Reviews Last Forever

I was planning a trip to take my 17-year-old daughter to New York City.  After booking plane and show tickets, I started looking for a hotel.  One that had been referred to me by a friend was the Westin near Times Square.  

So I got online and took a look.  Everything (other than price, the Times Square area is expensive) looked great, but I started to read reviews.  I found one where the person was taking his nieces to NYC.  And the room had a bad view and the clerks at the desk were rude.  I won’t put up with that so I booked another hotel.

Westin lost a sale.  I went back to take a screen shot of the review and saw a few interesting tidbits:

1. The post is five years old.  How could I make a decision based on 5-year-old information?
2. The review was from a friend of a Facebook friend so I was inclined to give it a great deal of credibility (that is a cool feature, but I don’t know this friend of friend from Adam).
3. The review was still 4 out of 5 stars, but the negative language used made me think the entire place was filled with poor service.

The review was very close to my experience so I gave it undeserving credibility.  The negative review also outweighed my friend’s personal recommendation even though it should not have had the same validity.  The real problem is that there were not enough sufficiently positive reviews to outweigh this negative review.

We all need to encourage more positive reviews and likes as possible.  Many of us only deal with negative issues.  But dealing with positive experiences is becoming more important.

When people have a positive experience with you, one idea would be to hand them a card asking for a positive review either on special sites that deal with your organization or in social media.  Detailing where to review is critical to making sure you have enough positive reviews to outweigh any less-than-perfect reviews.

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Social Media, Driving and Saving Lives

I’m a huge proponent of audio-visual linkage.  If you say, “I drive through a neighborhood,” in your video, you should show a driving shot, not some random wallpaper video you happen to have to fill the space.  To me, not following audio-visual linkage is like saying, “Yes,” but shaking your head no.  It just doesn’t make sense or confuses the communications. 

If you want to see an example, just watch your local news and mark how many times the video doesn’t really relate to what the reporter or anchor is saying.  This also happens in print, presentations and PowerPoint slides.  While working on an Iowa basketball game telecast, the play-by-play announcer, Bob Hogue told me he would prefer not to be on the sideline of the game and just comment watching it on TV just as the viewers were seeing it. It is simply, “Say dog, see dog.”

We all have trouble putting two sources of information together, especially when it comes to social media.  Right now it is the wild west—”Just put it up and see what happens.”  Thinking seems to be replaced with speed.  Yes, speed thrills (when you receive something before it was expected), but speed also kills (fast, careless cars and surgeons).

Did the Department of Transportation “think” before referring drivers to a Twitter account while they were driving down the road?  They were excited to promote their new social media outlet.  These are the same people encouraging you not to be a distracted driver: Stop texting, emailing or talking on the phone while driving.  Yet, they don’t seem to mind you checking your Twitter account in the car.  It is a break in linkage between actions and words.

In full disclosure, I took this photo while driving—with my knees.  If this blog were a TV ad it would say at the bottom, “Don’t attempt. Professional blogger/photographer on an open road.”

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And You Thought 140 Characters Was Hard

Leave it to Twitter to force us to think and write shorter.  (Although I’m often disappointed with tweets that are just full of hashtags—try saying something more than who you are with and a link). 

Now Twitter has unleashed Vine.  Vine allows you to post 6-second micro-videos.  It’s a mobile service that lets you capture and share looping videos.  They are like tweets.  Kids holding hands, people kissing, saying hi, beer bottles bowing to another beer, it can now all be shared quickly and efficiently.

I remember when 15-second spots came out in broadcast television and most thought it was ludicrous—now 15s are common, except on local TV.  Twitter and Vine are pushing the communications envelope.

How can you be creative in 6 seconds? It is hard to make a GIF-like looping platform make sense.  But ready yourself for the invasion of the micro-message.  It will require you to know your brand and be able to disseminate it in just a few words—or frames.

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Social Media Kiosk at Forum Shops in Las Vegas

There are times when you have to force the issue—especially with social media.

We’ve all heard the big fish stories of social media: Thousands of instant fans, tweeting and retweeting, posting and forwarding thousands of comments.  The fact of the matter is that most social media sites have a modest amount of people and have to really work at building a base with enough audience to have an impact. 

So I was not surprised walking through the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas to find a social media kiosk.  You could easily walk up and take your photo with the Forum in the background and post your location.  Most kiosks sit unused, but this one had a number of people using during the 15 to 20 minutes I stood creeping on people.  At one point there was a line three-deep.

Social media, just like all media, does not work in a vacuum (unless you are Ashton Kutcher and even he works the medium very hard).  Like anything of value in life, it requires strategic thinking, innovative ideas, investment and hard work.

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Make an Event of Your Event Coverage

I left a funny note for my daughter on her keys.  She quickly snapped a picture of the note and shared it with her friends.  I’m not sure what she said about me or the note, but the fact that she took a picture and shared it struck me. 

Watch teenagers at any gathering.  They are snapping photos and posting instantly, sharing the event with those who are there and those who are not.

Have you seen Instagram used on a smartphone?  Are you participating in Pinterest?  Do you have a Facebook page?  Photo sharing is a primary part of the mission statements of many of the best social sites.

Now observe a business event, chamber outing or nonprofit function.  You will see photographers, but the sharing seems to be missing. Or, if it is shared it is days or weeks (or in the case of newsletter, months) later.  The day of the newsletter with a couple of the photos of the most popular people in the shot is dead.  It’s time to make an event of the event coverage.  People can’t virtually attend unless there is a real story to be told through photography and immediacy.

So the next time you hold an event, don’t assign an event photographer. Assign an event social media photographer/poster and create an online event of the event that includes more photos faster.

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Stores Closing Facebook Storefronts

Quietly there is a crack building in the social media marketing world.  According to Bloomberg, Gap, JCPenny, Gamestop and Nordstrom have opened and closed storefronts on Facebook. 

Is f-commerce not working?  Is the ‘f’ in f-commerce for “flop”?  The business media has been predicting that social media will be the place to shop, market to customers and build brands in the future. The problem is that the social media outlets were not designed to be stores or messengers for business.  They were designed for friends to communicate with friends—to share photos and experiences.  They were not designed to sell products and services.  Also, shopping at a company website, Amazon or in a store is more convenient than a third-party page such as Facebook.  There is just no “incentive.”

The other problem is that companies are using traditional marketing thinking to use social media.  Social media is not a push-out medium.  And push-out messages are doomed to fail  in a sharing environment.  Just like putting newspaper ads on TV, the messaging is wrong for the medium and how people consume the medium.

To effectively use social media, you need to understand the environment.  It can be used as a marketing tool, but not in traditional ways.  It is a new medium and it needs new thinking.

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A Social Media Conversation?

We all know that social media is more of a conversation with stakeholders.  Instead of a push-out medium, it is an engagement medium. 

The most successful social media users think of the back-and-forth flow of information and ideas as liquid.  The problem is that the two-way conversation is two-way.  And when people are talking about what they like, they don’t always mention brand names, according to analysis by MotiveQuest.

MotiveQuest suggest that if marketers just follow word-of-mouth brand mentions, they may miss a large amount of relevant discussions.  For example, when people have food conversations, only 5% mention brand names; health brands only are mentioned by 11% of the people for health conversations.  Cars tend to be a bit higher, but only 50% mention brands when using social media.

In other words, if you only talk about yourself, you will not be following the way most people use social media.  We need better understanding about the conversation for social media.  Are your posts real engagement, or are they masquerading as conversation?  Can you really influence people and brand just by getting a bunch of  ”likes.”  Like, no.  It takes a conversation that is two-way: Your way and your stakeholder’s way.

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Social Not Local

The most followed accounts on Twitter are:  1) Lady Gaga, 2) Justin Bieber, 3) Katy Perry, 4) Shakira, 5) Kim Kardashian, 6) Britney Spears, 7) Barack Obama, 8) Rihanna, 9) Taylor Swift, and 10) Selena.  The top non-celebrity is CNN with 6 million followers (CNN ranks 27th). 

So when you think about social media, you are likely to look for news about Ashton Kutcher,  but not local news and information.

Research from Pew Internet and American Life Project found than half of adults looking for info about restaurants, bars and clubs use the Internet.  Most of the rest use newspapers or word-of-mouth advertising.  Only 1% of people looked to social media or social networking sites for local news about restaurants and businesses.

This research has special significance for nonprofits and small business.  The reason is that building a strong social media presence usually requires discontinuing one of the other marketing efforts.  Before you put your money into social media, make sure your website is optimized for search and optimized for real people looking for your site as well.

So it is better to go search than social, especially if you are local. 

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Brands Face Facebook

Sally Field was so happy everyone “liked” her when she won an Academy Award.  And, as businesses on Facebook, we are all looking for the Field Effect: ”You like me, you really like me.” 

But what does a “like” mean on Facebook?  Users have strong expectations when they “like” a company or organization.  According to research from ExactTarget,  here is what users expect:

• Access to exclusive content, events or sales  (58%)
• Discounts or promos (58%)
• Updates about company or organization (47%)

Here’s why Facebook users don’t “like”  a company:

• Don’t want to be bombarded with ads (54%)
• Don’t want to give access to profile (45%)
• Don’t want to push to friends’ news feeds (31%)
• Dont want contact through Facebook (29%)
• Don’t see a benefit (23%)

We all want to be “liked” on Facebook, but with being “liked” there are expectations we need to meet.  We also need to be careful not to abuse the trust people put in us after they do “like” us.

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Why Twitter?

I usually watch my 15-year-old daughter to see what is trending—and it is Twitter.  In my survey of one teenager, I found that more and more kids are tweeting.  They don’t seem intimidated by the short nature of the messages.

Polaris Marketing Research found that 18% of people online had sent a tweet in the last 60 days.  The research showed that people who read a tweet also tweeted themselves.  People read tweets, but also like to write tweets.

To me, it seems that the real benefit to tweets are the hashtags.  They are indicated by the # sign and then a few words.  For example, if you were watching a football game and tweeted about it, you might then add #Hawkeyes.  Now, anyone else who adds #Hawkeyes will be connected in a string of tweets.  You can then keep commenting within the group.  It is a great way to start a discussion or make a statement.

Will Twitter ever become as popular as Facebook?  Hard to know.  But the teenagers I know are switching to Twitter because it is a more social form of texting.   The best reason to be involved with Twitter is that people are talking about your products and services.  You should be, at the least, listening.

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