Folks that follow me on Twitter know that this year has been a particularly difficult one for my business. Projects are smaller in scope, delayed, canceled due to lack of funds or not closing at all. Lots of requests for advice and proposals. Not nearly as many closed deals. This is not unusual — everyone is feeling the pinch of the economy — but it is much harder to tough it out when you are an independent strategic consultant who primarily works on a project basis, rather than long term retainers.
To the point that I am re-evaluating my business model, selectively applying for marketing and social media positions, and hoping my brain doesn’t explode.
So here’s where I turn the tables, and ask you, my readers, for some advice. What should I do?
Issue 1: Have I been too generous with my advice? I give away a lot on this blog and have been stung by my one-hour free offer a few times this year. People taking advantage of the free advice with absolutely no intention of exploring a longer-term business relationship. Should I retract the offer?
Issue 2: It’s hard for an independent consultant to compete with agencies for social media projects. The agency has depth on the bench, can go to the well of existing clients and has a cushion, even if small these days, for business development. But, is this really true, or am I giving a few defeats too much weight? There has to be a creative way to break through so I can pitch my ideas to the larger companies who do have budget right now.
I just have to find the formula, because, goodness knows, I have no shortage of ideas on how companies can integrate social media into their marketing plans to achieve tangible, measurable results. And not just by throwing a party or giving away free stuff.
I’ve been noodling on an idea that would be just perfect for Interval International, the timeshare exchange company, and last night when the rain was drumming on the roof, I came up with:
a program for a travel catalog like Travelsmith or Magellan;
a possible approach for a manufacturer of reusable water bottles, for example CamelBak or SIGG;
a few ideas for big box retailer like Best Buy. As everyone in the social media twitterverse probably knows, Best Buy is hiring a social media marketing manager;
some thoughts for a book chain that has bricks & mortar stores — think Borders or Barnes & Noble.
The issues are: how do I get the opportunity to pitch the idea, and then how do I protect myself from the firm just doing it themselves? Because that has happened more than a few times with larger companies in the five years I’ve been consulting. There are no hard and fast answers, but I cannot afford to develop a great proposal for a firm, only to see them execute it on their own six months later. Not anymore.
Issue 3: Small business. Is there an opportunity to help smaller local businesses get started with social media? Typically, they cannot afford to retain a consultant to develop a program or even a blog for them but most could benefit from setting up a Facebook page.
So, I’ve developed a Social Media Start-up Session for small firms. I can price it aggressively because the business owner is doing the work; I’m just helping her think through the issues and pointing her in the right direction.
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I’m doing some hard thinking this weekend. If you have any thoughts, please drop me a note at sgetgood@getgood.com. I would really appreciate your opinion and advice.
There really wasn’t anything new or unexpected. I’ve written about this topic as has Liz. What was nice was to actually hear it directly from the FTC rather than filtered through another source like AP or BusinessWeek.
Here’s my takeway from the interview:
The key issues are disclosure of relationships and truthful opinion. FTC believes truth in advertising/transparency should apply regardless of the media.
FTC isn’t regulating whether bloggers take compensation or not. The occasional review or free product is not the issue. FTC is concerned about blog networks, bloggers that consistently receive products/compensation, and disclosure of relationships.
FTC believes compliance will be high.
Enforcement will be subject to the same criteria as it is now — the extent of the injury will determine whether it justifies the expense of enforcement. I have long believed this would be the case. Nice to hear it from the source.
While bloggers would like the FTC to distinguish between free product and cash compensation, it does not seem inclined to do so. However, as noted above, the occasional free product or review isn’t the issue. The FTC is interested in consistent patterns of behavior, and in blog networks, not in whether an individual blogger got a free mascara or a bag of chips.
What they did NOT discuss on Word of Mouth was affiliate marketing, which the AP story said would be included:
“… the guidelines also would cover the broader and common practice of affiliate marketing, in which bloggers and other sites get a commission when someone clicks on a link that leads to a purchase at a retailer. In such cases, merchants also would be responsible for actions by their sales agents – including a network of bloggers.”
I’ve read the initial draft of the changes to the guidelines, and it does not include an example specific to online affiliate marketing such as Amazon. While I expect changes to draft in the final guidelines, I never made the connection between endorsements & testimonials, and affiliate ads like Amazon. Blog networks that offer free products or compensation to bloggers, absolutely. Campaigns that offer compensation to users for reviews on Amazon or iTunes. Again, clearly subject to the guidelines.
But simple affiliate marketing programs?
After much thought and conversation, I don’t think affiliate marketing should be lumped together with the guidelines on endorsements and testimonials. If the FTC wants to review online affiliate marketing practice, it should do so in a separate effort and allow sufficient time for public comment.
Affiliate marketing is a different type of advertising
A review of a product that is compensated in advance by either cash or free product should be considered a form of advertising. The FTC guidelines should apply.
The affiliate marketing relationship is different.
The blogger reviews or mentions a product on her blog and provides a link to a store that carries the item. For example, Amazon. It’s a referral. The blogger is only compensated if the buyer purchases the product from that link.
The explicit endorsement is of the product, although no one would deny that there is also an implicit endorsement of the store, especially if the blog also shows a search widget for the store in its sidebar.
However, once the buyer is at the store, the influence of the initial mention or review is diluted — by the advertising material on the store, by reviews from other consumers, by alternate product suggestions from the store. The blogger’s original opinion becomes one of many sources of information. If the buyer goes ahead and purchases something from the visit created by the affiliate link, the compensation is really nothing more than a “thank you for telling your friends about us.”
Now, if the blogger received the product for free, it should be disclosed under the guidelines. But it should be the free product that trips the endorsement guidelines, not the affiliate referral.
Affiliate marketing is understood by Internet users
Whether you see an ad like this:
or embedded links within a post like these Sleep Is for the Weak, The White Trash Mom Handbook, most Internet users understand these to be affiliate marketing/advertising links, with a compensation component. Many are probably Amazon affiliates themselves.
In the very long FTC guidelines document, a key condition of the additional disclosure requirement is if the consumer would not otherwise understand that an endorsement was compensated or that the speaker had a material interest. If the consumer would understand that the speech or action was compensated, the public interest does not require additional disclosure.
Examples — An athlete wearing name brand sports apparel is assumed to have a contract with the manufacturer. A celebrity on the red carpet is assumed to have borrowed her gown from a designer. A public figure endorsing a product in a TV commercial didn’t do it for free.
Affiliate advertising on blogs is similar. We don’t need additional information to know there’s compensation. It looks far too much like straightforward online advertising for there to be any real confusion.
What should bloggers do if they have affiliate marketing relationships?
The new FTC guidelines are due later this summer. We’ll see then how affiliate marketing is covered (or not) in the document. It wasn’t in the initial draft, so we don’t have an example yet.
In the meantime, if you have affiliate marketing relationships, I suggest disclosing them clearly in your blog policy.
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The Amazon affiliate links used above for illustrative purposes are for books written by friends and use the Amazon affiliate account from my personal blog Snapshot Chronicles. So yes, if you buy a book, a friend gets a sale and I get a teeny weeny commission.
There are two principal components of successful outreach strategy. For simplicity’s sake let’s call one Execution and the other Content.
Execution is all the tactical stuff – targeting the appropriate bloggers or reporters, getting the details right — the simple things like name, blog name, email address, following through appropriately, sending review or sample product promptly. Execution is the HOW.
Content. That’s the pitch, the message, the story, the program. Content is the WHY. As in why should I care? Your pitch better answer that simple question straight up, or you will strike out.
Successful outreach programs get both of these elements right. Some recent examples:
No question about it, there are PR and marketing people who really get how to do it right, and are fortunate enough to have clients or bosses who trust them, who let them get it right.
Unfortunately, there aren’t enough of them.
I still see far too many execution errors — the dear blogger, dear xx, sending the same pitch to the same blogger at multiple blogs, forgetting to delete template notes, reforwards of messages without deleting the signature (a recent one had 94 sigs).
Irritating but eventually — hopefully — this will self-correct as tools and training get better and marketers become more sensitive to the potential for stupid, preventable errors. Forming the habit to re-read emails and check attachments before pressing send would be a good start.
The more serious problem is the content.
Agencies are still casting too wide of a net, with too generic a pitch. The lack of creativity is astounding. As is the expectation of what might interest a blogger.
From the inbox:
Invitations to promote a contest or support a charity (regardless of whether the blogger has ever expressed any interest in same)
The negative competitive pitch. Lead with something negative about the competition and then show how you are so much better. These often are ham-fisted and make the company look like a bully.
Requests for the blogger to write about or review a product without an offer to actually send the product. Extra demerits if the blogger asks for product, and the company offers a jpg instead. Or worse, promised product never arrives.
My perennial favorite – press releases (especially when they have no cover note)
We also seem far too reliant on BIG programs – trips, free appliances, free consumer electronics. Lately, Twitter seems absolutely cluttered with bloggers announcing yet another giveaway. More More More. Free Free Free.
I’ll leave aside the issues raised by the potential changes to the FTC’s guidelines for commercial endorsements and testimonials. I think these are manageable, although I do question whether affiliate marketing should be lumped in with commercial endorsements and testimonials. I think not — more next week.
Problems with the BIG blogger relations programs
First and foremost, are they sustainable? One of the phrases that comes to mind is: Begin as you intend to continue. But can they? I think Frigidaire’s current appliance campaign is very clever, but what happens next year?
Another problem is noise. The signal to noise ratio is increasingly out of whack. There are a lot of giveaways and contests announced on Twitter every day, but I’m not sure I could tell you a single brand. It’s becoming a muddle. Full of ethical landmines like companies offering cashto the first 50 reviewers to post about something on iTunes.
Where’s the creativity?
Why aren’t we spending the time to find those commonalities with our customers that create truly memorable campaigns and foster long term relationships. It can be done. We just don’t take the time.
Instead we rely on formulas. For example the tried and true brand ambassador program. There’s NOTHING wrong with a brand ambassador program. Except if the same bloggers get all the invitations to participate, how wide is your message spreading, and what else is it competing with?
Events. Invite x number of bloggers to DisneyWorld or a spa, treat them really well and hope for the best? What are the expectations and are they being met?
And then there’s my favorite – the solution in search of a problem. The latest example is Dunkin’ Donuts’ Dunkin’ Run iPhone app. Sure, it’s cute and clever, but does it solve a real customer problem?
How well do these programs match up to marketing objectives and do they deliver?
The smart folks are measuring. They know when they hit and they know when they miss so they can fix it for next time. In fact, I expect that the good programs I mentioned above had some form of measurement based on a consumer behavior, not just clip counting or ad equivalency.
This is where we need to place our focus — on developing meaningful relevant campaigns that deliver results.
Relationships are very important, but when you sit down to develop your next program or new business pitch, ask yourself if you are asking the right questions?
Does the program meet the marketing objectives or are you trying to make a favorite tactic fit? Are you going back to the same well, or bloggers, over and over, because it’s easy, familiar?
This is even more important when outsourcing all or part of a project. You don’t want a cookie cutter program or something developed to meet the goals of another client.
You want a creative program that delivers to YOUR goals.
Today, an AP story about the FTC’s review of the guidelines for testimonials and endorsements and a John Dvorak PC Mag column about same stirred up the blogosphere a wee bit, although the scintillating *yawn* news of Jon & Kate plus 8 minus 1 seemed a potent distraction.
While the spate of coverage leads me to wonder if the FTC is getting closer to announcing the new guidelines — the AP prefers to lead, not lag, the news — nothing was announced today. Apart from the fact that it is officially summer, nothing has changed since the last round of posts and articles on the topic one month ago.
The FTC is reviewing its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials and expects to issue new ones this summer. These guidelines will affect social media and viral marketing. They may also impact affiliate marketing, such as Amazon.
If you are upset about this, I have some questions for you.
Do you want advertisers to lie to you?
Do you want to wonder whether a commercial endorsement is honestly from the heart of the writer, or from the keys of a copywriter?
Right. I didn’t think so.
The enforcement guidelines on endorsements and testimonials exist to make sure that consumers have the information they need to judge a commercial endorsement. That is the FTC’s job, to protect consumers .
The Federal Trade Commission is the nation’s consumer protection agency. The FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection works For The Consumer to prevent fraud, deception, and unfair business practices in the marketplace. The Bureau:
Enhances consumer confidence by enforcing federal laws that protect consumers
Empowers consumers with free information to help them exercise their rights and spot and avoid fraud and deception
Wants to hear from consumers who want to get information or file a complaint about fraud or identity theft
Consumers.
That’s us.
It’s NOT about the blogger, or your credibility. It’s about whether the reader — the consumer – would have a different impression of your opinion if it were compensated versus unsolicited. Your ethics could be impeccable, your opinion unchanged by the commercial transaction of free product or paid post. It doesn’t matter.
It’s not about you.
It’s all about whether the reader would have a different understanding, and you can’t decide that.
Hence the guidelines, so we can understand our responsibilities under the law, and the need for disclosure.
This doesn’t mean bloggers shouldn’t accept review product or free trips or whatever else companies might be offering for consideration. If you’ve got a property that companies consider valuable, why not profit from it. You just need to understand that under the FTC rules, if you are compensated, either directly or in product, the FTC guidelines for commercial endorsements may apply to you.
I recommend that bloggers publish their review and disclosure policy on their blogs, and if active on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, a policy that covers your potential activities in these networks. I had updated my blog statements a month ago, but today I added links on Facebook and Twitter to clarify how I might mention products on these status-oriented sites.
Your readers decide if you are credible.
The FTC is just asking that you provide them with all the information they need to make that assessment. That’s everything from what and how you say it, to whether you may have been influenced by others.
I’m testing Social RSS on my Facebook Profile, and need a new post quickly to make sure it posts a new entry to the Wall, so you lucky readers are being treated to a list of places around the blogosphere where I have appeared or contributed in the past couple months. Enjoy!
With all the hullaballoo about Facebook Pages, I thought it was time I experimented with one for myself. As I wrote in yesterday’s post, there are a few instances where it may make sense for a blogger to have a Facebook Page. One is for a multi-author blog such as Snapshot Chronicles Roadtrip, the family travel blog I launched about eight weeks ago. Each author can be an admin, use his/her own Facebook following to help build the brand and share the load of adding unique content — beyond just the blog posts that get fed automatically.
I’m still experimenting but I want to warn readers to be very very careful when selecting the initial category for their page. There are three basic categories, each with sub options, and once you’ve selected your choice, there is no going back. The only way to change once you’ve created a page is to START OVER. If you’ve actually published the page and started publicizing it, this means losing those fans, and hoping they follow you.
Why is this so important?
Two reasons. First, discoverability. Facebook uses the categories in search, and if you are in the wrong one, fewer people will find you in general searches, versus specific ones based on your blog or brand name.
Second is that the options under the Info tab are different for each basic category. Local Business allows you to list your physical address, hours of operation, website address and information about parking and public transit. No free-form fields. For a Brand Product or Organization, you can list typical business information, including company overview and products in free-form fields. Artists, Bands & Public Figures are presented with options very similar to the ones in the personal profile. These cannot be changed or added to.
The Facebook Page for Snapshot Chronicles Roadtrip ended up in the wrong category - Local Other Business. Not because I didn’t pick the one I wanted (Brand, Travel). I did. However, I initially typed my electronic signature with my middle initial; Facebook wanted my Facebook name exactly, without the initial, so it posted an error message. I realized the error, fixed it, and saved.
What I didn’t realize was that in the refresh Facebook had also reset the category to Local Other Business. I pulled a similar sequence of screens to illustrate this for you.
Initial Screen:
Signature Error:
Refresh:
The good news? I mostly did the fan page to find out what might go wrong when creating one, and lo and behold I was not disappointed. Not having the right options on the Info tab is not a big deal for my family travel blog, but it might be for your company or brand.
What should you do?
Take a look at the three types of pages and pick the right one for your brand, blog or business.
When you are filling out the initial creation screen, check the box, type in your profile name correctly and carefully review the selection of category before you hit Create Page.
If you get the error message, check twice.
You can start over at any time until you actually publish your page, but in my case, I just didn’t notice that the category had defaulted to something else until I started trying to customize the info page much, much later in my process.
I’ll just chalk it up to one of those things I do, so you don’t have to, and hope that my experience helps at least one other person avoid the same mistake. I do know I am not the only one who has run into the problem, as there is a support topic in the Facebook FAQs.
So pick carefully!
Some additional nits:
I wish you could have a different image for the thumbnail and the main graphic. Unlike headshots, which most people use on their personal Facebook profiles, logos don’t always size down to something acceptable in a teeny thumbnail square, and certainly not when the same image is used for both with no resizing possible.
I have a devil of a time getting back to my page to edit it. I hope I am just missing something obvious, but the only way I’ve found so far is to navigate to all the pages I follow and then pick mine. There has to be an easier way….
As of Saturday morning, you can get a Facebook URL with an intelligible username instead of a bizarre sequence of numbers and letters. For example, my profile is now facebook.com/sgetgood.
Organizations and brands with more than 1000 fans of their fan page BEFORE May 31, 2009 could also protect their brand name with a custom URL last Saturday, but everyone else – fan pages created after May 31 or with less than 1000 fans – has to wait until June 28th, although there are mechanisms for protecting your trademarks.
The Facebook URL Grab
This simple Facebook change has resulted in a mad rush to recruit fans and create fan pages, even though at this point, there’s no way to reserve the name for a fan page. Everyone has to wait until June 28th.
Now I’ve already gone on record that I think nearly every business in America should have a Facebook page, because, point blank, your customers are there. If you’ve already been thinking about setting up a Facebook presence, and the June 28th deadline moves you ahead faster, there’s no reason not to go for it, full speed ahead, and try to get the Facebook URL you really want.
But if you haven’t:
Identified an initial customer/fan base that is on Facebook or can be invited easily (from a listserv, email list, Twitter, website etc.);
Developed a plan for updating your Facebook page on a regular basis;
Developed a plan for integrating Facebook into your other promotional efforts, on and OFF line,
STOP!
Take a deep breath, and let’s start at the beginning.
Why do you want a Facebook page? Are your customers on Facebook? Do you have a plan and the resources for engaging with your customers on Facebook once they become your fans? Do you have a blog or other online content, such as video, that you can link to Facebook to keep it fresh? If not, how will you engage the customer? No one likes to be invited only to have no one else — not even the host — show up at the party. Are you willing to develop promotions for your online fans?
Take the time to answer these important questions about your Facebook fan page before you start, and worry about the unique URL afterward. If your brand is a registered trademark, you have solid ground for booting any cybersquatters. If it’s not, ask yourself — what does more damage to my business? Customers seeing a lame inactive Facebook page for my company or waiting until I’ve got my stuff together even if that means my URL isn’t the “perfect” one?
I think it’s the lame inactive page that does more harm. Your Facebook page doesn’t stand alone; you promote it on your website, in your email signature, in company collateral. Take the time to create something your customers – your fans – will want to engage with. The time you need to do it right. If it is not your first choice name? So what. Your website URL probably isn’t either. If lack of URL choice — that you didn’t get your first choice — is your excuse for not succeeding? You deserve to fail.
Just don’t take too much time…. or your competitor will get there first. Your company or brand DOES need a Facebook page. Just don’t rush to do it before you are ready to commit to continue doing it.
What about blogs?
Should bloggers create a fan page? The answer is…maybe. Facebook created the fan page as a home for companies, organizations and groups. Institutional identities versus individual identities. It may make sense for an individual blogger to have a fan page in addition to a profile page [a fan page administrator must have an individual profile] under a few circumstances. Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother. It’s just one more thing to update.
Here’s when a fan page may make sense for a blogger:
If the blog is a commercial business entity. Example: Cool Mom Picks, Alphamom
If the blog is a multi-author blog. Example: Snapshot Chronicles Roadtrip, my new travel blog.
If the blogger wants to have a clear delineation between friends (profile) and fans (page). Example: celebrities, high profile bloggers, professional service providers.
Otherwise? My advice is to think twice before adding another thing to your social media plate. There are already ways to promote your blog through Facebook – Networked Blogs, linking your feed to Facebook, setting up a group. Only do the Facebook page if you are willing to make at least a small commitment to feeding the beast.
I like Avis well enough. They generally have reasonable prices and decent availability for the places I wish to go. But I am irritated that they have my name wrong in their promotional database — they have my first name, Susan, as my surname and my surname, Getgood, as my first name. Hence, the somewhat rude sounding salutation in the email subject line above (received today).
This would be mostly amusing, except that at one point, it prevented me from renting cars online with Avis because my Wizard number and login didn’t match in the customer database. So I contacted customer service, via email of course because the database errors prevented me from using any online mechanisms. After much back and forth, we managed to get the customer record and online login fixed. I’m pretty sure I can rent cars from Avis online, although I haven’t had the need to do so since; it was a family trip and easier to just use my husband’s account.
Apparently they couldn’t propagate the change to whatever vendor or department handles the mailing list, because sure enough, the next email campaign cheerily advised “Getgood” that I could do something or other with Avis.
So I contacted customer service again, because it just annoys me to be called by my last name, which is when I learned that the two databases were — ta-duh — separate. The customer service rep told me she’d pass the word along but there was nothing she could do personally to fix it.
DISCONNECT.
And still not fixed. Promo emails from Avis continue to be addressed to Getgood.
That makes it more than a disconnect. It’s borderline stupid.
The customer service disconnect is not an unintended/accidental hang-up. Nor is it the insidious phenomenon that influential bloggers and tweeters seem to jump to the top of the queue while others languish. The “celebrity” effect has always existed, to one degree or another. Funnily enough, with social media, it has extended to a broader circle, beyond the famous to the “niche famous” like digital celebrities and other online influencers. That sort of makes it more democratic
The customer service disconnect is a far more disturbing side effect of the rise of online & social media marketing.
Specifically, it’s the disconnect between the online marketing, community engagement, shopping bots, live chat consultants and interactive advertising we experience BEFORE we purchase a product, and the lack of similar options AFTER we buy. When the only way to get satisfaction for a customer issue is to call or email the service department, and then wait, on hold or for a reply.
Customers don’t have different pre- and post-sale expectations about the product and their experience with the company. We buy a product and we expect a seamless experience. We also expect our vendors to treat us as well as customers as they did when we were prospects.
Which of course doesn’t always happen. Cell phone companies are notorious for giving better deals to new customers. Software companies often have better deals for new buyers than upgrading customers; sure, they’ll extend the better price if the customer asks for it but you have to know, to ask.
Unfortunately for the companies, it’s a whole lot easier to know all the offers on the table, for whatever sort of product, than it ever was before.
And consumers are increasingly frustrated by having to use old media to rectify problems or complete transactions, when the bulk of the interaction is on new media.
Some examples of the frustration
My son recently signed up for an online site that uses some of his personal information. Under COPA (Child Online Privacy Act), a parent has to extend permission for children under age 13. But the only way to do it was by fax or snail mail. Total disconnect for my son (and my husband and I too). Twenty-four hours later, the permission had still not been processed and my son was pissed that he couldn’t play on the site.
Catalog retailer Lands’ End does a super job all around – online marketing and customer service. Have a question while shopping? Use live chat to ask your question. Need to change an order that hasn’t been shipped? No problem. Many post-sale transactions can even be done online. When you do have to call, the telephone reps are courteous, helpful and you never have to wait.
But, good as it is, recently I had a transaction that showed that even the best have room for some simple improvements in the connection between marketing and customer service.
I’m a regular Lands’ End customer. I’m on the mailing & email list and have an account and stored preferences on the site. I’m in their system, full stop. This spring, I placed an order on a Friday evening. The same weekend, on Sunday, when I opened my email, there was a promotional email for Free Shipping, starting that day. I phoned customer service, asked for the free shipping to be applied to my order and it was with absolutely no problem. Great customer service.
Even better though would have been an email that Sunday morning telling me that because my order was placed within 48 hours of the start of the promotion, it was automatically applied and my shipping was now free. Would I like to add some items? That would be superior, unforgettable customer service.
It’s not easy
It’s not easy breaking down the functional barriers between marketing and customer service, no matter how good the company is. The larger the company, the firmer and broader the barriers between the silos. At a small to mid-sized company, odds are the players all know, or at least know of, each other. The disconnects may occur but it’s easier to sort it out when your desks or departments are side by side.
Scale up and up and up to the multi-national consumer products companies. Many outsource first line phone support and customer service lines to India and other countries with large employee pools and lower wages. But even if the functions aren’t separated by a thousand seas, often they might as well be.
Organizational barriers, language barriers, corporate politics, reorgs, workforce reductions all play a part, but the truth is that customer service and marketing probably don’t speak with each other enough. Once a year, maybe twice a year at an annual meeting that is often more a dog and pony show than an opportunity to solve mutual problems. Each side takes their assigned pieces of the puzzle and regroups internally to figure it out. Report back next year.
I’m being deliberately harsh and stereotypical. I know that many companies already try to punch through this wall in a variety of ways — multi-functional task forces, employees chartered with facilitating cross-functional communications, CRM systems that make information available across the enterprise.
I just don’t think what we’re doing so far is going to be enough in a world where one customer problem aired on a social network like Twitter or Facebook can spark a customer service conflagration. And the fire spreads pretty fast. You don’t have days to respond. If you’re lucky, a few hours. These customer brouhahas also seem to erupt on the weekends — for example, Motrin Moms. Makes sense, right. That’s when most people are catching up on their personal stuff.
Solution?
I don’t have one. Because there isn’t a one-size fits all solution here.
What is clear though is that marketing and customer service cannot waste time arguing about who owns the customer relationship. They have to put their heads together to figure out how to satisfy it in the new reality.
That may mean cross functional teams tasked with cooperating on a daily, not annual, basis. It may mean new Customer departments staffed with experts from all the disciplines. It may mean figuring out how to use the CRM system as more than a sales/marketing database.
There are as many possible solutions as there companies; every one will be different. Even if they make exactly the same products, the people are different. Within the firm and without.
In the end, it’s all about people. And our expectations.
What we don’t expect is a customer service disconnect.
Repeat after me: It’s the SOCIAL that matters in social networks, not the network. On or offline, it’s the community that matters, not the structure. Even where there is no structure, community will emerge. Look at Twitter.
The engagement is what matters. Not the form of the network. Blogs, Facebook, communities like Cafe Mom and BlogHer, Twitter, LinkedIn, “Old fashioned” forums and bulletin boards. These are all forms of social media engagement.
The trick is to find the ones that matter. To you. To your business.
When I do my social media 101 workshops for business audiences, the thing I stress them most is that you want to be where your customers are. For individuals, where your friends are. Otherwise, why bother?
This week, Harvard Business Review’s report that only about 10% of Twitter users account for about 90% of the traffic on the network was quasi big news in social media circles. To which I say: what else did you expect? Twitter is most clearly an early adopter space, and early adopters are bound to be more active than users in general. @GuyKawasaki and @Scobleizer probably account for 1% alone. With (Kawasaki) or without (Scoble) ghweeters (ghost tweeters).
As it matures, the Twitter numbers may more closely reflect typical social network activity, where approximately 1% are active and the balance passive consumers of content, but for now, Twitter is the avant garde, the edge of social media. Trying to reach the early adopters? Ignore Twitter at your peril. We’re there. Every day. Using it on our phones and iPhones and Blackberries too.
Mass market? Don’t worry about it. For now.
More interesting were the Nielsen stats that time spent on Facebook had increased 700 percent, and on Twitter, more than 3,700 percent (hat tip Brian Solis).
Look carefully at those overall number for Facebook. Nearly 14 million total minutes in April. Nearly three times the nearest competitor MySpace.
This is why Facebook is the gateway drug to social media. And why it should be part of your marketing strategy, no matter what you sell.
Before I delve into why Facebook is so important, let’s review some of the common characteristics of social network sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, CafeMom, BlogHer etc.
Consistent user interface
Friend lists
In-system messaging
Ability to make and join groups
Opportunity for commercial interaction with members
Links in/out to other social media applications (blogs, other communities etc.)
We also hope to find our friends and/or people of like interests who might become friends. Every online community may not have everything on the list, and the implementation within the networks will likely look different community to community, but by and large, most online social networks have some flavor of these commonalities.
A social network is more fun when there are enough members to generate a reasonable level of activity. The easier the site is to use, the easier it is for members to connect with the other members, the more active members the community is likely to have. The more active, fun and useful a social network is, the more new members it will attract. Lather rinse repeat.
The limiting factor then becomes the core reason for the network in the first place. What brings the people together? The more narrowly defined the community, the fewer members it will have. CafeMom, for moms. BlogHer, women bloggers. And so on. It may still have many many members, but a “vertical” interest community won’t have everybody.
Which brings us to Facebook. Facebook is for everybody. Once you are in Facebook, you can make and join interest groups, but the only limiting factor on Facebook is that you must be willing to identify yourself by your real name. No anonymity.
It’s easier to use than blogs or MySpace, the distant second place finisher in the Nielsen reports, because the user interface (screens and functionality) is consistent user to user, page to page. The company fan pages even look pretty much like the personal profile pages. It’s easy to find what you’re looking for. Most of the time, and provided of course they stop changing the user interface.
Because it is all-inclusive and relatively easy to use, if a person is even marginally active online, it’s almost a no-brainer to join Facebook. Now, when a person joins a new social network, what’s one of the first things she does?
Yup. Recruit her friends to join her. It’s more fun when all your friends are there. Since there’s no limiting interest on Facebook, you can invite everyone you know, and most people do.
And so on and so on and so on.
Net? Just about everyone who engages in social media has a Facebook account, and once you step away from the technology geeks, early adopters and gamers, Facebook is very likely to be the first adult social network a person joins. Gen Y and Millenials may start with things like Club Penguin or “white space” communities, but those are “childish things.” [My spare copy of The Tipping Point, if you want it, to the first commenter who can source this reference. Alternative prize: if you are going to BlogHer, I'll buy you a drink.]
Facebook is a mostly grown up place. And it’s where most grown-ups start their descent into the madness that is social media. A dark dark place of addiction.
Oops sorry. I let my gateway drug analogy run away with the post. Seriously, though, Facebook is the point of entry into social networks for many users. Some may move on to mainline social media on the wild wild web, but many will be happy as clams hanging out in Facebook with their friends. Even if the more adventurous do go exploring Twitter and Ning and other cool stuff, they are bound to pop back to Facebook now and again to hang with their friends. Even if they hate it, they won’t be able to totally avoid it. Trust me, I speak from personal experience
Why? Because Facebook is the community where you are likely to find the largest number of all your friends and acquaintances, regardless of what your commonality with them is – neighbor, classmate, friend, relative, co-worker, colleague, fellow {fill in the blank} fan/critic, etc. Exception issued to social media geeks who seem to have abandoned Facebook for Twitter, although I bet if we continue to build out our Facebook networks, they’ll include more people we know, or have known, in the real world than Twitter does. By a significant factor.
But normal people? They’re in, and will continue to be in, Facebook. Or if Facebook falters too badly, a successor that shares the same model of inclusion. [Note: this is an unlikely scenario. Merger or new management more likely than total fail.]
Normal folk may join one or two other special interest communities and LinkedIn for professional connections where applicable, but that’s my gut feel for the limit for active engagement. Reading regularly. Commenting, at least once in while. We may join other networks, but it’s hard to be truly active in more than a few.
So, back to my statement that Facebook should be part of your marketing strategy, no matter what you sell.
Rule Number One in my social media strategy book is that you should be where your customers are. If you sell a consumer product, you have customers on Facebook. If you are a non-profit, you have both constituents and donors on Facebook. Even business to business products may find their customer or constituent base on Facebook, especially if they have a business to community component, such as the largest employer in a community or a chamber of commerce.
Making Facebook part of your strategy doesn’t mean you have to have your own fan page, although it will probably play out that way for most companies. It could be as simple as monitoring the activity on relevant groups and providing information through a designated employee representative.
Most companies though will take the step of setting up a Facebook fan page. This is smart business, but you have to feed the beast. You can’t just set it and forget it. In this respect, it’s no different than if you started a company blog – regular updates, engagement with the customer, responding to comments and questions. The big difference, and why it is attractive as a point of entry into social media for many companies, especially smaller ones, is that Facebook provides the infrastructure. You just pour your content into their framework.
Unlike the user example above, where I posit that many will be fat smart and happy staying in Facebook as one of their primary social networks and never feel the need to venture too far into the social media wilderness, I expect many companies will feel the limitations of the Facebook structure for their branding requirements, and supplement their Facebook presence with content on their own websites or blogs. More than a few will start with their own sites and branch back into Facebook to reach a larger constituency. The more you integrate the experience, on and off Facebook, the tighter the connection with the customer.
Just do me a favor please. Don’t create one of those stupid quizzes. Find another way to engage the customer.
, 
, most Internet users understand these to be affiliate marketing/advertising links, with a compensation component. Many are probably Amazon affiliates themselves.
