Social media has changed the way that brands connect with their consumers. It’s all about engagement now, about using the social media-based tools to interact with targeted consumers, during the times when they are most likely to engage with our brands. Many brands are finding that they require a social networking presence to ‘keep up’ with user demand and to keep competitors at bay.

The web has grown inline with our desire and need to be a part of it. With the evolving landscape that is the web, users are now seeking more from their online playground. Users want to interact more, communicate more, they want to be more ‘online present’ – most importantly though our consumers want two-way conversations that are relevant and honest, human-to-human.

While stage Web 2.0 elements are addressing our evolving web based needs, businesses are realising the positive impact that an interactive online presence can offer. Consumers are after all spending more time in their social networking zone than ever before (annual YOY growth statistics continue to show a strong upward trajectory) and are less inclined to leave the platform whilst ‘in their SM zone’. OK great – you get it!

Facebook is a pure example of a community portal that links people and businesses, whilst fulfilling interactive desires on both consumer and business ends of the scale. Facebook has become an ultimate marketing tool that exists as a cost effective portal, enabling marketers to ‘rev up’ their marketing efforts via social network user engagement.

I will be honest – I am a Facebook advocate (that’s what social media relationships are about right – honesty, 2 way conversations, relevance, being fresh, and being HUMAN – using social media to build trust and to leverage off this trust, in a mutually beneficial way – amongst other things). So, one day I woke up to become a Facebook advocate. I did so as I realised Facebook’s power for marketers, as a platform for brand-to-consumer interaction and engagement.

The size of Australia’s Facebook community and YOY upward growth trajectory is astounding – did you know that Australia’s Facebook coverage in terms of our overall Australian population is greater than that of it’s birth country – USA? Yes: 35% of Australians, in comparison to 33% of Americans use Facebook (September 2009 figures) Facebook is growing exponentially in line with consumer social networking desires. Facebook is our #1 consumer playground online and brands that are making themselves present are, and will continue to be the beneficiaries, as an inherent part of the online networking experience. Such brands will be insidiously top of mind when it is time for their related market segment to buy.

Check out these statistics for Facebook (current at 250909 = 6,572,900 Australians)

The fastest growing age demographic is 35 years+ BTW.

Anyway, I really did not plan to get stuck into my love for Facebook– I wanted to reiterate the importance of social media strategy, and to provide you with some bits and bobs that may add some value to your social media experience, as a brand that is…

Recently, a client stated that they would like to develop a Facebook based application. Perfect I thought, but then I STOPPED! Huh? – Were they planning on doing so without a SM strategy? I experienced an instant moment of stress, which compelled me to ask ‘so why would you do that?’ the answer was ‘because we want to immerse our brand into social media before our competitors do’great…yep…thinking ahead I thought – I liked it, but the fact was that they really weren’t, and I didn’t like it!

So we had a chat, and it went a bit like this: social media strategy is crucial to your success within this landscape – it’s not a matter of buying a ticket to the game and then taking a seat. Will you be ready to catch the ball? What would you do with the ball anyway and how quickly would you do it?! By failing to create a strategy, we are opening ourselves up for failure, and a potential mess.

There are few things that brands should consider prior to immersing themselves into social media, and I trust that the following will help:

Create an internal social media strategy, inline with your greater marketing strategy and goals.

Here are a few key questions to get started:

What is my Target market?

Social media monitoring – find out who, where, when, what?

Where is my target market – what network communities are my target consumers part of, in the most part?

What do I want to achieve from my social media experience with these individuals? Do I want to:

Strengthen current relationships for retention? Drive new product and brand information for heightened brand awareness and business extension? Drive new business sales-acquisition? Manage customer relationships better, via two-way conversations and brand-to-user rich content? Keep competitors at bay? Use as a public relations content-tunnel? Other? – all of above, or just components of above?

Synchronous, non-synchronous dialogue, or both?

Some other considerations:

Competitors – what are they doing in SM?

Budget?

Timeline?

Other marketing tools that may compliment my SM entry?

Contact strategy – who can I task internally?

What reporting, measurement for success is available?

Who owns the data and how can I make it work for me?

What social media networks and tools are available, and which are relevant to my consumer playgrounds and SM-based goals?

Don’t over do it – you are best off starting within a singular network and driving your traffic there (for example Facebook) we don’t want to confuse consumers by providing them with too many options and then spreading ourselves too thin. Remember – if it’s too much to manage, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, and this means – too much! Pull it back.

Exclusive, relevant content is key and we don’t really want to be promoting duplicity of content across the web do we? Remember – the most ‘fans’ wins – the higher the # of ‘fans’ that a business Facebook page has – the better the geometric mesh factor is. The more ‘fans’ – the better you would hope your content will be, the more 2 way conversations you will have and ofcourse the more feedback you should obtain from your users. Oh and BTW – the more ‘fans’ achieved = the more important is your ‘fan’ retention strategy.

Once you have ascertained which social media tools are most appropriate, it’s time to build your contact strategy, taking the following into consideration:

When and how is best to engage the community?

Create rules for engagement and interaction (maximum time frame of response, contact strategy: who, when?)

Get real, be honest, build respect – use a P2P 2way (person-to-person) approach – don’t SPAM and don’t ‘me me me’ the community unless you want to be kicked out of the party!

Get a good retention strategy in place: plan for a short – mid – long term life cycle factor of your social media presence and remember that social media relationships are two way, and as soon as half of that relationship drops off, the conversation is over. So a retention strategy is key – I recommend that you do what you can in advance to remain relevant and fresh, whilst you provide your consumers with interactive tools to keep them coming back to your page, or site. Remember that your ‘fan’s not only assist to maximise your geometric mesh factor, but act as a positive catalyst for your SEO.

Note: there is no point in driving traffic to a Facebook page that is not ready – don’t do it and if you write in SM that you are going to follow something up – ensure that you do, and then post appropriately in order to follow on your promise.

If you receive a negative post – don’t freak out! Use it to empower you to improve your position – always thank individuals, who provide feedback and for the negative users, take their notes on board, then return to them to show what you have (or have not) done about it! Nothing builds trust within your community better than transparency that results from an issue – remember if it doesn’t kill our brand, it makes our brand stronger + if it almost kills our brand – get out there and use SM to work the community, to show them your brand’s human side! No human after all is perfect – we make mistakes – but it’s those of us who make an effort to fix these mistakes amicably, and then learn from the experience, that are able to differentiate ourselves as heros in this regard. If you muck up – do the right thing – step up to the SM plate. Oh and one more thing – a lot of us like to complain – even more so, we like to complain about a complaint that we’ve lodged that hasn’t been dealt with – so please ensure that if you are engaging with consumers via post-based dialogue especially, that you are responding within a reasonable, professionally correct time frame – more than 24 hours may be too long right? Right, but then it’s also about customer experience and expectation – please remember these ‘guys’.

What ever the case, Facebook is the largest, fastest growing social network that Australia has right now, and it is an absolute goldmine for consumer driven brands who realise that social media is about mutually beneficial, two way conversations and interactions that are relevant and fresh.

Facebook enables businesses to engage with targeted consumers, to build stronger, more interactive relationships with current clients, whilst acting as a lever for new business acquisition. The Facebook platform offers developers a haven for dedicated brand application development – the best of which operate within Facebook brand pages, and engender instant value add, and convenience based gratification, whilst providing an additional potential perception point to users. The fact remains that strategy is key, and as Chris Brogan suggests – “we wouldn’t build a hotel without a toilet!”

PS: Our client has since commenced work on a social media strategy and an application will be developed in line with this – only if it is believed that it will add true value, which no doubt it will….but anyway, that’s a story for another day.

I hope that this article was helpful for you – please do provide feedback – I am after all writing this as a social media piece, so feel free to have a two-way conversation with me, if you agree / disagree, like / dislike and be honest! 

Cheers.

Heidi von Creytz

www.allaboutcheddar.com/

It is now commonly accepted that social media and in particular social networking sites such as Facebook and other popular sites in the social media ecosystem can generate significant user traffic and engagement. Popular YouTube videos can draw millions of hits in a single day and popular Facebook Pages can draw large comment volumes for each content nugget they post. It is not surprising that most major corporations are ramping up activity in evaluating and trying out the various social networking options.

Given that events that appear on a user’s wall typically have a longevity of a few days, coupled with the fact that recent estimates put average daily usage at up to 4.5 hours per day and between 25-30% of online internet time on Facebook (depending on country), it is no surprise that this phenomenon is of interest and presents a significant opportunity to companies, marketers and advertisers.

The Facebook platform is also deceptively easy to develop for. Almost overnight, every single web development house with a little Javascript / XML and Flash experience has hung up a shingle claiming they can build Facebook apps.

Unfortunately, the ease of building entertainment-oriented applications (e.g., flash-based games and surveys and virtual gifting campaigns) and the popularity of these applications when properly done, is leading many companies who are new to the social media game to witness temporary spikes in user interest and to think that they have cracked the code in social networking.

The questions remain:

1. Can these entertainment-oriented applications sustain user engagement?
2. What is the most cost-effective manner to leverage these applications over time?

Can these entertainment-oriented applications sustain user engagement?

As user profiles get increasing cluttered with multiple brands and companies vying for their attention, social networking is already starting to show similar tendencies as more established media such as web, TV and print. Explosive growth in sites such as Facebook and the geometric mesh of interconnections where items / events are cross-posted to “Friends” profiles is only exacerbating this clutter.

There is no doubt that entertainment-oriented applications can assist a company to build their presence on their chose social networking sites, and a sequence of these overt time can help to maintain user engagement, but as clutter increases with more and more companies jumping on the social networking band wagon, it is going to become increasingly difficult to achieve cut through. So unfortunately, it is likely that the answer to the question is NO.

However, knowing that, savvy companies with long-term planning horizons are starting to consider what else to offer though social networking which will add long-term value to their customers and keep them coming back.

The increasing time that users are spending online within the chosen social networking sites also has significant implications on the relative importance of corporate websites as opposed to corporate pages in the social networking sites. This makes getting their social networking strategy and the channel mix right even more critical over time.

Just as internet banking transformed the banking value chain, or internet flight booking transformed the travel industry value chain, social networking is also going to transform how these now relatively mature corporate internet presences will need to operate to maintain user traffic.

If people are spending more and more time on Facebook, and coupled with user preference for a single, “home” portal to avoid having to remember a dozen or so passwords to your cell phone service providers website, your bank, your frequent flyer site, your various household utility sites, your superannuation / 401k sites, and so forth, it is a no brainer that in the not too distant future, it makes sense that companies will need to shift (at least in part) their transactional functionality to the social networking domain. Why would you want to log in to your cell phone service provider website to activate a SIM card or to top-up your prepaid credit with a different set of login credentials, if you were on Facebook anyway, and the functionality was available through a branded service-provider application within your Facebook profile, with the same single log-in. Why log into eBay if eBay is embedded into Facebook, and so forth.

Providing this value added transactions in the social networking domain, will actually enhance customer utility and convenience and hence, induce them to repeatedly visit a company’s page.

As such, customers will seek out the company’s pages rather than company having to push their pages to their customers, and customers will regularly return without prompting as they need to continue to transact with the given company, e.g., to regularly top-up their prepaid cell phone credit. Of course, once these utility / transactional applications generate a user traffic flow to the page, there are the usual advertising / marketing opportunities.

The bad news for many companies is that social networking is about to induce a whole new round of capital expenditure to migrate transactional functionality to the social networking domain and there will be organisational challenges as channel-cannibalisation issues are addressed – however, whether they want to or not, the social networking domain is where the users are going. Companies have no choice but to adapt to this changing customer behaviour.

What is the most cost-effective manner to leverage these applications over time?

In the interest of getting campaigns and associated applications launched, and to minimise the costs of individual campaigns, the majority of applications are being developed as single-use / single-purpose.

However, given the short shelf-life of most entertainment-based applications, if the intent of a company’s foray into social networking is to generate sustained engagement, the company is going to need to develop a pipeline of campaigns and applications to keep users coming back.

The issue is that taking short cuts on any individual application, while likely rational in isolation, is actually going to cost the given company much more in the long term.

If the intent is to generate a series of attractive application-based campaigns over time, then creating single-use applications is simply not consistent with good software development practice.

The global and local software development industries have existed for as long as computers have existed. The industry has defined processes, tools and techniques borne of decades of commercial experience surrounding what works and what does not. These processes and techniques are well documented, embedded into student training curricula and supports a global industry of standards compliance and training accreditation.

It is unclear why in the Web 2.0 world, and in particular, social networking world, that all these best practices are frequently if almost always tossed out the window. Of course, there are arguments about putting more emphasis on look and feel of a given entertainment-based application (the “creative” side) and not to worry so much about how the IT in the back-end actually works as the end users don’t care.  It can also be argued that if the application is relatively inexpensive and so you can simply ignore good software development processes to keep it simple.

Could it be, however, it is an issue of not knowing what you don’t know. As previously mentioned, many web development firms have expanded into application development. Due to the concerted efforts of the major social networking sites to make it very easy to develop basic applications, the proliferation of developers has been significant – but so is therefore the noise in the marketplace. However, just like in any trade, there is a significant difference between experienced and inexperienced developers. Both can turn out an application that most likely fulfils the basic brief, but only more experienced developers consider the operational aspects of an application like maintainability, robustness, scalablity and component reusability.

Properly done, a company can accumulate a social networking toolkit (consider them building blocks) of application components which they can reuse and reassemble in a number of ways to create that pipeline of applications to maintain user engagement – this saves time and more importantly, money for subsequent campaigns so taking short cuts and not worrying about this “IT stuff” is simply a false economy.

In the software world, the equivalent buzzword is SOA or Service Oriented Architecture – essentially, the building of complex applications (e.g., games or virtual gifting campaigns or surveys) out of simpler building blocks. To lay people, this is known as “common sense”.

As such, when auditioning potential developers to assist in a campaign, attention must be paid to whether they are essentially creative artists extending into basic application development or are they true application developers. Would you let an interior designer carry out the structural engineering work in a house build? Would the interior designer even know what question to ask the structural engineer? Maybe..probably not.

If a company intends to take an extended swim in the social networking pool rather than dipping a toe momentarily, the company must really take into consideration these concepts of reusability and maintainability. Resuabillity reduces long-term costs to an organisation and reduces time-to-market and project risk, while maintainability allows the application to be up and operational 24×7.

Facebook, while highly successful in user acquisition, and also provides arguably the best developer support of any social networking platform, the platform is still very young and is constantly evolving.

For example, one issue facing companies who have long-duration applications / campaigns is that Facebook can and regularly makes changes to their Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs). Facebook recently (mid year 09) changed the way the APIs worked for posting on user walls – in part to address certain privacy law / regulation changes in some of the countries Facebook operates. This was communicated reasonably well in the Facebook developer forums, but the vast majority of the world was oblivious to these back-end changes. The problem was that posting on walls is one of the most common Facebook functions that developers use as part of their applications. In a short period of time, a large number of applications that used that functionality stopped working properly and companies had to invest time and money to recode their applications to use the new APIs. If you didn’t know this was going to happen and you didn’t plan for it, you could very well be surprised to wake up one day to find that that application that you invested in and which is still running as an active campaign suddenly stopped working – with all the poor user experience and PR related issues that follow. Unfortunately, Facebook application development is simply not a “fire-and-forget” activity, at least not yet.

Monitoring such changes is easy and is pretty standard practice for reputable development houses that also typically provide application support to their clients. However, given that we have already contended that the majority of applications are in fact single-use and are deployed on a “fire-and-forget manner” (“it is after all just IT right?” mentality), then the short cuts of improper design, lack of modularity / reusability / maintainablity and one of the most common mistakes – lack of proper error handling – will come back and haunt you. Typically, costs of fixing the application and getting it back on line can be equal to or even exceed the original cost of the application – hence the false economy and the risk of using less than enterprise-grade application developers.

Closing Thoughts and back to the Title

So will your organisation be more like the tortoise – methodical and steady building of customer engagement – or more like the hare – prone to rapid spurts of short-lived activity? Will your company take a long-term view towards investment in social networking technology or take apparent short cuts but end up expending far more resources over time?

You can rush out of the starting blocks with flashy (pun intended), and apparently low-cost applications which generate bursts of user engagement. However, if your goal is to generate sustained engagement on a cost-effective basis over time, you should not and cannot afford to cut the corners in the software development and support aspect of the campaign.

Also, while flashy games, surveys and all manner of current successful social networking applications are again relatively quick and successful, long-term sustainability in the social networking space requires creating a reason that users will repeatedly return to your pages without having to continue to invest marketing dollars to get the users there – this requires identifying underlying transactional opportunities with users and making the long-term investments in creating the transactional applications to provide true value-add to these users while providing customer-self-initiated incentives to visit…often.

Many Australian businesses have woken to find themselves amidst the thick mist that is social media. Brands and their tool kits have changed forever as social media has secured a ‘penned-in’ position within our digital strategy-tool kit. 

The closer we get to cracking the code that is social network engagement, the faster the landscape and the portals within it seem to change around us and so we must evolve inline with the landscape itself, if we are going to remain abreast of social media.

We can’t  just build something and hope that our target market of consumers will come, nor should we use social media as a stage for message promotion purely from a branding perspective, if we are not around to listen to feedback and to reply to consumers in a timely manner with appropriate responses.

The winners in this space will be those who understand that this is a game of listening, online community membership and two-way communication. It’s all well and good to jump into social media, guns-a-blazing, however please do take time to write a social media strategy before you throw your toes into the water. A social media strategy should be mapped out from point ‘o to go’. Would you run a marketing campaign without having completed a marketing strategy? Same same, but same.

Social media is about engagement sure, but I note that the winners in this landscape will be the businesses and brands that respect that engagement is a privilege and not one to be taken lightly. This means that those of us who are prepared to listen and show a human side to business, whilst promoting transparency via truth, will be our leaders in this space.

The volume of campaigns that I have seen flow into the social media space, without a retention strategy has shocked me. This shows a lack of understanding of what social media means for business and consumers akin. Honestly, is there a point of positive difference that I am missing, by rolling out a campaign through any social media portal without a retention strategy? By doing this, we not only frustrate consumers who want to experience further engagement with us (who we have encouraged to interact to do so already as part of our promotion), but we limit our further opportunity outlook, inline with new client acquisition, current user retention, and word of mouth potential via this medium.

We need to embrace social media as a new universe based-marketing medium and this means respecting the communities within, and consumer desires in line with what, how and when in terms of engagement and appropriateness of contact.

Social media can mean so much more for businesses, the core of which is a strong foundation for mutually beneficial relationships, within a captive social media-based target audience, or community. A well thought out social media strategy can help us to get a ticket to the inner circle of trust – the winners take the prize.

PS: Please respect our social media communities – do not disrespect them by SPAM-ing them with irrelevant messages, and if you create a social media presence – please be prepared to provide responses that are timely, useful, correct and representative of your organisation’s code of conduct and authentic mission. Thank you.

Cheers,

Heidi von Creytz

www.allaboutcheddar.com/