This chart shows Facebook’s growth in new users from 2004 to 2010 based on data provided by Facebook.com.  I was looking all over the internet for this chart and couldn’t find one.  I figured I’d just create one and share it so that other people wouldn’t have to go through the search that I did.

Here’s the data from Facebook if you want to do your own thing

The movement to quit Facebook on May 31 received about 36,000 fans.  Dunkin Donuts Free Donut Day, received over 90,000 fans.

Quit Facebook Day - 36,000 People

Free Donut Day - 90,000 people

Despite some media reports claiming Quit Facebook Day was a success because it raised awareness, I feel like Facebook is going to feel emboldened to stretch the limits even more.  There is now a public validation that privacy isn’t as important as staying connected to your friends.  Facebook now has public validation through hard numbers that what they are doing is right….and they’re going to do more.

I observed an interesting trend in commercials during a recent episode of 30 Rock.  A majority of advertisements now direct viewers to the company’s Facebook page rather than the brand’s home page.  This isn’t necessarily a good strategy, but it does say a lot about the importance of Facebook in integrated marketing communications.

Brands realize that millions of people are spending hours on Facebook every month and they want a piece of that.   But who are the best types of people to engage on Facebook?  More importantly, if you’re buying ads on Facebook, who do you want to target?

This awesome widget from Forrester shows that Social websites are the domain of younger generations.  Older consumers are joining Facebook, but not at the scale of younger people.

Fewer Facebook Friends = More Real Estate for Your Brand

It is exactly this reason you should target your ads to older demographics.  Because there are fewer older people on Facebook, your message is more likely to show up on their news feed.

Sure, your brand’s Facebook application is pretty nice, but the first thing you see when you login to Facebook is the news feed.  This ability to get your brand’s message right next to baby photos and funny links is what makes engagement on Facebook so valuable.

A simple example:   An older user with 50 friends will see your message more than a younger user with 500 friends.

Fewer Friends - More Real Estate

Be careful…you don’t want to overdo it and annoy your fans.  I like traffic from Facebook because visitors typically stay longer and visit more pages.  So, it’s tempting to post LOTS of messages.

If you do so, the graphic above would be ALL green, and your precious fans won’t see any updates from their friends and family and could hide or unlike you.

It’s no secret that brands are rushing to Facebook to create pages to broadcast their message, establish “friendships” with customers, and leverage the platform’s functionality to execute savvy campaigns.  Many brands and celebrities have used Facebook very well, but does their success mean that your brand will be able to replicate it?

Most brands are sophisticated enough now to ask the obvious strategic questions around business objectives.  Many also know to study the customer problems that their looking to Social Media to solve.

But, as a tool to execute Business Objectives, Facebook is different than other Social Media tools.  The reason for this is the intensely personal nature of relationships on Facebook.

As compared to Twitter, blogs, forums, or other Social Media tools, relationships are closer and generally confined to family, friends, and trusted work colleagues.

Activity, assocationas, and content added by Facebook users is much more deliberate than other sites.  As a result, people are very careful about being a “Fan” of a brand.

People don’t become a Fan of a brand they like; they typically fan a brand has that makes them look “cool” in front of their friends.

“Would A Person Wear a Tee-Shirt with My Brand On It?”

Throughout human history, clothes and fashion have been used to communicate summary-size bites of information to other people. Rightly or wrongly, we look at what others are wearing and pass judgement, develop opinions, and summize a person.

This same principle applies on Facebook.  I choose to be fans of brands just as carefully as I choose what Favorite Music, Quotes, and Movies to select.  They can communicate information to others about who I am quickly and clearly.

Because people use their Facebook profile to shape their perception in a network, brands that can’t offer a customer “cool points” are likely to not gain followers.  People want to fan Apple, because Apple is cool.  Adding Apple to your profile is like wearing an Apple t-shirt, we know what types of people use Apple.

Example:

• Say you manufacture kitchen appliances.  A good Social Media Strategy would be to increase usage and affinity for your product through content like recipes, tips/tricks, and service/support that can be improved by a loyal community.
• Using Facebook to execute this strategy and distribute this content might be difficult.  Sure, there are likely some rabid fans of your product….but would a typical customer wear your brand on their clothing?  Compared to Apple?

Of course, you could throw money at a Facebook campaign to increase followers…but the ROI is likely lower.  Consider a blog/forum community site.  Consider using Twitter to promote that site.  Consider an iPhone app targeted to connecting loyalists together.

Here’s who I fan on Facebook:

I’m a Social Media Marketer’s dream.  I love Facebook, I love experimenting with it to learn more…But look at who I fan.   It’s stuff that speaks about me to my friends.  I do this as much because I care about association as I do because I care about the updates.

Happy to remove any photos, please email me or comment.  I am using photos simply to comment on the world around us.

Foster’s

Products

Trust Agents

Products

Miami RedHawks

Sports / Athletics

Facebook for Influencers

Consumer Product

The Economist

Communications

Papa John’s Pizza

Food and Beverage

Pitchfork

Communications

Social Network Roadmap

Professional Service

Careers at Allstate

Financial Service

Allstate Insurance

Financial Service

Nine Mile

Restaurant

Skyline Chili

Restaurant

PrepMe

Education

Miami University

Education

Miami University Alumni – Chicago Chapter

Education

University of Chicago

Education

Miami University

Education

Barack Obama

Politician

Budgetball

Non-Profit

You Can’t Do That on Television

TV Show

Chicago Cubs

Sports Team

Chicago Blackhawks

Sports Team

The Fourcoursemen

Other Public Figure

Kristin Wiig

Other Public Figure

Tucker Max

Writer

Veronica Belmont

Other Public Figure

E*TRADE Baby

Actor

This American Life

Other Public Figure

Spaghetti Cat

Other Public Figure

Elizabeth ‘Tina’ Fey

Actor

Kristen Wiig

Actor

6 DEGREES OF SEPARATION

Musician

Gringo Star

Musician

Sixteen Candles Band

Musician

Good Hands (SM) Community

Website

8tracks

Website

Chicago Cubs

Application

TechCrunch broke the news today that Facebook is acquiring the wonderful site FriendFeed.  There were few cues in either the official Facebook press release or the press release from FriendFeed.

The following is what’s clear to date:

• All 12 FriendFeed employees will be joining Facebook
• Facebook has borrowed many design features and functionality from FriendFeed
• Most content on FriendFeed comes from Twitter posts
• Most discussions on FriendFeed come from popular users

Facebook’s Strategy for Acquiring FriendFeed

• Engineering Brainpower of FriendFeed

  • In the first paragraph of Facebook’s press release, they said “As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.”
  • Jeremiah Owyang pointed this out as the most likely reason that FriendFeed were acquired.
  • Given that Facebook has continually used features like the “Like” button, and a focus on “real-time” streaming, they obviously think that the engineering talent has a great understanding of their customers

• Blocking Innovation at Twitter and Google around Conversations and Replies

  • The “reply” functionality on Twitter is not very valuable.  Even Twitter has said that replies are “not perfect”.
  • Rob Diana at Regular Geek chimed in on a post about FriendFeed being ripped off and said that the real source of innovation in conversation is FriendFeed.
  • Organizing the FriendFeed innovations into the Facebook patents makes it easier for Facebook to control the valuable features that users want.
  • If Facebook can implement some of the talked about features of Google Wave (like Real-Time and Embeddability) before Google Wave is released, they can better argue in front of an IP or patent court.

• Ownership of Data in Conversations

  • The conversations on FriendFeed are more robust and detailed than Twitter or Facebook.
  • Facebook could use this data in advertising in two ways:
    • Better data to sell to advertisers about what people are saying
    • Better data around who are the key influencers in networks to target for a new product
  • Additionally, Facebook could use the data to help shape their vision of the semantic web as people tend to have better and more diverse network discussions about the content being shared.

FiLife is an amazing site, not only because of their innovative Stacker tool which is a great Social Media case study that helps consumers figure out how they “stack-up” to their peers, but also because of all their great financial content.

Recently, FiLife created a contest to crowd-source content by challenging people to come up with their own stackers.  I created a stacker I was interested in that asked, “If Facebook forced you to pay a monthly fee, how much would you pay?”

I decided to embed this here to see what people think.  Full Disclosure:  I wasn’t aware that you could embed stackers on a blog (which is awesome).  I did this after a suggestion from Paul Kennard, Project Manager at FiLife because I think it’s a good fit for the content of this site.

Filife – Family Finance

Disclaimer:  My entry is the $5.00 because I believe that Facebook is a valuable part of my life…However, once something is “free”, is it impossible to start charging for it without losing a user base?

Previously, I presented the Customer Experience lifecycle as a framework for companies defining Social Media Strategy and Business Objectives. This model shows you where consumers are looking for information to meet their needs.

By focusing Social Media efforts on where your customers are looking for information, you can better define your Social Media Strategy around helping customers solve their problems.

Here’s a quick reminder of the framework:

The Customer Experience Lifecycle:

1. Realization - Recognition of a problem or need
   1. Best Practice – FiLife Stacker Tool
   2. Learn From – Motrin Moms Commercial
2. Awareness - Connection between need and your product
   1. Best Practice – Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?”
   2. Learn From – Target Rounders
3. Evaluation - Consideration of you (and your competitors) product benefits and tradeoffs as a solution to the need
   1. Best Practice – Best Western’s On the Go With Amy
   2. Learn From – Skittles’ Interweb the Rainbow
4. Transaction - Money is exchanged for product
   1. Best Practice – DellOutlet on Twitter
   2. Learn From – Belkin’s Fake Product Reviews
5. Consumption - Product is used
   1. Best Practice – Lego’s User Communities
   2. Learn From – Kraft Digiorno Pizza – The Ditcher
6. Service - Post-purchase support for your product
   1. Best Practice – Comcast’s Twitter Account – @ComcastCares
   2. Learn From – Any Company Not Using Twitter Search

Evaluation – Consumers compare product benefits

Best Practice – Best Western – On the Go With Amy

• Business Objective Increase sales by providing travel tips (and Best Western deals) through informative content
• Tool: Blogs – Through “On the Go with Amy”, Best Western offers good content mixed with deals on their hotels
• What They Do Right:  Provide tips and advice on how to make the ENTIRE trip more affordable
  • Hotel costs are just part of the travel budget; by sharing tips on how to reduce the total cost, they increase the value to their customers
  • Content is relevant to customers for example use smaller cars which are cheaper to rent AND have higher gas efficiency
  • While the blog isn’t highly trafficked (Alexa rank of #2,201,016 on June 8, 2009), that’s an easily solvable marketing problem. The content is great and is a perfect place to start a dialogue

Company to Learn From – Skittles Interweb the Rainbow

• Business Objective: Encourage consumers to redefine brand
• Tool: Mashup – A combination of Twitter, Wikipedia, and Facebook
• What You Should Learn From: A PR play is not Word of Mouth
  • There’s no such thing as bad pubicity, but Social Media seems to work best when it’s a 2 Way dialogue
  • To paraphrase a famous chart, 1% of traffic were people who care about Skittles; 99% of traffic were Social Media Bloggers
  • Skittles should do more than promote consumer dialgoue, they should USE this as insight for a two way dialogue

Transaction – Money is exchanged for product

Best Practice – DellOutlet on Twitter

• Business Objective: Increase sales by offering exclusive deals on Twitter to PEOPLE WHO WANT THEM
• Tool: Twitter – Using Twitter Search to find and Twitter to execute, DellOutlet promotes deals
• What They Did Right: Increase the outlet store’s value by responding to customer needs in the moment
  • Many companies are using Twitter to promote deals, but Dell takes it further by responding to people’s needs
  • By selling refurbished, scratch and dent, and previously ordered Dell products through Twitter, they increase the perceived value of “used” merchandise
  • Not all posts are deals – Lots of times they offer tips like this one to a new student

Company to Learn From – Belkin’s “Fake” Reviews of Products

• Business Objective - Increase sales through reviews of products at Amazon.com
• Tool: Customer Reviews – Or more specifically, manipulated customer reviews
• What You Should Learn From – Customer reviews are sacred; manipulating reviews is never worth the benefit
  • Though Belkin says they have a high standard of ethics, Gizmodo reports that Belkin had a culture of “doing whatever is needed” to get good reviews
  • Customer reviews are sacred in Social Media.  The payoff for faking a review does not stack up to the damage from getting caught.
  • If you google “Belkin Reviews” , the first thing to pop up is a story about Belkin paying for reviews

What other examples come to mind?

Posted by Ben Foster

In my last post, I presented the Customer Experience lifecycle as a framework for companies defining Social Media Strategy and Business Objectives.  This model shows you where consumers are looking for information to meet their needs.

By focusing Social Media efforts on where your customers are looking for information, you can better define your Social Media Strategy around helping customers solve their problems.

To illustrate how the Customer Experience lifecycle is important, the following are examples from the first 2 stages:  Realization and Awareness.  I’ll cover the next four in future posts.

The Customer Experience Lifecycle:

1. Realization - Recognition of a problem or need
   1. Best Practice – FiLife Stacker Tool
   2. Learn From – Motrin Moms Commercial
2. Awareness - Connection between need and your product
   1. Best Practice – Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?”
   2. Learn From – Target Rounders
3. Evaluation - Consideration of you (and your competitors) product benefits and tradeoffs as a solution to the need
   1. Best Practice – Best Western’s On the Go With Amy
   2. Learn From – Skittles’ Interweb the Rainbow
4. Transaction - Money is exchanged for product
   1. Best Practice – DellOutlet on Twitter
   2. Learn From – Belkin’s Fake Product Reviews
5. Consumption - Product is used
   1. Best Practice – Lego’s User Communities
   2. Learn From – Kraft Digiorno Pizza – The Ditcher
6. Service - Post-purchase support for your product
   1. Best Practice – Comcast’s Twitter Account – @ComcastCares
   2. Learn From – Any Company Not Using Twitter Search

Realization – Recognize a Problem

Best Practice – FiLife

• Business Objective: Drive traffic to an ad-driven site
• Tool:  Social Comparison – Through their innovative “Stackers” tool, they allow consumers to compare themselves to others
• What They Did Right:  By seeing “how you stack up”, consumers can recognize a need to do more in a certain area
  • A consumer saving 3% of their paycheck through 401(k) contributions would see that they are in the 10th percentile
  • This consumer would likely recognize the need to save more for retirement
  • And guess what…FiLife is there with a variety of resources and ads to help the consumer solve their problem

Company to Learn From – Motrin

• Business Objective: Increase sales by creating a “new need” for the product
• Tool:  Viral Videos – For the start of International Baby Wearing Week, they promoted videos with a mom describing that carrying her baby is cool as long as she carries Motrin
• What You Should Learn From: They tried to create a need where no problem existed
  • All consumers know pain; all consumers know that pain-killers kill pain
  • Some say it wasn’t tested, but large companies generally do not put out ads without focus group testing
  • But people act funny in paid focus groups.  I’m guessing that either no one spoke up in front of the group or that they wanted to “help” Motrin by telling them what they thought Motrin wanted to hear
  • Viral videos are typically watched alone and without financial incentives.  This behavior led to a significantly different reaction, like these on Twitter

Awareness - Connect Product to Problem

Best Practice – BlendTec

• Business Objective: Drive sales by increasing brand awareness
• Tool:  “Will it Blend?” videos that show the power of the blender
• Why They Did It Right – They created brand awareness by entertaining consumers and showing them EXACTLY what they were looking for
  • Blenders are not exciting and therefore not talked about (especially among friends on the internet)
  • The main (and only?) question facing consumers when purchasing a blender is, will it blend?
  • Rather than adding complexity to the need (like competitors were doing by promoting fancy features), they kept it simple (and funny)

Company to Learn From – Target

• Business Objective – Drive sales using recommendations of friends
• Tool: Facebook Group with Insiders- Created a Facebook group with a set of insiders, Target Rounders, that encouraged people to recommend products to friends
• What You Should Learn From This: You can’t force word of mouth to inform customers about products
  • On the surface, it’s not a bad idea;  Target is a great brand.  How many times have you walked out of Target with more than your shopping list?
  • When people need something, recommendations of friends is critical; but recommendations must be authentic
  • Target tried to force secrecy with emails to Target Rounders that read, “Your Mission: Try not to let on in the Facebook group that you are a Rounder”
  • No one wants to compromise their reputation amongst friends by being a shill for a corporation

Other examples you can think of?

]]> http://www.benphoster.com/social-media-strategy-case-studies-using-the-customer-experience-lifecycle/feed/ 11 http://www.benphoster.com/how-to-define-social-media-strategy-and-business-objectives-by-using-the-customer-experience-lifecycle-model/ http://www.benphoster.com/how-to-define-social-media-strategy-and-business-objectives-by-using-the-customer-experience-lifecycle-model/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 14:40:51 +0000 Ben Foster http://www.benphoster.com/?p=991

Well defined business objectives are the cornerstone of any corporate Social Media initiative.  Defining strategic objectives for social media has been pretty well covered across the social media blogs, but many businesses seem to be missing it.

Photo Credit - Beck Tench

So why the struggle?  Well, good strategy isn’t easy.  It takes a lot of hard work to build a strategy and even more work partnering across the organization to make it work.

Social Media is all about listening to your customers and having a dialogue that increases the ability of your company or brand to meet their needs.

But as savvy marketers know, the process consumers go through when considering, purchasing, and ultimately recommending your product or service is complex.

Many Social Media strategists try to focus their efforts across ALL steps of this process.  But a detailed understanding of customer needs for information at each point in the process holds the key for where to focus your Social Media efforts.

For discussion, here is a simple Customer Experience framework

1. Realization – Recognition of a problem or need

2. Awareness - Connection between need and your product

3. Evaluation – Consideration of your (and your competitors) product benefits and tradeoffs as a solution to the need

4. UPDATED:  Transaction – Money is exchanged for product (Great Suggestion from Alain Breillatt)
   

5. Consumption – Product is used

6. Service – Post-purchase support for your product

You’re probably already thinking of this cycle as how it relates to your own company, and it may seem simplistic.

But compare a product like HDTVs to a product like Search Engines.  Customer information needs at each point in the Customer Experience Lifecycle differ based on the product.  Understanding the details behind customer behavior and the need for information can help focus your Social Media efforts.

HDTVs – Customer Experience Life Cycle

Social Media Business Objectives for HDTV marketers should focus on creating consumer recognition of the need for an HDTV, evaluating the differences between solutions, and providing customer service.

• Realization – [HIGH] – Many don’t recognize or have a need for an HDTV
• Awareness – [LOW] - Consumers who have recognized a need likely understand how an HDTV can solve it
• Evaluation – [HIGH] – Consumers need information on the benefits of various HDTV options relative to cost
• Consumption – [LOW] – Most customers are well aware of how to use an HDTV
• Service – [HIGH] – Customers who have a problem with their HDTV need information on how to service it

Search Engines – Customer Experience Life Cycle

As an illustration of the opposite, Search Engines (who aren’t Google) should focus Social Media efforts on Awareness and Consumption.

• Realization – [LOW] – Consumers know when they need to search for information
• Awareness – [HIGH] – Consumers often don’t understand how search engines can meet their information needs
• Evaluation – [LOW] - Consumers can quickly search multiple sites at little cost
• Consumption – [HIGH] – Many customers struggle to do anything but a basic search
• Service – [LOW] – Once customers use the search engine, there is really no need for “service”

In my next two posts, I’ll cover companies I think are doing this right and companies I think have their business objectives misaligned.  In the meantime, I’m open to suggestions on the lifecycle model (should there be a step for “Decision/Transaction”?)

Also, I’d love any examples of companies you think have properly aligned objectives to their Social Media strategies through a detailed understanding of their customers.

Posted by Ben Foster

Recently, I led a Consumer Research project that featured some very wonderful Innovation Consultants from Strategos who preached the gospel of “learning by doing”.  Or, as Vas Vasiliadis would say, “You got to get in there and make the sausage, man.”

“Learning By Doing” has since become my professional mantra.  I started this Social Media Strategy blog solely to learn techniques for my current job.  Writing a blog teaches you a lot about content strategy, search engine optimization, and community building.  I wanted detailed knowledge on these topics so I could better execute Social Media Strategy.

Google Webmaster tools have taught me so much about the way people look for information on the internet.  Search Engine Optimization is truly an art-form and the most skilled practitioners are worth their weight in gold.

Today, while checking my account I noticed that my page had a high search engine result for “Annoying Facebook Pictures.“  I Googled it, and the results weren’t quite what I intended when I wrote my post about Facebook’s Monetization Strategy for Facebook Credits.

Google image results for “annoying facebook picture“

“Nice Etch-A-Sketch, Jerk Store” – Tripp Barry

However, Google…we’re still friends.  I like the way you think about “corporate strategists.”

Posted By Ben Foster

Photo by adpowers via Flickr

Summer interns are one of the greatest traditions of capitalism.  Each summer, notoriously ambitious interns join companies eager to make an impact and deliver results.  For the Social Media Strategist, interns can provide a fresh perspective to companies looking to embrace Social Media.

At the dawn of E-Commerce (way back in the 1990s), GE executives gathered for a now infamous strategic session called DestroyYourBusiness.com.  Realizing the threat facing GE from the thousands of start-ups thinking differently, Jack Welch had his managers pretend to be one of the many Dotcoms trying to destroy GE’s existing business models.  This exercise helped GE’s leadership think about how the internet could quickly exploit a company’s weaknesses.

Here’s an adaptation of GE’s classic management idea for a meaningful 12-week summer internship.  Not only will your interns love the challenging and exciting assignment, this can also provide your company with fresh strategic thinking.

Weeks 1-2 – Industry and Competitor Assessment (2 weeks)

• Objective – Develop a detailed understanding of industry adoption of Social Media through assessing competitors
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Analyze the competition and document the best uses of social media
  • Support findings with external validation of competitors’ strategies from secondary sources
  • Develop a ratings scale to score industry players on dimensions like traffic, customer conversations, revenue impact, and scalability
  • Interview managers to develop 5 orthodoxies, or “The Ways Our Industry Always Does Things” that could be overturned by Social Media

Weeks 3-5 – Discover Customer Needs, Problems, and Frustrations

• Objective – Act like a Social Media Market Research consultant to study what conversations are occurring on the web about your brand
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Identify the top sites where consumers are talking about your products or services as well as your brand
  • Compile a database of customer quotes about their problems and how they are using products and services from your industry to solve them
  • Categorize the quotes into topic areas for a qualitative analysis
  • Create findings from categorized quotes to identify customer needs that could be met through Social Media technology

Weeks 6-10 – How would a Start-Up Disrupt the Industry Business Model?

• Objective – Take the role of an entrepreneur and create a business plan ready for a Venture Capitalist that could radically alter the industry
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Identify the vulnerabilities of the current business model used by your company and competitors
  • Develop a hypothetical business plan that a start-up could present to a VC that would radically change the industry business model
  • Analyze 5 start-ups that are already pursuing this model and what the company should learn from their early results

Weeks 11-12 – Create a 12 Week and 12 Month Plan for the Organization

• Objective – Highlight quick changes that can be made to lead the organization to a long-term change
• Tasks for the Intern
  • Identify hypotheses that could be tested through experimentation and prototyping
  • Test these hypotheses by building an implementation plan for quick-fixes that could be made in 12 weeks
  • Brainstorm longer-term ideas that could be implemented in 12 months with knowledge gained from the 12-week experiment

I think this could be a very interesting business school project or paper.  Thoughts on how to adopt this for the classroom?

All these people got to learn that I made Jeff Thompson's day.

A couple months ago, Facebook introduced us (who weren’t using FriendFeed) to the “Like” button.  Users could quickly indicate their appreciation for content without having to think about writing a witty comment.  Users improved their understanding of how to make their friends happy.  Facebook built even more data around micro-demographic preferences to further their strategy of people organization.

The Problem:  28 Notifications

Whenever you click “Like”, you are notified via email of anyone who comments on the item.  There is no way to turn off this insanely annoying feature.

Why does “Like” function the same as a comment?  When I comment, I am commenting with the direct intent of creating a discussion so I look forward to follow-ups.

However, when I “Like” something, I’m simply telling someone that they are neat.  I do not want to hear what others have to say, the “Like” button is merely of a personal feedback mechanism.

Is Facebook Doing This To Sell Credits?

My friends who stopped clicking “like” told me they hated notifications from strangers.  This functionality seems easy for Facebook to make and would make Facebook users happy.  Facebook are a very smart group of people…is this annoyance intentional?

Facebook has talked about offering Facebook Credits to reward users for good content which is a logical step.  Now, if you knew that by using a credit to “like” something that you wouldn’t get notified, wouldn’t you buy a couple?  Even if you wouldn’t buy any, wouldn’t you use a few that were gien to you rather than cash them out?

Facebook is so worried about Twitter that they are creating monetary incentives to keep people on Facebook to check their statuses.  Mashable provides great coverage, as always:

Facebook Credits seem to (be) Facebook’s baby steps into the world of virtual currency. Right now, users can only give credits to friends for sharing great posts or having a status people like. However, it isn’t a far stretch for credits to be the medium in which people pay for things on Facebook applications or even pay for things on other websites via Facebook Connect. Imagine connecting to Amazon and buying a new mouse with a couple thousand credits.

But seriously, will anyone buy these to give to their friends?  Facebook has struggled with monetization of gifts for friends, and this is no time for users, particularly in Facebook’s demographic, to be spending money frivolously.

Rather than paying for credits, which seems to be unrealistic, Facebook should study its data to find the best creators of content and provide them with free credits to get the virutal economy in information rolling.  Giving credits to the best content creators will allow them to “trickle-down” the credits to those they recognize as providing great content.

Great Content Recognizes Great Content

• We can safely assume that Facebook knows more about us than our actual friends do.  Facebook should mine their data to find the users who share the most links, that are most commented/liked, and that are re-shared with others.
• Users who can create good content are more fitted to recognize great content than users with money to burn.  Having good users recognize content increase the value to Facebook for that recognition.

Let Great Content Providers Trickle-Down the Facebook Wealth

• Selling Facebook Credits will put power in the hands of those with wealth; this conflicts with a basic principle of Social Media, let the users determine what is good content.
• Good content creators can give credits to other good creators who will then do the same continue to “spread the wealth”.  Sound like socialism?  Well, it’s actually more like the theory behind Trickle-Down economics.

Existing creators of good content rewarding others who can create good content will provide Facebook with much more relevant, and therefore more financially valuable, data.  By selling the credits, not only will the program look silly and likely fail, the data created by the program would not be as valuable as allowing the best users to highlight where others are doing the right thing.

Photo by ChrisL_Ak

Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta write an ambiguous, bland, and wrong piece on Forbes.com about the need for CEOs to use Social Networking technologies.  Their seemingly decent argument cites Web 2.0 Evangelists (no one particular, just the “evangelists” in general) who apparently claim the following:

Web 2.0 evangelists, on the other hand, argue that social software can be used to boost productivity. They say it can facilitate an open-ended corporate culture that values transparency, collaboration and innovation. Most important, it can be an effective way to build a customer-centric organization that not only communicates authentically but also listens to customers and learns from that interaction.

Of course all this is true, but two of the examples they use, Blendtec CEO’s “Will it Blend” series, and Zappo’s CEO Twitter Feed, feel like a simple marketing channel.

Simply put, CEOs make a lot of money because they are good at managing talented people.

Average CEO of an S&P 500 company was $10.5 million in 2008

Say whatever you want about executive pay…but CEOs have unique skills and are therefore highly compensated.  At $10.5 million a year, and assuming no sleep, that’s about $1,200 an hour.  Shareholders demand that CEOs should focus on what they do best…

CEOs Would Need to Spend Many Hours Building Social Media Skills

It takes a decent amount of experience to use this technology authentically without sounding artificial.  And, the only way to do this is “learning by doing”.  So, if anyone says, “It only takes a couple of seconds to Tweet”, remind them that the best Twitter users are ones that have practiced writing pithy updates.

Johnathan Schwartz is the rare example of a CEO who can do this, but I suspect there is some ghost-writing behind this blog.

The Best CEOs Hire People Who Are Smarter Than They Are

Find a social media expert, apparently they’re everywhere.  But hire them and have them communicate to you like any other functional leader in your organization.  Find a strategic thinker who can drive change at all levels of the organization to impact your business objectives.  Don’t have a CEO spend their valuable time learning Social Media skills when they are experts in the much rarer skills of Management.

Now that all your friends have stopped wondering whether or not they like the New Facebook Changes, we can study what this is doing for Facebook and it’s users.  First, here’s Jared W. Smith with a great summary of the changes:

The area where you enter status updates has been made into a more ambiguous “publisher” which will post status updates, notes, photos, and the like. …  A lot’s been made of a comparison to Twitter, but I think FriendFeed is a far more effective analogy because of the range of items you can share … Facebook was pretty straightforward to use because a status update was a status update, a photo post was a photo post, and the like. It’s all been melded together now…

Where’s the Real-Time Search?

With all the recent talk about Twitter threatening Google (unlikely, Google has massive amounts of personal data) why didn’t Facebook include a Real-Time Search like Twitter?  For example, this weekend I wanted see which friends were at the South by Southwest conference (SXSW) but couldn’t.  So I went through hundreds of updates trying to find out.

Facebook is Forcing  Friend Categorization

The seemingly intentional omission of real-time search suggests that Facebook’s strategy is to solve for real-time search by forcing Friend Categorization.   I found myself wanting to organize friends into a “tech” friend group because those would be the most likely attendees of SXSW.

Friend Tagging/Categorizing is Insanely Valuable to Facebook

Facebook benefits if users are labeling, tagging, and categorizing their network.  Most of us aren’t self-aware enough to properly label ourselves, so having our network label us (anonymously) provides a hyper-accurate categorization of who we are.

Search is probably coming…but not until we’re all labeled

It’s easy for Facebook to implement real-time search and it is valuable to users.  Facebook is intentionally waiting to roll it out until we’ve all done our job helping Facebook categorize ourselves.   As a user…I don’t know if I’ll ever spend the time to organize everyone.  As a strategist, I congratulate you Facebook.  Great move.

Mashable’s wonderful update on new Facebook explains many of the changes, including a link to the most relevant changes for social media marketers.  In the Opportunities section, they highlight these 4 points:

Opportunities

1. Stronger Interaction with Fans
Because the Wall tab will become the focus, Pages will feel much more active and dynamic than ever before. This will encourage more participation and interaction between brands and their Fans.

2. Increased Virality
Content posted on the new Wall will also show up in Fans’ News Feeds more often. This means that posting updates to your Page is much more viral and has the potential to drive significant traffic to your Page.

3. More Ways to Communicate

The Status Update will provide a powerful way for Pages to share short interesting blurbs with Fans in a way that is less obtrusive than an Update delivered to their inboxes. Brands that use Twitter can sync their accounts so that selected Tweets will automatically post to Facebook as Status Updates.

4. Specific Landing Page for Non-Fans

The Wall tab will be the point of entry for all Fans when they visit a Page (with the idea that they’ll first be exposed to the newest content). When it comes to non-fans, Page admins will be able to choose which tab they’d like to use as the landing page. This means that if a Page has a new application or custom content that they’d like to promote, they can set this as the point of entry for all new visitors to the Page.

But seriously…how many brands are you a fan of?  Probably your company and a few others to make former high school classmates think you’re cooler now than when you were 16.

Don’t recycle Twitter Content

The biggest implication is in Mashable Opportunity #3, More Ways to Communicate.  Specifically, “a powerful way for Pages to share short interesting blurbs with Fans”.  However, don’t take the lazy way out and recycle your Twitter messages; your fans are interested in you so give them more interesting stuff than what you are spamming to the legions on Twitter.

Create short URLs from your domain

If you are providing links to content you host, don’t bog your URL down in a mess of directories.  Additionally, if you have to use a URL shortener like bit.ly or tinyurl.com avoid the random letters and make it your own.  Simple is key, for example, a post from CareerBuilder.com offering advice for job seekers should read like this

“Tips to make your resume stand out to recruiters – careerbuilder.com/resumetips”

Provide “How-To”, not “Buy Me”

No one wants to see an advertisement in their news feed, that’s why facebook puts their ads on the side.  Make your updates a source of information to help your fans make a purchase decision.  Sorry Skittles, not much you can do here…however Guitar Center, pay attention.  A great Guitar Center status update would read something like the following:

“How do guitar strings affect the sound of your music? – http://bit.ly/GuitarStrings“