Social Business

Twitter, Facebook, and other social sites continue to try to figure out ways to make money through advertising. Most recently, Twitter rolled out "promoted tweets" where advertisers' tweets appear in Twitter searches. At the same time social sites are figuring out advertising, companies look for ways to promote their brands on the sites--with and without paid advertising.

A friend recently asked me what I thought about a company that promotes its customers' brands via tweets. I was somewhat ok with it until she asked what I thought about the company offering it to their customers for a fee.

We all promote brands on social sites--we "like" brands on Facebook and we mention restaurants, movies, books, snacks, electronics, and more in our status postings and tweets. More formally, companies like Amazon are taking affiliate marketing social. However, the scenario my friend gave still feels different. It seems less than transparent. How does it sit with you? Is it any different than affiliate marketing? You can be sure that if the company does it, the community will let them know their thoughts, probably in 140 characters or less.
 

Real-time search--or social search--is dramatically changing the results pages from Google and a handful of other search engines. Instead of just presenting results from indexed pages, results now include the latest content from Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites. If you haven't seen it, try it now:
- Type "B2B brand" in Google's search box and hit Enter
- On the results page, click on the + sign in the upper left next to "Show Options"
- Select "Latest"

In addition to the normal results you'd expect to see, such as pages for blog posts, consulting firms, articles, and job postings, you now see Tweets and other commentary from social sites.

For marketers, this means social sites have a much broader reach than our friends and our friends' friends. In Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin noted,  “No one visits a web site's home page anymore — they walk in the back door, to the page Google sent them to.” Now Google is sending us to people's streams of consciousness. Are they talking about your brand?
 

I've read a lot of articles and blog posts recently about measuring social media. Companies spent the last couple of years testing the grounds -- now the honeymoon is over and they want (um, need) to prove the value.

We've had the same discussions at Oden. Are we optimizing Facebook? How can we establish and keep a momentum with blogging? Should we tweet? As we ponder these questions, we typically find ourselves back at the ultimate question, "Are we doing things that fit within our overall objectives?"

Social media strategy is not about numbers of fans or tweets, or how many social networks you're in. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of new media. As a firm that's in the business of developing strategic marketing plans, we even have to remind ourselves at times to practice what we preach -- begin with a strategy, not the tactics. It's no different than other channel -- develop a plan that focuses on what's relevant to your target audience and the ROI will follow.

Now that those of us who are considered a "mature audience" have finally embraced social media, Facebook is apparently uncool. Just like when we were kids -- if our parents liked something we liked (especially AFTER we liked it), it must not be cool after all.

While the 55+ age category is flocking to Facebook, the cool kids are dropping out. According to an article in Adweek, the changing demographic profile has advertising and marketing folks scratching their heads. Personally, I welcome the change. It means that something even more innovative is likely on the horizon. It also means Facebook may be a new channel to test for marketers whose target audiences fall in the post-college age categories.

The important thing to remember when planning a campaign, whether it's B2B or B2C, is to develop your strategy with your customers' preferences in mind. Where are they when they will likely pay most attention to your message? At work on email? In the car? On Facebook?

I have to run now and log in to Facebook to see what all my uncool friends are posting.
 

eMarketer just released stats from a recent survey of US Web retailers. The stats, not surprisingly, showed that adoption of social media is rapidly rising. Over half of those surveyed are already using five of 10 social media sites.

However, the article noted, retailers are still fearful. "One of their biggest fears was that customers would abandon their site in favor of one that was more socially engaging. Using social media might be scary, but avoiding it is becoming less of an option."

When I clicked on links to the sponsors of the survey, the e-tailing group and PowerReviews, I noticed that only 12% of the survey respondents were web-only retailers. The majority of respondents were multichannel merchants, suppliers, manufacturers, etc. I expected the majority to be online-only retailers based on the fears expressed.

This hesitant willingness to embrace social media is a direct effect of the groundswell -- customers looking to each other rather than to companies for information on products and services.

Retailers are realizing the customer's power extends beyond human interaction in a brick and mortar. And they are realizing they must offer customers a platform in which to be heard because, if they don't, that doesn't mean customers aren't talking.