My talk about Social Media for Small Business Owners along with Morgan Johnston of Jet Blue was a huge success. I went in wondering if I needed to down a few shots of vodka before giving my talk, but turned out that I had a very attentive audience who was hungry to learn! And how!
Like I mentioned earlier, I wanted to focus on talk on giving SBO’s a framework to think about their social media strategies. I still think that was the right approach. The crowd was a mix of SBO’s at all levels – there were folks who had no idea what Twitter or a Fan Page was and folks who were still wondering how to use Linkedin.com to grow their business. While I found most of the attendees very warm and eager to learn, it was a little disheartening when a few still referred to social media as a quick solution to “send more traffic” to their site. You can’t lose weight without working out- how can you then gain the benefits social media offers without putting the time and effort into it?!
Anyways, here is the final presentation that I shared with the SBOs:
I’ve read about ChatRoutlette.com a lot and even spent a few awkward moments on the site. I think a Twitter friend summed it best when he described the site as the online red light district.
The experience on Chatroulette.com is eerily similar to the ICQ.com days – where you’d enter a room, vet each other out virtually and maybe share a few meaningful lines of conversation. Atleast on ICQ.com, you could hide behind a cloak of anonymity.
I’ve kept clicking next and the weirdest assortment of strangers from all over the world whizzed one after another on my screen. A creepy bald, old man, an excited college kid from Holland, a girl with her underwear in focus, and the list goes on. I shared perhaps five lines with a kid before clicking next.
Its remarkable that a young kid in Russia created this site – unsure of how it would be used and how people will react to it. And even though I’m not seventeen, there’s a part of me that is entirely fascinated by this site and the idea of meeting strangers on it. danah boyd expresses it better than me when she says,
I used to love the randomness of the Internet. I can’t tell you how formative it was for me to grow up talking to all sorts of random people online. So I feel pretty depressed every time I watch people flip out about the dangers of talking to strangers. Strangers helped me become who I was. Strangers taught me about a different world than what I knew in my small town. Strangers allowed me to see from a different perspective. Strangers introduced me to academia, gender theory, Ivy League colleges, the politics of war, etc. So I hate how we vilify all strangers as inherently bad. Did I meet some sketchballs on the Internet when I was a teen? DEFINITELY. They were weird; I moved on.
I’m not sure that immature folks of any age (or the easily grossed out) should be on this site. But I do hope that we can create a space where teens and young adults and the rest of us can actually interact with randomness again. There’s a cost to our social isolation and I fear that we’re going to be paying it for generations to come.
Personally, the Internet hasn’t taken away any randomness from my life. The only difference is that this randomness how has a context to it, whether its the six degrees of separation or knowing enough about a person from simply googling them. It is still an act of measured serendipity to come across strangers who actually are not.
Also, I don’t think ChatRoulette has evolved into the kind of platform that can sustain anything more than a brief curiosity yet. And that is OK with me. I do agree with boyd that all strangers are not inherently bad, however, it this Internet age, it might be handy to have an internal radar that urges you to click “next,” when something is just not right.
I think I may play around a little bit more with ChatRoulette. I want to try it with a bunch of friends on the screen to see the experience that gives me. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts about CR as well.
I’m giving a talk next week at Asian Women in Business about Social media for small business owners. Over the last few months, I’ve been thinking a lot about what my point-of-view is regarding social media for SBO’s. I don’t for a minute doubt the value social media provides any business. However, I want to be cognizant of the fact that social media, like any other business channel, requires immense time, resources and investment for limited tangible results. And I wonder if that is a hard sell for a SBO.
I’ve been interviewing and speaking with SBO’s since the last few days and am hearing mixed opinions. Most SBO’s see immediate value in social media but the results don’t often match up to their expectations. And mostly that comes from a case of misguided expectations.
There is a LOT of information on the Internet for SBO’s interested in using social media. But just sifting through it and reading about it can be overwhelming and cause action – paralysis. I don’t want my presentation to be just another talk crowding the web. While there is no one-size fits all approach when it comes to social media, I do want to provide my audiences with a strategic framework to think about social media.
I just wanted to jot down some thoughts here before I begin framing them into a presentation. I’d love feedback and ideas on making this better.
1. What you don’t know about social media: Social media is old news. This talk is not a SM 101/ but lets start with a reality check. Yes, we’ve heard the astounding numbers. 350 Mil+ users on Facebook. 50M on Twitter. etc etc. But what you might not know is this – only 5% of people on Twitter create 75% of the conversations on it. 85% of iphone users use only between 2-4 applications. (So hold your horses before you invest 50% of your marketing budget into a new application)
Bottomline: Share of attention is difficult to achieve UNLESS there is a compelling value proposition.
2. Lets talk about you. Have a clear understanding of your business goals and then think about how social media platforms can help you achieve them. You are not Dell. You are not Zappos. What are YOU trying to achieve from social media? Entertainment networks use social media to drive tune-in and awareness; Magazines use social media to increase readership and build audiences; the korean BBQ Truck uses Twitter to drive foot-traffic and inform its fans of the truck’s locations. And other retail brands use facebook and Foursquare to drive sales and promotions. What is your business goal and is it something that social media can help you achieve it?
What are then some of the goals that SM can help you achieve? From a sales POV – social media can give you a terrific understanding of your customers; help you build thought leadership in you area of business/ expertise and help occupy mindshare. Social media also offers a more direct advantage in terms of driving promotions, foot traffic, sales and positive reviews. (Think yelp.com twitter.com and foursquare.com) The usual arc into success in social media is 1) build audiences 2) to drive awareness and 3) ultimately inspire action.
3. Understand your audience. This is important. Once you have your goals clearly outlined, think about your audiences and where they enjoy spending time on the Interwebs. Are they talking about you or your competitors somewhere? Are they they just a handful or are they in droves?
4. Prioritize your investment. What’s right for your business? Each platform helps you achieve specific objectives. Linked in with business networking, Twitter with customer service, relationship building, Facebook with fan engagement.
5. Rules of Execution.
No overnight results: The amount of time you invest in social media is directly proportional to the results you can expect from social media: Setting up a Facebook page of Twitter profile isn’t enough.
Not about the numbers: Not yet anyways. Focus on the quality of your interactions not the quantity. An entertainment client of ours has 30K less followers on Twitter than its competitor. In spite of this, our client tweets are just as re-tweeted (slightly more often, in fact) as the competitor tweets.
Measure. Optimize. Adapt. The beauty of social media is real-time results. Twitter is still far limited in providing results – but Facebook gives you the opportunity to track progress, see what’s working and what’s not and make changes in real time.
This is a work in progress. But any thoughtful comments and constructive criticism will be super helpful.
Social media is evolving from an engagement platform to an ecommerce platform.
With the year ending, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I was and what I was doing around this time last year. In December 2008, I was presenting to all my clients a Twitter 101 deck and giving them a practical, logical reasoning of why they should consider jumping on Twitter. Fastforward 12 months and my agency is not only running and growing over 10 Twitter feeds for our clients, but we’ve gathered a rich historical database of our results.
I want to try and imagine now, how the next 12 months are going to surprise me and knock the breath out of me. Social media and it’s evolution excites me. And for 2010, I’m putting my stake in the ground for E-commerce.
We are going to witness a major shift in how we approach social media. 2010 is going to demand stronger measuring tactics and more importantly, tangible results. Brand building, awareness, buzz and fan activation are important goals but clients and agencies alike will now push for more tangible goals: sales. A direct increase in revenue.
Dell just announced today that it credits about $6.5 million of its revenues to Twitter. Dell’s aggregate presence on social media (Facebook & Twitter) and its own community sites (Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm) has 3.5 Million + fans and followers that have collectively contributed to the $6.5 Mil rev. achieved.
What’s important to consider is the astounding growth (more than double!) in just three months following Dell’s announcement in June at having reached a 3 Mil revenue mark. Will the numbers reach 12 Million+ by 2010 ?
Granted $6.5 Million is a tiny piece of Dell’s $60 Billion revenues – but the unparalleled (100%+) growth in just three months alone is worth noting.
We are just beginning to see the potential of driving sales through social media.
Another point to consider:
As financial and human-resources investment in social media continues to grow, it will only get more time-intensive and expensive for a brand to push their audiences to three different web-based destinations: 1) It’s own website 2) It’s Facebook profile and 3) It’s Twitter page.
I think by late 2010, it will be fair to expect brands to start prioritizing their investment and efforts, and arguably giving first preference to its social media destinations. I know it sounds far-fetched. The idea that a brand’s website can be completely cannibalized by its social media presences seems preposterous, but it just makes sense to me logically.
If I can grow the impact of my brand and my revenues ten times faster on the social web than via my website – why wouldn’t I just put more resources into my Facebook page?
Also, it is a LOT to ask a customer to fan you, follow you and also sign up for your email newsletter. Ecommerce needs to get streamlined – content needs to get streamlined.
On it Facebook page, 1800 Flowers accepts payments with all major credit cards and will soon implement Facebook’s proprietary payment platform. (Although the company only has about 8000 fans on its page (and not much fan activity – but that you can attribute to the fact that 1800 Flowers it not exactly what you’d call a passion brand.)
A friend of mine who works at a luxury fashion brand informed me that her company is “definitely” selling products on Facebook starting 2010. Facebook is one of their strongest focus for next year.
These are just my top level thoughts on a topic that is going to become very important and talked about next year. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. If you are a brand, I want to know more about how you are looking at measuring success in social media. Let’s keep this discussion going!
I’ve been closely following newsletter marketing these days – while it’s tough to find out exact response rates and gauge effectiveness, I try to judge each newsletter from my own lens, or its uniqueness.
I found LifeBooker via a Facebook Ad and signed up for their deals and newsletter. Just today I recieved this email in mail promoting their free $12 gift certificate code.
What’s interesting to me is that LifeBooker shared information on how other customers used to code, thereby, booking massively discounted spa and haircut deals.
While the newsletter could use design more powerfully to convey this information, I thought it was really smart that they shared some ‘voyeristic’ data. That certainly got my attention.
What do you think? Have you seen other clever and unique newsletter marketing techniques?
Ben Malbon and team of BBH Labs has an amazing, thought-provoking discussion on Twitter and the future of it.
Here is the comment I posted on the blog: (Read the main post first!)
I think there are two lenses to have this conversation from: a personal lens and a business lens.
On the personal front, I think Maria phrased it the best. Curiosity and Credibility -also lets not forget instant gratification that this medium allows us. From a theoretical POV, I can also argue, vanity and a kind of cultural megalomania (look how funny my tweets are, or how cool the links I share are)
Whatever the reasons, they pander to the very basic human instinct and we respond to them. I think these responses are also quite evident on Facebook (rememeber how everyone had the ‘Places I have visited’ and the ‘Books I have read’ applications installed when the aps first premiered? ) However, on Twitter – the gratification is on steroids! The speed, the quickness, the instant-ness…
I think what Twitter has done, is made us as human beings incredibly self-aware. We have come to realize the power of our words, our curatorial abilities and our personalities – and because it is so easily manifested on Twitter, I think this is just the beginning. As Twitter evolves, we too, will evolve how we use it.
On the business front, I personally think the answer has never been clearer or simpler. I believe that brands and entrepreneurs are coming to accept that perhaps, the only value with investing time and resources on Twitter is that of a direct connection with the customers. Cliched, but I cannot think of a single social technology that has made customer service so incredibly simple or relevant.
As a collective Twitter community, we have also evolved from the obsessive need to gain ‘followers’ and ‘follow’ people back. Infact, now if I see someone following everyone that follows them – they lose a little bit of credibility with me. It goes to show that they are not curating the information they receive – only paying attention to the information they send out.
It is OK for brands to follow / harness only their audiences. They don’t and shouldn’t feel obligated anymore to follow everyone back. The barriers to entry on Twitter are only diminishing – So in that respect – I believe for brands and businesses, this is just the beginning.
No. I don’t think this is the end of the beginning. Early-adopters such as ourselves may move on to some other technology, but that does not mean Twitter has peaked. We early adopters moved on from Hi5 and Friendster – but those networks continue to thrive. Albeit, with a different audience, but they are successful.
Early adopters like us are never the sole/ target audience of any new technology. Also, any new technology takes atleast a few years before it finds who the ‘monetiziable’ audience is and eventually, it evolves into pandering to that audience. More often than not, early adopters are not that audience.
About monetizing Twitter itself – that’s a question I think everyone is interested in watching how and when that will happen.
I’ve been aware of this nifty little tool (Thanks to Jazmin) for some time now and everyday, I think – today, is the day when one of the massive beauty companies (read: L’oreal, Estee Lauder, P&G, LVMH) are going to license this technology and build it into their website. Why wouldn’t a color cosmetics company jump on this technology and install it on their own website and give women the ability and the freedom to sample the different colors?
Color cosmetics, like food, are products that people (read: women) need to touch, feel and sample. God knows, how many shades of blushes and lipstick I’ve had to try on my face before I found the one that looked good. And the funny part is that the one I end up buying was the one recommended by the MAC makeup specialist. I would have never thought that the color she recommended would look good on me. The point is, this tool would be a life-savior.
Sometimes I think that, while the social web is about connections, relationships and conversations – technology that enhances my experience with a brand will connect me better to it, definitely earn my loyalty and you know me – I will gloat about them The future of marketing cosmetics and beauty is not just about a facebook fan page and some blogger buzz – it is about actually using technology to solve the challenges of your business while making the end-experience a hundred fold more beneficial for your customers.
Btw, I am also surprised that taaz.com only has about 15.2K visitors/month. (Quantcast) Is it because not many women know about it? Is it because while women CAN experiment with the products and try on makeovers, they actually CANNOT buy the products that work directly from teh site?
I’d love to hear your thoughts – and what you think about taaz.com.
* Taaz.com is developed by a San Diego based photo enhancement company called, Photometria Inc.
UPDATE: Deepu John, VP of Marketing at Taaz.com was kind enough to reach out to me upon reading this article and further clarify some of the points I made above.
I thought I should answer your question about TAAZ from my perspective. In reality TAAZ has had Millions of women try the experience since we launched. Taaz.com has indeed received millions of site visitors. Taaz.com has also partnered with instyle.com to power their Hollywood Hair Makeover (http://www.instyle.com/instyle/makeover). They also worked with Sephora and powered the makeover aspect of Sephora’s 2008 Holiday Ecard, “Mistletoe Makeover” at http://mistletoemakeover.com
I have written previously about monetizing online communities. To sum it up, my point was that communities do not convert into paying customers unless the expectation is set at the very beginning. The recent Yelp.com extortion scam further strengthens my point. Yelp.com is not yet a profitable company – its primary source of revenue is advertising. As the primary user-review site, I did trust yelp.com implicitly with its customer recommendations. However, having learned today that yelp.com actually tampers with the reviews (pays employees to write reviews, gives a negative review to business who decline to advertise with yelp.com and gives positive reviews to companies that advertise with them) – I will never again trust the veracity of the reviews on that site.
It is a mockery of consumer trust and the implicit rules of social networking and social technologies. Like the Creative Commons Act – this may not yet be written in stone, but dude – tampering with user reviews is dishonest, faulty and plain despicable.
Social networking/ social media companies – I beg you. Please have a business model in place first. Then go attract your users.
Don’t get me wrong – I do think that as a community of thinkers and entrepreneurs, we will only learn by taking risks and making such mistakes. But personally, I’m becoming less and less enchanted by social networks that essentially offer variations of the same service – but do not do the right due-diligence and research to have a sound plan behind it.Ultimately, this is what happens then. Oh yes, we’ve generated a terrific user base- NOW- lets go to investors and get the money. And THEN lets figure out how to make money off this. How can you do business like that?!
We talk so much about old business models dying and how social technologies is re-defining how we do business. Agreed- but I still think there’s a lesson or two to be learned from the old-school folks. For Yelp.com -what’s the point of bringing in thousands of users, establishing trust with your users and then fooling them like this? The sad thing is, unless this story reaches critical mass – users will continue to flock to yelp.com, trusting its recommendations.
I wish brands would understand that a social network is not a solution to their problem. Heck, most brands don’t even do a good job of properly identifying the problem first. As I see it, they find a new media solution first (whether it is a facebook fan page, a social network or even twitter) and then they frame the problem around it.
Facebook – the savior
Yes. I sincerely believe this. At work, I have two windows constantly open other than my work email: my personal email and Facebook. With their new “Like and Share” features, it is diminishing my need to go to a digg.com or a reddit.com – and instead derive satisfaction from sharing items with MY friends. There has been a lot of debate abou their TOCs lately – Give those guys a break. They are doing their best too – to figure out how to make money while staying true to the community. What I love most about Facebook is that while they experiment with different business and revenue models, they are quick to react, communicate and apologize to their community as and when need be.
Anyways, these were totally unfiltered thoughts brimming around in my head after reading that Yelp.com scam news today. Feel free to agree/disagree.
My biggest pet peeve is coming into my inbox with friend requests from names I don’t recognize AT ALL.
This post has been a long time in the coming. I am a little pissed off right now because I am struggling with handling the facebook conundrum. Facebook has unfortunately liquidated the meaning / definition of “friend.” I still view Facebook as a personal domain. While, thankfully, I have the option to select and adjust privacy settings per user, it still takes a certain level of personal comfort and familiarity for me to be bold enough to request someone’s friendship and for me to accept someone’s friend request.
Everytime I recieve a friend request that I don’t recognize, I message back and ask : Do I know you. Today, perhaps, I just tipped over my threshold and the response I recieved really really pissed me off. I received a notification on Twitter last night about this person following me. I didn’t find their Twitter feed interesting – so I didn’t follow them back. Then this afternoon, I received a friend request from them. I thought that perhaps I might have met the person and was blanking on the name/ face so as I always do, I asked them: Do I know you. And here’s the response I received.
(Redacted) : followed u on twitter
My response: Not to be rude – but following me on Twitter is not the same as being my friend on Facebook. Please be mindful of people’s privacy and if you want to friend someone, at the very least – write a note explaining why or the association. You can network with me on linkedin or twitter if you like. I don’t know you well enough to friend you here.
WOW. That just annoyed me.
My goal with being on Facebook is not to collect friends, but to strengthen my already existing social relationships. Unfortnately there are no rules to friending people and making new friends – its just that each of us has a different agenda that should be respected, irrespective of what it might be. And the reason why I invest my time asking, ‘Do I know you’ every single time I recieve a friend request from a stranger is because I have been very glad of the times I have accepted a relative stranger into my friend fold simply because they took the time to answer my question sincerely and honestly. Thats the kind of people I want to enrich my life with – not the ones who think sending me a half-assed phrase as a reason to be my friend.
Maybe I have a very high opinion of myself, maybe every sentence here is hypocritical, but I stand by it. I have not yet sent a TOTAL stranger a friend request – and if and when I do – I guarantee you I will make a strong case of why I should be their friend.
These are random and slightly haphazard, so bear with me.
I’ve been part of a few discussions the last few weeks that have resulted into me going back home with the ultimate question in mind: how do you monetize a community? Or rather – can a community even be monetized?
Everyone is trying to do this – from our clients to startups and even Facebook (did you see that Facebook’s internal evaluation went down to $4Billion from the earlier estimation of $12.5 Billion?)
The only successful case-study that I can think of is Threadless.com. They have nailed the revenue model and the community aspect both – a feat very difficult to achieve in today’s web world. Also, they have done so without really relying on “Advertsing” or “subscription” (the most commonly resorted to rev. models for communities)
I have a theory as to why they are so successful: threadless.com set the expectations from their community from the very beginning.
Threadless was in the business of selling T-Shirts that people will want to buy. That’s it. The way they find out what people will want to buy is by soliciting designs and having others vote on them which has resulted into a strong community around the core proposition. (Which, btw is not revolutionary – this is how traditionally communities have formed around products, movies, stores etc. – The expectation is always set) In these cases, communities may also stand for “fans”
When I look at some of the recent start-ups and existing networks, – it clearly comes off as these sites were started to 1) build a community first and 2) figure out a rev. model then.
The risk these companies run with such a model is that the expectation for the community is already set: the community already believes that this is a free service and they begin to conform/ expect and fall in love with that frame of reference.
Once you try to change that frame of reference, you risk uspetting or even losing your community or your fans. And rightfully so – because you are trying to change the core product that the community first fell in love with.
Which is why, it only took Threadless 3 years to make profit and neither of the companies stated above are even breaking even yet.
Which is also why, I think Opensource and crowdsoucring and “Free” are the domains of companies that already have money and are not particularly expecting to see a return on investment. I also think Opensource is a fantastic domain, and possibly, should become the only domain for social good/ social design and social causes. When the collective agenda is to ultimately “do good” – concepts like open source and crowdsourcing are not only incredibly useful, but also cost-effective.
However, for a first-time entrepreneur (like majority of cases) I’m not convinced that Opensource or even “community” is a way to go. While having a community of supporters is incredibly instrumental for any new business, I’m not convinced that this community will convert into paying customers unless the expectation is set at the very beginning.
And lastly, for corporations and clients – I think every established company or organization already has a built-in community. The job of social media/ web is to bring together this community under one umbrella (or at the very least, be findable when they come looking for you) and treat them well and continue the relationship.
Dell just announced today that it credits about 
ting in this direction. Earlier this year, 
I’ve been closely following newsletter marketing these days – while it’s tough to find out exact response rates and gauge effectiveness, I try to judge each newsletter from my own lens, or its uniqueness.