Facebook ‘Likes’ – a license to be pushy

So the new currency for the web is Facebook ‘Likes’. It seems as if brands and services are falling over themselves to get people to like them as if their lives – and livelihood – depended upon it.

But that’s no excuse to abandon the tried and trusted rules of engagement with your consumers.

Still, that’s what seems to be happening. Brands are demanding that you like them for no other reason than they are a ‘brand’. I thought the whole point was that you earned a friendship?

Dale Carnegie, author of ‘How to win friends and influence people‘, wrote the following back in 1936:

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

How relevant is that quote a full 75 years later?

I like CrazyBuzz! Not.

Today, a friend on Facebook shared a video on his wall: “Ronaldinho humiliates his teammate during warming up!” Being a football fan, I clicked through, hoping to see some piece of magical, mind-bogglingly good skill. Instead, I was greeted with this.

CrazyBuzz - Like this video. Errr, no thanks...

Excuse me? What? You want me to like you, even though this is the first time I’ve been to your site and I’ve never viewed any of your content? This is just wrong. Social Media doesn’t work this way and it constantly amazes me that people haven’t got to grips with this.

And this isn’t the only time I’ve experienced this. A few days ago I was contacted by a a well-known agency network – I won’t mention them by name in this case – who wanted me to like their new Facebook page. Again, there was no attempt to tell me why I should do this, or any invitation to sample the page to see if I thought it was of value to me. Instead they started their email by giving me instructions of how to create a Facebook account and ‘like’ their page. It’s a clumsy and heavy-handed approach, and could do real damage to the brand’s perception.

Changing our approach

Yes, there are precedents in Marketing practice. The tried and trusted method of offering whitepapers and other resources in return for supplying your details is still used today. But in a content-led web, the effectiveness of these ploys is questionable. It takes content with a high perceived value to generate the response, and even then we (as marketers) tend to offer freely available content prior to this point. In a digital world where Social Media is growing ever more dominant, organisations must adapt their approaches to be more sensitive to the needs of the consumer. They are now in charge of the conversation, and to earn their trust and their support you have to make it worth their while. Going back to Dale Carnegie, the way to gain ‘Likes’ is to show interest in them through providing meaningful and useful content.

Following my experience with Scribd, I had hoped that I’d be spared this kind of thing for a while, but it seems not. We still have a long way to go, and I’m sure there will be many mistakes along the way. But they are avoidable mistakes and some simple preparation and reading will arm organisations against them. After all, it’s not as if you need an expert…

Have you had any similar experiences? I’d be interested in hearing about them.

Why digital marketing is like my local

Okay, I’ve got a confession to make. A few years back I used to be the captain of a darts team, playing every Tuesday in a league. I wasn’t very good, but as I was capable of organising things I got the job by default.

Putting that to one side, being captain of the team and a regular at the pub had its advantages. I was well-known – in fact I still am, even though I haven’t been a regular for years – and that brought its privileges. They knew what I drank, I’d get my name up on the board for a game as soon as I walked in, and I was never short of someone to chat to.

So being a regular at a pub is like digital marketing.

Not my local pub... there's no werewolves there as far as I know...

Are you still with me? I know that last statement seems a little bit of a stretch. I promise I’ll make up for it.

Every visit I made, the people there learned a little bit more about me. They collected data, building up a picture of my likes and dislikes, my past and my present. It’s that data that they used to create a welcoming, but not too intrusive experience every time I went there (whether they knew it or not).

A few weeks back at SXSW, Reid Hoffman, the founder of business social networking site LinkedIn, said that Web 3.0 was all about the data.  But the thing is, the web – and digital marketing – has always been about the data. From its humble beginnings at CERN to the present day the web has been about the exchange of information; only the type of data has changed, from documents to social and personal. As users, we’re now involved in a quid pro quo arrangement that says ‘you give me some of your data and I’ll share my personal data with you’.

It’s true to say that offline marketing is about the data as well; the very existence of CRM systems pays testimony to that fact. But it’s the ease by which we can collect data online that is so compelling. There’s no manual collection and processing of returned direct mail, no manual data entry every time a phone call is completed. It’s so easy to collect data in a digital environment that we’re really getting spoilt. Despite concerns over privacy – which Facebook is never far away from – Internet users are more and more ready to share information with the established social networks. Using tools such as Facebook’s Graph API we can start to use this data too, in our own little quid pro quo with the social networks. Facebook understands a little more about the interests of its user base and we get a little bit of demographic information back in return.

The important question now is ‘How do we collect and use data in the right way?’

Let’s go back to my local pub and the experience that was created. It was welcoming, reassuring, but not obtrusive. It was a relationship based on familiarity, not stalking. Digital marketing can create the same relationship if it’s approached correctly.

Digital Marketing Data Do’s

1. Make collecting data easy – your user knows that you’re going to want to get information from them at some point, they’re not daft. When you do, make sure it is as easy as possible. Give them the opportunity to use existing logins and then supplement that if you have to. Open the door and welcome your users in.
2. Give something back – Digital marketing is about give and take. If you want users to return to your site, and by doing so give you the opportunity to learn more about them, you need to give them a reason to do so. Invest in good quality content for your core web presence. Great design is the icing on the cake, but users don’t come back simply to look at how you’ve styled your navigation elements, content is the key. If you can’t create truly original content then at least curate and comment to add value to existing content.
3. Personalise – don’t collect data if you’re not going to do anything with it. Use the information you collect to personalise the web experience. We’re not talking targeted ads here, just the ability to present relevant and engaging information to your audience. For example, use location to filter or alter content so that it is meaningful: if you present a list of shop addresses, place them in order of distance from the user’s location or alternatively just move the nearest shop to a featured position at the top of the list.
4. Respect privacy – not everyone will want to get to know you. Ensure that you make it easy for people to disengage. They want to remove their details from your database? Do it straight away and let them know, preferably whilst they’re online and with you. Transparency creates trust, and you never know, they may come back.

Digital Marketing Data Don’ts

1. Don’t be obtrusive – “Good Internet companies do not ambush their users,” said Reid Hoffman in the interview at SXSW. He’s absolutely right. Personalisation is a great tool for engaging and keeping users, but played too hard it becomes just a little creepy. Be subtle about collecting information.
2. Don’t lose the data! – the last two weeks have been full of stories about lost data, the most prominent of which has been Sony’s PSN debacle. The incident is likely to cost the company around $24 billion in compensation and lost revenue, but it will also have a massive impact on their userbase’s relationship with the brand. How much additional revenue will be lost due to people’s reticence to spend money online and trust Sony with credit card data? Only PSN’s position as the only way to play multi-player games on the PS3 will hold it steady. If it had been more dispensible the impact may have ended up being much more severe; losing or exposing your user’s data is unforgiveable.

Digital marketing presents us with an amazing opportunity to build lasting relationships with consumers online, and the potential rewards are huge, but the onus is on marketers and their clients to set the benchmarks. We have to show respect for our users and engage on their terms. Only then can we realise the benefits of true relationship marketing and keep our consumers coming back again and again.

Company websites… who cares?

Yesterday, Jeff Bullas posted a blog entitled ‘Is Facebook killing off the company website?‘ It’s based on a study by Webtrends that looks at the effect that Facebook has had on the website traffic of a selection of well-known brands. It’s a good post, and one that raises a key point, but unfortunately like some businesses it is 80% concerned with Facebook and 20% everything else. The issue here is not Facebook – internet behemoth that it is – but about the value of the company website and its place in the wider online strategy of all companies, large or small. In fact, Facebook won’t be the most relevant social network for a lot of companies, especially those without a B2C focus. The real gem inside the post is simple – make the most out of aligning all your digital assets. But how do we go about that? And what is the value of my company website in this scenario?

Taking a step back

It isn’t the 90’s anymore, but let’s pretend that it is. As businesses start to realise the value of a burgeoning internet, they are all lining to up to create their own little piece of web real estate. Things start off simple: just a name, an address, some contact details, a little blurb to say what you do. Really it’s nothing more than a glorified entry in the Yellow Pages.

Over the next decade, that online directory entry will grow and grow, getting ever more complex as businesses try to cram more information into it, desperate to be relevant to any visitor. It’s understandable though, because it’s pretty much the only place you have:it has to try to be relevant to everyone.

We’ve now reached a point where the question of relevance has changed in emphasis. Relevance isn’t just content, it’s also channel.  And as a result, the company website has to change.

What is the value of a company website?

The value of a company website lies in its authenticity. It’s the one place where the company has control, from the carefully selected domain name to the honed and polished content. At the very lowest level, if you want to find out how a company positions itself, you visit the company website.

But that’s it.

Your company website is no longer the best place to engage with prospective employees, to advertise your services, to create thought-leadership positions, or to generate leads. The explosion of social networks and other web services has meant that there are a host of specialist services available that can be utilised to increase a company’s web presence. It’s a similar scenario to digital TV; channels have become more fractured and more focused, and for each channel there is a target demographic that they are designed to exploit in a way that more generic channels cannot do.

Twitter's Fail Whale has become an iconic symbol, despite its negative connotations

Hold on, you want me to trust everybody else with my stuff!

At this point I’m sure there are a few people who are asking this; it’s a completely valid question. The answer is yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying, but you don’t need to worry about it for a number of reasons. I’m going to put my IT hat on for a moment, so bear with me.

1. The people behind a lot of the services are quite likely as well prepared for downtime as you are. Online services are always susceptible to downtime, whether from DDOS attacks , weight of traffic, hardware issues or simple human error:  the Twitter ‘Fail Whale’ has become an iconic symbol over the last 5 years. But they are businesses too, ones that rely on being able to provide high-quality outage-free services, and as such they will have structures in place to deal with these issues.
2. A distributed network of services delivering your online presence is more resistant to failure than a single site. If you have one site and its down, it’s down 100%. Having a number of independent services providing content minimizes the risk of 100% downtime. We do the same on a hardware level at our data centre; spreading elements physically across locations and logically across multiple nodes.
3. You’re not alone. Many companies have started using third-party services for online communications. The internet is the great equalizer, small or large you can use these tools to your advantage.
4. Having a third party service go down doesn’t reflect poorly on your brand, it reflects poorly on theirs.

So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t create a more distributed web presence, but how do you go about doing it?

Mapping your online real estate

The first step to working out how you create your online presence is to work out what sort of content you have. From the content you can then work out the most relevant way to present it.

Here’s a theoretical example for Acme Corp.

Acme Corp - online presence map

I’ve identified four types of content that are pertinent to my users: Social content, Positioning content, Communications content and Functional content.

Social content is about building personality around the company. Its purpose is to entice the best new employees by showing what it’s like to work here. The content is upbeat and slightly frivolous, so I’ve selected two matching online services. Facebook will be the main area for photos and stories about social events, and for sharing information that we find interesting outside of work. The main contributors will be the staff themselves. We’re also using Last.fm; music is really important to the team in the office, so we’re going to share our musical playlist with the world. Later on we might also include Spotify and Flickr.

Positioning content create a clear set of focus areas around the business. I want to create a thought leadership position around the key personnel within the business and make sure that their thoughts and opinions are heard. Personal brands are a big topic right now, so I’m going to leverage those personal brands, exposing people’s strengths and experience. For this I’m going to use LinkedIn and maybe Flavors.me (if they have a profile). To provide these people with the platform to talk I’ll use a WordPress blog, and maybe Lanyrd to spread the word if they’re speaking anywhere.

Communications content is all about publicity and PR. Whatever happens in the business, it will get published as communications content, from official press releases to office parties. Twitter is the obvious platform of choice for this.

Finally, functional content is the real nuts and bolts information. Where are we, who are we, what are our products and services. All this will go on our company website, which will form the hub of all the other services we use, pulling them altogether.

Of course, there will be an element of crossover, where we push content to other channels once in a while – using individual Twitter accounts for positioning work for instance.

As we can see from this example, there are numerous ways to blend services together to create the right online presence for your business.  And within this blend there is still room for the corporate website; we just need to be aware of what its purpose is and why people will want to visit it.

Maybe it is the 90’s again?

Well, it might be for the company website at least. It’s time to go back to the basics. Your company website still has a part to play, but it’s a limited one.  Give it the attention it deserves, but let’s not forget that there are many other ways to connect to the audience we crave – and it’s not just Facebook.

Making sense of it all – Part 2: the marketer

You can find part 1 of this blog entry here.

Wasn’t it nice in the days before social media, when communications could be put into little campaigns, all neat and tidy? Sure, we had customer care and sales that had a kind of ongoing conversation with the client, but, on the whole, we controlled when and how we communicated with our customers and leads. It was much easier then, with our plans and our schedules.

Image from Flickr - credit to Kexino (http://www.flickr.com/people/kexino/)

Okay, I’m still being facetious, but this lack of control over the communication of our brand, and the sheer volume of activity that social media networks generate, can catch marketing departments unaware. Unlike traditional marketing activity, this is a real-time conversation, a non-stop campaign that’s already started.

The good news is that it is manageable and there are some easy steps we can take.

1. Treat Social Media with the same attention to detail as all other channels
It all starts here – don’t treat social media as an afterthought. It’s been done before and the results are usually bad. Not convinced? Check out ‘Social Media screw ups – a history’ then come back. Social media should be considered as a core part of the marketing strategy and should tie in to business objectives – it’s just the day to day mechanics of communication that are different to more traditional marketing techniques.

2. Understand your Social Media landscape
Tracking your social media exposure is extremely difficult without the right toolset. 2010 saw an explosion in the number and quality of the tools available, from Hootsuite to Radian6, both of which monitor multiple social media sites and networks. Here at Volume we use our own internal tool (SociView), but whichever you choose, the important thing is to use one. Good tools will provide you with the means to monitor, respond and analyse your brand online; giving you the data you need to create effective strategies

3. Understand the limitations of what you can do
Once you see the amount of information online, you’ll quickly realise that controlling every word is an impossible task. Relax, this is the way it should be, and there’s no point worrying about it. The days of total control are gone, and with it the old marketing mindset. Use your tools to map and separate the official (your blogs and feeds), the unofficial (partners, affiliates, fans and brand-enemies) and the temporary (bad and good experiences looking for an outlet). Start listening and filtering the noise, then you’ll know when you can…

4. …be a part of the conversation
And it is a conversation, we can’t rely on the same set of skills we use for one-way communication. The people we choose to represent us should be selected carefully. When you have the chance to get involved, acting the right way is paramount and can stop bad situations escalating unnecessarily. If someone’s happy with you, by all means retweet them, but make sure you stay humble and polite – acknowledge that you’re getting a helping hand. If someone’s unhappy, make sure that you deal with it with the same level of attention – admit your mistakes and learn from them.

We can see this approach already being adopted by Dell – ready converts to the social media space, who have had their fair share of “learning experiences” along the way – when they announced the setup of a dedicated ‘social media listening centre’ to manage the 22,000 Dell-related posts every day.

Although a lot of us won’t be dealing with quite that much, putting the right people and tools in place will help you to stay in control and, hopefully, make sense of it all.

Agree or disagree with my point of view? – I’m happy to discuss, so please post your comments.