Social media

Facebook: the gateway drug to social media, & other thoughts on SOCIAL networks

June 4, 2009 by Susan Getgood

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.

Pretty please. With sugar and a cherry on top.

Just what is blogger relations anyway?

May 11, 2009 by Susan Getgood

(Warning- long post)

Call it blogger relations or blogger outreach or social media outreach. Whatever we call it, the shorthand version is that it involves engaging with bloggers, with programs and promotions that they will wish to share with their readers.

I’ve been writing about blogger relations on Marketing Roadmaps for quite a while now, and in my opinion, we are in the midst of a fairly important change. Some for the better. Some not so much.

The best way I can find to summarize it is: the more things change, the more they become the same.

Big brands embracing bloggers in a BIG way

Consumer and technology brands have been dabbling in social media for a couple years, but lately it seems like there’s a new BIG campaign aimed at bloggers every week, if not every day. Consider the mom blogging segment. In the last month alone we’ve had Hanes ComfortCrew trip to Disney, Let’s Fix Dinner from Stouffers, a Disney-sponsored mom blogger weekend at DisneyWorld, HP’s NY meet-up with Dara Torres and just last week, the launch of Frigidaire’s Motherload promotion.

Now, big blogger events are nothing new, but the sheer volume of them is. Is it still possible, given such volume, for firms to build real relationships with the influential bloggers in their space through these big promotions?

Or, good as these promotions are — and some of them are superb, with excellent micro-sites and contests, has the product of the outreach, i.e. the blog posts, simply become a new form of advertising?

We don’t dislike advertising. We dislike bad advertising.

Advertising is both useful and necessary. It lets companies offer their products for our consideration in a controlled fashion, to which we supplement trial, word-of-mouth, reviews, blogs and whatever else we use to make a purchase decision.

These big budget blogger events are creating a new form of advertising, similar to sponsored posts in many, but not all, respects.

Let’s distinguish big budget outreach from sponsored posts. In a sponsored post, there is an explicit agreement that the blogger will write something about the product or service but (generally) there’s no direction given about the content of the post. Compensation is paid, to either the blogger directly or a blog network.

In big budget outreach, there is no explicit agreement about posting, although there may be a contract outlining responsibilities of the parties if goods of significant value change hands. No cash compensation is paid.

I do believe, however, that the company and the blogger have an implicit understanding that the blogger will write about the event, and the higher the value of the goods/services, the more certain that is. Assuming the experience is a good one, to not write would set up a highly dissonant state for the blogger. He or she would have taken something of value from the company and not returned the favor.

In fact, it’s a pretty safe bet that the blogger will write; it’s up to the company to provide a good experience that leads to a positive post. So far so good. We’re still in the realm of opinion. Here’s how it drifts into a new form of advertising.

Most big budget blog promotions include the mainstays of traditional advertising – branded badges for the blogs, slick microsites, sweepstakes, etc. Odds are damn good the bloggers will use, link to or tweet about them. As a result, the blogger’s opinion is bracketed by the company’s advertising.

Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck? It’s a duck.

In the midst of all this, the FTC is revising its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, with the distinct possibility that new guidelines due this summer will hold bloggers, and companies, liable for false statements on blogs.

Disclaimers and ethical transparency certainly go a long way to protecting both the company and the blogger, but in the end, if it looks like advertising or reads like advertising, the FTC is going to call it advertising, regardless of what we might label it ourselves.

As I’ve said before, I believe the key issues will be compensation, whether cash or product, and the amount of direction given to the blogger. To what degree is the blogger acting as a representative of or proxy for the firm?

I would not be surprised to see an either-or-both situation. In other words, even if there is little or no direction given to the blogger about what or when to write, if the value of the goods or services received is significant, the FTC may impose the advertising guidelines. Ditto for paid and sponsored posts, even if the pay is shit.

Signal:Noise – Too much static

You can’t stop the signal, but it is getting harder and harder to pick it up. It’s just too much when every other tweet in the stream seems like an ad, whether for a commercial or “personal” brand.

I think we are edging ever closer to a backlash against commercialism in the blogosphere. We — the collective we — rebelled against mass market command and control advertising by turning to social networks and blogs, yet now we are inundated again. How many posts do we really want to read about Brand X’s big party or Brand Y’s new influencer program before it all starts to blur? Before we stop reading or caring?

Before blogger relations jumps the shark?

It’s a shame. Somewhere in this ever escalating blogger outreach, it seems we’ve lost the element that made the whole thing so appealing, effective and efficient in the first place — the ability to have an honest conversation with your customer about the things, including your products, that both company and customer care about. Instead of relationship and reach, it’s become ALL about reach.

Don’t misunderstand. I don’t have a problem with “blogvertising.”

Some of these recent big budget campaigns are superb examples of how to authentically use new media to reach out to your customers through your customers.

And some will suck, because this new form of advertising isn’t going to be any different than the old. Some good promos. Some not so good. Some excellent writers who write creative and unique posts about the products. And some hacks who repurpose boilerplate and press release content wholesale.

I just hope people don’t get the idea that a big program or sponsored posts are the only game in town. The only way to reach your customers through blogs and other social media. Here’s why.

How do you get them back on the farm once they’ve seen Paris?

Big programs aren’t sustainable. No matter how successful. What happens when the next Frigidaire program doesn’t give away appliances? Or Hanes can’t allocate budget for a getaway for the next group of influencers? Big programs are setting expectations that are impossible for smaller companies to meet, and not even terribly realistic as a long term play for the big consumer brands. Heaven forbid if the big program is a flop. That company won’t be doing any reaching out any time soon.

More importantly, these big programs seem very transactional — here’s the offer, do you want to play? The relationship component of blogger relations, which is sustainable, seems far less important.

Big companies with big brand budgets can do BIG programs. Smaller companies can’t.

For example, the Frigidaire program. Just guessing, but I’d be willing to bet they took a piece of the advertising budget associated with the product launch, and moved it into the blogger program. Sure, it’s a lot of money to give away appliances to bloggers, but in the context of a display ad in Good Housekeeping or a tv commercial during Oprah? Not so much.

Smaller companies don’t have that luxury. They have to be more creative, more clever with smaller budgets, but generally the same scrutiny and expectations of success. They can’t do the extravaganza. They can reach out to establish relationships with influencers, but if no one can hear them for the din around the big campaigns, I fear they will get discouraged and miss the opportunity for engagement.

Worse, they’ll be tempted by the seemingly simple route of spamming bloggers with press releases. Because that’s what we all need right? More crappy pitches in our in-boxes.

What’s the solution?

I’m not suggesting that the big brands stop doing BIG programs with bloggers. There’s huge opportunity on both sides in these programs. I am however hoping that companies of all sizes think strategically about the long term relationships with their online customers when they build their blogger relations programs. Don’t just have big launches and big parties. Engage with your customers in small ways as well.

For example, say you are an appliance manufacturer; in your monitoring, you learn of a blogger who just got laid off and then the microwave exploded. Send a new microwave. It’s not part of a big splashy campaign, but I guarantee that simple act will go just as viral, and contribute just as much to your brand, as the big splashy campaign.

Don’t limit your generosity to just the top bloggers in your space. By all means include them in your programs, but keep in mind that a blogger with fewer readers might be much more engaged in your offer or brand, and in fact, do more for you than the one with thousands of readers. As the saying goes, be nice to everyone on your way up because you never know who you’ll meet on the way down.

Going a bit zen on you, it’s the difference between dropping a big rock in the pond and skimming a pebble across the top. The big splash may be satisfying in the moment, but the small ripples fan out longer and further. Be a pebble.

—

Additional reading:

Don’t miss New Comm Forum 2009

April 13, 2009 by Susan Getgood

New Comm Forum is known for assembling a terrific group of social media and marketing experts, and this year is no exception. On Monday April 27th, I’m honored to be moderating a panel on blogger relations featuring some of the honorees from the 2008 SNCR Awards: Julie Crabill, SHIFT PR, Laura Tomasetti, 360 Public Relations and Paull Young, Converseon.

Other speakers on the program include: Sashi Bellamkonda, Chris Brogan, Laura Fitton, Tom Foremski, Paul Gillin, Francois Gossieaux, Shel Holtz, Shel Israel, Charlene Li, Geoff Livingston, Mike Manuel, Jen McClure, Jeremiah Owyang, Katie Paine, Brian Solis, Joseph Thornley, Todd Van Hoosear, Dr. Mihaela Vorvoreanu and Zena Weist.

This year, New Comm Forum is co-located with the Inbound Marketing Summit, and New Comm attendees will have access to the Summit’s expo area. The combination of the two events in the same space should foster some very interesting hallway conversation, with New Comm drawing a national group that tends to have more experience with social media, and Inbound attracting a more local audience looking to understand what it’s all about.

Event Details for the 5th Annual New Communications Forum
April 27th – 29th, 2009
Marriott Hotel
4th & Mission
San Francisco, CA
http://www.newcommforum.com/2009/

REGISTER NOW WITH DISCOUNT CODE SNCRFRIEND & SAVE $100. PARTICIPATE IN THE ENTIRE THREE-DAY CONFERENCE FOR JUST $695 OR JUST ONE DAY FOR JUST $395

About New Comm Forum

Now celebrating its fifth year, NewComm Forum is the premier conference that brings together thought leaders and decision makers to discuss the impact of social media and emerging communication tools, technologies, and models on PR and corporate communications, marketing and advertising, media and journalism, business, culture and society. The Forum provides an in-depth exploration of the future of communications. In its five year history, it has come to be known as one of the world’s leading conferences focusing on the latest trends in new emerging media and communications platforms.