The Twilight of Social Media. A {growtoon}.
Jun 15th
Join the growtoonists each Friday for a humorous take on marketing, social media, and current business events.
Joey Strawn is a social media strategist that loves enjoying a good book and then drawing in it. Check him out on Twitter: @joey_strawn
8 Shocking New Social Media Facts
Jun 14th
I’m pleased to be a collaborator with Edison Research on the new Social Habit Project. Why? Because I’m a numbers geek so I’m overjoyed to finally get some social media data we can trust! Here are eight fantastic facts from the Social Habit’s latest study.
1) 7 percent of Americans have never heard of Facebook
So on this one, can I hear a big ol’ what the HELL? How can seven out of 100 people you see each day have no clue about Facebook? The social network has dominated ALL media, not just social media, for a couple of years now. TV. Magazines. The news. Even a movie. This is one mind-blowing fact. Who are these people? Even my mom knows about the “Facebox.”
2) 80 percent of Americans between the ages of 18-24 use this one product
Can you name any other branded product in the world that is used by 80 percent of the young people in the United States? I asked this question in a class once and somebody shouted out “toilet paper.” Ha ha. Very funny. That’s not a brand. But Facebook is, and the penetration of this single brand is beyond belief. It seems like that fact alone might be a reason some people would want to invest in Facebook. They are just so … THERE.
3) Facebook acquired one new user in the U.S. every second for three years
Check out this growth rate between 2009 and 2012. Over three years, Facebook acquired about 3,805 new users per hour. That equates to almost exactly one new user per second — and that’s just in the U.S. I wish I had the server installation and maintenance contract for this outfit.
4) 74 million Americans are passive aggressive
If these numbers are to believed — and they are — 74 million Americans are at least somewhat concerned about privacy issues on Facebook. That is one significant gaggle of people. Why is there no outcry? Why isn’t anybody DOING anything? How come there is no Occupy Facebook Movement? Seems a little passive-aggressive to me.
5) Look to your left. Look to your right. One of you is a social media stalker.
So how many social media users are active on the network but NEVER post? If you guessed about one-third it’s only because you looked at this graph first. Come on, you didn’t REALLY know that did you? I would have guessed about 5 percent. Shows how much I know. I guess I haven’t earned my guru merit badge yet.
6) Foursquare still sucks
Well maybe I took some liberty with that conclusion, but the data show that there has been a dramatic drop-off in both the use of location-based service and the amount of check-ins going on. Why? Boresquare is not delivering enough value to its users. We want free pastries and we want them NOW. Here’s the bright side. It has never been easier to become the fake mayor of your favorite donut shop.
7) Companies are rapidly figuring out social media
I think this chart is a real-eye-popper. Here’s my assumption. Since 2010, human nature has not necessarily changed so that we are more open to “following” brands and companies. I’m thinking that people aren’t waking up in the middle of the night with a cold sweat and a sudden realization that the simply MUST follow more brands on Facebook. The way I interpret this chart is that the brands are delivering more value so that people WANT to follow them. I think this is a pretty amazing validation that the money being spent on social media is at least having some impact on customer connections.
8. Content marketing is for real
Here’s another good news chart for marketers. A significant number of people are coming to our social media sites because they like the content, not just because they are getting a coupon. I would like to see more research about this as far as loyalty to coupons versus content, attitudes, conversions, etc. but this is pretty encouraging. Maybe there is an alternative to buying off fans and followers with daily discounts?
If you thought this information was interesting, wait until you see the whole report: The Social Habit. It is very well done and has lots of pictures of Beyonce and Justin Bieber. Well. No it doesn’t. But I’m suggesting it for the next report, along with free pastries. Somebody has to do it.
Many thanks to my partners Jay Baer, Jason Falls and Tom Webster of Edison Research for collaborating on this project.
Now, here’s how you can get involved. What question did we NOT ask that needs to be included next time? Give it your best shot in the comment section!
Case study: IKEA launches social offer to drive sales
Jun 13th
By Neicole Crepeau, Contibuting {grow} Columnist
If you read my blog, you know that I promote a method of digital marketing that involves developing social offers. A social offer is a win-win proposition that you make to your audience. By win-win, I mean that the user gets something he or she wants by doing something that you, the business, wants. The actions the user takes help you, but the user is motivated to take the actions because you’ve offered something they want.
I recently read about IKEA’s success with its new digital strategy—a 7% boost in sales. Lo and behold, as I was reading I discovered that they used a social offer! IKEA’s marketers probably didn’t call it a social offer, but it is. Here’s what they did:
IKEA created the Shared Space website where customers, primarily women with families, can post pictures of the rooms they’ve remodeled or redecorated. To upload pictures, you register and get a small profile on the space. You can include a quote about the room, and all your spaces (pictures of rooms you’ve decorated) appear under your profile.
Visitors can browse the images by room for ideas and inspiration, rate them, save them, and share the images. Members can send messages to one another.
If you’ve ever taken on the project of remodel or designing a room, you know how proud you feel when it’s done. IKEA keyed right into their customers’ desire to show off their hard work and satisfied that desire with a very public, gorgeous site for customers to share. Women (and men, of course) can post their pictures, provide that House Beautiful quote, and then share it with their friends and relatives. The traffic they drive goes right to IKEA’s site, which also includes a blog, where potential customers can browse and get inspired to share. Oh, and guess what? You (or presumably IKEA) can tag IKEA items in the pictures, in which case product information and pricing appears with a link to the main IKEA ecommerce site.
IKEA’s site inspires users to shop, encourages sharing, gains IKEA target customers through sharing, lets them highlight products in user-generated content, and gives them all the attendant SEO benefits. They get all of that without having to create all the content for the site themselves, either. The audience does much of the work for them.
Audience Research Drives Social Offers
They didn’t end up with this social offer by accident though. As this article details, IKEA first set a clear business goal: increase the ticket size (amount per transaction) of sales. They then did considerable audience research before coming up with their digital strategy. They did ethnographic studies of their target customers, going into their homes and into the IKEA stores with them to understand their attitudes.
IKEA put together a complete marketing strategy that included traditional and online ads, as well as lots of content in lots of formats and channels. Their Shared Space site and social media work is only part of their digital strategy, but a seemingly successful part. The Shared Space had more than 36,000 unique users in the first month, and according to the article its Facebook fans tripled in a month.
The bottom line is whether they met their business goal. From all appearances, they did, with a nice 7% lift. You might not have the ability to implement an expensive and comprehensive digital strategy like IKEA. But there’s no reason you can’t implement a winning social offer for your audience, and use it to meet your business goals.
Neicole Crepeau a blogger at Coherent Social Media and the creator of CurateXpress, a content curation tool. She works at Coherent Interactive on social media, website design, mobile apps, & marketing. Connect with Neicole on Twitter at @neicolec
Klout scores feed a social media sickness
Jun 12th
A couple of weeks ago, I was the keynote speaker before a jammed conference room of 300 people and here is how I was introduced:
“I’d like you to welcome our special guest Mark Schaefer, who has over 40,000 followers on Twitter and a Klout score of 71!”
He made no mention that I have written two books, teach at a university, have 30 years of international marketing experience or that I have two masters degrees. He probably doesn’t even know or care that I have raised two great children, am a devoted husband and contribute time to charities and mentoring.
Is Klout more important than life?
It drives home a critical point though. “Social proof” like Twitter followers, Facebook Likes and Klout scores are exceedingly important on the Internet. In fact, as I explain in Return On Influence
Little wonder that a subculture has arisen on the web determined to achieve this social proof by any means necessary.
This group is dedicated to gaming their influence scores because they see this as a true reflection of their personal worth. There is even an online commodity market that buys and sells +K’s on Klout in some quixotic quest for self-worth.
A hit to the ego
After another recent Klout algorithmic change, many people’s numbers slipped again over the past two weeks. Instead of looking at this as simply a tweak in a business model, many people took this as a personal affront, a blast to their very being. Here is a post from a friend after his Klout slipped day by day for 26 days:
26 CYBER ATTACKS ON MY SELF ESTEEM AND WELL BEING WITH ONLY ONE BACKSLAP IN THE MIDDLE TO ALLEVIATE THE PAIN AND SHAME. ITS A SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS…
Another guy chimed in complaining that his Klout score slipped when he had to actually pay attention to client work for a couple of weeks.
A young man who works night and day to game his numbers asked me how he can turn his growing social capital into a career. I told him that he can’t … and encouraged him to learn a skill that will actually help people.
Let’s keep focused on business benefits
Social scoring is an important new business trend and it’s important to understand what companies like Klout and Appinions are up to. We have always known that there are certain powerful word-of-mouth influencers out there but finding them has been out of reach for all but the biggest and richest companies. We are on the brink of a truly revolutionary ability to accurately identify, connect with, and reward authentic brand advocates throughout the world we never knew existed. We’ll even be able to place a dollar value (yes — a return on investment!) on powerful individual word of mouth influencers, and in fact that is already happening. If you’re in marketing, you undoubtedly need to understand this trend!
But I am disturbed by this parallel consequence of people obsessing with a number as a legitimacy of their human worth. I know there is nothing I can do about that, but I’m not going to contribute to it either. I’ve been asked by my publisher to write a short book on how to increase your Klout score. It would be an easy financial windfall that would build on my previous work. But it simply flies in the face of my principles and encourages behaviors that will hurt people in the end in my opinion.
Checking out Klout, Kred, Peer Index and Empire Avenue values can be entertaining but anybody truly enslaved to these numbers for their self-esteem needs a reality check. And here is the irony. All these folks eventually will be sniffed out as fakes, which will really crush their self-esteem. In the end, true authority, expertise, and kindness will win out.
Want to REALLY increase your social influence? Here’s how.
Surround yourself with people who care about you.
Do good work.
Be kind and helpful.
Just do those three things and the influence — the influence that matters — will take care of itself. OK?
Welcome to {grow}
You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow.
Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here.
-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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