Posts filed under ‘Social Media’
Word of Mouth From the Inside Out
Navel Marketing helps create organizations worth talking about and then arm customers to spread the word. On the surface, this may seem like a simple enough task, but too many companies today focus the majority of their efforts on how to get the word out with little thought as to why someone would care. Whether you choose to use more traditional tactics, such as advertising, or new methods, such as social media, your target market needs to know why you matter before they invest any time or emotion in your brand.
Marketing today is about meaning. Customers buy products but evangelists buy causes. You have to mean something in the marketplace before someone will take notice of your communications and, most importantly, tell others about them. Navel Marketing helps you develop the inner tools that create meaning for your customer, such as a cause, a unique and compelling position, a culture that reflects your cause, a simple repeatable message, a viral customer experience, and more. We then implement word-of-mouth marketing tools to help arm your customers spread the word.
If Social Media Were a Planet…
Many people refer to their geeky friends who spend all of their time in social media land as “living on their own planet.” Well, apparently now there is a map of that planet.
A recent Mashable story showcased how the social media landscape has changed in a short 3 years. Back in 2007, web comic XKCD published the original “Map of Online Communities”. If you visit the Mashable article, you can see the original compared to the latest rendition. Notice how the relative size of communities and online tools have changed between 2007 and the one created for 2010 by marketing firm, Flowtown, below. Twitter didn’t really exist back then, MySpace ruled the world of social communities, and “Farmville” would likely get you some strange looks.
Though many social media “experts” would have you believe that social media marketing means getting thousands of followers on Twitter or friends on Facebook, the landscape is always changing. I have often said that the tools will come and go, but the principles of marketing in a connected world will not. You still have to create something worth talking about, no matter the community in which your customers choose to talk about you.
LinkedIn is the Business Lunch, Facebook is the Cocktail Party
One of the most often asked questions I receive is “when do I use LinkedIn and when do I use Facebook?” People, especially business professionals, are looking to take advantage of popular social networks as a way to build their personal networks, add to their “Rolodex”, and build professional relationships that can help them further businesses and careers. So when it comes time to select somewhere to spend your time, the natural question is, “where do I focus?” (Twitter is also effective, but we’ll leave that one aside for now)
The short answer is – both. It seems like a lazy answer, but let me explain why. When you want to build a true relationship with someone in the analog world (not online), how do you typically go about it? You will most likely set up some sort of formal meeting, such as a business lunch. Once you get through the formalities and a couple of business lunches, you begin to build your relationship on more of a personal basis. It is at that point you feel more comfortable talking about family, hobbies, likes and dislikes, etc. This is typically something you would do at a cocktail party or after hours event, such as grabbing an adult beverage together.
If you want to build lasting relationships with high value contacts, start with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the online equivalent of the business lunch – quick, professional, exchange of business cards, a few probing questions, etc. Once you have built your relationship at the professional level, try broaching the personal realm using Facebook. Facebook is the cocktail party. This is an area where you can ask, “how are the kids doing?”, “how was the fishing trip?”, and “how is the new house coming?”.
Online relationships often mimic what we do offline. Take advantage of all the opportunities you have to connect with people. However, just because you are “connected” doesn’t mean you are friends. As the old saying goes, people do business with friends. We have unprecedented access to each other. Use that access to build friendships, both online and off.
Social Media Exhaustion
There are many pundits talking about social media as a “bubble”. Just as we experienced the recent housing bubble or Internet bubble of a decade ago, they argue that social media will reach a point of diminishing returns. While I don’t believe that social media will ever disappear, there is some truth to this argument that we need to take into account.
I remember a mere 5 years ago I was doing seminars on what a blog is, what a podcast is, and how you use these in a business environment. Those seminars consisted of helping people set up their tools and learn how to use them in a meaningful way. Today, everywhere you turn there is a newspaper article, TV news segment, blog, or social network posting with someone’s opinion about social media, how to use it, and where it is going.
I was driving and listening to a sports talk radio show recently and heard “Tweet of the Day” segments and even interviews of athletes on what they Tweet about. Late night comedy hosts have bits about Facebook and Twitter almost every night. Also, since when did it become hip to plaster a “Follow us on Twitter” or “Friend us on Facebook” logo on every possible piece of company literature? When I saw the phrase, “WWJT? What would Jesus Tweet,” I knew it has hit mainstream America.
So what’s next?
I think many people are beginning to experience what I have for about the last year – what I like to call social media exhaustion. It is not that social media are not valuable. They are simply on overload. You reach a point where you feel as if you are the digital version of Henry David Thoreau. You just want to go find a pond somewhere and build yourself a cabin – sans broadband.
Remember when social media used to be the tool we used to escape all the noise of the advertising world? Now social media has BECOME the noise. We have created the very environment we were trying to avoid.
Is social media a bubble ready to burst? Possibly. The more likely scenario is that more of the classically trained marketers, like myself, are going to find ways to use this one-on-one medium to avoid the noise and establish relationships the old fashioned way… by earning them.
If you are tired of the noise, let us know. Bring us your tired, your worn, your huddled masses, and your fed up anti – Mafia Wars/Farmville/”Business Opportunities”/Group Invitations/Cheap Software activists. Come find rest for the social soul and value for your time. Tell me how you avoid social media exhaustion…
