Sometimes the path of least resistance unwinds into a far more complicated and arduous journey than we anticipated. In times of change, taking the path less traveled is easier and far more rewarding. Such is true for social media.
I read a review about Engage once that read, “Brian Solis takes the fun out of social media.” The author’s point was that the book took an academic approach when the industry could benefit from something that focused on best practices, case studies, and actionable takeaways.
Shortly thereafter, I participated in a day-long event at a leading global consumer brand. Following my presentation, the person, a representative from a leading social network, took the stage and started her presentation by slighting the general theme of my discussion. She simply said, “Don’t over think social media. It’s supposed to be fun!”
Between the review, others like it and that on stage remark, I was starting to think that maybe I was beating the wrong drum. While I appreciate their perspective and their ideas, there are those of us who must march to the beat of our own drummer. This is why my work focuses on how to bridge the gap between customers and businesses, nothing less, nothing more. I focus on accountability, change, innovation and co-creation. It is not easy nor is it supposed to be when your mission is value, starting with the end in mind and working backwards from there.
The truth is that the customer gap existed prior to social media and successfully closing it takes more than basic conversational or content-driven strategies in Twitter, Facebook and other social network. The path to engagement is strenuous, uncharted, and anything but easy. Everything begins with understanding the magnitude of the gap and what it is that people want, are missing or could benefit from in order to bring both ends toward the middle.
No matter how hard we try, we just can’t build a customer-centric organization if we do not know what it is people value. Social media are your keys to unlocking the 5I’s of engagement to develop more informed and meaningful programs:
1. Intelligence – Learn about needs, wants, values, challenges
2. Insight – Find the “aha’s” to identify gaps
3. Ideation – Inspire new ideas for engagement, communication, new products/services, change
4. Interaction – Engage…don’t just publish, bring your mission to life
5. Influence – Influence behavior and in the process, become an influencer
Social media is as effective as its design. The ability to deliver against brand lift, ROI, or an established set of business and operational metrics and KPIs is all in the design. I believe you can not measure what it is you do not, or do not know, to value. As part of a recent study sponsored by Vocus, MarketingSherpa discovered that a majority of social media programs focused on programs that were deemed “fast and easy.” Sound familiar? Indeed, those programs that focus on social media programs that are easy are less effective than those that require a deeper investment of time, understanding and resources.
MarketingSherpa combined three questions about social marketing tactics: The effectiveness to achieve objectives, the degree of difficulty to implement each tactic, and the percentage of organizations using them. Their findings across the board is that “fast and easy” trumps effectiveness.
The tactics with the lowest degree of difficulty and corresponding level of effectiveness include…
- Social sharing buttons in email
- Social sharing buttons on web sites
- Tweeting
- Multimedia creation
- Social advertising
The balance shifts however toward potency as the degree of difficulty escalates. Here we see the following programs carry greater reward for consumers and businesses alike, but as such, you get what you pay for.
- Blogging
- Engagement in social networks
- SMO (Social Media Optimization)
- Blogger and influencer relations
Social media doesn’t have to be void of “fun.” It must offer value and usefulness to be successful.
In the end, the reality is that you get out of social media what you invest in it. But at the same time, experimenting with social media is not anything to discredit. The difference between today’s media and the the networks of yore is nothing less than the democratization of information, from creation to consumption to sharing and the equalization of influence. The marketing landscape has been reset and thus requires a shift from a casual approach to genuine leadership.
1. Start by understanding who you’re trying to reach and what it is they value
2. Design programs that meet the needs of each segment
3. Dissect the keywords and clickpaths of your desirable segments and develop a thoughtful SMO program
4. SMO is only as effective as the content and destinations its meant to enhance. Develop content and click paths that matter and deliver value on both sides of the transaction.
5. Identify the individuals and organizations that influence your markets. Learn what it is they value and develop engagement programs that offer tangible value (what’s in it for them and their audiences).
6. #Engage
Originally published on BrianSolis.com
Top News – WebProNews
Internet Marketing Tools For The DIY’er HERE
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jun 1st, 2011. 
The big news hit yesterday that Twitter will be rolling out its own native image service, powered by PhotoBucket. Users will be able to upload photos and attach them directly to tweets without using one of the many third-party applications that have performed this service for some time now.
Twitter is all about a formal and uniform experience. Earlier this year, they cracked down on third-party clients that serve to “mimic” the functionality of the native Twitter app by amending their API terms of service. This new photo sharing move enforces that idea, that Twitter wants to provide everything you need to fully enjoy the Twitter experience.
Social media monitoring company Sysomos has just released some stats on their blog that detail the currents state of image sharing on Twitter. They looked at every tweet from May 30th and found that Twitpic is the top image hosting service among users, followed by yfrog and Lockerz.
So who needs to be worried? Obviously Twitpic and yfrog, both with substantial shares of the image hosting duties currently. It’s possible the services like Instagram may stay relatively unharmed or even grow when Twitter’s PhotoBucket feature rolls out. Instagram has found a niche with its quick photo effects similar to Hipstamatic.
There’s really no telling how popular these photo sharing services will remain when Twitter’s native function is fully up and running. Will they have to adapt and add new features that Twitter’s photo sharing may not provide?
It’s important to note that photo sharing on Twitter is still a very small percentage of the total Twitter activity – 1.25% according to Sysomos.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jun 2nd, 2011.
You thought some the rules lording over communication here in the States were infuriatingly pedantic, get a load of this:
France’s broadcasting regulation organization, the CSA, has banned the casual use of the words “Facebook” and “Twitter” on the air. The just issued decree cites an article from another decree issued in 1992.
Paris-based writer Matthew Fraser notes that “the French are notorious for their obsession with maddening, micro-meddling rules and regulations,” and that the country is “infamous for its oppressive bureaucratic culture of legalistic codes and decrees. The term ‘French bureaucracy’ is shorthand for the worst imaginable Kafkaesque nightmare.”
Well, this kind of proves that.
The only time radio or television broadcasters can say “Facebook” or “Twitter” now is if the two companies make the news. For example, “Social Network Facebook involved in scandal” would technically be permitted. But things like “Follow us on Twitter” are strictly prohibited. This new regulation takes away a powerful tool that news organizations uses to connect with viewers.
Imagine if the FCC told CNN that they couldn’t ask users to follow them on Twitter? They would go absolutely berserk. But according to Fraser, this new regulation came and went with little media coverage or outrage, save a few French bloggers.
What is the reasoning behind this seemingly ridiculous new regulation? A CSA spokesperson had this to say:
Why give preference to Facebook, which is worth billions of dollars, when there are many other social networks that are struggling for recognition,” she said. “This would be a distortion of competition. If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s Box — other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘why not us?
So it’s about fairness? Neutrality in journalism? Money?
Facebook and Twitter are so much a part of everyday life around the world, that it seems disingenuous to say that other lesser social networks deserve equal mention. They simply aren’t as important, and therefore aren’t discussed nearly as much. In order for a news organization to ask viewers to “like” them on Facebook, should they also be forced to tell viewers to follow them on MySpace? It’s ludicrous.
Fraser has a different explanation, one that the CSA would obviously never cop to:
But there is another, more plausible, explanation. Facebook and Twitter are, of course, American social networks. In France, they are regarded — at least implicitly — as symbols of Anglo-Saxon global dominance — along with Apple, MTV, McDonald’s, Hollywood, Disneyland, and other cultural juggernauts. That there is a deeply-rooted animosity in the French psyche towards Anglo-Saxon cultural domination cannot be disputed; indeed, it has been documented and analysed for decades. Sometimes this cultural resentment finds expression in French regulations and laws, frequently described, and often denounced, by foreigners as protectionism.
Yeah, I guess Americans do give the French a pretty hard time sometimes. And I can understand a little bit of hostility towards American cultural intrusion. But banning “Facebook” and “Twitter?” That’s just burying your head in the sand.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jun 3rd, 2011.
he latest Google Webmaster Central video from Matt Cutts talks about home page content. Given issues like content depth and site speed, which Google has brought up a great deal in recent memory, the content on your home page is worth considering with regard to these things as well.
The question from a user, which Matt addresses is: “More or less content on a homepage?”
“You can have too much,” says Cutts. “So I wouldn’t have a homepage that has 20MB. You know, that takes a long time to download, and users who are on a dial-up or a modem, a slow connection, they’ll get angry at you.”
“But in general, if you have more content on a home page, there’s more text for Googlebot to find, so rather than just pictures, for example, if you have pictures plus captions – a little bit of textual information can really go a long way,” he continues.
“If you look at my blog, I’ve had anywhere from 5 to 10 posts on my main page at any given time, so I tend to veer towards a little more content when possible,” he adds.
You can see Matt’s blog here, if you want a better idea of how he does it.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jun 8th, 2011.
Yesterday, Google introduced Instant Pages (among several other things), which is a new upcoming feature of Chrome that will instantly load a search result, when Google is confident that it is the one the user is going to click on. It does this by “prerendering” the page, or starting to load it even while you’re still on the results page, so it appears much more quickly when you actually do click on it.
The above video demonstrates this, and shows how much faster it can be compared to when you’re clicking from a normal Google search. It’s an impressive concept, but it has raised a few questions. We had a good one in the comments of a previous article we ran on the subject. AL wrote:
I am wondering if this is going to impact our site analytics. If they retrieve the entire page – html, images, etc… – then would they not also trigger a visitor in our analytics, whether a visitor does or doesn’t visit our page?
If so, that would skew even the most basic of KPIs, including bounce rate which could be a ranking signal.
Another reader, Nick Stamoulis, added:
That’s a really interesting thought. Since the page is pre-loading, does that get recorded as a visitor? If the user doesn’t click on the link, will that impact the bounce rate?
As we had not seen Google address this directly, we reached out to the company to get some more insight into how this works. A Google spokesperson tells WebProNews:
Most website analytics solutions assume that one page load is equivalent to one user “impression,” or page view. Although google.com only issues the prerender hint when it is confident that it knows where the user will click, in some cases it will mispredict, resulting in a page that has appeared to load but was never actually shown to the user. Although this will happen relatively rarely, in some cases it is important for the webpage to know.
Chrome has implemented a new API called the page visibility API that, among other things, allows websites to detect when they’re being prerendered. You can learn more about that API at our Using the Page Visibility API article.
Analytics and advertising solutions will have to be updated to take account of prerendering via the page visibility API. In most cases the end site owner shouldn’t have to make any modifications to his page; the 3rd party will simply make a minor change to the javascript that is pulled into publishers’ pages. You should check with your analytics or advertising providers to check if their scripts are prerendering-aware.
Interesting, and helpful to know. I’m assuming that most major analytics providers will adjust accordingly, but it is definitely something to be aware of.
The Instant Pages technology is currently in the Chrome Dev Channel, and will be rolling out in Chrome beta this week, with stable and mobile releases coming in the coming weeks. Today, Google’s first Chrome OS Chromebooks became available for consumers.
Filed under Internet Marketing by on Jun 10th, 2011.
