Social Media and You

In the ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ category, kudos to Starbucks for innovations that might impress any marketing mastermind. Get a load of this article about the launch of Starbucks’ own  Digital Network.

Their concept – offering a select (and hotly popular) set of internet picks, free for the taking when on site (when they’d usually cost the viewer at least some pittance) –  is brilliant. It’s a marketing gimmick, a free plastic toy to beat all and to please all, as well. As the cited article’s author says, “Imagine a customer-only network chock full of ‘In Network’ freebies that you can ONLY get while on ‘location’ …  Free access to premium news sites such as the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, free iTunes downloads, and for the kids free access to Nick Jr. games that typically require monthly fees.”

Talk about no-brainers. The cheap and easy value-add boosts Starbucks’ appeal astronomically. This is at least as phenomenal as Facebook Places, IMHO, though it approaches the wooing of customers from a different angle. While Facebook Places distinguishes a business establishment through its visits from individuals, the Starbucks initiative wins customers through the irresistibly of its personality.

A fascinating dichotomy, n’est-ce-pas?

So what do you think of Facebook’s switch to narrower tab pages? Heretofore, we could use a 700+ pixel-wide table and our tabs showed as simple pages without sidebars. As of next Monday, sidebars will show on either side of every 520 pixel-wide tab page.

Facebook mumbles something about how this will make navigation easier, but obviously it’s to increase their available ad space, right? I’m wondering why this isn’t being discussed; perhaps you can enlighten me.

Fact is, it’s a little disturbing that Facebook feels compelled to change the rules on us so often. I’m not opposed to change, but from a marketing and public relations standpoint, I’m beginning to think Facebook is dangerously pushing their luck.

The news lately has talked about a phenomenon in corporate economics in which an organization is too big to fail. Does Facebook count itself amongst these behemoths?

Certainly, reputation loudly proclaims that the company – particularly its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg – couldn’t care less about the software’s users. Considering that we pay nary a cent for using it, we can hardly complain. And Facebook substitutes are not easy to imagine.

It’s fascinating how the tail is wagging the dog, don’t you think?

The two are so closely related that it’s hard to distinguish between them, sometimes. But actually, they differ in important ways. Important, that is, if you’re wondering how to sell your products / services online.

Social media is a sub-set of inbound marketing. It’s much easier to understand and manipulate than inbound marketing. Social media is to inbound marketing what a rowboat is to an ocean vessel.

It’s like writing a letter, versus developing an entire postal service.

What you consider to be social media may range from a narrow perspective, in which only the networks of Twitter-Facebook-LinkedIn and such are included, to a broad definition inclusive of almost anything about your business that exists on the internet.

Perhaps social media goes even further than that, extending to in-person meet-ups and Foursquare events.

Social media is a set of tools.

Inbound marketing is a state of mind.

Inbound marketing is about moving beyond a competitive economy to a branded one, where value is derived from observed behaviors and relationships that are relatively personal.

(Traditional business values subliminal seduction through mass communications.)

Social media’s easy. Inbound marketing’s hard.  It’s tough to teach: it begs intuitive understanding.

More to come on this.

There are a few people who speak like prophets about the internet, and Brian Solis is one. Along with Clay Shirkey, Mitch Joel, Seth Godin (+ others), Solis establishes the lingo, defines operative principles.

Solis writes about Social Media Best Practices for Business and drives home in just a few strokes the essentials of the new culture that the web has created. He uses words like dedicate, conquer your fears, listen. He teaches that we need to be not only attractive, but expansive.

“The ability to showcase your products and services to attract customers and spark conversation is arguably greater on social networking sites than your own website.”

This sentence presents a formidable thought.

I asked some other supposed ‘gurus’ about the future of websites: they replied with indignation that individual websites are and always will be paramount online.

Shirkey more clearly understands the realities: social media (read, your Facebook Page, your Twitter presence, your LinkedIn activities and profile) is now almost as important as your website.

Note that this doesn’t mean you should use Facebook as your home base and bypass the need for a website. Rather, it suggests that both website and social media are required, working together.

Continuing from previous posting on uses of Facebook for business, we can list various reasons you might return to visit a company’s Business Page, after you’ve Liked it:

• offer a testimonial;
• respond when XYZ Company asks you to respond;
• participate in a contest, drawing, or special event;
• you’re curious about what others have to say about XYZ Company;
• you want to share a personal story that’s relevant to XYZ Co.

While these motivations may be shoe-ins for larger companies, small and itty bizzes may doubt that they can garner significant numbers these ways.

However, this viewpoint is skewed: it assesses FB as an optional vehicle, as if it were one of many choices. But actually, it’s the whole banana. Like the phone, you don’t have a choice whether or not to use it. FB’s a unique and necessary tool, not a fashion statement.

If you offer your FB Business Page as a service, rather than as messaging from you, its use may become more clear. It’s there

• to receive testimonials;
• to listen to your market;
• to reward your market;
• to enlist your market in doing good things;
• to be transparent.

While working on Facebook Business Pages for my clients, I sometimes contemplate their real uses. Facebook introduced Fan Pages a long time ago in an effort to keep personal profiles eminently personal. Business Pages were meant to accommodate the impulses of business and marketing. As we muddle through the consequences, we may well ask, how exactly is this supposed to work?

You go to Facebook and check out the updates on your home page. You run across a message from XYZ Company, where you recently bought a thingy you like a lot. The update mentions a new mobile thingy, and you click on the link. This takes you to XYZ’s website home page.

You go to their website, not their FB Page.

Yet businesses carefully cultivate their FB Pages for multiple visits by their Fans. What gives?

What makes you return often, or return ever, to a particular business’ Page?

Offering a testimonial, perhaps. Or responding when XYZ Company asks you to respond. Or participating in a contest. Or curiosity about what others have to say about XYZ Company.

On the broad scale of Things To Do everyday, though, these motivations score relatively weakly.

We have more to investigate here.

A new client has a successful personal page on Facebook, with many friends and lots of interaction. I was wondering why I should hassle her to start a business page, when her personal page is plenty lively already, with lots of updates pertaining to her business. And then I was reminded that FB discourages that sort of behavior. Doing business on a personal page is against the rules.

There are good reasons for this, I suppose. Cluttering up the network with a million pages of inane ad-babble would be obscene.

But then, no one would friend/like such a page, right? The whole idea of social media marketing is to attract people to your remarkableness, and your obvious integrity.

In my client’s case, as with other very small business owners, the seamless interweaving of personality and the business is what makes it all work so well. It’s my client’s passion that brings her success. She and her work are lovers: platonic, but fierce. Her friends and her fans/likes are the same.

By barring personal pages from doing business, Facebook’s policies contradict a fundamental of social media: its emphasis on the human element, on transparency and the person behind the corporate facade.

Facebook’s grabbing all the headlines these days, but let’s talk about Twitter for a minute.  FB is mundane, but Twitter is divine.

Dan Schawbel tweeted yesterday: “In order from highest to lowest conversion rate: Email > Blog > LinkedIn > Facebook > Twitter.”

Odd that the service is often seen as the underdog. Not so many members, not such fabulous return. In there, but trailing behind.

First thing every day, I check my emails, the news, and Twitter, in that order. BUT (true confessions time) I very seldom do original tweets. I react, retweet, even post links. But you won’t read much that’s just me. Why is that?

The simple truth is that I haven’t gotten past the awesomeness of everyone else’s updates. I’m still thrilled with the experience of just going to my tweetdeck and seeing what people are up to.

I tweet quite a bit on behalf of clients. I know how to use the tool as information exchange. But how to use it to express ME? Gee, I’m just not there yet.

It’s okay to take your time getting to know your options in online inbound marketing. It’s a relationship, after all. Not created in a day.

Of course, I have to weigh in on the Facebook privacy issue, since it’s trending higher than any topic ever or something like that. Very big news: “Facebook doesn’t care about your right to privacy!”

The software offers a way for you to be in instant contact with other people from all stages of your life. It is loaded to the max with extras and thoughtful benefits. It continuously labors to improve its services. You use its services to any extent you wish, absolutely for free.

But now that Facebook is sharing individual influence more liberally than ever, many peeps are getting scared, and drawing the line. Leo Laporte, reports CNN, sought vigorously for instructions on deleting his Facebook account, and dramatically executed them during his online broadcast.

But let me override the above links with that maverick Robert Scoble’s viewpoint, because it’s so much wiser. Fact is, like Scoble, I just don’t get the big privacy outcry. I learned early-on never to put in writing anything I’m not willing for others to read. Your personal journal, handwritten and kept under lock and key, maybe, but nothing else.

This isn’t rocket science. So what’s the big deal about privacy online?