Tag Archives: social media

August 18, 2016 · 12:41 pm

Quit Pushing Me

We discuss engagement in this space fairly often. I’ve made no bones about the fact that I’m a believer in The Cluetrain Manifesto and that markets are conversations. Think about a conversation you’d have at a bar or a party. You would listen at least as much as you spoke and you probably wouldn’t keep tossing random lines at people, especially if those lines are only about you. Now let’s look at a piece of research.

According to The Future of Content: Rethinking Content Consumption, a national survey report, consumers want to discover digital content on their own and are skeptical of brands pushing online ads through interruptive channels. Rapt Media, recently surveyed an audience of more than 1,000 consumers to understand how content discovery is driving the content personalization trend.

Insights reveal consumers want personalized content experiences that are meaningful, helpful and valuable to their specific needs and interests. But equally important is their empowerment in discovering it on their own. The younger millennial generation is especially mistrusting of brands pushing interruptive online ads.

Key findings from the survey include:

● 95% take action to avoid seeing or receiving online ads
● 5% say ads influence their purchase decisions
● 57% of millennials block ad content because it is too pushy
● 43% say online ads are not personalized to their interests, but 62% say the content they discover on their own is personalized
● 61% say that even if content is customized, they still prefer to find it on their own
● 46% say content they find on their own influences their purchase decisions

I especially like this quote: “Programmatic push messaging is implicit personalization perceived by consumers as irrelevant and inauthentic.” Yep. The findings confirm that consumers have come to expect content personalization along with the opportunity to shape their own experience, so why are we spending time and resources on doing anything that delivers an experience other than that? Maybe we need to make our business behavior more like our cocktail party behavior (and who has ever pondered THAT before?)?

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July 6, 2016 · 9:22 am

Open Your Ears

First things first: I swear this post isn’t about golf.ClickZ

I recently joined a new golf club. What has impressed me so far has been the proactive customer service.  After almost every round I receive a quick (5 questions) survey about my experience at the club that day. Was the course in good shape? The food ok? Any staff issues? I also received a survey last week since it was the end of a half-year. That was a more in-depth questionnaire (but not burdensome). I know, by the way, that these are being read because I made a comment on one of them and the club GM sought me out to answer it in person after my next round. I’ll admit that this is an extreme and I can see where it might be annoying for many consumers to have a follow-up post-mortem after each interaction.

I’ll also admit that I’m baffled by the companies that ignore the basic customer feedback mechanisms they already have in place. Name a business without a Twitter account or a Facebook page or at least a website with a “contact us” button. Pretty hard to do. Yet studies show that 45% of consumers will abandon a purchase if they can’t get answers to their questions. They use social channels to get them and yet businesses keep ignoring them. At least a third of these interactions go unanswered.

So in the words of the Jerky Boys, open your ears, jackass. As you can see in the graphic from ClickZ, the differences in long-term results for a business are very tied to how that business services its customers. Negative experiences have ripples as dissatisfied folks tell their friends, post reviews, and go elsewhere. If they’re doing so via social channels, and most are, then isn’t it incumbent upon every business to listen and react? Especially to the customers who come to you for a response first?

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June 30, 2016 · 11:15 am

You Need To Own It

Since today is something called “Social Media Day” (when is it not?), I’d be remiss if I wrote about something other than a big topic in social media. Depending on your perspective, Facebook announced something yesterday that will either have you jumping for joy or throwing your hands up in frustration. As they put it in their announcement:

Facebook logo Español: Logotipo de Facebook Fr...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We’ve heard from our community that people are still worried about missing important updates from the friends they care about. For people with many connections this is particularly important, as there are a lot of stories for them to see each day. So we are updating News Feed over the coming weeks so that the things posted by the friends you care about are higher up in your News Feed.

Can’t get enough of those pet pictures, I know.  But if you’re a publisher who has carefully cultivated a Facebook community over the last few years, this is really bad news. It decreases the likelihood that your audience will see your posts. When Facebook has become the source of a significant portion of your traffic (research says in the 40% range for many publishers), that’s not good. As an aside, there is more good information on this here.

Of course, the cynic in me wants to remind you that one can always purchase traffic from Facebook via ads and that despite Facebook’s statements that this is only to serve users who want to see those pet photos, it’s really a move to generate more ad activity. That’s fine. Facebook is there to serve its shareholders and it’s a business.

What this should also serve to do is to remind us that we need to own the audience and the platform. We can’t rely on third parties such as Facebook or Google to keep our communities (and content) front and center.  History tells us that the rules will change and that those platforms will come and go (Friendster, MySpace). Your community isn’t a bunch of bedouins who will decamp and follow you anywhere.

I’m always amused when a client asks if they should invest less on their own website and more on building a presence on third parties. You can guess my answer: own it! Do you?

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