Does everybody need a social media strategy?
Jan 15th
As the hype of social media begins to die down and companies re-evaluate their efforts with a steely-eyed look at the cost versus benefits, I think it is time to re-visit this important question: Does every company really need a social media marketing plan?
This is a very complex question. So to help answer it, I looked at a few companies with brands that might not be natural fits for a social media presence. Adult diapers. Coal. Hazardous waste clean-up. Playing cards.
Let’s explore this important question by taking a romp through some unusual case studies that stretch the boundaries of social media marketing thinking.
Depend Adult Diapers
Do you need a social media strategy? It depends! Get it? Oh, never mind.
Depend, a Kimberly Clark brand, has no apparent social media offerings. With its typically geriatric customer base, the product website offers a fitting guide and coupons but no social media way to connect. A company not affiliated with the brand has set up a rogue Facebook site called “Depend’s adult diapers.” So Kimberly Clark probably should protect itself by nailing down as many name alternatives as they can on the most popular social media platforms.
Should they have a social media component? It’s not a conversational brand, is it? I really don’t want to participate in any diaper polls.
However, they should consider at least a modest Facebook outpost because their future customers will certainly be there. Also, more and more people are using Facebook to search for brand information. At least one competitor, Poise, does have a Facebook page.
Should they continue to poo-poo social media?
Coal
A big argument I hear against getting involved with social media is when a company sells a commodity product. And, there is perhaps no product less differentiated than coal. In a tough business like that, you simply try to excel where you can by managing the supply chain properly.
I know commenters might argue that there are ways to differentiate any business, but the reality is, usually a contract in this market is won or lost by cutting a few cents per ton. That’s life in a commodity business. Why be on social media?
Peabody Energy is the largest publicly-traded coal company in the world. It has an excellent, informative website, but virtually no social presence (a token Twitter account and a weak Facebook page).
Perhaps Peabody’s strategy is to do whatever they can to avoid social media connection. Let’s face it, any company that scrapes away pristine countrysides to mine a product that is a major contributor to air and water pollution is not necessarily part of a conversation that is shareholder-friendly. Coal is important to the world economy, but it’s a dirty, dangerous business that sparks a lot of emotion in people. Should we support coal energy? It is an argument that will never be settled, and one they can never win. If they had a significant social media presence, the debates and hater harpoons would be endless.
Instead, Peabody can provide financial support to trade organizations like American Coalition for Clean Coal, which has a significant social media footprint — more than 1 million YouTube views, a blog, and a meaningful presence on Twitter and Facebook.
Should a company avoid the cost of social media conversation and move it to a trade association? A viable strategy?
Playing cards
I play this little marketing mind game with myself. I pick a product and then imagine what their social media presence might be. Like playing cards. What can you really say about those for heaven’s sake? They haven’t changed for centuries.
Turns out, quite a lot.
I opened a new pack of Bicycle playing cards and was delighted to see an extra card promoting their social media properties: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. These sites are filled with excellent content for people who love card games, card tricks, and even card-related arts and crafts. There are tons of fan conversations going on for this ancient gaming product.
Bicycle has also launched a premium content site called Club 808 that requires a paid subscription. Are there enough card fanatics out there to support something like that? I guess they’ll find out. But it just goes to show that there are content marketing opportunities for even the most common household products.
Bicycle is not a highly conversational brand but this notably non-digital product is finding interesting ways to create new conversations, and renewed relevance, with a digital audience.
Radioactive Waste Removal
You have to love a company with a tagline of “Providing radioactive waste services since 1952.” Straight to the point. And so is US Ecology, a company specializing in one of the most demanding B2B services on earth.
The company has no social media presence with the exception of a short LinkedIn page. Let’s think about their business model. Somebody has a radioactive mess on their hands. There is a well-known and short list of qualified and trained people to clean it up. The customer inquires to see who is available and asks them to get there fast. There probably isn’t much of a negotiation.
Or perhaps US Ecology has some long-term contracts with companies who generate radioactive waste. You probably don’t want to pinch pennies in that case, either.
If it doesn’t need Facebook to generate demand or customer connection, does US Ecology need a social media presence to attract and retain employees? Apparently not. I actually met some of their workers a few months ago and they were happy to have the job. They are paid well and the hours are good. There is little employee turnover in their area of expertise.
If you were the marketing director for US Ecology would you spend money on a social media marketing program?
The world’s oldest company
Fonderia Pontificia Marinelli has been casting beautiful bronze bells continuously in the quiet Apennine Hills of Italy since the year 1000. It is one of the five oldest companies in the world and, in fact, they have been making their bells the same way throughout the centuries.
The bells of Fonderia Pontificia Marinelli toll in the important buildings of New York, Beijing, Jerusalem, South America and Korea. The family business currently employs 20 people, five of them named Marinelli. The company also has a small museum and hosts special events.
They have a basic website circa 2000 and no social media presence. That doesn’t mean that their content is not being shared by social media savvy visitors from throughout the world, but the old ways seem to suit this family business best.
Fonderia Pontificia Marinelli has made it through wars, natural disasters, and economic calamities without fail. Can it keep going without a social media strategy? If you are looking for an epic bronze bell, would you buy from this company, even if they didn’t have a Facebook page?
Somehow, I think they will outlast us all.
So what do you think? Does every company need a social media strategy? Any of these case studies ring your bell?
Social media “engagement” is not a strategy
Jan 6th
Back in the early days of the social web, the leading “gurus” were actively anti-business.
They made fun of measurement, strategy, objectives and any hint of trying to monetize a social media effort. I know that sounds weird today, but it’s true. The mantra was “Social media is not about your stupid company. It’s all about the conversation.”
We’ve come a long way and even the “purists” have relented. Today, social media is being mainlined into the traditional marketing, PR and advertising initiatives, for better or for worse.
But despite this progress, every now and then I catch a whiff of the old days hanging around. Such was the case on a recent blog post when commenters vigorously defended the “true goal” of social media as being “engagement.”
I am sufficiently disturbed by this conversation that I think it’s time for a reality check. Here we go.
Engagement is not a strategy
A strategy is a direction that ideally capitalizes on a unique value proposition that serves un-met or under-served customer wants and needs. In other words, are you creating something that would be difficult or impossible for your competitor to copy? Is it possible to truly be strategic by “engaging” with customers in a singularly unique way? Difficult, I think.
I do believe it is possible to create strategic advantage by delivering great content and executing a social media initiative well. But the entry barriers to creating a Facebook page and initiating engagement, for example, are so low, I think it is unlikely that this can truly be “strategic.” Engagement should more likely be viewed as a tactic that supports an over-arching marketing strategy, unless you truly have some super-human community management skills that consistently bring customers in the door.
Social media’s place in the marketing mix is to provide consistent, small provocations and conversations through content that lead to engagement and interactions. Skillfully done, that engagement ultimately results in consumer interest, and hopefully loyalty and meaningful activity (like a purchase).
Engagement must lead to stakeholder value
The most valuable brand in the history of the world, Apple, has no social media engagement. By comparison, Dell, the gold standard of social engagement, is floundering and has a stock price hovering near a five-year low. So “engagement” in and of itself is not a predictor of success, is it? That’s why “engagement” is not a valuable activity unless it is tied to some organizational goal such as:
- Customer acquisition
- Brand awareness/defense
- Investment
- New product development
- Registrations
- Service
- Employment/recruiting
I would not invest in a company that is driving engagement as a goal without tying it to some business objective that moves the needle. Engagement, yes. But only in the context of business results!
You can talk yourself broke
One commenter on my blog argued that a company’s goal should be to drive engagement ever upward and pointed to her success in moving a brand from a 10% engagement level to 25%.
Again, without the tying this to a goal, that seems like a silly way to describe success. In fact, you could be hurting your customer.
Let’s not forget that all that engagement comes at a cost! We have to be careful that we’re ready to staff-up to effectively meet those demands. And for some companies, that may not be a good business decision.
Let me give you a micro-example. Last week I wrote a blog post that had more than 100 comments. As a small business owner, if I had this level of engagement every day, I would not have time to work on the consulting and teaching activities that feed my family.
Now if I really wanted to, I could pump up this level of engagement all the time … but it would be foolhardy for me to do so. I need to strike the proper balance of commercial activities across my customer base that optimize my business results. In fact, I purposely plan my blog postings to DEPRESS engagement on days when I don’t have the time to properly handle it.
In other words, if you’re not careful, you can talk yourself broke.
There is a level of diminishing returns to any economic activity and engagement is no different. Having a goal to “increase engagement” for every customer in the absence of strategy is irresponsible.
The conversational brand
Finally, a successful engagement level must also be considered in the context of the type of company and product. An engagement level which would be disappointing for Disney might be thrilling for a niche B2B chemical manufacturer because it is not a very conversational brand. There are no absolutes in this business.
Likewise, not all conversation is created equal. A company may drive an artificially high engagement level simply by posting inane polls and cat pictures that don’t contribute to business objectives in the least.
So if you’re striking out on a new social media strategy, I hope you’ll consider these take-aways:
- “Engagement” needs to be evaulated and supported in the context of company objectives
- Engagement level alone is not necessarily a meaningful indicator of marketing success or financial performance
- Engagement comes at a cost and must be considered as balanced part of an optimized marketing mix
Those are a few observations on engagement but I would welcome your views, dissent, and additions in the comment section! It’s your turn (and yes, I want the engagement!).
Illustration: “Conversation” statue in Calgary
The Business Case for Buying Facebook Likes
Dec 18th
There is a particularly funny scene in the Will Ferrell movie Elf when he passes a run-down looking coffee shop that has a sign saying “World’s Best Cup of Coffee.” With exuberant joy, he bursts into the shop and yells “Congratulations!”
It’s a hilarious moment, but a common example of “social proof” that has been used in the advertising world for decades. When we don’t know the truth, we look for clues from our external environment (like a claim in a storefront window) to help us make decisions.
Social proof is not always true or accurate, it just has to provide an effective impression of authority.
In my book Return On Influence
Young was an accomplished radio, film, and television actor who represented the iconic All-American father in the 1950s TV series “Father Knows Best.” In the 1970s he reprised this squeaky-clean in an even more famous character — the gentle, and trusted “Marcus Welby, M.D.” In fact he became so tied to this character that it was impossible NOT to think of him in this role in any subsequent role or appearance he earned.
Despite his trademark portrayal of these happy, well-adjusted characters, Robert Young’s reality could not have been more different. He admitted to being a terrible father and husband, and was often described as a bitter man. He suffered from depression and alcoholism, and spoke openly about a suicide attempt in the early 1990s.
Yet during this same timeframe, Young was among America’s most popular television commercial spokespersons – utterly in contrast to his tormented personal reality.
Brands capitalized on his social proof as a TV doctor and extended all of those powerful positive attributes to their products, even though the man wrapped in the white lab coat was suffering as a human being.
The essence of social proof
In the online world, “social proof” is paramount … and easily achieved because anybody can appear to be pumped-up and important, even when they’re not.
There has never been a time in history where the mantle of authority has been so effortlessly assumed and promoted. Words like “best-selling,” “award-winning” and “expert” have become meaningless.
And yet in our information-dense world of the Internet, we’re starved for clues to help us determine leadership and authority and we readily turn to “badges of influence” like number of Twitter followers or even a Klout score as convenient indicators of power.
Perhaps the most prestigious symbol of social proof today is the Facebook “Like.” Among many companies, there is a Facebook arms race in progress as competing brands do anything necessary to gain the upper hand on this important metric. I recently wrote a post describing a company who has an internal marketing metric of “cost per like.” On the surface, this seems ludicrous but it demonstrates how strategically important this symbol has become.
Let’s go shopping for Likes
As you might predict, an underground market has emerged that will happily sell you manufactured Facebook Likes. A search turned up a market price of $199 for 10,000 likes.
A client recently asked me if this was a legitimate way to build their social proof, especially if their competitor is doing it. My instinct said no. As much as I’ve written about the need to be trustworthy and authentic on the social web this tactic seems unethical.
But the more I consider this, the more I wonder if this position is hopelessly naive. Let’s face it, for many brands, social media has become another advertising channel. Almost every corporate Facebook account I know of is run, at least in part, by an advertising agency.
If we look at Facebook in terms of being just another advertising platform (which it is) then what’s the difference between pumping up your Facebook account with fake Likes and …
- A Twitter account that is primarily populated by empty accounts and spambots? (This is the case for almost every person with a massive Twitter following.)
- A badge on your site claiming your blog is one of the “Top blogs of …” when it was simply a popularity contest that you manipulated by encouraging friends and family to do mass voting?
- Claiming “four out of five doctors …” when you really have no idea what the study was about or how it is being applied to the advertising claim?
- Claiming to be an “expert” or “guru” when you’ve never had a paying customer?
I don’t see any outcry against these examples of social proof … in fact chances are good that you may be participating in something like this yourself somewhere on your social profile. If we are willing to look the other way on these other trumped-up claims, why is there such an emotional backlash when it comes to Facebook?
The business case for buying Likes
While we pontificate about the imperative for “authenticity,” when you get down to it, nobody really cares. Like the case of Robert Young, reality plays no role in manipulating people’s perceptions about authority.
I run my business and my life with integrity. Not only do I avoid anything unethical, I avoid anything that even LOOKS unethical.
But I’m wondering if it is irresponsible and out of step with reality to keep a customer from buying Likes to match a competitor that is already doing it. If I only built an organic following for this customer, it will put them at a competitive disadvantage … and at the end of the day somebody coming across their page won’t care any way.
There is a practical business case for being a Facebook fake, right?
Illustration based on art from BigStock.com
A cautionary tale: Putting your business in the hands of Facebook
Dec 5th
As I enjoyed a mega-popular Kebab restaurant on my street, I wondered about the “secret” of their success.
Certainly one factor is the kebab itself — a delicious jungle of salad, meat, and fresh herb sauce that melted like Angel cream on your tongue. Mmmmmm.
The other aspect of their success, and frankly the more interesting part for us, is their Facebook presence.
The young owner has built an impressive online audience. The fan page attracted thousands of fans from around the country who post pictures and stories about their Kebab experience. Wowzee.
The owners fuel their presence through the share of fun restaurant pictures (guests posing, entertaining quotes, food pics), unique YouTube videos, and sophisticated social media give-and-take.
For a physical food biz to rock the Internet like that, I was truly impressed and as I heard his story, I almost let the Kebab slip through my fingers because of the sheer astonishment.
But when I asked them about their business website, they just shrugged their shoulders and laughed. “Why waste time and money on building a website when you can do everything for free on Facebook ?”
I frowned.
“Because you don’t want to put all of your eggs in one basket … and a basket that you don’t own.”
But the conversation was already over, because the business had placed its entire faith on Facebook’s free fan page which they’ve labored over for almost two years. Argh.
A few weeks later, Facebook introduced the “promote your posts” feature.
Bang.
Needless to say, interactivity and visibility of the restaurant’s fanpage dropped drastically. Now they are finally building their business website.
Lesson learned.
Now this is not a slap against Facebook, but it’s a mistake that happens all the time …
Every big online company wants to lock you into their platform…
…offering you free space and an incredible existing audience.
- Amazon wants authors to mainly use their author’s page and discourages outside linking challenging
- DeviantArt wants to display your entire portfolio on their site
- Facebook “encourages” you to focus on building your fan page followers and marketing
And while their offers are all legitimate, they hide one important fact :
They make you totally dependable on them – and you’ll always be at their mercy.
Seriously, I cringe every time someone focuses heavily on building their online presence on a platform they don’t own.
Instead of worrying about getting email subscribers and customers, they obsess about getting likes and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
It may be accessible, free and powerful in the beginning, but what do you do if their platform rules change, which they eventually will?
- What if the company changes from free sharing to paid promotion ? (*cough* Facebook *cough)
- What if a big player platform loses out and becomes irrelevant ? (Myspace is no space now)
- What if a successful online brand creates a hyped platform that attracts more digital dust that visitors? (sorry Google)
No matter how much you luv a brand (and I like Google a lot), always be suspicious of their offers to rely on them for your business infrastructure and marketing presence. It’s their game, and we all know you’ll never win by rules that have been set by someone else.
You can actually WASTE years of building your brand on someone else’s platform and then lose out when the tide changes. Nothing, nothing and I mean NO-THING is more important than channeling your audience attraction to your self-hosted platform. That’s why I focus the majority of my time getting people on MY site, instead of getting likes and followers somehwere else.
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr … and sometimes even Google+ … all help me extend my reach, but each of them could vanish in an instant and I’d still have my audience and profits.
The web is in constant flux. The big platforms of today could become the no man’s lands of tomorrow.
Placing your bet on an outlet you don’t own is the riskiest and dumbest thing you can do. Treat them for what they really are – marketing tools that attract visitors to your own online real estate where you’ll turn them into subscribers or even paying clients.
Don’t be a leaf in the wind – a brand whose long-term success you want to control is dependable on a platform you own. Agree or disagree?
Mars Dorian describes himself as a creative marketeer with a moon-melting passion for human potential and technology. You can follow his adventures at www.marsdorian.com/
Original illustrations by the author.
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-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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