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by Bret Treasureon Aug 20 |
On passion and influence, or why social media isn't as important as it thinks it is
I have a relation who’s a famous retired sportsman; a household name. He returned to his home town and wanted to join the local golf club, which had a waiting list. The membership officer explained to my famous relative that no, he couldn’t get an accelerated membership. He would be positioned at the bottom of the waiting list. When he recounted this to his 90 year old mother, she said, ‘well; looks like you’re not as important as you thought you were’. Which brings me to social media, in particular blogging and micro-blogging - tools like Twitter.
Passion killer
Reading through Rob Antulov’s summary points of the Future of Media session on Media and Social Networks; wanted to discuss this one: ‘many companies about which conversation occurs online are NOT tracking this conversation, so are missing out on a unique opportunity to listen and engage with some of their passionate consumers’.
Are those consumers who use social media any more passionate than other consumers? I don’t think so. How are they different to other consumers? They use technology more so they might be more passionate about technology but I think the passion ends there. As technology early-adopters they are more likely to be educated and affluent but from a market research viewpoint, this renders them uninteresting. They are not a representative sample. If I’m selling a mainstream product I’m interested in the opinions of a cross-section of consumers, not an elite niche. So much for the Passion Argument.
Follow my leader?
There are two other arguments often advanced for companies expending effort on social media. One is the Influence Argument, the notion that social media early adopters are more influential in the public realm than Joe Dokes, Couch Potato, passive media consumer.
At risk of heresy, Matt Cutts and Robert Scoble are no more influential on mainstream consumer opinion than Joe Dokes. In their own limited areas they exert influence; no argument. If you don’t know their names, I’ve made my point. Broader society is unaffected by blogging, micro-conversations and micro-blogging. The capacity of social media to influence mainstream media, and hence the mainstream, is pathetically small.
Conversation non-starter
Then there is the PR Argument; that a company can use social media to initiate positive conversations on the Internet and beyond (cue Buzz Lightyear) or respond to an adverse story before it gets a head of steam. Poster child for this is Southwest Airlines, which responds in near real time to Twitter users who mention the airline when they Tweet (blog).
I’m afraid this is influence at the margins. If Qantas had been using SouthWest Airlines’ approach would it have stopped or influenced the mainstream media blitz that followed their recent in-flight explosion? Not a skerrick.
I don’t think social media is an advertising medium or even a PR medium. It is a new kind of word-of-mouth and word-of-mouth derives from your staff and your policies (in that order). The capacity of your marketing department to drive it is negligible.
What is social media good for then?
Well what is social software good for? Access to the knowledge of informed people is a biggie. And you would have to say it has great potential as a tool for personal branding and personal promotion. If you own a business (particularly a tech start-up) and you want to raise your profile, invest hundreds of hours in blogging and micro-blogging - you might very well build a following.
But it’s not probably not going to make you more passionate or influential than Joe Dokes.
From a conversation with Myles Eftos.
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From where I stand, I know of heaps of great social media success stories. We use it, some of our clients use it and very successfully....thank you very much.
I do especially like your statement: I don’t think social media is an advertising medium or even a PR medium.
If that's true, why are you writing on Marketing Mag's blogging platform, promoting your blog and trying to sell classic marketing campaigns?
Also, as an unclassic marketer, what is a classic marketing campaign? I want to learn!
Please don't take offence.
P.S. I'd like to welcome Scotland (editor) to NSW
Twitter is not the only social media tool. Perhaps it hasnt been utilised much yet, but it will be. When you look at the potential of blogging, podcasting, video etc I dont think 'mainstream' will be around for much longer. And if youre selling a mainstream product, maybe you should pick up Seth Godin's Purple Cow?
Social media, above all, allows you to build relationships by providing value. And if you have a relationship with a consumer, they are much more likely to be passionate about your brand and product.
Of course you know about Apple vs Engadget right? On May 17th 2007, the Engadget blogger - an influential geek blog by your terms - posted that the iPhone would be delayed by 3 months and Apple lost 4.6 BILLION MARKET CAP in 6 MINUTES? yes, influential. Now if Apple had taken a social media approach as does, say, Microsoft, that would never have happened. Why? Because users can go to Microsoft bloggers and confirm/deny delays in products, rather than just dump stock.
I have a bunch more examples on this blog post/slideshow including how a non-tech, non-geek, deaf mother used her uninfluential blog to write a story of discrimination that got on the Fox Evening News and impacted the proposed acquisition of that fast-food chain.
http://silkcharm.blogspot.com/2008/04/australia-event-social-networks-and-pr.html
We are not more passionate about brands than we were before. We are just more connected, and have our own media creation and media distribution channels now. Those guys that actively campaigned against MacDonalds years ago, would have an easier time of it now - no more photocopying and distributing anti-Advertising by hand. We become influential by our passionate connection to the subject, by our ability to create content around our passion and by our ability to connect and disseminate that content to other influential parties. Twas ever thus.
I am a social network strategist who has heard for years that online communities is for geeks. First with YouTube, then with MySpace then with Facebook, now with Twitter. I can only say one thing: isnt it time you caught up on the real statistics? There are the same number of teens on myspace as there are seniors. About 11%, actually. Most members are women over 35. Hello luxury brands. Most second life members are over 40 and female. There are over 3 million Australians on Facebook over the age of 18 - out of a population of 21 million. Twitter has only picked up steam since November and has over 1million members. Will it continue with that growth rate? who knows.
Twitter may be new, and therefore at the moment full of early adopters, but it does herald a new era in mobile, locative, instant communication. Dell Computers held a huge international press conference ONLY on Twitter last week. Where were you? :)
If you are selling a mainstream product then surely you are not so interested in a cross-section of people, but in those key segments where there is a strong buying need or potential for category growth. It is all a numbers game, and that is where well defined social media strategy, metrics and activation win out.
And I agree, influence is not all it is cracked up to be. The benefit lies in the strength of weak ties.
@ZacMartin: Yes I read the Purple Cow. I thought it more interesting as a piece of book marketing than as a marketing tool and I had some fun with it here: http://tinyurl.com/2dovwk
Thanks for robust feedback. I take Laurel's point about Apple but in a sense it reinforces the idea of power in the tech area and not much impact anywhere else. I'm not saying social media is never effective; I use it and advocate its use. It's obviously growing. And I'm an enthusiastic proponent of blogs and story-telling. But mainstream categories like banking, clothing, furniture, etc are not likely to be impacted by early-adopter Twitter users.
Yes, I follow the stats. Concurrency in Second Life is running between 50K and 70K internationally. That's not mainstream. Facebook has a lot of members but your capacity to reach large numbers of them effectively is limited.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that we have to be careful in talking to clients not to position social media as an alternative to more mainstream broadcast media. @ServantofChaos seemed to speak a lot of sense in a small space. I thought the strength of weak ties was exactly right. I think that also speaks to some broader changes that are occuring in the way we communicate.
As servant of chaos highlights, social media is not a broadcast medium. It deals with online communties, however small. Its about ongoing conversations, not short lived multi-million dollar advertising campaigns that are deemed a success and given awards before they're even launched.
People are conversing about most brands as we speak, you can either ignore it and be preceived as a faceless corporation or you can join in and get a brand personality, a listening personality.
Look deeper and you will be enlightened!
Which of my propositions do you not agree with @The Marketer? Here they are again:
1. People who blog about products are no more passionate about these products than other consumers.
2. The capacity of social media to influence mainstream media is very limited (possible exception tech/geek markets). Therefore, in almost all cases, social media has little influence on mainstream products and mainstream marketing.
3. Social media is ineffective in preventing adverse publicity (though prompt responses are of course good communications strategy). BTW, I certainly agree with Laurel that Microsoft have used social media very well in the developer community.
You say I am confusing social media with broadcast media. But then you quote me saying I don't believe social media is an advertising medium. That quote would seem to suggest I understand there is a distinction. *shrugs*
Lets face it, social media is still an emerging form of online communication. It has had some successes overseas, but as Julian Cole points out on his blog (http://tinyurl.com/67q6xy) Australia has yet to produce a great example of social media success.
That said, it can a be a viable marketing strategy, although not in an overt broadcast sense. I have been steadily compiling a series of interviews with marketers who have used social media successfully and it has been truly fascinating.
I don't really think that in marketing there are any absolutes. A big brassy TV campaign might be right for one company, while a social media strategy could be the perfect tonic for another. The intended outcomes are the same: build a greater bond with potential customers and convert them to sales.
Social media is young and still aiming to get some runs on the board. It doesn't mean it doesn't work, just that its early days and not everyone understands it nor employs it well.
Bret (with one T) is right to say that people online aren't necessarily more passionate, but they do have the ability to spread the word much faster through their social networks, to the advantage of detriment of a brand.
Social media hasn't had a massive impact or influence on mainstream media (yet) but there is evidence of it starting to filter through and I wager that its only a matter of time until you see a major story break or be driven via social media in Australia.
Nothing can really prevent bad publicity. I your company or product sucks then people will talk about it. I guess a social media approach allows companies to get opinions out in the open and then hopefully pacify them diplomatically.
Thanks for igniting a fascinating debate Bret.
Let's tease this out a bit. Imagine that a conspicuously successful example of social media use emerges in Australia. (I'm sure it will). Agencies and consultants will use it to encourage clients with decent budgets to invest in social media. They will then design CAMPAIGNS to try and replicate the success. Those campaigns will almost all fail. Agencies and clients will all shake their heads and conclude that social media doesn't work.
This is what happened with Second Life. American Apparel secured First Mover Advantage and won millions of dollars in media exposure. Other companies followed and had progressively less and less success as the novelty wore off. 'Hey, we are the first European Haberdashery in Second Life!'. Since then, large corporates have largely abandoned the platform.
Why did this happen? Because they all treated it as another sales channel instead of putting in the extra time to understand the medium. New = small budget = haven't got too much time to invest in it.
As @The Marketer says, social media is about on-going conversations. Because it's a conversation your capacity to influence it as a single entity is very limited. Let's not pretend otherwise.
If we, as marketers, go around saying 'you need a Facebook presence' we need to manage the expectations of the client. It ain't going to bring home the bacon and they need to know that.
I believe that for this approach to work it has to reflect a genuine desire by the company involved to communicate authentically with their audience. You can't duplicate that.
That being said, agencies should look at every campaign and client and consider whether social media is an option. For some it will be, others should avoid it like the plague. At our own agency we are fans of SMM but do not offer it as a default option. We only put it on the table if we believe the company involved can embrace the concept genuinely.
I guess that's the great thing about social media...you can spots the fakes a mile away.