a trip across cyberspace...

FACEBOOK(ing) for real!

Mon, 7 Sep 2009 00:41:23 +0100

‘Facebook(ing)’ as defined above is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while.

In short, I'm putting myself through the exercise of becoming the admin of two Facebook groups and two Facebook fan pages. Not just any groups and fan pages, but most importantly, groups and fan pages of things I have a passion/strong liking for.

What is the point of the exercise?
- to put myself in the shoes of an admin - like many of the ones i've come across - that have done this out of, well, nothing else but their passion for the subject
- to play and experiment with Facebook's products like 'Facebook ads' (and many others I probably don't know of yet), with the aim of discovering the effect they have on key ratios - e.g conversion of fans, engagement levels, etc
- to up my hands-on experience of using the Facebook as a community building tool

Why both Facebook groups and Facebook fan pages and not just one of either?
- Although they would appear to be more or less the same on the surface, they each have their own set of guidelines that have an effect on decision-making. It will be interesting to compare how the decision-making unfolds in each situation.

Why 2 Facebook pages and 2 Facebook fan pages as opposed to just 1 of each?
- To get the experience of talking about the topic in both general terms (e.g. appreciation for rock music) and about something specific that is of course still relevant to the topic (e.g. appreciation for Led Zeppelin). I suspect that the groups/fan pages taking on the subject in general terms will have a higher conversion of members/fans, and not entirely sure what to expect about the quality of engagement. In the case of the groups/fan pages taking about the topic in specific terms I expect to experience quality engagement, and not entirely sure how the growth in members/fans will unfold. We'll see.

Topics: Facebook fan pages
The Facebook fan pages will be about: vinyl records. I am a huge music fan and happen to spend way more money than I should on expanding my vinyl records collection. I've been collecting vinyl records since the early 2000s and have come across a wide range of awesome records - from classic LPs and rock’n’roll albums of the 1970s and 1980s, to some great house music (deep-house, tech-house, minimal-house, nu-jazz) from the early 2000s all the way through today.

Fan Pages
- Fan page #1 (the more general of the two) will be named: I LOVE VINYL RECORDS
- Fan page #2 (the more specific of the two) will be named: I LOVE DEEP HOUSE RECORDS

Topics: Facebook groups
The Facebook groups will be about: cats. Yes, that's right: cats. I'm a big animal lover, and have had two Burmese cats as partners in crime for the last 7 years. They are indoors cats and are very low maintenance, which is awesome! In addition, the groups will be focused on the UK audience without - of course - excluding any anyone that's not from the UK.

Groups
- Group #1 (the more general of the two) will be entitled: CAT LOVERS UK
- Group #2 (the more specific of the two) will be entitled: BURMESE CATS UK

This is a medium to long-term experiment so I will be updating once every month or so, depending on what tactics/decision making happens along the way. Stay tuned and if you know of anyone that would want to become a member of either group and/or fans of either fan page, please point them in the right direction! Thanks in advance and hope to see you participating too!

p.s. hat-tip to my good friend Roberto Carreras for being the one who planted this idea in my head after sending me a post from my other good friend Rafa Campoamor that you can find by clicking here (in Spanish), and a second post by Fernando Plaza that you can find by here (in Spanish too).

Seasonal Brands and Social Media: applying recent set of learnings and thinking ahead.

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:17:40 +0100

It’s fair to say that the summer of 2009 has been the first season in which mainstream brands have taken their first committed steps to adding a Social Media component to their marketing mix. Now, I’m one of those that strongly believes that Social Media goes way beyond the realm of a company’s marketing mix, but that’s a different post all together. For this post, lets focus on mainstream brands that have joined the social platforms of the moment - Twitter and Facebook - which undoubtedly allow for the creation of thriving communities capable of producing a solid amount of brand advocates.

Among the many types of brands that have taken their first step into the realm of Social Media since the beginning of 2009 are seasonal brands. For timing reasons, it just so happens that summer brands have been the ones which have had to lead the charge into this new and unexplored territory that is Social Media. So then, as an exercise in being proactive and thinking ahead, we must begin to ask:

What have we learned from seasonal brands that have gotten their hands dirty working their Social Media muscle this summer, and what takeaways can we immediately apply for the upcoming autumn and winter season?

Here are a couple of pointers:

Get serious and start early. The earlier you start, the quicker you will start getting to know your brand’s following/fans (quite literally too! getting to know them as if they are your friends, that’s right). The more you get to know them, the stronger the connection. The stronger the connection, the more meaningful the brand experience. The more meaningful the brand experience, the higher the brand loyalty. Simple, yet it takes discipline and a strong commitment to actively engage with the community. Lastly on the point of starting early, the earlier you start, the quicker you will reach a critical mass of fans/following. Reaching critical mass means that there is more echo of messages bouncing amongst the community in the form of word-of-mouth - and this is where you want to be!
Whilst the online can exist without the offline and vice versa, why segregate the two when having the offline feed the online and the online feed the offline works much better? The sum is greater than the parts people, and this applies well in the context of brands wanting to have a strong impact within a short amount of time. In order to get this right, egos or invisible walls set up between offline PR/Digital PR/Social Media teams need to be eliminated. This within an agency (or a combination of agencies) is easier said than done my friends.

Perhaps most pressing for summer brands at the moment is the question of what happens when the season is over? Not only has the brand built friendships (yes, that’s right, friendships!) with their followers/fans that will continue to be in disposition to engage after the season is over, but there’s also been hard cash invested into building these relationships. Think about it - it would not only be wrong to bail out on a friendship just because there’s been a change in season, but it also makes no business sense to turn your back on an investment that has not matured - unless you consider it has matured. This part of the ‘thinking ahead’ exercise merits a post of its own as a matter of fact, so stay tuned for that!

In the meantime, what other learnings can we apply to the rollout of Social Media strategies for autumn and winter brands?

What do you think should be done in terms of continuity once the season ends?

Would love to hear your thoughts! Cheers!

Impressive! Yet, does it over-do it and generate too much ‘hype’?

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 22:09:24 +0100

For those that know me, it would come as no surprise that the numbers thrown at us in the above video blew me away! For those that don’t, suffice to say that I’ve been one of those that is wholeheartedly convinced that social media is the way forward - way before seeing this video. No doubt, whatsoever.  However, upon having a deeper think about the video and from commenting it with @Litmanlive, I started to sober up from it and reverted to viewing it from a *healthy-skeptic* point of view. Seeing it from this *healthy-skeptic* point of view shot up some red flags in my head - most notably that this video may be the culprit of ‘overdoing it’, thus generating too much *hype* around social media. If you come to think of it, it’s very easy to take in these statistics for fact without even questioning where they come from (especially b/c many of the ones reading this are already convinced that Social Media is in fact not a fad, etc).  I go on to think that: hey, we’ve been here before, right? mid 90s, internet/e-commerce hype, and sure there was equivalent media that made us drunk with promising stats. Are we applying the learnings of the past when it comes to distinguishing *hype* from reality?  As of now I think the truth will be somewhere in the middle - yes some truly disruptive changes in behaviour and business models are bound to happen, but maybe not to the extent the mind blowing stats thrown at us on the video may lead us to believe…
What do you think?

Social Media Expectations: Keeping it Real

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:31:08 +0100

More often than not, people that are not cued up on Social Media cite the handful of cases where brands have amassed very large audiences on any given social platform - Twitter and Facebook being the most commonly mentioned. Case in point, the very large number of fans Coca-Cola and Starbucks command on their Facebook fan pages. However, truth is that as of now this is not the case for most brands.

Why? It's simple.

First and foremost, most brands have been at it for ONLY 6 months or so - a very short amount of time no matter what anybody says.

Secondly, social media is not about creating 'lists' or 'databases' but about creating relationships with would-be 'friends', 'followers', 'advocates', who will be in willing disposition to pay attention and engage.

Let's think of how we go about becoming part of a social scene in the offline world simply because the first steps in social media are like stepping into a real life party for the first time.

If you're new to the party, you will probably start by making one friend, who will introduce you to another friend, who will then introduce you to yet another friend, and so on. Very rarely do you find first-time party-goers making a loud entrance to a party they've never been to, right? Well, same thing with Social Media.

When a brand enters a space on the social web, it is exactly like entering a party they've never been to - and as in the case of our first-time party-goer, the brand will have to make 'friends' that will introduce the brand to another friend and (hopefully) vouch for the brand's credibility to that friend. A brand planning to enter a social space with bells and whistles expecting to immediately draw the right kind of attention is most likely setting itself up for failure. Having said this, there are ways for brands to make some noise upon entering a social space (such as planned competitions, giveaways, etc.), but the focus and expectations of these competitions should not be to 'buy' large pools of potential friends. Instead, the aim for a brand making an entrance of the sort should be to 'earn' friends by using the competitions and/or giveaways as a means of drawing some attention, to break the ice, and most importantly, to kick off a conversation that then leads to more conversation with others. This, as with making friends in offline social scenes, takes time and needs to be earned.

What are your thoughts? Anything to add?

Educating about Social Media by drawing parallels to traditional businesses...

Wed, 13 May 2009 15:59:40 +0100

When talking about Social Media to an audience of people that are in the dark about its importance and impact on business (i.e. potential clients), it is easy to lose them at 'hello'. Basic industry terms like 'blogging' - 'social networks' - 'community building' - seem to immediately translate into deal-breakers leaving the conversation grounded before it even got off the ground. Worse yet, more often than not they already possess preconceived and mistaken notions of industry-relevant things such as 'Twitter' and 'Facebook'. My personal favourite of this kind is the preconceived notion of the term - 'viral'. Any time one of these conversations starts with someone demanding 'a branded viral a-la Susan Boyle and/or Where in the World is Mat', you know you're in for an uphill battle!

It is for this reason that I find it worthwhile to take up the exercise of explaining bits of social media not by way of a direct wikipedia-style definition, but by drawing parallels to traditional businesses so that those foreign to it are better able to process what's going on in a language they understand.

So then, below are a couple of parallels between the business of social media and the business of financial investing:

REQUESTS TIED TO UNREAL EXPECTATIONS:
Social Media - (client starts vague and lofty) "...I want you to anticipate the next 'big thing' in the online landscape in order to associate/position my brand within it...” (fair enough and understandable when taken with a grain of salt; that is until they qualify their expectations by saying something along the lines of) “...in other words, I’m looking for you to anticipate the combination of factors that contributed to the explosive viewership of the Susan Boyle YouTube video and/or Zappos early involvement in Twitter."

Financial Investing - (client starts vague and lofty) "...I want you to anticipate the markets in order to find the next 'big-time' investment opportunity...” (fair enough and understandable when taken with a grain of salt; that is until they qualify their expectations by saying something along the lines of) “...in other words, sort of like having invested in Google at the time of its IPO and/or in Apple stock before the release of the iphone."

The takeaway in this comparison is that expectations and demands in social media can be (and wrongfully so) as unreal as in financial investing. People forget that everyone is smarter in hindsight. If it were easy to predict the ‘next Susan Boyle’ or the ‘next darling-investment-opportunity’ everyone would get it done and that would be the end of that. However, it is not easy and clinging to expectations based on one-off results in any type of industry - whether social media or financial investing - is simply unrealistic.

LISTENING / DUE DILIGENCE PRIOR TO TAKING ACTION:
Social Media - (social media provider says) Prior to getting our hands dirty, we will focus on LISTENING - i.e. in order to know who, how and where to engage.

Financial Investing - (investment consultant says) Prior to taking any positions, we will focus on DUE DILIGENCE - i.e. in order to know which, how, and when to take a position.

The takeaway in this comparison is that the word/verb ‘LISTENING’ in social media is equivalent to the word/verb ‘DUE DILIGENCE’ in financial investing. In both social media and financial investing it is imperative to do the necessary homework in order to make informed decisions when the time comes to get your hands dirty. So then, next time that a potential client gets thrown off by the use of the word ‘LISTEN’ in the context of a social media conversation, you can easily provide a point of reference by drawing the comparison to the ‘DUE DILIGENCE’ process in financial investing.

What other useful comparisons between social media and traditional businesses have you come across? Would love to hear them!

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BONUS: check out this article making a very good case for why clients ‘need to engage in Social Media even if they don’t want to’ (or understand it).

BONUS, BONUS: check out the FreshNetworks site as it contains a superb section on learning Social Media, which incidentally is where I found the presentation embedded above.

REVIEW: Conversation with LinkedIn’s CEO - Reid Hoffman

Wed, 6 May 2009 11:11:38 +0100

This post is based on a twitter stream posted by David Cushman who at the time was having a conversation with Reid Hoffman - CEO of LinkedIn.

The conversation produced several tweets that I considered to be pure gold, and others that I just had to add my £.02 cents on. Below are some of the highlights of the twitter stream and my comments to some of them.

Reid Hoffman: all organizations need a good social media policy for their employees. Everyone will use it within the next few years.
Comment: somewhat DISAGREE - I am more in favor of training through educating. Policies are restraining, education and training is constructive. This article contains a good perspective on ‘social media policies within the enterprise’ from the point of view of an HR person. An example of the type of training and education I am referring to can be found in this slidedeck created by the folks at IBM - a traditional blue chip company that in my opinion is demonstrating that it 'gets it' with training decks like this one.

Reid Hoffman: There's a bakery that uses Twitter to announce when it's just baked fresh bread.
Comment: interesting and definitely a sign of the times. There are a lot of examples of this out there. Mostly in the recent month I would add. The first one to come up on my radar was through this TechCrunch article about a pizza place that promotes their twitter handle rather than their phone number for delivery service. Also, I have just discovered that the popular UK every-day-grab-and-eat chain EAT is tweeting their 'soup of the day' here - absolutely fantastic as I am a big fan of their soups! (thanks to @helenium for the tip off!)

Reid Hoffman: One hedge fund investor used Linkedin ONLY to decide on a £50m investment. -
Comment: sounds a little over exaggerated. I even hope it's not true! I would expect hedge fund guys to be a lot more in-depth in their research before making £50m investing decisions. LinkedIn may be a good place to start their research though...

Reid Hoffman: we live in a networked world. Don't compete late.
Comment: cannot AGREE more. Remember, the early bird gets the worm!

Reid Hoffman: Linkedin answers is a way of identifying their personal brand. It's tied to your professional reputation.
Comment: cool feature within LinkedIn that I had not tuned into yet. In short, this feature lets you 'tap into the knowledge of your professional network' by (1) asking a question and (2) announcing it to all or specific members of your network in the hopes of (3) getting an answer from a trusted source. This is basically an example of the crowdsourcing you see happen on Twitter on a daily basis. However, in this case the question can be targeted to a specific network of professionals who in theory should be in a better position (and disposition) to provide a tailored answer. It goes both ways too - that is, part of the fun is lending a hand whenever possible as being good to your network can only be good to you. The more useful you become to your network, the more your reputation/influence will grow. Overall, pretty awesome.

Reid Hoffman: Sorting signal from noise means participating in the right groups - wisdom of the right crowd vs stupidity of the masses.
Comment: very true and easier said than done. A huge challenge for all Social Media practitioners. This highlights the importance of nurturing one's networks, knowing which of your networks can provide what, and of course, always keeping in mind that 'quality over quantity' is central to the effectiveness of any network.

Reid Hoffman: companies can tell employees not to have info online about as much as they can stop them having mobile phones
Comment: 100% AGREE - the plain and INEVITABLE truth!

Reid Hoffman: having a profile means you may be recruited. Makes companies nervous. But it's a benefit - it reveals the companies presence.
Comment: 100% AGREE - and rather than worrying about setting up barriers to block others from recruiting their staff, companies should worry about giving them reasons to stay!

Reid Hoffman: What makes you a good pro is (the ability of) deploying your networks and those networks around you.
Comment: this is probably my favorite. I think it is dead on right! Since reading this tweet, I confess I have used it in conversation a lot. I am totally onboard with this and recommend you get onboard too!

Reid Hoffman: Every individual is becoming a small biz. Part of what makes a pro is knowing where to go to assemble a problem solving team.
Comment: 100% AGREE - this goes back to the previous tweet about good pros being the ones who can rally/deploy their networks and those around them.

Reid Hoffman: How I get new ideas is that I talk to people. Add the power of online and...
Comment: AGREE - I happen to be big on networking and a main reason for this is that I find it much more efficient to test and build on ideas through conversation with relevant people, as opposed to hibernating and single-handedly cranking out a brilliant idea in the way a mad scientist does.

Reid Hoffman: What the Internet means for management, companies and careers: it helps pros be more efficient
Comment: AGREE - and would add that the more we learn to maneuver in this ever-changing space, the more we'll steer out of trouble and the more we'll leverage its potential.

So, what do you think?

Looking forward to getting your take!

Cheers

Reasons to be OPTIMISTIC about the not-so-distant FUTURE!

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:37:10 +0100

Had to pass on this video because I believe it does a great job at adding a big dose of perspective to the current confidence crisis affecting the markets and the overall economy. Not only that, it clearly makes the case of something I truly believe in which is that - THE BEST IS YET TO COME!

It’s incredible to think that it was ONLY 60 years ago that we began to come out of an incredibly problematic half century in world history - I mean: two world wars, major worldwide depressions, all within a span of 50 years! Yet, we seem to forget how far we’ve come since then. Sadly, in today’s short-sighted world, it seems that the slightest ‘negative’ news crushes investor confidence to bits - which in the end affects us all. This shouldn’t be. At least not to the degree that it happens nowadays.

Pay attention to the factual evidence Mr. Alex Tabarrok presents that talks to this point. My bet is that you will feel inspired by his factual reasoning and become an advocate of his message. If so, why not pass it along to your Twitter followers, Facebook friends, LinkedIn contacts or whichever one of your networks is most appropriate? By doing so you will be contributing to the distribution of this positive, intelligent, and reasonable message, and be of service to your network!