Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Social Network Marketing Presentation at Johnson County Community College, July 2009
Marketing with social software means we work in an opt-in world. People ask to be connected, to become friends, or to make connections. You’ll see this approach called permission-driven marketing or in-bound marketing, as the folks at Hubspot use.
And as with any marketing campaign, we need to approach it with the audience in mind first, then develop a strategy, then find the tools to support the strategy. Since social software now carries a substantial buzz factor, we see people talking about their Facebook strategy, or their Twitter strategy. Approaching the campaign from the tool direction muddies the results, and leads to undesired outcomes.
Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell, suggests five methods to bring social media into the marketing mix.
• 5 methods
• Listen to audience
– Use Technorati to monitor blog mentions, or Twittersearch to monitor Twitter
• Talk with the audience
– Rather than issue press releases, Starbucks put Howard Schulz’s trip to Africa on its Facebook page.
• Energize the audience
– Get them talking to each other with discussion groups on Facebook, or on Twitter
• Support the audience
– Comcast uses Twitter as a customer service tool, monitoring tweets for mentions of Comcast, and sending a direct message to the customer. http://www.twitter.com/comcastcares
• Embrace the audience
– Bring the audience into the discussion
• One example is the Mini-Starbucks card, generated from an idea submitted at My Starbucks Idea:http://www.Mystarbucksidea.com. Letting the audience share, discuss and vote on ideas leads to product development.
Consider asking a question: Where can people interact and use social media to do so within the context of my web site, product page, or other venue? Be aware that not engaging may be a strategy, particularly if management is leery of social software’s value.
Picking one of those methods and executing it well may be more important than trying to execute all five methods at once.
User control is the common thread in social software. Users can subscribe to feeds, ignore friend requests, become fans, follow Twitter streams, or ignore Twitter streams. This aspects divides new tools such as social software from the traditional media of 30 years ago.
This also means that to be a member of this community, you have to use social media tools as the other members do. Meeting and understanding customers becomes paramount, and using traditional media approaches in the social software community may backfire. You are joining a community, which that has rules, written and unwritten, that you must abide by.
The metaphor is join the party. Attending a business reception comes with some rules of etiquette.
• Professional and friendly
• Meet people
• Catch the tone of the discussions
• Join in conversations
• Answer questions, help others
• Add value, gain respect and trust
The difference with this party is that there are no time or space limits on the party. Other people can listen in to the conversations without regard for time or space.
Li also divides the party-goers into several groups.
• Spectators, or lurkers in early days of the internet sit back and consume content
• Joiners might be people who enjoy becoming fans of Facebook pages
• Collectors archive content, such as photos on Flickr
• Critics rank content, render opinions, or discuss content
• Creators build content for others
If we decide to work in these communities, we have to commit to engage with customers on their ground. This also means customers may tell us things we don’t want to hear. If personal feels too dangerous, using social media won’t work, and using traditional methods will backfire. In addition, new traditional methods such as mining Google search may not work, as search is not able to index social media today.
And because social software is new, finding what will work is a matter of trial and error. Experimenting, and being open to failure becomes more critical. Testing and finding failure quickly also becomes important, as the social software systems change rapidly.
So, to find customers, we have to execute several preliminary steps:
• Research your market and topics, and find the groups oriented to those topics.
• Preview the groups’ activity, discussions, needs and wants.
• Join these groups or create them.
• Add value with Q&A;, photos, videos and discussions.
• When value is added and trust built
– People will find your profile
– Additional information
• Could lead to blog, website, video hosted outside FB
• Convert FB friend or fan into an evangelist of your compnay and offerings.
• Repeat the cycle.
Facebook
• Establish a presence
– Keep it centered on users
– Community members there for socializing and sharing, not product research or ads.
– Focus on their interests
• Promote advantages gained by becoming a fan or a group members
• Whole Foods is a good example.
• Add value to the community
– Where people perceive value, they share with others.
– Sharing valuable content pulls people into your site
• Make it personable, social, people-centered
– Give your company a human face that people can connect with
• Make friends
– Leverage existing contacts (email) and invite them to be a friend or fan
– Encourage employees to become friends or fans
• Use Facebook groups as an internal and external communication tool.
– If your company has multiple workers on Facebook, you can create a group just for your company, where you can exchange company information as well as information about using Facebook.
• Facebook supports 2 levels in addition to the default global, or open setting:
» make the group “closed,” meaning that non-members can view the group but not reply to posts or leave comments.
» make the group “secret,” meaning that non-members cannot view the group and it will not show up in public searches.
– Consider giving your customers access to at least one group where members of your company are participants as well.
– Bring customers in, give them a voice where they can discuss your company.
– Especially helpful if your company isn’t blogging, as it gives your company a way to have an online conversation with your customers.
Facebook uses five different types of pages to spotlight content:
• Groups
• Pages
• Events
• Applications
• Ads
Groups, created at http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php, have the advantage as a place for two-way discussion, with a maximum of 1200 members. The group owner can send messages to group members, and group badges appear on friends profiles.
Pages, created at http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php, offer an alternative. Once the page is created, the page owner can edit the page, add information such as a photo, overview, a product list, then publish the page. Facebook profiles have friends; Facebook Pages have fans. Creating engaging content becomes the path to convert viewers to fans. The content could include:
• Events
• Video
• Photos
• Blog articles
• Email your opt-in mail list
• Link in email signature
• Blog entries pointing back to FB page
• Link or badge on blog or site
Advantages
• Pages are not as interactive as groups. Rather than becoming a member of a page, you become a fan
• Pages are more focused on a brand or person than a group
• Pages are listed more prominently on people’s profiles.
• Your page’s logo will appear in your fans’ profiles, not just the name, as with a group
• Must share a link, rather than invite a friend
Disadvantages
• Can’t create fake pages, or create pages on someone’s behalf, as you can’t create a page for a movie star. Even though FB members opt-in to your page, they will click Report as Spam, rather than Opt-out of the page if they perceive items posted to the news feed as spammy.
Deciding between a page or a group comes down to a choice:
• If your marketing efforts require a great deal of communication with a large number of Facebook members, go with a page.
• If you want to get as many people as possible to know you virally, consider a group. The “invite” feature of groups is hard to beat.
Events
• Date, time, location
• Gets its own page
• Can invite others
• The fan receives an RSVP
• Can invite only 100 people at a time
Applications
– http://www.facebook.com/apps/
– Use pre-existing applications, or build your own with FBML
Twitter can be thought of as public, bulk instant messaging using 140 characters to discuss topics of interest. As with the other social software tools, users must opt-in to follow my tweets.
• Try Yammer for internal audiences to test
• Demographic skews older and male, higher income
• As service grows, demographic broadens
• Quick distribution of content
• Quick redistribution of content
• Handle multiple followers with TweetDeck, Twirl
• Examples
– UPS
– Ford
– Comcast
– Adventure girl
– LinkedIn
• Champion a cause
– Dove’s Campaign for real beauty on Facebook
– Became a focal point for change
– Started a discussion about beauty
• What can you start to attract FB members to champion something that you and your company sponsors.
• http://www.facebook.com/Starbucks?ref=s
• http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/skittles?ref=s
• http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/coca-cola?v=wall&viewas=1146214157
• http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/ideaHome
• http://twitter.com/ThomasAtUPS
• http://twitter.com/adventuregirl
• http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php
• http://www.facebook.com/events/create.php#/advertising/?src=pf
• http://twitter.com/comcastcares
• http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2204923350
• http://www.blogsouthwest.com/blogsw
• http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/apps/directory.php
• http://developers.facebook.com/?ref=pf
• http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/wholefoods?ref=s
• http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php#/group.php?gid=60589985516
• http://www.facebook.com/keith.krieger?ref=profile#/NPR?ref=nf
