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A few months ago, Wildfire conducted an ROI survey of over 700 marketers across different industries all around the world to see how social media is used in their businesses and why. The below infographic shows how social media is used to grow brand awareness, increase communication with consumers, and how marketers use this information to determine the impact of social media on their business.
This year at the Association of National Advertisers convention, Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook decided to be bold with her sales pitch. Her message: Facebook shouldn’t be the only thing marketers do online or in marketing. It should just be part of everything they do. In the AdAge article, Sandberg’s Quietly Audacious Pitch to ANA: Put a Little Facebook in Everything You Do, they quote her saying, “For Facebook, not only is overall sharing doubling every year via “Zuckerberg’s Law,” but the number of daily fan page “likes” also has doubled in the past year to 100 million daily.” Though she has a point and proved it with case studies showing the success of American Express and Huggies, I don’t really agree with her that it should be the strategy for everyone.
There are some brands that should definitely be on Facebook. I have liked pages for companies like my favorite brands of ice cream and shoes. However, my main goal is to get discounts or enter contests. I’m all about free shoes, not that I ever win. Because of this, I understand Ms. Sandberg’s point of view. However, there are some types of companies I don’t want to “like” on Facebook. I don’t want to “like” life insurance companies, pharmaceutical makers, or financial planners on Facebook. There are certain industries that should remain serious and in my opinion, having a page on Facebook cheapens the value of their brand. I also want at least some of my life private and “liking” something personal such as who I go to about my 401K to pop up on all of my friends’ newfeeds. I also think that the number of likes a company has is not necessarily a good measure of success. I know many people who have “liked” a brand on Facebook in order to write on their wall about how much they hate them. In this case, being on Facebook is hurting your brand by making everyone aware of all of the problems people have had.
I completely agree that Facebook is a great way to highlight a brand when it is appropriate. I’ve seen many successful campaigns use Facebook as a platform but it should not be part of a strategy for every brand. In my opinion, Ms. Sandberg’s statements should be taken into consideration, but keep in mind that she is the COO of Facebook and it was a sales pitch.
Read the full AdAge artile here.
So this morning, the new owners of the social bookmarking site Delicious launched their new, revamped version of the site. Gone are the Yahoo name and many features that long-time users are now complaining about on Twitter and other social networking sites. What they’ve offered is a new Beta site that is not without glitches. This, combined with a recent article in the Atlantic (The Cloud’s My-Mom-Cleaned-My-Room Problem) highlight the problems that many brands (especially online ones) face when they change a product or service.
It’s a clear reminder that users/customers/consumers whatever you want to call them, feel they have a stake in your brand. Sometimes they feel their stake is as much as the actual owner’s. It’s yet to be seen if the new owners of Delicious can make enough changes to keep users attracted to their site, or if they’ll drive away existing users and do little to encourage growth. One thing is clear, they may have misjudged the passion and expectations that many of their customers have for their brand and service.
My freshman year of college, Facebook came to Bowling Green, OH and I signed up immediately just like everybody else. It was incredible and probably the most exciting thing to happen in Bowling Green all year. I could talk to friends from everywhere! People I hadn’t seen in a decade were telling me all about their lives and I could share right back. I visited the site constantly throughout my college years. But as times change, though I still visit Facebook daily, I don’t stay on nearly as long or nearly as often. I find other websites like Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest taking over my social media time.
In an article on Datamation.com, Mike Elgan brings up the point that Facebook, though they have tried numerous times, has yet to produce anything new and exciting for users. They’ve tried email, location check-ins (like FourSquare), groups (like Google+ circles), and Skype integration and all have been unsuccessful. People are becoming bored with Facebook and its failure to grow and evolve. Because of this, Elgan compares Facebook to Yahoo. Yahoo used to be the go-to company for the “portal era” as Elgan puts it, until Google came along and started the “search era”. Facebook used to be the only social media site, and though other sites don’t have their number high number of users, they are coming up with new ideas and features while Facebook is fading. In the month of May alone, Facebook lost 6 million users in the US and 1.5 million users in Canada.
Elgan says, “Yahoo has no vision. It has no purpose. It’s dispensable. Yahoo continues like a zombie, animated by the life it once had. And that’s what Facebook is becoming. Yes, they’ll continue to have users. And yes, they’ll continue to make money. But Facebook is looking increasingly like a one-trick pony that doesn’t have the vision to reinvent itself for the post-Facebook era.”
As we’ve all seen this month, Facebook is trying to improve with the new layouts and the “important posts”, but again, it appears to be another failed attempt and users are, again, unhappy. The question is, will any of their ideas stick? Personally, I believe that if they want to be successful, they are going to have to be original. Copying what other sites are doing won’t cut it anymore since people are already on the sites they are copying from. They need to be unique just like they were my freshman year.
Read the full article here.
For those of you who follow all things fashion, your head is probably spinning from the blogosphere’s New York Fashion Week reports. But have you met the newest fashion week blogger, Marina? If you’ve been following Missoni for Target’s marketing campaign you’re probably familiar with the 25-foot tall marketing marvel. Yes, twenty-five feet tall. Marina is, in fact, a doe-eyed blogging mannequin/doll outfitted in a gigantic Missoni for Target dress and tights, easily recognizable by the fashion house’s signature zigzag design. She’s also styled with a chic mod haircut and armed with a larger-than-life smartphone (for blogging/social media purposes, of course). Marina certainly looks like a hip chick you’d like to follow on Twitter.
This week Marina will be available for just that. Flown in from Italy, Marina plans to spend her time in New York tweeting and Facebooking her whereabouts, contributing to Target and Missoni’s Tumblr blog, “All the Way Up Here,” and making special cameos at hot spots like the Missoni for Target pop-up store in midtown Manhattan. A genius move from NY ad agency, Mother, who lovingly crafted the super-sized model. For all purposes and intent, Marina appears to be the perfect concoction of fashion-forward style (cheap-chic courtesy of Target and Missoni), technology (she’s a living doll, well, kinda, her limbs are operated by puppeteers), and social media (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr). She’s the ideal companion for New York Fashion Week and an eye-catching advertisement for Target’s latest line. Want to tweet with Marina? You can reach her at @MarinaWithStyle or via text at 1-917-409-7260. Or you can catch Marina over the weekend at these locations:
Friday, Sept. 9, 4 to 6 p.m.: Times Square (42nd Street and Broadway)
Friday, Sept. 9, 7:30 to 10 p.m.: Fifth Avenue at 58th Street
Saturday, Sept. 10, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.: Merchant’s Gate, Central Park
To see Marina in action, click on this link, scroll down to the small square box, click and press play.
In an interesting interview with NPR, former Los Angeles and New York Police Chief Bill Bratton addresses the ongoing debate over Internet privacy rights, again brought to the front of media attention by recent flash-mob riots in Philadelphia and England.
The struggle to resolve issues of individual privacy rights with protection of public safety isn’t a new one. But now, government officials have to contend with a virtually omnipresent information stream and a communication vehicle that taps into innate social mechanisms—As apparently, participants in the mobs this summer might have been moved by some of the same instincts that propel flocks, schools, herds, and swarms in coordinated movement.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute and National Science Foundation have found that, as with birds, fish, mammals, or insects, our instincts sometimes propel us to do things contrary to an initial choice of action.
It’s no surprise that people are inclined to change up what we’re doing in order to keep in step with others in our social network. But it is interesting to find the same model for group behavior in other species. And not just that, but that it is precisely the willingness to individuals to change course that is most important to a group’s movement. So much so that according to one of the study authors, “we don’t necessarily pay more attention to those doing the same as us, but many times [we pay more attention] to those doing something different.”
The study provides interesting insight into how social networks might operate in exerting influence over our attitudes, preferences, and behaviors…whether good or bad.
