How social are your media?

Happy New Year to all. I hope you're all doing well, and some of you will be sharing such information via social media of various kinds. There's the seemingly ubiquitous Twitter, the suit-and-tie LinkedIn, the snap-and-share Instagram and even the partly-owned-by-Justin-Timberlake musicality of MySpace ... and lots more. Enough social media to be sociable amongst themselves it seems with more interconnections than the New York Subway.

The days of needing to grow your own web pages, and even your own blogs, have moved on to an environment where we're all a kind of DJ, broadcasting our favourite moments and collecting followers like small boys collect stamps.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines social media as "web sites and applications which enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking" and gives the origin of the term (or at least its first citation) as 2004 with a conference called The Business of Social Media ... so this could be its tenth anniversary, at least of the term itself. MySpace and LinkedIn were formed in 2003, Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006 and Instagram in 2010.

Wikipedia's list of social networking sites is instructive. The earliest one dated in the list is classmates.com in 1995 (the UK equivalent, Friends Reunited, dates from 2000). Older than I expected. Even more interesting, and extensive, is the page on social networking itself. This one reads a bit like an abbreviated PhD thesis! It's a big social world out there.

If you're a business it's very difficult to keep up. Since the sites will wax and wane in popularity you will need someone who can follow the trends and advise which networks fit best with your clients' communications. IMHO Twitter and LinkedIn are a minimum (and in my case probably the maximum as well). Facebook seems to be the leader, with most unique visitors, at least in the English-speaking world. The end of 2013 saw a brief flurry of questions about Facebook possibly losing its core teen audience because they didn't want to be on the same network as their parents. This needed more careful examination and fortunately that came from the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones. Did you know that in part of Australia you can be served a summons via Facebook?

I've scored a couple of successes by contacting companies via Twitter and picked up some interesting followers. Pick the right 'DJs' that you want to follow ... for their news or their jokes or their photos. I'll tweet this iProfessionals blog entry and make the whole thing somewhat recursive. The main thing is that you need to make regular, even if occasional, use of your social media accounts and then people will know where to find you. I'm at @Delverie.

Customer Relationship Management going social?

It could be argued that CRM (Customer Relationship Management) lifted the lid on the potential of all this social networking. Well, if we just imagine how influenced teens are by their peer group, it's not rocket science to extend this idea of strong influence to friends and family. So CRM, which bonded people by brand association and/or buying habits, is not that far from companies trying to influence people bonded by friendship or family ties to buy similar things.

This seems to be a successful advertising formula improving recall by 30% if friends' names are linked to buying a brand. See the article from MyCustomer.com.

You’d imagine that the links between CRM and Social Networking are a bit obvious if I make the link as a non-marketeer! But it is not, it seems. Although Facebook and Twitter have passed the fad stage, traditional CRMers have not bought in to them - as cited in another MyCustomer article.

Watch this space because the social networking sites are still growing more rapidly than any other communication media. But again if we try to learn from the past, the social sites grew for other reasons and may react badly to adverse influence. It has to be handled carefully. Where's the solid research?

Talking of research, Forrester looks at the trends of CRM 2010. They see this year as one where the hype about social media and CRM leads to some pilot projects. Take a look at a summary of other CRM trends at Forrester.

Perhaps you can do your own bit here. Would you be happy to see ads with your friends and family names and faces linked to them? Would it influence you positively?

Social Network Marketing

There's still a lot of confusion as to how to make best use of the incredibly successful social networking sites in terms of marketing. With Facebook now well in the lead for use in terms of numbers of people and time spent there, (New Media Age, Social Circles, 5th November), and with a majority of US companies saying they will employ a social media specialist, (2009 Digital Readiness Report, Essential Online Public Relations and Marketing Skills), the social network trend is enticing mainstream business.
But it seems that brands are having a rough time working out what interactive users want. Since social sites favour word-of-mouth or tips from trusted others, some brands have fallen foul if the trusted haven't liked their offerings. This news gets spread virally just as fast – if not faster – than good news!
Interactive users also want input into shaping ideas that they might then promote. The 'active' user's profile is very different from the passive user's profile of static communication channels. Maybe new profiling can move towards a better understanding. It's an emerging field full of landmines, so tread carefully.
See The CMO third online survey results about future market trends at:
faculty.fuqua.duke.edu/cmosurvey/survey_results/august_2009_reports/cmo_survey_highlights_and_insights_8-2009.pdf
and the 2009 Digital Readiness Report at:
www.ipressroom.com/pr/corporate/social-media-communications-skills-survey.aspx