Tag Archives: social media

April 15, 2013 · 10:55 am

Four Misunderstandings About Social Media

As you’ve probably aware if you’ve spent any time here on the screed, I take a great interest in how business folks think about social media.

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I am one of those people who believe that over time the word “social” will vanish as all media becomes more social and what we classify today as “social” media becomes more mainstream (although I’m not sure how Facebook could become more mainstream when it seems damn near everyone is on it!).  How businesses can use social media is one of the areas in which I advise clients and so I took great interest in an info-graphic I came across the other day entitled “How Small Businesses Are Using Social Media (and why they may be getting it wrong).  If you click through I think you’ll find some good information on it but you’ll also find four terrible misunderstandings.

In the section labelled “Why Small Businesses Are Using Social Media” there are four points.  Each one is, I guess, something that these businesses believe to be true.  Unfortunately, they’re not.  Take point one:  it’s inexpensive.  Sure the tools are free but supporting your business on each platform is not free.  In fact, to do social well and to cover all the potential social bases (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+ for starters) in an active way that will engage your customers requires planning, writing, and responding.  It all takes time, and as we all know, time is money.

Point two: it’s easy to use.  Another half truth although I’m sure businesses believe it.   The tools are not overly complicated but creating great, engaging content is hard, as you can probably tell from the attempts to do so in this space.

Point three:  their customers use social media.  Yes they do, but as the term “media” indicates  they’re in a lot of places doing so.  The aforementioned “big” guys are just the tip of the iceberg, and new players emerge and grow every day.  Reddit, Vine, and Stumble Upon are just three places where a lot of the customers are but the brands aren’t.  Add to that the fact that to gain any sort of visibility with the majority of your customers on the big guys (Facebook and Twitter in particular) requires you to be a paying customer.  So much for “free.”

Point four:  It doesn’t take a lot of time.  Totally wrong unless you add “to do it badly” to the end of that phrase.  Supporting multiple platforms with engaging content and responding to consumer interactions takes a lot of time – ask any of the brands that do social media well.

That’s my take – what’s yours?

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March 18, 2013 · 10:02 am

Social Is As Social Does

Let’s start the week with a little food for thought.  I came across a great report from the Altimeter Group concerning how businesses evolve around social.  The report makes a distinction between companies implementing a social media strategy and those that are building a social business.  It’s really an eye-opener, especially the finding that just 34% say there are clear metrics used throughout the organization that associate social activities with business outcomes.  Then again, given how too many businesses are always chasing the next shiny object without considering how or if it works for their enterprise, maybe it isn’t.

Here is how they made the distinction between social strategy ad social business:

A social media strategy lays out the channels, platforms, and tactics to support publishing, listening, and engagement. A social business strategy is the integration of social technologies and processes into business values, processes, and practices to build relationships and spark conversations inside and outside the organization, creating value and optimizing impact for customers and the business alike. The most important criteria for a successful social business strategy are twofold: clear alignment with the strategic business goals of an organization AND organizational alignment and support that enables execution of that strategy. However, in a survey conducted by Altimeter of social strategists and executives, only 34% felt that their social strategy was connected to business outcomes.

Yes, I said that last point a second time – I think it’s that important!  It gets to the first of the success factors of a successful social business strategy:

The biggest cause of social strategy failure was the lack of alignment around business objectives. Businesses that uncover the gap between business objectives, social media strategies, and internal challenges and opportunities will open dialogue that both closes the gaps and creates alignment in the process.

The report goes on to list six others:  Having a Long-term vision for becoming a social business, key executive support, having a roadmap in place for all your initiatives along with a timeline, process discipline and ongoing education, staffing properly, and choosing technology only after strategy is set.  Each one of those points would make a fine topic for a longer post but it’s a pretty good checklist from which to work.

I encourage you to read the report a couple of times and let me know what you think.

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February 27, 2013 · 11:07 am

Influence and Spending

I always look at research with an eye toward the axe the researcher is grinding. The fact that a survey is conducted to prove a point doesn’t necessarily negate the value of the findings but it does mean we have to be careful about how questions were asked. That said, I took a look at a study released by the folks at Technorati Media called the Digital Influence Report.  It takes a look at the role “influencers” have on purchase decisions and how brands are spending to reach the influencers.  I guess the thinking is that if these folks like your product they’ll drive their friends and followers to make a purchase.
Technorati‘s axe to grind is that they sell ads on blogs.  They’ve put together target segments of bloggers.  Not surprisingly, one characteristic of the aforementioned “influencers” is “Influencers are most active on blogs, as 86 percent say they have them and 88 percent of those say they blog for themselves.”   However, even with an axe to grind, the point is a good one.

For as long as I’ve been in media (since the late 1970’s, thank you) someone is trying to make the point that the audience/spending equation is out of whack.  The argument is always “we’ve got X% of the audience and yet we’re only getting Y% of the budget and we should be getting a lot more.”  There’s truth in that although it does ignore a few key factors:  environment, cost/value ratios, and others.  In this case, the food chain look like this:  spending against social media is about 10% of the digital spend, and spending against influencers is roughly 6% of social.  In other words, it’s tiny, especially compared to the influence these people have against purchase decisions.  As you can see on the chart I’ve embedded, 32% of consumers identify a blog as a source most likely to influence a purchase decision.

We can debate the merits of this particular study but I think the point is a good one.  There is too much of a herd mentality when it comes to advertising and that appears to be the case in social advertising as well. Blogs have as much influence as Facebook but Facebook gets more than half of all spending against social.  In part that’s due to its ubiquity.  In part that’s due to the “safety” factor – you don’t get fired for buying a market leader and it’s a much easier sell when the higher-ups have actually heard of the medium you’re buying

I take all research with a grain of salt.  That doesn’t mean I don’t believe it but we should always try to get beyond the intent (or bias!) of the researcher and into the good stuff that might be hidden inside through our own evaluation.  What do you think?

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