In the spirit of trying to get a bit of discussion going in the comments section here at The Curbside Marketer once again (and to have a bit of fun), I propose to you a question: If you could make one social network just disappear from the Internet, which would it be?

Personally, just to stir things up a little bit, I’m going to go with Facebook. Admittedly, I do love Facebook and would hate to see it go for my personal use, but the thought of it disappearing is an interesting one.

On a personal level, it may encourage some people to return to that whole human interaction thing instead of poking, following, etc. (you’re right…probably not). Actual stalking complaints may rise, since cyber-stalking would be a little more difficult. We would even have to resort to other sites to store photos. All of this, I suppose, would be only until everyone found the next service to flock to, like Google+.

What’s really fascinating, though, is thinking about the brand side. Think of all of the brands that have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on ads, apps, and campaigns driven to get “Likes.” What would they do? My guess is cry a little bit.

After the tears have washed away all of the Facebook rainbows and unicorns, what is the brand left with? When a fan Liked a Page that’s in a forest that’s already been cut down, does it make a sound? (What???) It’s sort of beautiful to think about actually. What better kick in the pants by taking away a basket that so many people put all of their eggs in. The truest test of whether  your brand was built on a strategy or based on a platform.

Of course, if you’ve had the right approach all along, then you should be able to regroup pretty quickly and continue reaching your customers and fans in other manners.

Or, if you’ve REALLY been doing a good job, they will come looking for you.

Image by Walt Jabsco.

I’ve just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (i know, a little late on checking that one out), and I couldn’t help but to think about how it helps explain the nearly meteoric growth of the question and answer site, Quora, lately.

A lot has been made about how other sites, Yahoo! Answers, Facebook’s Questions, and countless others, had essentially the same exact concept as Quora, yet they had nowhere near the same amount of short-term success. People ask questions, other people provide answers. Seems like a concept that’s pretty hard to fudge up, right?

Well, Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point actually does a very good job of providing us with an explanation.

The Law of the Few

The first premise of Gladwell’s book is that for an idea to reach its “tipping point,” there are typically a handful of key people involved in its success. He refers to this as “The Law of the Few” and it is made up of connectors, mavens, and salesmen.

Connectors. These are people who link us to the world and have a magical skill of bringing people together. In Quora’s case, Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever likely acted as key connectors for the site, especially considering D’Angelo worked at Facebook, the online king of connecting people. These two guys were probably able to get Quora in front of a lot of key folks early on in the process. Also, Quora was able to tap into social media, especially Twitter and blogs, which really helped the product pick up speed. On the other hand, one can also argue that Facebook Questions and the other sites also had this advantage. So, connectors helped Quora get in the game, but not necessarily rise above the rest (although they did come into play big time once it started taking off.

Mavens. This is the group that we look to regularly with the expectation that they will provide us with new information and the latest ideas. In this instance, folks like Robert Scoble, TechCrunch, and Mashable began talking about Quora, which attracted quite a bit of attention to the product. Furthermore, the fact that a number of mavens in the technology world have joined Quora has helped make the service even more valuable, as their answers add a tremendous amount of value to the Quora community. Again, it’s not like mavens didn’t talk about any of the previous services, they definitely did (albeit not as much, at this point). In the end, I’d actually say the mavens were one of the more important members of the “few.”

Salesmen. This one doesn’t need much explanation, it is exactly what it sounds like. For an idea to take off, it needs charismatic and persuasive people who can convince others of its value. Quora has greatly benefited from this in the form of bloggers and social media users. As the user base began growing and really taking off, everyone and their brother began writing blog posts about Quora, many of which expressed how valuable of a tool it was. This definitely isn’t something you can plan on at the outset, but it has ended up being a very valuable resource and piece of Quora’s growth.

The Stickiness Factor

This is essentially, what makes the idea something that will break through the noise and be a memorable one? At its core, Quora is meant to be a useful tool, allowing users to tap into the knowledge of a huge group of people to find the answers to questions they’ve been pondering for quite some time. While this is a critical factor in whether or not an idea can reach a tipping point, I don’t think it is one that necessarily sets Quora apart from similar sites and concepts. Sure, Quora may have some features and characteristics that make it more sticky, but ultimately it is the same concept as many before it.

The Power of Context

Ah, yes. Here we are. Nothing thus far has really made Quora stand out that much from others. Mavens are probably the one characteristic so far that has set Quora apart a little bit, but not even very convincingly. So, what do we mean by context? Well, ideas, and people for that matter, are greatly influenced by their environment. In this case, sure D’Angelo and Cheever have this product that they’ve raised, but that product is still subject to the influences of the environment it is operating in (that are often out of the creators’ control).

Let’s look at Yahoo! Answers for a second. In my experience with the tool, it is full of somewhat relevant and interesting questions that attract answers from random, everyday joes. Look through some of the questions and answers provided here and you’ll first lose confidence in the human race, and secondly understand that you would never rely on Yahoo! Answers for any halfway important question you had. Questions don’t even use proper grammar and answers don’t even use proper logic. Where is the value there?

Quora was able to operate in a much better environment (even if it may have taken a while for that environment to come to fruition). Let’s start with questions. Quora does a great job of helping users understand what sort of questions to ask and how to format their questions. They have tips on how to structure your question and even have a little quiz before you post your very first question. Out with the questions your 2nd grade teacher would frown at and in with intelligent and useful questions.

Then, somewhere along the way, many of the answers even became relevant. Look through questions about Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare and you’ll find answers from employees of the companies and clients who have worked closely with them. You can ask questions you’ve always wondered (How much does a promoted tweet cost?) and actually get a legitimate answer. How did this happen?

Well first of all, it has helped that really the whole tech community has responded very well to Quora, and word gets around quickly in this space. This has brought CEOs, entrepreneurs, and some of the biggest names in the industry to the site to actually participate. Apart from word of mouth, this has happened because Quora almost makes answering questions like a contest and, if you win that contest, your brand (personal and/or corporate) gets a nice little boost. On Yahoo! Answers, many people answer questions with usernames like HawtChick892, so there isn’t much accountability. On Quora, your answer is a direct reflection of your expertise in a certain subject, almost like a test. This automatically increases the likelihood of better answers (and, if the answers aren’t as good, the voting system makes sure those get buried).

Quora’s context is what has made it a winner. Sure, this context didn’t arrive until a few months ago (or maybe the context existed already, but the other factors and this one didn’t synchronize until recently), but for now it’s thriving in the environment it currently exists in.

Moving Forward

So, the real question is can this context persist? That’s an interesting question. Initially, Quora benefitted greatly from the “Fax Effect”–it became more and more valuable as more and more users joined. What it has to be careful about is the Fax Effect Error, or immunity to the tool being used. In other words, as Quora’s user base gets bigger, and there are more and more people fighting to be the most popular answer (and using questionable tactics to become that top answer), the value of Quora will decrease. Just like mail’s value has decreased with junk mail, e-mail with spam, and Twitter with all sorts of noise and self-promoting. Ultimately, I think this is the biggest danger facing Quora and, if not handled properly, could be the beginning of the tool’s demise

Quora has already proved that it is special. It rose above similar concepts and has simply taken off in the past few weeks, which makes it all the more fascinating when looking at what the reasons for this were. And, as everyone and their brother is wondering how they managed to do it, I tend to think that Malcolm Gladwell already did a mighty fine job of explaining it for us.

What do you think is the reason for Quora’s sudden and impressive rise?

Image by whiteafrican

On Wednesday of this week, Apple had another of their big events in which they announced new iPods, the new Apple TV, new iOS, and the new iTunes, which features a social network for music dubbed “Ping.” Well, today I had the chance to play around with Ping for a little bit, so I figured I’d share some of my initial impressions of Ping.

I’ll begin by saying it reminded me a lot of when I first started using Twitter and didn’t really know what to do. With Ping, I didn’t have any friends to follow, there were only a few bands on there to follow, and I was left wondering what is there for me to do on here? Important to note: when I first started Twitter, I quit for a good 5 or 6 months before I came back and actually sent out my first tweet.

Artist Selection

Let’s just say the number of artists available to follow right now are…limited. This can be expected with Ping being so new, but I only found a handful of bands/artists that I really wanted to follow. Hopefully over time, more and more artists will sign up and provide some pretty solid content on there for their fans. I would be interested to find out what the process is for an artist to get “approved” to be one of the artists users could follow, as this could have a major impact on the selection of artists to follow. This is probably one of the biggest and most important question marks moving forward, and I’m sure Apple is trying their darnedest to improve in this area.

Finding Friends to Follow

The second thing I wanted to do in Ping was find which of my friends were signed up so I could follow them, check out their musical interests, etc. This proved difficult to say the least. The only option I could find was searching friends by email, and honestly, that sounds like a pretty outdated option to me. In the email Apple sends when you sign up, it says there’s an option to invite your Facebook friends, but I couldn’t find it to save my life (as a result, I’m only following two people right now). To me, this means it’s not nearly easy enough to find. Either way, what about adding Twitter friends too? People won’t stumble across friends’ profiles like they do in Twitter or Facebook, so it’s critical that Apple makes this step as easy and versatile as possible.

Privacy Settings

Of course, privacy is going to be a topic that is talked about with any social platform, so why should Ping be any different? Really, the privacy settings are pretty simple. On one end, you can let anyone follow you who wants to. On the other end, you can be selfish and follow whoever you want, but not let anyone follow you. In the middle, you can choose to approve of any new followers. I didn’t choose this option, but word on the street is it will show you the user’s name, profile pic, and email address when you’re choosing whether or not to approve them. Also of note, the profile picture that you upload goes through a sort of review process through Apple to avoid any offensive content (I don’t envy whoever has that job!)

The Social Aspect

I must say, the idea of a social network around music is one with a heck of a lot of potential, but I think that Ping has a ways to go to reach this full potential. The social aspects of Ping are pretty simple. When you follow artists, the content they publish comes through your stream (photos, videos, etc.) When you follow a person, the music they buy and/or like as well as artists they follow and any reviews they write. Other users can then comment on any of these tasks.

Something that did surprise me is when you’re viewing an album in the iTunes store, it shows how many total users “liked” it, but it doesn’t say specifically which of your friends liked that album, which seems like it would be a very useful option. If i know that I have similar music interests to Joe and see that Joe “liked” an album, I’m more likely to buy it.

Something else that hurts Ping in a way (but doesn’t surprise me at all, considering it is Apple) is how Ping is pretty much a closed ecosystem. You use it completely in iTunes, all the actions you take stay within iTunes. It fits with Apple’s mantra, but it doesn’t really help Ping really take off. What if, when you “Liked” something, it showed up in a special Ping application you could set up on your Facebook profile? This would prevent it from just falling into your feed (because then why would you need the Ping feed?) and would bring Ping into the Facebook interface which is without a doubt more “social.” Or, why not allow users to sync their Twitter accounts, giving them the option to tweet a review they write or an album they like?

Also, iTunes isn’t really a “destination” piece of software. You typically open it to play music (or buy it) while you’re doing other tasks (ahem…like perusing Facebook), so staying in iTunes to use this will take a while for users to make it part of their routine. It seems silly, but it’s easier to use social networks that are web based than those that live within an application. Also, since it’s in the iTunes app, you can’t tell a friend: hey follow me on Ping at *insert link*. So, if I wanted to get my blog readers to follow me, I’d have to say “hey guys, type in my email to Ping and follow me.” Not an ideal situation.

User Interface

Unfortunately, I just didn’t feel 100% comfortable using the Ping interface. Part of it may be simply because it’s new, but it’s within iTunes, so it should feel pretty natural, you would think. Part of it was also because it is housed within iTunes instead of web-based. It took me a few extra seconds to figure out how to get back to my stream, how to edit my profile, etc. If I end up using Ping pretty regularly, knowing where things are will come a little more naturally, but I still think there could be an easier way to get from Point A to Point B within Ping.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

• I tried to “Like” an album which I’d bought one song from and had a bit of trouble. You have to click “view full album” and then the option to “like” it appears. Didn’t make much sense as to why this option wasn’t available without clicking.
• I saw a couple people on Twitter say that this will kill MySpace. I disagree with this. Sure MySpace is sort of the hang out in town that used to be where everyone went, and, although it’s a bit rundown now, it is still good for certain purposes. The two things that are keeping Ping from “killing” it are: 1) you can’t listen to full songs and 2) it is harder for smaller bands to get on iTunes (this is an assumption based on the artists that are available to “follow” now). So, if you’re into 30 second song previews and only like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry, Ping may have “killed” MySpace. Otherwise, it’s still hanging on.
• I noticed quite a bit of spam on Ping, primarily in the form of people commenting on posts from various artists. I saw a lot of “free iPhone” links and such. It’d be nice to see something implemented to prevent this.
• Currently, there is no form of notification for when someone interacts with you. For example, someone commented on something I had “liked” and the only reason I knew was because I saw it in my stream. Some sort of notification system would help people avoid letting these slip through the cracks.

The Verdict

Overall, Ping remains a pretty nifty idea with potential, but I really don’t think that it will thrive in it’s current form. With a few changes

At Social Fresh last week, Amber Naslund’s keynote was all about the “Now Revolution.” The crux of her presentation (and her and Jay Baer’s upcoming book) is how the consumer has drastically changed from even a few years ago. We now want the companies we buy from to move as quickly as we do. If we ask a question on Twitter, we want a response within the hour, even if it’s 11 pm on the west coast. The real time nature of social media requires us to have someone constantly standing by the digital telephone. This fundamental change in what consumers expect demands a change in how businesses operate.

Here’s the thing I’ve noticed about this change: it scares businesses the crap out of them. I’m okay with them being scared, but this fear needs to lead them to respond. If you see a piano falling from a building (because that happens all the time), you can either react and book it out of there or get caught flat footed like the cartoons always do.

The unfortunate thing is that this fear is paralyzing many businesses. They’re scared they’ll mess up. They think that avoiding it will make them invisible. They don’t have the time or resources. I’ll take “Common Excuses” for $500.

The thing is, it’s our responsibility as marketing and PR professionals to 1) explain it to them in a manner that they understand the importance of adapting to the real time world and 2) help them figure out how to equip their business from the ground up to take on the real time revolution.

Here’s the kicker, folks. Yes real-time is a bit scary because at any moment, a PR nightmare could happen, a fake Twitter account can bet set up that entertains the world at the expense of your business, and an employee can (and probably will) say something they shouldn’t. However, if you equip yourselves to mitigate these risks (with social media guidelines, crisis plans, etc.), then there is a tremendous opportunity for businesses.

The Now Revolution works both ways. These days, consumers are closer than ever to the point of purchase. At any given time, they are seconds away from handing over their money. It only takes a few clicks. It’s all a matter of whether or not you’re there with them to make the sale.

On Monday, I had the great opportunity to attend the Social Fresh conference here in Charlotte. First of all, thanks to Sports Media Challenge, my company, for paying for my ticket and also to Jason Keath for bring SoFresh back to the Queen City for the second time. I tried not to tweet much during it since I can’t stand when people send hundreds of tweets from a conference mentioning who all they met and what everyone was saying. So, instead, I’ll give you a nice little recap with a few of the highlights. Word on the street is videos and slideshare presentations will be uploaded soon, so I’ll be sure to post links as I come across them.

In each time slot, there were two panels/presentations, so a few won’t be covered here (although I wished I could have been in both at times), but on with the goodness.

Bert Dumars, VP of E-Business and Interactive Marketing – Newell Rubbermaid (slides)

This was the first and one of my favorite panels, mainly because he talked a lot about how social media shouldn’t be approached in the sense of “hey, we need a social media strategy, where do we start.” Rather, think first about your overall brand strategy, and consider which aspects of it would lend themselves well to social media. As Mr. Dumars said, “You don’t need a social media strategy, you need a brand strategy that leverages social media.” (Great quote, huh!?) Brands that have failed in the past didn’t do so because they sucked at social media, but because they had a lame brand strategy. So, the progression should be:

• Define the target market
• Establish brand’s positioning
• Determine what needs are unmet for consumers based on their insights
• Determine the critical parts of the purchase decision tree and how they translate into key consumer touch points (these touch points being platforms where your fans/consumers are active)
• Establish the marketing plan based on the prioritized consumer touch points.
• Develop social media tactics that are aligned with the brand positioning and extend from the marketing plan objectives and strategy

Also, you may want to check out Sharpie’s community site called “Sharpie Uncapped,” as it is a great example of using a community to give your customers an avenue to express their passion for a brand.

David B. Thomas, SAS and New Marketing Labs (as of September 1)

First, big props to David for his new position with NML, I’m sure there some exciting things down the road for him and the rest of the NML team. David’s presentation was on “Structuring for Social Media Success: Integrating Social Media Without Adding Headcount.” David talked about 3 key steps to building a social media strategy. These included:

Build Awareness Internally

• Find the right people within your organization to become your champions
• Invite skeptics as well as the evangelists
• Remember how you felt the first time you got into SM. It was scary, you were confused, so be patient in teaching others.
• Figure out what’s important to emphasize to your employees and coworkers

Build a Framework

• Put someone in charge
• Create guidelines (be clear and concise, and encourage others to communicate on behalf of your organization)
• Communicate, communicate, communicate. It’s easy to silo social activities, but everyone loses in this scenario, so make sure there are open lines of communication across departments and within them.

Build a Strategy

• Define success. Discuss what the desired end result will look like? Then, back up and figure out how to achieve this.
• Map social media to your goals
• Give your people the right tools. Whether these be monitoring tools, content publishing tools, or whatever, make it easy on them.

Greg Cangialosi, Blue Sky Factory (slides)

Since Greg and the rest of the Blue Sky Factory team typically talk about email, it was interesting to hear him discuss how they use social media to grow their business. Probably the stat of the day was that they generated 22% of their revenue through social media. 22%! Not too shabby. While his entire case study of Blue Sky Factory was quite interesting, the most important point (which isn’t new, but still valuable) was don’t be about the sale. Blue Sky Factory did this by not approaching social media as a marketing medium, but rather a content producing medium. So, instead of actively trying to sell their product, they focus on writing daily blog posts, creating useful e-books, and creating other social content that simply ensures Blue Sky Factory is top of mind when customers think about email.

Amber Naslund, Radian 6 (slides)

I really enjoyed meeting and having the chance to chat with Amber at SoFresh, as I have a ton of respect for her and the folks at Radian 6. Amber was the keynote for SoFresh and, unfortunately, Jay Baer, her partner in crime, wasn’t able to make it down for the event to present with her (you can look out for a new book written by them in the near future!)

Frankly, there was a ton of great content in Amber’s presentation titled “The Now Revolution,” about how our business world is moving towards real time, yet our businesses are still trying to catch up to this “Now” revolution. I’d recommend you simply checking out the video of her presentation, but here are some of the key takeaways:

• The notion of being real time (participating in open, reciprocal communication online) needs to be built into our corporate cultures. This requires 1) A solidarity of purpose internally 2) Demonstrated trust for those on your team (empower them to feel comfortable responding on behalf of the company) 3) Diverse people and ideas and 4) Establishing effective rewards systems.
• Our hiring practices need to change to reflect these changes. Employees are ambassadors for our brands, yet we don’t account for that in hiring.
• Customers don’t care if the complaint that they send in a tweet isn’t in the respondent’s department, they just want it fixed.
• Some key attributes to consider when hiring employees are: curiosity, enthusiasm, innovation, motivation, collaboration, humility, and awareness. Another big one is translation, being able to both understand and communicate with C-level folks, but also to communicate that to the folks on the front lines and the social media newbies.
• Who owns social media shouldn’t matter. What should matter is how nimble your organization is to respond and act quickly, which comes down to how you’re wired. This means you need good social media guidelines and training/education programs in place for employees.

Random Event Tip: Sometimes, it may be worth it to just skip out on one of the panel sessions to chat up some of the folks at sponsor booths. There are some pretty big name people at them often times and this is a great chance to get their undivided attention. During breaks, there is often lots of noise, people waiting in line, and distractions that can get in the way. So, if you hit them up during a panel (you know there’s usually always one time slot that is a little lacking) you could really get some solid networking and conversations going.

Again, great stuff all around from the panels (much more than what was covered here). Anyone else that went to SoFresh have any thoughts or comments?

Some other great recaps can be found from John McArthur, Wray Ward, and Stacey Alexander.

On a final note, it was great to meet some of the following people who I had both talked to on Twitter quite a bit before, as well as some who I’d never met until this event, and they’re definitely worth a follow on their blog and/or on Twitter: Logan Stewart, Simon Cole, Katie Morse, Lisa Hoffmann, Chris Moody, Mike Mahoney, Jason Yarborough, Gwynne Murphy, John McArthur, Ted Shelton, and Jeff SanGeorge. Also, always great to see folks like Jason Peck, Genevieve Jooste, Eric Fraz, Eric Boggs, Adam Covati, David Horne, and others once again. Until next time…

Just last week I read an article entitled “Why Facebook Adspace is Worth Bupkis” (thanks to Scott Hale for sharing the article in his Google Reader). My first thought when reading the article was what is Bupkis and what exactly is it worth? But, using my context clue skills from back in the day, I figured out that “Bupkis” and Facebook ads are apparently worth very little, a CPM of 56 cents to be exact (compared to an Internet average of $2.43). The article explains that part of this is due to the high number of page views that is inherent in Facebook and other social networks. I’d also suspect that part of this is due to the ads being so easy to set up, there are a number of people using them that really don’t know what they’re doing, meaning their ads are very unsuccessful.

Still, this low number is somewhat concerning. It has dragged down the CPM of ads across the web by 20% for goodness sake!

Are you really that surprised, though? I’m not.

The Problem With Facebook’s Advertisements

Everyone always talks about how targeted Facebook’s ads are. You can segment them by age, university, marital status, religion, interests, etc. But let me tell you something, it doesn’t matter how relevant the ads are to someone’s interests! It has to be relevant to their interests AND presented to them at a time that they are interested in that interest. Not to mention, even if a user was interested in an ad, they won’t even see it half of the time since the right side of the page doesn’t get many eye balls.

For example, I love Mexican food, but if I’m at the movie theater watching Toy Story 3 and someone walks in the theater and yells, “Hey everyone, Qdoba is having a buy 1 get one half off special on burritos. Come and get it!” then I’m going to be pissed. Sure, that’s a good deal and I do love Qdoba burritos, but your telling me about them out of context.

That’s where Facebook is at a tremendous disadvantage compared to Google. Ads on Google are relevant both to your interests and contextually. You search for “mexican restaurants” and the sponsored results are actually mexican restaurants. The ads are unobtrusive and *gasp* actually helpful.

Facebook, on the other hand, isn’t contextually relevant when it comes to its ads and either goes unnoticed completely (because the ones you’ve seen in the past you weren’t interested in) or you notice it but don’t care at the time because you just want to see the scandalous pics that your friends uploaded from their crazy weekend at the beach.

Alternative Advertising Options for Facebook

But it’s not enough to just explain why Facebook’s ad model isn’t really successful. We need to examine alternative options for Zuckerberg and his crew. So, here are a couple ideas I had, be sure to share some of yours in the comments section:

• Make Ads Relevant Contextually - If I’m on a Fan Page for a golf related brand, why are you showing me ads for creating a website? Yes, web/digital type stuff is relevant to me, but not at this moment. I just saw a golf ad somewhere else, but now that I’m on a golf related page, it’s gone. Making the ads relevant both to fan pages that you’re on and searches you’re executing would make them much more relevant contextually.
• Integrate Ads into the Stream of Content – I will admit people probably would be pissed off about this initially, but, like everything else Facebook has done, give it a week or two and it will be water under the bridge. I’m picturing these ads to mainly appear in the news feed, which, unlike the right sidebar/margin, is the most valuable section on Facebook. The main thing I’d recommend here is making a much larger barrier to entry here to avoid some of the random advertisers and small websites out there from getting on here. Charge more and attract bigger brands for these ads so that they look more professional and less annoying.
• Sponsored Status Updates – Much like what Twitter is experimenting with, Facebook could offer certain big brands the ability to “Promote” a status update, which would appear as a sticky update at the top of Facebook users’ news feeds. It would help if these were targeted and would sure as heck get more eye balls than one that got lost in the news feed, therefore, you better believe brands would cough up the money for it.
• Allow More Ad Customization - As they stand right now, the ads are pretty bland and limiting for the advertisers. This does provide a nice uniformity across the site and prevents them from being too big of an eye sore, but may limit their effectiveness in cases. Another option would be to offer greater customization for one of the three ads that appear on most pages. For example, allow a customized background color and headline font. These would probably have to go through a review process before being posted, and as a result of all of this (and to create a higher barrier to entry once again) they would come at a premium price.

So what do you think? Good ideas? Would they piss you off as a Facebook user? What are some more alternatives?

Image by smlions12

Yesterday I posed a question to Twitterland that received some interesting responses on both sides of the fence, so I figured I would bring it here to look into a little more deeper and have even more people chime in. The question was essentially, how do you feel about businesses/websites/organizations who have more than one Twitter account? One which is the more personable account (the face of the organization, much like Scott Monty is for Ford) and another that is primarily for news, company/site updates, and links to articles posted on the site?

My initial thought was it depends. Some of the Twitter responses took both sides of the issue…

So, let me add a few thoughts that couldn’t really be expressed in 140 characters…

• We can’t assume that the “typical” Twitter user uses it just like we do. As marketing professionals, we prefer to see a face associated with the brand and don’t like accounts that just post links. I do think that in the majority of cases, this is true for the “typical” user, but there are exceptions.
• News sites like CNN, ESPN, and USA Today may be better served having an account that just posts links to their articles, and then having one of their more prominent personalities have an account for commentary. That way, people can choose if they want just the facts or want someone to tell them what they think about the facts. Another example would be certain shopping websites. Some fans may ONLY want tweets about coupons and deals from Amazon. Others may want reviews of products, pictures, and a personality. Would it make more sense to separate these accounts to please the highest number of people (even if one group is smaller?)
• If you do have two separate accounts, it is important to make it very clear to followers that the other account does exist.
• Oftentimes, leaders of a business/organization have very busy schedules and don’t have time to tweet about all of the important news and information from their company. Now, before you say that they obviously are being huge slackers, quit thinking about people like David Armano, Scott Monty, and those type people because, quite frankly, most execs don’t have their social media act together like these guys do. In big, international corporations or business that produce a ton of content (like newspapers), it really may not be worth their time informing followers about every news item, so they just stick to the major ones and let someone else aggregate the rest of the news in another account.
• This isn’t to say that the company account has to be entirely links. It could be more than that…

So, what do you think? Is it appropriate for an organization to separate their accounts into a more personable one and one that is mostly news, articles, and the type? Is it even preferable? Let’s hear your thoughts…

Facebook just surpassed the 500 million user mark. Which raises the question, what could you get done with 500 million people?

• If everyone donated $10, you’d have $5 billion to be split up among 5 different charitable causes. Not a bad donation, right?
• You could hold a basketball tournament featuring 50 million teams (with 3 subs and 2 cheerleaders on each team) from across the world. Good luck drawing up that bracket.
• You could own the Guinness Book of World Records for events such as “Largest Water Balloon Fight”, “Most people dancing to Thriller simultaneously,” “Largest slumber party” etc. etc.
• You could build an army that would pretty much dwarf any in existence (don’t even think about it, Zuckerburg)
• You could start your own country. Oh, and you’d have the 3rd largest population in the world.
• Unlock the “WTF! Where Did All of These People Come From?” badge on foursquare.
• Assuming the average person is 5 feet, 5 inches tall, you could stack the users on top of each other, reach the moon, and then stack them going back to the moon. Then, you’d still have 75000 miles of people left, which would allow you to wrap them around the circumference of earth 3 times. Dare to check my math?
• Film a semi-decent movie, get it in theaters, and get each of these 500 million people to go see it. Average ticket price of $10 means you’d gross $5 billion on opening day. Take that, Batman.
• Throw one heckuva epic party.
• Send out a search unit for Bin Laden.
• Construct a plan to convince one of the 500 million that their life was actually a made for tv movie (a la the Truman show).

What would you do?

Original photo from Robert Scales

Contests. They’ve been around long before social media, but they seem to be a pretty popular tactic used in the medium. I’m convinced that some companies even consider the contests their entire social strategy, as opposed to simply a tactic. Let’s face it, though, these contests can be pretty effective (for some purposes, which we’ll see), if you approach them the right way.

Before We Get Started

First of all, as with anything, you need to know who your target audience is and where they “play” on the Internet. You don’t want to be running a contest on Twitter when your target demographic has proved to use Facebook much more than Twitter. Furthermore, you need to know why you’re executing a contest. It should be used as a means to some end (as opposed to it being the end). Don’t just hold a contest for the heck of it.

What a Contest Is (and isn’t)

A contest is a great way to help spread a specific message or increase the visibility of your brand or a new form of communication for your already visible brand (i.e. – Coca Cola wants to get word out about its Twitter account that they want to turn into a major communication channel).

The key here is that the contest shouldn’t be the start or the end of your strategy. You need to first have valuable content in place prior to the contest so that new visitors can have an idea of what sort of value you provide on a regular basis. Stemming from that, you need to ensure that after the contest, you continue bringing that solid content to your followers.

The contest is a great way to get people to the front door, but this doesn’t do you any good unless they stick around for a while and make repeat visits.

Know the Rules

Although many would be happy to throw these to the wind, it is important to first be aware of any legal regulations that you should be operating within. Be sure to look at the Terms of Service or user Agreement for the social tools you’re wanting to use as well as any regulations for sweepstakes and contests for any states you or your audience may be in.

Many people don’t realize that it’s actually against Facebook’s Terms of Service to run a contest without the approval of Facebook beforehand (I’ve read that in order to get their permission, you have to make a Facebook Ad buy of at least a certain dollar amount).

The Prize

Let’s face it, one of the two most important pieces to running a successful contest is having a killer prize. If the prize isn’t up to snuff, then who the heck is going to take the time to enter it? I’d be willing to do a lot more to enter a contest if the prize were a $10,000 home theater set-up than if it were for a $25 Starbucks gift card.

The Contest

This would be the other critical piece in having a successful contest: What am I going to have to do be entered? I’m not going to jump through 500 hoops for a wimpy prize, but I may jump through 10 to get a sweet one. Honestly, this should be the fun part, for both you and your customers. Have fun  using your creativity to think of contest ideas, and make sure the contest is enjoyable for your customers to participate in. If the contest itself is fun, it’s impact will go far beyond the short amount of time the customer spends thinking about your brand.

If entries are fun, funny, and/or creative, you can even get more bang for your buck by aggregating all of the entries and allowing visitors to vote up their favorites. This both helps you find the best entries and makes it easier for visitors to find the best entries without having to sift through them.

Contest Types

Retweet Contests – If you ask me, these are lame. Any decent sized brand will get a pretty high number of entries, but it doesn’t do much good because most will RT the message and be done with your brand after that. The low barrier to entry is good, but it doesn’t leave much of an impact since it’s almost TOO easy to enter.

Be our “x”th follower and win – I really hate these contests. How do people not realize that this encourages your current followers to unfollow you and then refollow you once you get close to the “X” number?

Answer a Question - Sometimes they use a trivia question, which may encourage fans to explore their website in an effort to find the answer, while others use a question that just makes the follower spend time thinking about the brand or what the brand does (i.e. – an airline asking what one country you would fly to if you could). This is better in my books because it’s still easy to enter, but it makes you think about the brand and can help start a conversation with the entrants.

Note – be sure to tell entrants to answer it and use a hashtag (not an @ reply) so that their followers will be able to see it, allowing you to tap into their networks.

Caption Contest – This would involve posting a photo of a funny/awkward situation and asking your followers to add their own caption. I really like this because it can be used on any medium really, is very easy to enter, and encourages creative and funny responses. This may even get some followers to spend time reading through others’ answers, enjoying the funny responses.

Photo/Video Contests – Maybe it’s asking followers to post a photo of them using your product or some other form of contest. Maybe it’s asking them to make a funny commercial for your brand. These are powerful simply because of the visual nature of the content being produced. Only thing to keep in mind here is make sure it’s easy to upload entries, to make it as easy as possible to enter.

Crowdsourcing – You need an idea. A great idea. And you are either too lazy to think of one yourself or (better scenario) you want your audience to feel a sense of ownership and responsibility of your brand. So, how do you encourage them to do this? Easy, offer an incentive. Cooler prizes equal the more time they’ll put into thinking about a great idea.

To Be Determined… – Of course, the best idea out there is one that hasn’t been used yet. This is where you can have a bit of fun in thinking of what you can do. Go wild and think of the craziest ideas you can, and then scale them back to reality.

Are you a fan of social media contests (as a consumer and/or as a marketer)? What are some of the best examples of contests that you’ve seen/participated in?

Facebook recently informed us that we had it wrong all along. We weren’t “fans” of brands. We simply “liked” them. Well now, The Zuckster is giving us permission to “like” comments on the book of Face.

I know, we’ve already been over why you should quit Facebook, but for those of you that have stuck around, this seemingly minor feature addition is actually a pretty significant one. I’ll admit, initially I brushed it off as the equivalent of a car adding a cup holder in the 2012 model. Nothing more than a minor cosmetic change that gives us only a marginal amount of added utility. BUT, once I got to thinking about it, “liking” comments will likely turn out to be much more than a feature that simply giving users another number to look at to see how cool they are based on how many “likes” they receive. How so?

Increases Interaction with Brands

Facebook user #112,012,234 visits Brand X’s Facebook Page. He takes a peek, skims some comments, maybe clicks on the photos tab, and maybe even “Likes” the page since he’s been a fan of Brand X since he wasn’t old enough to wipe his own…you get the point. The thing is, he/she isn’t THAT likely to come back.

Facebook user #124,123 (an early adopter, no doubt. Likely some sort of guru) visits Brand Y’s Facebook Page. He takes a peek, skims some comments, sees a hilarious comment from a user in response to the announcement that Brand Y’s widgets are now available in Vermont. What does he do? He “likes” the comment.

Boom.

User #124,123 just took an action. It was an extremely small action. No more than a simple left-click of the mouse. However, this small action makes them highly more likely to return to your Page. Even if that comment wasn’t directly from your brand representative or community manager, it had an impact. Enough of an impact to make them take an action, which will maybe (just maybe) make your brand come to mind quicker in the future, leading them to return to visit.

Increases Relevance of Comments

I’ll first note that this point is based on something Facebook hasn’t done just yet, but they should do very soon. By allowing people to “Like” comments, they are essentially allowing the comments to an update to be reviewed based on their quality. Facebook should (hopefully) sort the comments on a post based on the number of “Likes” they have received, so that the best comments appear at the top. Sometimes, it is better to view comments chronologically, so there should definitely be a way to toggle how they are viewed (how else are you going to see what Suzie was saying “OMG, Josh, STFU!” in response to?)

This way, on a brand’s Facebook Page, new visitors will not have to sift through the junk that other fans are posting in response to an update and get straight to the good stuff. For users, this makes for a better experience. For brands, this makes for a more engaging Page. For Facebook, this should make them happy.

New Data for Facebook Analytics

Big brands often have thousands or millions of “Likers” (I still don’t know what to call them now that they’re not “fans”), which makes it pretty difficult to identify who the brand evangelists are on their Facebook Page without a lot of elbow grease and carefully monitoring activity on it. Again, I have no clue if Facebook plans on implementing this feature, but imagine having data on which of your “likers” received the most “likes” from other “likers” and which “likers” are “liking” the most comments? Confused yet?

Oftentimes (with many exceptions) people who are receiving the most “likes” are adding tremendous value to your Facebook community by providing insightful, funny, or relevant comments. You NEED to know who these people are so that you can use it however you choose. Maybe you reward them by sending them a prize pack. Maybe you “hire” them as an official brand ambassador. Maybe you simply highlight them on your website or blog. Heck, maybe you invite them out to your offices or place of business for a VIP day. Whatever it is, you can do something to both thank them and encourage others to become as much of a brand evangelist as they are.

So, those are just a few of the initial thoughts I had on how such a teeny tiny update is actually a potentially sorta big deal for us on the business side. Am I exaggerating the benefits of the new ability to “Like” comments, or is it beneficial in other areas as well?

P.S. – Like Zucks, I now give you permission to “Like” this (and any other) blog post at the top of the Page, so, have at it!

Image by Laughing Squid