Tag Archives: social media

Which Social Platform is for you? A Neat Flowchart

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So now that you’ve used MySpace, Friendster, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Foursquare, Google+, Yahoo! Groups, LinkedIn, and about a thousand other social sites you’ll never remember, it’s time to make the prognosis: Some of these platforms won’t be here in a few years. Of those that do, they will attract the users who have best figured them out.

For learning to use one of these sites, it’s not really a matter of how, since they’re all pretty easy. They may have their own set of normal practices, and you may look like a terminal noob if you don’t adhere to them, but how much you care about that is driven by your own practices. You either think and act like Google+ or you don’t. If you do, you’ll focus your efforts on that site. If you don’t, you’ll drift away.

Within the next year, I think the shakeout will begin in earnest. When the dust clears, we won’t all be using every tool in a way that is ravenous toward some and pathetic toward others. I’d make the soft drink metaphor but it’s been done.

So it’s time to lay down the cards. Which is best for you?

Which Social Platform is for you?

Deconstructing the #McDStories blunder: What could they have done?

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mcdonalds #mcdstories social media failYou know how a lot of teary downer movies come out in January, in an effort to capture the mantle of “Best Movie of the Year” before anyone else? On January 18, it seems the McDonalds chain used that approach in their attempt to win the award for “Biggest Social Media Blunder of 2012″ with the #McDStories hashtag.

Why do social media marketing ideas sometimes fail so grotesquely? Sometimes the idea is truly idiotic, or malformed, or naive. #McDStories is different. It actually seemed like a good idea for a well-known brand like McDonalds, which trades on convenience, cost, speed and a chipper all-American wholesomeness. The problem is that McDonalds is well-known to different people for different reasons.

Creating a hashtag is like naming a child. You’d like him to get through kindergarten without being tormented because of his name. But you’ll never know if the name you give him at birth will be considered wierd by the other kids, or so popular that he sinks into a sea of Coreys or Parkers. If an infamous criminal or Hollywood star arises with the same name, you can’t control that. So you choose a name and bear it. That’s what McDonalds did.

So what was the mistake?

In using the #McDStories hashtag, their first few posts were about the people who provide the restaurant chain with raw materials, such as farmers. The genesis of their error resides here, because it led Twitter users to align the campaign with where McDonalds gets their food, not the family-friendly sappiness the brand offers to the public.

No doubt McDonalds was hoping that the campaign would morph into people posting about the time they took the kids’ soccer team out for burgers, held a birthday party, found a much-needed rest stop on a long trip, or shared moments after a fun day out. In other words, they needed parents; People like me, who actually have stories like this but have no time to tweet about it. Why? Because we have kids.

So they reached a different audience instead; Socially plugged-in, cynical, humorous young adults without kids, who do have time to tweet about an unethical brand they abandoned long ago and don’t believe in.

Could it have been avoided?

It actually could have been, if McDonalds used their legendary brand awareness acumen to appeal to their traditional audience with a broader campaign. In other words, soften the ground with radio, television, and parent-oriented websites, infusing the hashtag with the kind of stories they want their audience to tell, and invite them to use it on social media platforms. McDonalds is not grassroots, and can never be. Even parents like me see it as a necessary evil. It can not drive a social campaign that is not top down. Period.

Here’s the worst part: This social campaign was clearly attempted without any such strategy, and #McDStories backfired, so there’s that. But this is really a tragic double-fail. Here’s why: the notion of using real customer stories to strengthen McDonalds’ community relations, a very powerful idea that is well-aligned with their brand, is now dead. Not just the hashtag; but any stories at all.

There is one silver lining: Clearly, McDonalds has learned that it should never, ever, remind people that its food once ever existed as chickens, beef steers, or potatos.

Why Did Salesforce.com Buy Radian6?

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Salesforce.com buys Radian6By now, you probably know that Salesforce.com is buying Radian6 for a total of $326 Million.  On the heels of Salesforce.com’s investments in HubSpot and Seesmic, I’m not at all surprised at this move. HubSpot’s unique lead generation and engagement platform is great for pushing content, while Seesmic is a cool self-service social network management tool. Radian6 can add some amazing analytical value to the mix.

But Salesforce.com? SFDC’s client list is a who’s who of global businesses with one thing in common: they are either commercial product and service companies or the commercial divisions of very large consumer-oriented businesses like Dell and NBC. Yet, social platforms have largely been considered consumer media. So does this investment make sense for SFDC?

Of course it does.

Remember that Salesforce.com is not a trend follower. It is a vision maker. The company helped create the Software-as-a-Service meme, as well as other terms like Cloud Services, which seemed to pop up on their own. They didn’t. It took companies like SFDC to help define and market these terms.

Until now, any buzz monitoring platform could be seen as a useful social analysis tool or a gimmicky waste of time and money for marketers trying to justify their embrace of a fad, even the good ones like Radian6.

As someone who has experience dealing with both, I find this very interesting for several reasons:

  • Salesforce has not bought an email service provider, and I always figured that was because it enjoys strong relationships and technical integration with several ESPs, and preferred not to jeopardize those.
  • Salesforce may have had the opportunity to enjoy similar partnerships with various social media monitoring and engagement platforms, but has obviously decided that for this model, direct ownership is more important than partnerships.
  • Radian6 will be a very powerful tool for tracking the online buzz behavior of business contacts already stored in Salesforce, and it is obviously true that business users use social tools as well.
  • It makes me wonder if Salesforce has something planned for a consumer-oriented CRM product or service.

I believe this represents a major milestone in social marketing. With this acquisition, SFDC is spending the considerable value of their brand to legitimize a current business trend, changing everything. Thoughts?

Cookie Cutter Social Media Strategies (For Cookies Only)

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Look, I’m new to social media, so I won’t shovel you expert advice about building a huge following. Your Twitter mojo is probably a thousand times mine. If you rock the social media house, keep doing whatever you’re doing. I’m probably learning a lot from you.

(The truth is, I’ve never worked for someone who saw any value whatsoever in social media, and I wasn’t able to sell it to the boss. So my opportunity to jump on the social media bandwagon was spent doing old-school stuff; powerpoint decks, data sheets, press releases. I know, I know. That’s another post.)

But like everyone else, I do have an opinion on how best to use social media to grow your business. That’s what it is ultimately about, right? Growing your business? Building a base of people in your community, so that you have a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw on to help you deliver a finely-honed service or product to the people who are willing to pay you for it? Creating mind-share? Getting noticed?

I’m looking for all of that, too, and the advice I’ve found on how to use social media in my marketing strategy follows a massive bell curve. The range seems to break down like this:

Social Media Strategy - Bell Curve

The advice in the middle approaches a ‘best practices’ tactic for social media in marketing. Although I think we’re still a long way from that. If you are a thought-leader who publishes new material all the time, social media is exactly what you need it to be. You can gain a massive following and if you’re good, you can monetize that following.

But a cookie-cutter strategy won’t cover everyone. No more than a great cookie recipe will help you make a cheeseburger. If you’re selling air conditioner parts, the best social media model really isn’t there yet. If customers found out about you through Twitter, it’s a safe bet you’re a long way from a sale. You should use social media to build a community and get links, but not leads. And that reality will drive your strategy more than anything else. For the average B2B company, social media is still a luxury.

So if you’re not a constant online publisher, why worry about strategy? You’re still in the “Just Do It!” stage. Jump in.

Look at email marketing, which was the Wild West about ten years ago, but is now a (variably) respected marketing and communications tool that offers tracking, best practices, compliance guidelines, and an entire realm of best practices and expertise. Social media looks at email marketing the way email marketing looks at postcards. The strategy will come.

I’m not going to prescribe any specific approach, except to suggest that you take advice that works well for a publishing model with a grain of salt. In ten years it will be easy to know the best way to use social media, but today, despite all the hollering, we know nothing. I’m just saying; “Relax!”

What is a “Real” Social Media Success Story?

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Whenever you read about companies and celebrities using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, you hear all the stories about how these organizations and people have become huge social media success stories. They have expanded their reach to more followers and created another portal for constant engagement and brand-building.

A rundown of these social media success stories usually includes the following:

  • Oprah Winfrey
  • Ashton Kutcher
  • CNN
  • Walmart
  • Apple
  • Skittles
  • Marriott
  • Kodak
  • McDonald’s
  • CVS
  • Hershey’s
  • Staples
  • Intel
  • Cisco
  • UPS
  • The Home Depot
  • PepsiCo
  • Discovery Channel

Do you notice what they all they have in common? They all existed before the rise of social media. Beyond that, they were all huge before the rise of social media.

Oprah, for example, got famous for creating one of the better daytime talk shows, and making it the cornerstone of her media empire. Every day, she touched a nerve with viewers and guests, and stayed away from the circus atmosphere of some other daytime shows (you know who I mean). She covered topics that were touching and interesting, and developed a brand that was largely based on her personality and interests.

In other words, she was a social element before the medium she could really exploit was even born. And you might notice that her show is still on television, and is still the foundation of her empire. Her followers would not be her followers without it. So is Oprah really a social media success story?

Similarly, Ashton Kutcher was not unknown before the rise of Twitter. It turns out he was already a very talented and funny actor, and the star of a hit television show, a veteran of several movies, a teen magazine heartthrob, and his posters graced the walls of girls’ bedrooms everywhere before he ever sent his first Tweet. Without all that, he’d probably be a geeky-but-dreamy guy working at Wal-Mart, known for his ability to make friends, but not a social media legend.

While we’re on the subject, Kutcher challenged CNN to gain more Twitter followers. He won, and claimed the victory showed that “Social media and social news outlets can become as powerful as the major news outlets.”

But CNN still seems to be standing. 90 million people subscribe to it through their cable providers and several million viewers tune in each day. Kutcher relies on reruns, movies, Nikon ads and tabloid covers to keep his name on everyone’s mind. When he covers a foreign war, humanitarian disaster, or the daily economic report using only his Twitter account, I’ll be impressed.

Speaking of Wal-Mart, you might have noticed that the company is larger than some countries in revenue and total square footage. This had nothing to do with social media, and neither will the company’s future. Wal-Mart’s only possible strategy with social media is to strengthen its relationship with followers, most of whom shop there only because of low prices (based on forcing its manufacturers to exploit slave labor overseas).

Apple took a lot of flak until very recently for being late to the party, and even discouraging the use of social media tools. The company is now on board, but with such a dedicated base of followers and some of the most innovative consumer-oriented multimedia tools, it’s surprising they didn’t lead. Apple’s finally building outposts using social media is not an example of a success story.

Skittles are tasty, fruity sugar drops that got to be one of the biggest sellers before the Internet was even around, so what is the point of a candy having a website anyway? Well, the Skittles marketers thought the same thing and replaced their website with a Twitter window and a little Flash with promotional offers and links to Facebook and YouTube. It’s brilliant, but is it a social media success? Skittles isn’t even a company. It’s just a brand sold by Wrigley Bros., which in turn is owned by Mars, Inc.

So what exactly is a social media success story?

It has to go beyond creating an outpost and generating buzz. A true social media success story should have been virtually unknown before using social media, and should be a legitimate business. A business is something that fills a market need, has a sustainable revenue model, and has the potential to enrich more than just the owner, but also its community, industry and audience. A lot of people make money from their blog, and they advertise their blog through social media, but have they created something that can continue to operate and adds value for others?

There are a few examples:

Zappos
http://blog.davemadethat.com/2008/07/09/communication-20-zappos-a-social-media-success-story-interview-with-tony-hsieh/

Bacon Salt
http://www.baconsalt.com/

Cold Stone Creamery
http://social-media-optimization.com/2007/07/social-media-marketing-success-stories/

MyWorkButterfly
http://mashable.com/2009/04/28/grow-social-network/

Indium
Finally – a success story that more closely matches every marketer’s situation: How to take an existing business with a small budget and little name recognition and gain market share using social media.

http://www.indium.com/