Posts tagged facebook
Facebook —Wake up! You’re a business, now act like one!
Dec 11th
Neicole Crepeau is among the smartest bloggers on my social media radar. Imagine my surprise when out of the blue she sent me this email: “Your blog made me think about some things and I’ve written an article for you. Here it is.” Isn’t that cool? So I get to take the day off and we can all enjoy Neicole’s unique perspective today …
Mark’s post Does the social web primarily benefit service companies? discussed some of the obstacles to greater use of B2B social media marketing, particularly by small and medium businesses. As he points out, businesses must do a better job of integrating social media into their overall marketing strategy. However, there is an even bigger obstacle to an expansion of business use of the social web, and it is in the networks themselves.
Wake up, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even LinkedIn. You might have started as a lark, a side-project done just for fun. Now, you’re a business. But you’re not acting like one.
These popular social networks have failed to recognize where their bread and butter is going to come from. Even YouTube, under Google, continues to focus on ads as its potential source of income. It has yet to make that work. Chances are, that model will never be successful enough to turn the profit they need.
I see a clear evolution of social networks, as outlined in my video and blog post of December 8th. It begins with a great idea, like micro-blogging or connecting friends via status updates. That draws an initial, small set of users. The customer base expands as the social network transforms and improves.
But end-users won’t pay for these services—not enough, at least. The social networks now need to look to the corporate world to make a profit. Remember, you have two customers, guys:
- End-users
- Business users
You’ve correctly focused on building a great tool for end-users, and you need to keep doing that. However, you also need to recognize that business users are an equally important customer. Now, go focus just as fervently on them!
Google built a great search solution that end-users love—but weren’t going to pay for. They turned to innovative corporate solutions and found a goldmine. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn need to do the same. But NOT through the same tired technique of ad serving.
These companies need to take a page from the marketing 101 handbook and listen to their customers — business customers — and find innovative solutions for them. What do businesses want to do via your site? Marketing … maybe customer support? What do they need in order to do that successfully? Ways to engage and maintain contact with consumers? The ability to find/target the right consumers? Mechanisms to track and measure their engagement and ROI over time?
They are your customers. Solve their problems. Make money.
Look at Ikea’s photo-tagging campaign on Facebook. There’s a creative new revenue stream. How can you make that method available to lots of businesses, with a low barrier of entry/use? How can you monetize it? Could YouTube do something similar, by making it possible for businesses to find and tag their products in user-supplied videos? Or make it beneficial for users themselves to do product placements in their videos. Businesses would love to promote those user-created placements!
When social networks treat the corporate world as a key customer, the innovation will really start that will drive businesses to the social web in droves and drive profitable new business models from themselves.
Neicole Crepeau is a 25-year veteran of the tech industry, with experience in technical writing, usability testing, user experience/interaction design, website design, and product management. Her outstanding blog can be found at http://nmc.itdevworks.com/
B2B’s biggest social media screw-ups
Nov 3rd
While the case for social media as a marketing channel is compelling for consumer products companies, I’ve been particularly interested in how it is being used … or not … by mainstream industrials. Earlier this year I assessed the social media presence of most of the major Fortune 500 B2B giants looking for case studies.
I found some great examples, but for fun, I’ve decided to start out with the WORST companies I found out there. With few exceptions, major industrial companies are not utilizing – and in many cases ignoring — social media as a stakeholder connection point. A few fun facts:
- Number of Top 25 B2B companies with more Twitter followers than me (None)
- Worst B2B corporate Twitter-er (by far) — DuPont. An example: “Back off weeds! 4 new herbicides are coming to get you …”
- Most popular corporate social media platform: Facebook
- Percent of companies with either Facebook or MySpace pages: 75%
- Percentage with both: 25%
- Most popular use of social media: A place to post press releases
With no further delay, let’s take a look at the Top Five biggest B2B social media screw-ups.
5. 3M Corporation – I love 3M. I’ve always cherished their heritage of innovation and product development. If any company in America could take advantage of the awesome power of global community it should be 3M. Where are you guys? We need you out here.
4. General Dynamics — There is a not-very-good techno rock band called General Dynamics who dominates the social media bandwidth. That’s a problem for a Fortune 100 company with the same name. This is the time for the company to flex some legal muscle and tell them they were there first! In the corporate world, this ID theft is tantamount to a porn starlet naming herself “Pepsi.” You have to take action on this, General Dynamics! Go kick some techno butt!
3. Oracle Corporation – You would expect an ego-laden company like Oracle to be sucking up the social media space, but not so. The Twitter account is exclusively a press release machine and their other sites are ill-attended placeholders. Larry, look at what SAP is doing with social media. Work it baby.
2. Johnson Controls — This Fortune 50 titan has had their name usurped on Facebook by a bunch of disgruntled employees. An example of social media gone very wrong when you’re asleep at the wheel.
1. Dow Chemical Company. The pinnacle of social media mayhem. The first search result for Dow on Twitter is called “spillspill” and the largest company-related Facebook page is called Fuck Chemical Valley and Fuck Dow (42 members). The MySpace presence has also been hijacked, complete with fake logos, fake employees and a mission statement that includes: “minimizing damage by angry citizens who have been affected by our pollution through legal suits and PR campaigns, making sure scientists who find our products to be dangerously toxic are not allowed to publish.” Dow has a proud history of PR fubars. The legacy continues.
Disclosure: My ex-wife had family ties to the chemical industry. While clinical tests have shown she is toxic to humans, she is not associated with the Fuck Dow campaign.
Warning: Social media may be hazardous to your health
Oct 29th
A lot has been written about the “danger” social media poses to companies and brands, but what about the real threat it poses to us as individuals?
Immediate, transparent, global, free communication is one of the most breathtaking information advances since the telephone. But when there is an opportunity for human corruption, there probably WILL be human corruption. Here are the biggest threats posed by the advent of social media:
Risk to personal security. For fun, I follow a few celebrities on Twitter, the digital Post-it note. The other day, one of them tweeted: “Down at Gino’s having a pizza with my boys.” Earlier in the day he had established the city he was in. With this kind of shoot-from-the-hip public broadcasting, it’s only a matter of time before we see the first Twitter-related crimes. Even for non-celebrities, how safe is it to post to the world, “My husband and I are off to Boston for the Web 3.0 conference.” Not very … unless you want your next post to be “Our house got wiped out by crooks while we were away!”
Risk to personal finances. Every time you register for a site, sign up for an app, or populate a social media profile, you are adding to a databank all about you. Strangers can find names, birth dates, family members, school and work history, e-mail addresses and much more. One blog writer recently quipped, “Honestly, it doesn’t take a genius to steal a person’s identity online.” Even more severe than identity theft and the obvious financial ramifications for an individual — we will begin to see online crimes being committed under the alias of another person.
Risk to personal reputation. Thankfully, nobody was holding a video camera in my face during my college years. But the lives of today’s youth are explicitly documented on You Tube, blogs, photo albums, and social media sites, creating a permanent online record. One corporate recruiter told me that a web search is more important to him than a resume. How will your Google-image affect your future job prospects, personal relationships, political aspirations? Did you read about the teen girls who took pictures of themselves in their bras at a sleepover, texted them to friends and then hours later ended up on porn sites? How do you erase something like that? Google never forgets.
Risk to data and information. A few weeks ago, a computer worm, using Twitter, infected tens of thousands of computers as it replicated itself across the Internet. The worm was created by a 17-year-old to “expose the vulnerabilities” in Twitter. The red-hot social networking/microblogging service has been scrambling to plug cross-site scripting and other Web site vulnerabilities to thwart worm attacks but, as one researcher points out, it’s much easier to misuse the Twitter API as a “weak link” to send worms squirming through Twitter.
Risk to personal health. Neurologists and doctors warn that obsessive immersion in screen technologies and social network sites will lead to short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathize, weight gain, and a tenuous sense of identity.
Risk to personal productivity. A friend recently told me that he needed to find a way to block himself from social media sites at work. “I’m hooked,” he said. “I can’t stop myself from getting online every minute that I can.” According to a U.K. study, British firms are losing $264 million A DAY on lost productivity due to undercover activities on Facebook. Businesses are starting to look for ways to deal with the social networking problem. Several companies in America already block social media sites.
So, where does this lead?
I’m a fan of social media. These new platforms have connected me to countless interesting people, opportunities and ideas. The purpose of this article is to serve as a counter-point to those who seem to be hypnotized by the hyperbole and beat the drum of social media while ignoring these certain consequences. There is virtually NO dialogue on the risks of the inevitable corruption that will result from having a free and pervasive window into YOUR life.
I’m hoping the dialogue will start now …
Google, branding, and the beauty of zero
Aug 13th
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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