Member-to-Member

Social Networks Make Lousy Marketing Tools? Patience.

It turns out people like to socialize on social networks according to Knowledge Networks, but we still don't go there to buy stuff, as indicated by user opinion about advertising on social network sites. This is news?

"Social media has reached critical mass, with 83% of the Internet population now  using it - and more than half doing so on a regular basis - according to new research being released today by Knowledge Networks. But for all the media industry's hype and buzz surrounding social networks, microblogs, and other social networking platforms, the genre has failed to become much of a marketing medium, and in the opinion of the Knowledge Networks' analysts, likely never will." - Joe Mandese, MediaPost

As a social network user and marketer, I think the real potential for social networks to influence purchase decisions will remain untapped for a while longer. I believe this because I see three factors in this nascent space that have yet to mature:

Case Study: Facebook Causes Increases My Personal Fundraising ROI 220%

I recently got older. Rather than get depressed however, I found reason to celebrate my encroaching mortality with Facebook Causes. The reason I'm writing about it is because Causes' new birthday application enabled me to garner social profit for myself and financial gain for those I'd like to help in a unique way. By evolving their cause marketing platform from an "invite your friends" model to a "run your own fundraising campaign" model, they personally helped me increase my Causes fundraising ROI by 220% and helped me raise $160 for my chosen cause, Educate Tomorrow. Based on my rather general assumptions detailed below, by creating a social marketing tool that let me build my own fundraising campaign, Facebook Causes could raise their donations revenue by as much as 93% (or $18 million).

Why You (Proably) Need A New Web Site to Partipate in Social Media

I've spent a lot of my career helping organizations improve their web presence and when social media first came a long I thought I would get to move on and leave web sites behind. And yet my first recommendation on virtually every new project goes something like this - Step #1: upgrade your web site! I've even developed a checklist to guide our assessment of their current site (see below).

The first few times this happened it made me uncomfortable; was I just falling back into my comfort zone? But then I began to understand the rationale behind my own recommendation at a deeper level, and it is this:

When you participate in the socialsphere your credibility (and to a great extent your success) depend heavily on your ability to express yourself genuinely and authentically. But where does your audience go to perform the "authenticity check", to compare your dialoging self against your "real" self? If you're a human being, they read your profile, meet you in a restaurant or talk to a mutual acquaintance. If you're an organization - they go to your web site and when they do this your online identity (i.e., web site) either reinforces their original opinion of you or not. To the extent your web site identity does not correlate to your social "voice" it undermines your authenticity, your credibility and thus your success.

Social Media 101 - For Marketers (and other people who speak English)

I, like everyone who does "social media' professionally, get asked to explain it a lot. I've got bunches of emails and slide decks taking a crack at the answer to What is Social Media, but I haven't been happy with any of them because they tend to focus on the little stuff, and it's the big stuff I find so interesting. Also, in getting my clients (and prospects) to the point where I can begin to actually advise them on how to incorporate social media into their global communications strategy, I have to help them understand the essence of what it is, not the details.

So, for a new client, I sat down and just wrote it out. I've been told by non-marketers and non-techies that it works pretty well to give them the big picture and put a lot of things they know about (e.g., Facebook, Twitter etc.) into a larger perspective. I share it here in the hopes others will find it useful. Feedback below welcome since I'll probably continue to evolve it for use in new fora.

Social Media 101 for Marketers

View more presentations from Dana Theus. (tags: 2.0 marketing)

Social Media Link Digest - #3

Not breaking news, just recent stuff of interest to those monitoring the social media phenomenon. Comments and link suggestions welcome.

Insights & Opinions

• MAYBE YOU'RE UBER-SOCIAL: & your boss isn't. Social psychos determine social media comprehension? Thx @socialmedia411

• DYNAMICS OF FREE LABOR: Fascinating read on the volunteer economy & how it powers the social web. Downsides identified as well. How long will talented volunteers work to make you rich?

Social Media Link Digest - #2

The next installment in my newest filtering experiment in how to stay on top of the tidal wave of info out there on the social web - headlines only. Not breaking news, just recent stuff of interest to those monitoring the social media phenomenon. Comments and link suggestions welcome.

Insights & Opinions

• OPT-IN ADS GET FUNDING: SocialMedia gets $6M investment for opt-in social network ad products, claiming $16M in revenue.

• ADVICE FOR COMMUNITY MANAGERS:, how not to get fired by @owyang
  

• MEASURING THE WATERCOOLER: Example engagement stats to measure WOM.

• FACEBOOK JOINS OPENID: My blog post about why this is important on more levels than the obvious.

Personal Identity Management Takes a Major Step Forward

Facebook joins the OpenID movement!

Thanks to @jowyang for spreading the word announced yesterday that Facebook has thrown it's weight in with OpenID, joining Google, IBM, Microsoft, PayPal, VeriSign and Yahoo! on OpenID's board. I think this is great news, because getting the big players together is the first step in a long haul to helping make the social web more useful, trustworthy and important to the broader population.

My opinion might differ from others' a bit in terms of the importance of this first step - critical mass - in that I think a centralized login ID is only a prerequisite to the true impact of this movement, which is ultimately (multiple) personal identity management. What's the difference? Centralized login is a quantitative improvement - reducing the number of logins you have to manage across multiple platforms (and thus potentially improving security over them). It certainly is beneficial and will reduce barriers to joining multiple networks, but it's not the holy grail. The holy grail is being able to centrally own and manage your personal identities. In other words, having one identity which you use on Facebook and LiveJournal, and managing it through the same tools as you do your separate professional identity on LinkedIn and Business Exchange. OpenID does this really well, or might once they get the buy-in and support to build out what is now very basic functionality in this regard.

Twitter as Social Experiment

I, like everyone else I know and read in social mediaville, am still trying to figure out what's so compelling about Twitter. I say "compelling" with a grain of salt because I don't always feel all that compelled to hang out there (though I do so more now that I'm using @Tweetdeck). On the other hand, I do go back pretty regularly to decide who to return follow, check out links and reply to message; I even tweeted my first conference last week and it did make me feel more connected as well as helped me meet new people. Most importantly, I'm always thrilled when I get a reply or direct message; it adds a little spark to my day. I think that spark is what is so cool about it, and so I'll add my voice to the hundreds of others who have already lauded, puzzled over and trashed Twitter.

Here's my basic takeaway; to the TwitTrashers, I say - chill out. Twitter isn't a business model, it's a social experiment - a people mashup - and what it reaffirms is that people are addicted to other people; they like to hang out with each other, do business, share stuff and otherwise find excuses to communicate. This is true of the social web in general, and the reason that I agree with Doug Shumacher that the whole web will soon be social. But when it comes to people addictions Twitter is like the social web on speed because it accelerates the "fan ego boost" phenomenon and puts people in direct conversation which is where true communication happens.

21st Century Social Marketing: Lead, Follow or Stop Playing & Listen

Many of us saw the stats at the end of last year indicating that while social networks' traffic is up their ads are less effective (IDC 11/08) because people use them to socialize, not be lured into the purchase cycle (as opposed to search). This was a statical blip in the noise of crashing markets a few months ago, but if you buy or sell advertising it must have been a little jarring, like a loudly played wrong note in a cacophonic symphony of doom. Of course, the music is still playing and new melodies are discernable through the discord; they just don't sound the same as traditional advertising. In fact, they're more like a jam jazz session than music played to a score, forcing us all to listen harder in order to play along. In this chaotic transition, in which the customer has more control and influence in the purchase process than ever before, I submit that it is the twenty-first century marketing professional who has the greatest opportunity to step up to lead the band forward to success, redefining the discipline of marketing in the process.

The Medium Is The Experience - Inauguration 2009

"The medium is the message." - Marshall McLuhan, 1964

"The medium is the experience." - Me, 2009

I am watching the inauguration live on CNN.com and CNN TV with my youngest son, and chatting with my Facebook friends in the right margin about it, and Tweeting about it and watching #inaug09 tweets as well. My oldest son and husband are down on the mall trying to experience it in person. I have friends watching it all over the world and communicating via email. CNN is interviewing people on the mall, in Atlanta and in Afghanistan who are watching it on jumbotrons, and a Facebook person talking about all of us watching via FB. Who of us is having the more authentic experience?