teams. The discussions that yield more questions than they often do clear, direct answers that we can run right out and implement.
The great irony of the speed and immediacy of the web and the velocity of social interactions is that the far-flung implications – the ones that reach to the very (dare I say) soul of a business – are gradual. Difficult. Meandering and messy. They require careful cultivation, a delicate weaving of very concrete things like process with very philosophical things like intent and the emotional drivers behind our businesses and our work.
I’m afraid we’ve confused controversy with progress in some places. I don’t believe that progressive conversation must come with fireworks and heated debate (though it often does, they are not one and the same). The big “bang” is a great impetus for discussion, but it’s only the start.
Maybe what we’re lacking isn’t so much the tolerance for crunchy conversations – a word that Justin has helped me endorse here – but rather the patience and discipline to have them in forums and situations that are longer than 140 characters, that aren’t defined by a witty repost to a blog comment. That are carried out over coffee tables or the length of a bar, or heaven forbid in our own board rooms and communities and team meetings. That take far more than a single session or a clever social network chat.
It’s the endurance of the marathon we’re missing, not necessarily the shakeup of the sprint.
The stuff that’s shifting under our feet is gradual, like the many years of begrudging creak of tectonic plates or the eternally patient shaping of wind erosion. Eventually, though, something gives and shifts, erupts or breaks or quakes.
The discussions surrounding that - both learning to expect it and knowing how to respond in the wake of it – are where our brains and our very best minds will be best spent for the foreseeable future. Those are the hardest of conversations, and the ones that will be most profoundly worthwhile.
Find more like this: change management, Featured, Social Business , business evolution, change management, culture shift, social business
With more than 600 million users (and counting) and a planned IPO that values the company at many billions of dollars, Facebook is clearly more than just a place for individuals to post cute cat videos or update their friends with the latest George Takei wisdom. Businesses are customizing their Facebook presence and leveraging Facebook apps and app development to, among other things, engage new and existing customers, increase their fan base, and drive brand awareness. Apps built on the Facebook platform can integrate with many aspects of Facebook, including the News Feed and Notifications. Also available to apps on Facebook are Social Plugins, the Graph API, and Platform Dialogs. In addition, Facebook recently announced that it was approving more than 60 new apps that take advantage of a more talkative version of the Open Graph API.
Whether your business builds its own apps, uses an existing app, or works through an agency to beef up presence, customization of Facebook pages can yield significant benefits in terms of existing customer satisfaction and new customer acquisition, as well as brand awareness. In this slideshow, we take a look at some of the campaigns organizations have launched leveraging Facebook. If your organization would like to share a Facebook success story, send me an email.
Several savvy organizations use Facebook apps to increase brand awareness and engage new and existing customers. Consider these interesting examples.
If you’ve been following the social media marketing space/blogosphere over the last year or so, you’ve probably heard increasing chatter about the concept of ‘Social Business’.
So what IS a Social Business? Good question, and it seems one that not even the people chattering about it can agree upon. For example, The Wikipedia definition states “social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective within the highly regulated marketplace of today. It is distinct from a non-profit because the business should seek to generate a modest profit but this will be used to expand the company’s reach, improve the product or service or in other ways to subsidise the social mission.”
Ok…but here’s how @Armano describes it “At it’s core, it’s about connecting stakeholders who are critical to the success of your business. And as I’ve stressed before—it’s about executing initiatives leveraging the “3 P’s”—People, Process & Platforms.” David also has a nifty drawing that helps explain the process at that link.
And here’s Augie Ray’s definition: “A new form of commerce where consumers, empowered by new social technologies and behaviors, bypass traditional channels and acquire more information, goods and services directly from each other.”
Finally, here’s how the Social Business Forum defines a Social Business: “An organization that has put in place the strategies, technologies and processes to systematically engage all the individuals of its ecosystem (employees, customers, partners, suppliers) to maximize the co-created value”
Three things I see from the above and other various definitions I’ve found for the term ‘Social Business’:
1 – We can’t even agree on the definition of the concept. Which is no biggie, most of us can’t agree on the definition of ‘Social Media’ and it’s been around for 25 years in some form or another.
2 – The name ‘Social Business’ is terrible in that it immediately makes you think ‘Oh I get it, a business that does social media!’ Seriously, we marketers and business types put the ‘social’ modifier on waaaaay too many things.
3 – These definitions (and much of the discussion around the concept) seem to be focused on the companies that ‘get it’ when it comes to…whatever your definition of a ‘social business’ is. If you’re a business that doesn’t ‘get it’, is talking about how becoming a social business will help you ‘engage with and empower your customers to increase co-created value’ REALLY going to get you excited? I mean companies have been hearing about the potential of empowering and embracing their customers for at least 5 years now when we all got on a kick about how amazing social media is. Right? If that talk didn’t blow their skirts up, changing the name from ‘social media’ to ‘social business’ and trying again probably won’t either.
BTW here’s another interesting tidbit, the Wikipedia definition of the term ‘Enterprise 2.0‘: Enterprise 2.0 is the use of “Web 2.0” technologies within an organization to enable or streamline business processes while enhancing collaboration – connecting people through the use of social-media tools. Enterprise 2.0 aims to help employees, customers and suppliers collaborate, share, and organize information. Andrew McAfee describes Enterprise 2.0 as “the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers”.
Ah we marketers do love to mark our territory by slapping labels on everything, don’t we?
But perhaps the biggest problem I have with most of the discussion around the concept of a ‘Social Business’ is that it seemed to be geared toward selling companies on the concept, versus the actual business benefits of integrating/embracing the concept.
Last month when I spoke at Bazaarvoice, I got to spend some time talking to CMO Erin Nelson and I learned more about BV’s offerings and how the companies is helping its clients. In general, Bazaarvoice is creating products and systems that let clients get more detailed and relevant (read: valuable) product information and feedback, and then helping them ACT on that feedback, both internally and externally, in order to improve existing business processes.
A very simple example: Erin noted that LL Bean tracked the reviews customers were leaving on their site for a popular sweater, and they noted that customers were asking for it to be produced in the colors green and purple. So LL Bean started offering the sweater in those colors as well, and sales doubled as a result. And the great thing about getting and ACTING on customer feedback is that it only encourages your customers to leave MORE feedback, which increases the chance that you can continue to improve existing business functions as a result.
That one small example to me does more to explain the possible reason why a company would want to become more connected internally and externally because it details a real-world business benefit from doing so.
As a result, I think those of us that are talking about the concept of a ‘Social Business’ need to stop talking about it as if we are selling a concept/product, and start talking about it as if we are selling the BENEFITS of being a Social Business. Because that’s what you SHOULD be doing, and besides, that’s a far more interesting conversation to be having anyway.
Since the dawning of brand pages, more companies are hopping on Google+. Check out some strategies adopted by the most popular companies.
This guide has everything you'll ever want to know about Google+. Updated regularly.
Simon Laust’s Cheat Sheets with shortcut keys and codes for Google + goes around the world and is already translated into several languages. If you are starting use Google+ this is a must have tool!
Advertisement
It almost sounds too simple and like something Google itself should have made. However they didn’t and now a small sheet created by a young man from Denmark with shortcut keys and codes goes around the world like a storm. Is has already been translated into several languages available from Simon’s Google+ posts page.
The sheet was prepared by Simon and he then invited interested people to help translate and expand the sheet with additional content. The result is amazing and already show the power of Google+ collaboration capabilities.
Let’s take a look at some of the commands you will find in the cheat sheet. If you put stars around a word, it becomes highlighted/bold and the use of underscore characters around a word would place the word in italics. If you use + or @ in front of a name, Google will + look up and see if the service can find someone with the information provided.
According to Simon Laust’s update, he is overwhelmed by the amount of feedback on the sheet, but has also taken on camping and is out of reach. Google+ is however available on mobile devices – also when you are on camping…
Tagged as: cheat sheet, google, Google+ Cheat Sheet, Google+ commands, Google+ tips
By Wix - http://bit.ly/A2t77B @Wix Social brand awareness, social engagement, social advertising, social ROI – see the pattern?Social is the way to go. The power of social networks is that your clients are already there. A frequently updated Twitter account or Facebook page is a way to engage with them where they already hang out. Promoting your business on social networks has numerous advantages – virality, cost-effectiveness and massive visibility, to name just a few. This Infographic visualizes the reasons why social media should be a critical component in every business’ strategy. If your business isn’t yet social-friendly, you’d want to start making changes after viewing this: - http://bit.ly/wvO8lc Click here to enlarge: http://bit.ly/w22A6x
How to (easily) add a Pinterest tab to your Facebook Page
With all the interest around Pinterest at the moment, you’re probably going to want to find out how to make the best use of this new platform and integrate it with your other social network activity. The good news is that I’ve just discovered a great way to easily add a tab onto your Facebook Page that will display your Pinterest activity. You don’t even need to know code to do it! I found the brilliant hack at AG Beat, who have full instructions on how to add your Pinterest feed onto a dedicated tab.
You can follow full instructions on their post, but here’s a quick step by step of how we added the Pinterest tab to the Simply Zesty Facebook Page. First, when you’re logged in as the admin of your Facebook Page, add the static iFrame tab and allow it to access to your Page.
When you have the app installed, go back to your Facebook Page and you’ll notice you now have an tab called ‘Welcome’. Click on this then authorise the app to get started :
Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to edit the setup of your tab. The important parts are to firstly select the page source as ‘url’ then enter the url of your Facebook Page as the following, replacing simplyzesty with your own pinterest account name : http://pinterest.com/simplyzesty You can also adjust the height of the Page here, depending on whether you want users to scroll through content.
Good to go!
When you’ve changed the settings on the tab, click on ‘view tab’ on the top right and you can see how your tab will look :
Now keep in mind that this is a free and very simple way to add Pinterest to your Page, so you’ll notice that the content does cut off to the side, with users having to scroll left and right to see your boards in full.
You can also click within a board to open up the full image within the tab, without having to leave Facebook, as well as being able to search through content within the tab :
How you choose to promote this to your fans is then up to you. You might want to link to your tab in a Facebook post to ask people to follow you or check content, or you could even make the Pinterest tab a default landing tab.
Don’t forget, if you’re looking for custom tabs and apps on your Facebook Page for a more professional look, we do those too. Check out our agency work here.