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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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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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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Social Media ROI

We are all wondering about the return on investment for social media.  Many have experimented, but few are finding any tangible results. 

Recent research indicates that more than 10% of Americans use social media before making purchase decisions.  About half that number say social media has “strongly influenced” purchase decisions.

The real key to have a true ROI is to start with a real goal from the beginning.  Putting up a Facebook page, posting a few Tweets or linking up on LinkedIn is not fulfilling a goal.  Return comes from understanding exactly what will put points up on the
board.

Knowing how a medium contributes to your overall goals is what you should determine with all opportunities.  We all need to use the same criteria for soical media that we do for other, more traditional media.  The glow is over.  Now is the time to make it work.

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Are You Linked to LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is for business people. There is no question about it,  just look at the profile pictures compared to the Facebook profile photos you see–a lot more suits and professional clothing on LinkedIn.  Not one funny talisman.  A Fiserv survey in 2010 found that the most likely users of LinkedIn are boomers, but usage among seniors drops off quickly. 

LinkedIn lags Facebook and MySpace, but passed an important milestone of 100 million users worldwide (44 million are US).  Twitter ranks slightly lower than LinkedIn for Unique Visitors according to comScore.

I know that many have tried to use LinkedIn as a tool for sales.  And there are ways to connect with people in a much more professional
way than Facebook connections.   But the real value to me seems to be the idea of establishing groups and keeping connected on a topic—without all the vacation and pet pictures.

Groups and sub-groups work well for discussions and sharing information over a long period of time.   There are many college groups and hobby interest groups, but you could certainly establish a workgroup around a project or goal.    LinkedIn says that these groups connect in ways that “really matter” to marketers.  I’m not
sure what ”really matter” means, but I do know that it is a good way to connect and receive ideas and content on a project.  And that is a good environment for sales.

If you are not on LinkedIn, look me up and connect.

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Diet Coke 1 (actually 2), Pepsi Social Media 0

We interrupt this blog for a warning: Reading this blog might make you think I don’t like social media.  I firmly believe all media works—from Facebook to bus bench-boards.  They all work when used correctly.  We now return to our regularly scheduled blog. 

Social media drives sales?  Do social projects ‘for good’ drive sales?  Well, at least for sodas, it seems that traditional efforts still pay dividends and drive market share. 

Diet Coke topped Pepsi-Cola for the first time.  Diet Coke is now the No.2 soda behind regular Coke.  Pepsi launched the much-ballyhooed Refresh Project.  Pepsi reallocated marketing dollars toward social media and an online donation program to build brand awareness.

http://www.refresheverything.com/

Pepsi Refresh may have generated brand awareness, but it didn’t seem to generate sales.    Pepsi touted its new effort as the “Year of doing good.”  Unfortunately the effort allowed a shift in market share to crown a new No. 2 in the cola wars and didn’t do much good for shareholders.

Social media can work.  But it works best at what it was created for, and that is creating relationships.  It may not directly drive sales.

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The Story of Social Breakup

It seems our search for the perfect social relationship is a little like Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  You must get it “just right.” 

One of the reasons people “unlike” your business or organization is that you post too frequently on Facebook according to a report from Exact Target and CoTweet.  The study, “The Social Break-up,” shows that too-frequent posts and crowded walls with marketing messages were the number one and two reasons to “unlike” a business.  Number three, registered by 38% of the study respondents, said the content was becoming too repetitive or boring. 

The study also found that 55% of Facebook users that “liked” a company, no longer want to see the company’s posts.   In the old days they would just disregard your direct mail piece or radio ad.  Now they can physically strike back. 

Now that we are not selling products and services, but rather developing relationships, we are needing to be very careful in traveling the woods.   The consumer can’t have it too hot or too cold.  When creating a relationship you have to be just right.

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Silent Movies Are Back

I’ve noticed something about my own video viewing that I think is worth noting. Usually I like to back up my blog posts with research, but this is first-hand, first-person qualitative research.  I notice I’m watching more video content with the sound off.

In the office, I keep my computer muted.  At home, I have a mute button on the remote, and the DVR (or TiVo) shows the commercials in fast motion without sound.  During lunch the other day, with my family, I was watching some TV in a sports bar/restaurant, yet I couldn’t hear the audio.  At the YMCA, I listen to music while I’m on the exercise bike and watching the TVs.

More and more video screens are popping up in various locations, without sound.  So what does this all mean?  The next time you produce a commercial, watch it with the sound turned off.  Does it still sell?  Does it communicate?  Will it silently speak to your audience?  For sure, ask if your TV station will support closed captioning for your commercial.  I’m not there yet, but closed captioning is for the deaf and hard-of-hearing audience (which is growing) and those at the Y without a TV-radio tuner.

The one thing you should ensure is that your logo is on enough times for people to know who the communication is from and what it means to the audience.  The silent selling technique will not work for every ad or video, but you need to be aware that people may be watching your message in silence, yet you still need to speak to the audience.

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Social Media: Acquisition or Retention?

It seems the hype is starting to peel away from social media.  We are now starting to learn how to really use this new medium. 

A survey by Direct Marketing Association and Colloquy found that Brand Awareness and Customer Growth/Loyalty were the driving objectives of marketers with social media.  Only 19% thought it was a good Acquisition media.  Another 27% said “Other.”  That “Other” group must be all the people who are doing social media but don’t know why.

The study was called “Deploying Social Media to Cultivate Customer loyalty: A Benchmarking Study” (August 2010).  The study also found that companies were allocating the majority of marketing dollars to developing customer growth and retention programs through social media.  In fact, Customer Growth and Loyalty out distanced the other categories combined.  The study noted that most companies that listed customer acquisition for a major objective for social media were smaller companies.  As reported by eMarketer, other studies by Marketing Sherpa and eROI also reported similar findings.

What this means is that if you are looking to social media to acquire new customers you may be searching for a long time.  And it just makes sense:  Most social media is based on relationships, fans and friends.  If you don’t know a company or organization, how are you going to engage with that unknown in the social media world?  It’s hard to have a relationship with someone you don’t know.

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Fun Facts to Know and Tell

From a marketing perspective, an abundance of trends and shifts in lifestyle are starting to impact our lives.   It is hard to make sense of them all, but here are a few that recently caught my eye:

• Time spent online in 2000 was 2.7 hours per week; in 2010 18 hours per week
• My kids won’t wear the wrist watches we got them for Christmas (they check the time on their cell phones)
• Number of daily newspapers in 2000, 1,480; in 2010, 1,302
• Books published in 2000, 282,242; in 2010, 1,052,803
• Top health website:  WebMD with nearly 8% market share.  #2 Righthealth.com; #3 Yahoo! Health.  WebMD is also the top general health content site visited by physicians.
• Half of adults 50-64 use social networking sites.  26% of people 65+ use social nets.
• 60% of Americans get news from a combination of online and offline sources:  Internet is now third-most-popular source behind local television news and national television news.
• Average time it takes a person to search the Internet following a doctor appointment is less than 20 minutes.
• The most time spent by mobile Internet users is doing e-mail (average 25 minutes per month); a little over 6 minutes for social networking; nearly 3 minutes for news.
• Average Facebook fan is worth a $137 ($270 is best case, $0 is worst case).  Facebook fans participate with a brand 10 times per year.
• More than 60% of online transactions are made by women.
• Average US citizen watches 158 hours of TV per month.
• Direct-to-consumer drug advertising on TV and online was more than twice as effective than advertising on online alone.
• 61% of Americans believe customer service is more important in today’s economic environment and will spend 9% more with a company that provides a high level of service.
• Social media tactics are growing for small business, but most (around 30%) do not integrate or cross-sell social media in e-mail campaigns or on their websites.

Don’t worry, there will be no quiz over this material—at least not from this blogger, but from your customers and stakeholders there may be a few questions.

Sources: Newsweek Backstory; Marketing Charts, Hitwise, comScore, Pew Internet & American Life Project, Nielsen, eMarketer.

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