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Social Media – is it really mainstream in B2B Marketing? | Buzz Marketing for Technology
I don’t know how you feel but I certainly feel like everything I read about Social Media is the same old thing just a rehash of something else I read before. There doesn’t seem to be anything really new. Sure Facebook changes its platform every Tuesday but I mean something more like groundbreaking ideas using social. Maybe that’s because we are entering a stage where we are all including social in everything we do. It’s no longer a social science experiment by a bunch of early adopters – it’s just part of our everyday approach!
Also I am not seeing anyone really “killing it” with or in social media (sans Mark Zuckerberg of course). There seems to be tons of Social Media consultants and Directors of Social Media but will that party last? (see my post on Fire your Director of Social Media).
Furthermore everyone seems to have a book out on Social Media – heck I have 3 books on social media (2 out there and 1 on the way!) It’s amazing to see so much written on this topic which leads me to believe the party is over.
So where do we go from here?
I guess we head back to the core of what we do as B2B Marketers and take these lessons learned in Social Media back with us and see if we can innovate. I once heard that innovation happens when people get bored with a technology – perhaps we are at that point now in social.
Paul sounds a lot like a 2.0 Hippie :)
Mindset change critical to ensure social success -
But, some still buck this trend, said Ebenezer Heng, a spokesperson for social media marketing agency, Kumeiti.
He told ZDNet Asia that it is a "fallacy" when businesses choose to ignore social media totally to avoid problems and challenges that may arise from adopting such platforms, such as security and negative branding.
Noting the growing influence of social networks, Heng said: "Consumers always talk about their experiences with businesses they patronize. Everyone is a publisher in the social media world, from blogs to forums. Content now drives awareness, not advertising."
To best tap the power of social media platforms, he said business should adopt "the right mindset and technique", and not simply the medium itself. "Social media means allowing the company to become human, to react to its consumers, to reach out, ask them [questions] and then actually listen to the answers," he added.
Carlyn Law, consultant and director of PR agency Sixth Sense Communications, said businesses should not blindly use "a blanket strategy" but look instead at carving out a mix of online tools and content that suits their concepts and brand values.
As GetIT Comms' Nair described: "It's about being social. So get your feet wet and start interacting."
You have to change your beliefs before you can change your mind :)
On Great Websites, Information is Craft, not Commodity
The same principle applies to the websites that are distinctive because their authors combine content and packaging into a beautiful product that others aspire to recreate. Mega-sites like Facebook, Yahoo!, CNN, and many others designed to keep you moving through content like merchandise racks in a department store will never define the web, because they don’t push it forward. They have the biggest, brightest signs, but can’t match the experience and quality of sites that are the product of craftsmanship and dedication.
Influential Leaders: The People Person - destinationCRM.com
It’s no secret we hold Doc Searls in high regard around here. Just glance at our May 2010 issue, dedicated to the notion of vendor relationship management (VRM) he helped establish when he cowrote The Cluetrain Manifesto in 1999.
“He could have retired on the merits of Cluetrain alone,” says Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal at CRM consultancy Beagle Research Group, who laments the Berkman Center fellow is “largely unheralded for his work.” But Searls is still at it, and the effects are beginning to take root. “Doc continues to influence…business leaders and continues to break new ground with ProjectVRM,” says Christopher Carfi, vice president of Edelman Digital. “He’s a true visionary in understanding how customers and companies will work together over the next 10 years.” Altimeter Group partner Ray Wang agrees. “Doc’s a visionary about what’s next in relationship management,” he says. “Groundbreaking work on VRM will hit in three to five years—and he’ll be working on the next thing.”
And Doc should also be on the cover of Time as the Person of the Year :)
The End of Management - WSJ.com
The weakness of managed corporations in dealing with accelerating change is only half the double-flanked attack on traditional notions of corporate management. The other half comes from the erosion of the fundamental justification for corporations in the first place.
British economist Ronald Coase laid out the basic logic of the managed corporation in his 1937 work, "The Nature of the Firm." He argued corporations were necessary because of what he called "transaction costs." It was simply too complicated and too costly to search for and find the right worker at the right moment for any given task, or to search for supplies, or to renegotiate prices, police performance and protect trade secrets in an open marketplace. The corporation might not be as good at allocating labor and capital as the marketplace; it made up for those weaknesses by reducing transaction costs.
Mr. Coase received his Nobel Prize in 1991—the very dawn of the Internet age. Since then, the ability of human beings on different continents and with vastly different skills and interests to work together and coordinate complex tasks has taken quantum leaps. Complicated enterprises, like maintaining Wikipedia or building a Linux operating system, now can be accomplished with little or no corporate management structure at all.
That's led some utopians, like Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, authors of the book "Wikinomics," to predict the rise of "mass collaboration" as the new form of economic organization. They believe corporate hierarchies will disappear, as individuals are empowered to work together in creating "a new era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance or the rise of Athenian democracy."
CoIT: How an accidental future is becoming reality | ZDNet
All of this has resulted in a situation where most individuals can now wield just as much IT capability as most enterprises, and for a fraction of the cost, (see: Are we ready to declare the “time of death” for the IT data center.) This is a recipe that is ripe for causing change and potential disruption.
Social media: short-term success versus sustainability | Econsultancy
While it is too early to measure the impact of the Old Spice campaign over the long term, for instance, it seems pretty clear: this is a campaign that will eventually fizzle out. The setup probably is not sustainable, and in any case, it seems quite likely the initial hoopla will die down and we'll all become a lot interested in watching the Old Spice guy's videos. In other words, his shtick will wear off. Yes, there may very well be ways to extend the core concept and themes, but Old Spice is not going to see continued month-over-month sales increases of over 100%.
Perhaps it doesn't need to. There's a good argument to be made that shooting for sustainable performance of any one campaign is a fool's errand in the realm of social media. But on the flip-side, there are a number of challenges for marketers looking to string together a series of one-hit wonders:
- Most people don't win the lottery twice. Old Spice, for instance, is probably not going to be able to immediately follow up its 'Smell Like A Man, Man' campaign with a campaign of equal or greater impact.
- Short term results don't a long term business make. While few marketers will complain about short-term sales spikes, they're not necessarily as beneficial to a business as marketers would like to believe. In some cases, they can even be detrimental because they fool a company into making long-term decisions based on short-term results. This is especially true for marketers pushing newer products and services with less brand recognition.
- A hit or miss mentality can be tough to maintain. The idea that you can 'fail early and often to succeed quicker' is nice in theory, but it can be somewhat problematic too. After all, if your strategy is to run lots of campaigns and hope that a few succeed wildly, a low percentage of successes may be more discouraging than encouraging.
At the end of the day, I don't think there's a good answer here. Although social media has certainly matured to the point where it's no longer okay to say "this is so new let's not worry about ROI", there's still a lot to be learned about how social media is best applied to produce said ROI. That means marketers should probably worry first and foremost about finding ROI, and then they can worry about if and how to sustain it.
Doc Searls Weblog · Padding a category
The question is, can anybody else top it, or even compete with it? (Apple) Certainly somebody should. Here’s what I’d recommend.
First, a second unit with a smaller form-factor: about half or two thirds the size of the iPad. There’s a need for something that’s bigger than a phone but smaller than the current iPad, which is a bit too large for most purses.
Second, freedom from anybody’s silo. Apple has done it’s vertical thing here. Now it’s time for the horizontal one. In product categories, the horizons are always wider than the skies are high.
Third, featuring the 3G or 4G model, rather than regarding it as a premium exception. This also means working energetically to expose and break down the national boundaries to mobile carrier data plans. We desperately need the phone system to become a data system that also does telephony, rather than the reverse. (More about those in another post.)
Fourth, better speaker(s). The iPad actually sounds quite good, for a speaker that talks out of the same flat hole that’s plugged by the power connector (just like the iPhone).
Fifth, two microphones, for binaural recording. This is hugely under-rated as a feature, and generally ignored by portable gear makers. With binaural recording, you get a you-are-there sound field when listening to the recording with headphones. Related idea: two cameras, for shooting in 3D. The latter would also be a cool peripheral.
Sixth, make the ‘pad a production and not just a consumption device. Shooting and/or editing video, and uploading it to a server on the spot, would be a way cool use for the thing.
Of course, consumer electronics makers are notorious copy-cats. But what they need to do is zig here where Apple zags. There’s infinite room.
Death to 'social media' and seven other crazy ideas | Econsultancy
Let me know your thoughts on my thoughts and perhaps I can expand on any bleet you feel deserves it. In no particular order…
1. I welcome the death of ‘social media’
I mean the term ‘social media’. It has been annoying me almost since its inception. Like ‘Web 2.0’ I hope it goes away some time soon. For starters it is way too vague. Are we talking about online communities or social networking (they’re very different)? Are we talking about social media for search, for content, for advertising, for commerce, for customer service, for reputation, etc. (they too are all very different)?
But more than its too-vague-to-be-useful semantic challenges, my main annoyance at the term is that it suggests that this is something new, some great new discovery. But the internet has always been a social medium, an interconnected network. And humanity itself, and all of us, have always been social beings.
My children have never uttered the term ‘social media’ and I’d be amazed if they ever did. It just is what it is. Like ‘mobile’ for that matter… but that’s a bleet for another day.
2. I’m as fond of APIs, platforms and atomisation as the next man, but I’d urge extreme caution in risking your entire business on something not really in your control
Anyone who’s heard me speak over the years has probably heard me get excited about things like ‘atomisation’, ‘federated commerce’, ‘APIs’ and the like. And it is very exciting that you can now create businesses out of the building blocks (data, APIs, web services, widgets etc.) that others have created for you. But I do worry (as a business owner myself) about the dangers of having a business where critical components are not only not owned by you, but are barely even controlled by you.
Using a platform like WordPress – that’s fine. That you can swap out if needs be. It’s not a business-critical asset. But now I hear businesses talking about how smart they are, for example, in transitioning their entire customer base to, say, LinkedIn. Or businesses that are completely at the mercy of Facebook. Or companies who seem happy for Apple to own their customers (think iPad…). Or whose future success and business model is entirely predicated on the assumption that a particular web service or tool that they are using will continue to a) be free b) be owned by the same people and c) be available at all.
3. There will be a backlash against YouTube
Not from a consumer point of view, but from a business point of view. And probably not the kinds of businesses who just want ‘brand awareness / reach etc’ but those who want sales and ‘hard’ ROI.
Currently businesses are merrily creating channels on YouTube and uploading their video assets. There are two main reasons for this: 1. ‘Go where the audience is’ i.e. they’ll get more views on YouTube than they would on their own site and 2. They’re (understandably) wary of the technical challenges around the video player, encoding, streaming etc., and YouTube makes that pain go away and they can then just embed the video on their sites. The latter argument ultimately is just a bit lazy of course.
But ultimately what these companies want is traffic to *their* site, usually to sell stuff. And I don’t hear great things about clickthroughs from YouTube videos to a destination site (various reasons for this). And there’s little evidence these video postings would help your own site’s search rankings – actually… who ranks when you search? YouTube does, with your video. So you’re creating video, putting it on someone else’s site, which gets the traffic and the search rankings and you get… ‘views’? Google is certainly doing well out of this. Are you? I think we’ll see more businesses taking ownership of ‘video’ back to their own sites.
4. There’s money to be made in filtering
There was a craze for ‘filtering’ a while back. Remember Peter Gabriel’s The Filter (doesn’t look like much is happening there...)? Remember ‘vertical search’ engines? In the end it felt like most of these ideas either a) didn’t have a viable business model (who’s actually going to pay for this amazing filtering?!) or b) Google would soon eat their lunch or at least provide a good enough search experience that you couldn’t be bothered to use said marvellous filtering service.
But filtering is making a comeback. Mostly in B2B services. And, actually, mostly it is humans doing the filtering. We (Econsultancy) are currently getting more and more paid work to, essentially, filter in or out (digital marketing / e-commerce) content for large companies. We are using our (human) editorial expertise to provide content ‘curation’ services to businesses that have neither the skills, time, nor inclination to do it themselves. And often the actual content itself is free. The value is in the filtering and the packaging.
Knowledge, time, contacts… they all have a lot of value and I’m now seeing successful business models emerging that the connected nature of online greatly facilitates. Take the emerging sector of ‘expert networks’ for example. Look at the Gerson Lehrman Group – I’m told it generates $300m+ a year by matching people with questions with people with answers. Hello Yahoo! Answers… Google Answers… Mechanical Turk etc….
5. The battle in the boardroom has been won. Now it is all about execution.
It wasn’t so long ago (maybe two years ago) that many board directors remained a little unconvinced or wary of this whole ‘digital’ thing. They’d seen the dotcom crash and breathed a sigh of relief. We’d talk to Heads of E-commerce, Digital Marketing Directors, eBusiness Directors (or whatever they are called) and they’d tell us about their continued efforts to ‘make the business case’ for investing in online.
I’d say those days are over. That’s not to say that all these board folk actually *understand* much about digital but they are at least behind it now. You’d think this would be good news for the Heads of Digital types? It is in as much as they have the budget and the remit to get on with it. But there are also now extreme (and sometimes unrealistic) expectations placed on ‘digital’ – often to save the business completely. Now the complaints we hear from the digital bods are about (people) resources, about target pressures, about the lack of time, about unrealistic expectations around how fast they can make things happen, about the board pushing them to ‘do social media / create an iPhone app’ when they haven’t actually even got some other basics sorted first.
It’s now not about ‘if’ or ‘why’ businesses should commit to digital. It’s about *how* and *how fast* they can transform into more digital businesses. And this is mostly about people, about skills and capabilities, about internal education. Guess that’s why we’re so busy with custom training programs… (sorry, couldn’t resist the plug).
6. Google has won the SEO battle
And that’s a good thing. All along Google have been trying to tell people ‘focus on your customers, do a great job, create great content etc.’ and your search rankings will follow. Don’t waste time trying to game the system. It’s Google’s job to fine tune their algorithm so it rewards the right sites. In the ‘early days’ (five or so years ago now) it was easy to game the system with on page optimisation (title tags, a touch of keyword stuffing etc.) so, fair enough, why not. It became harder to game the system as off page optimisation became more important (but you could still buy links and get away with it). Now there are so many factors (semantic, geolocation, personalisation, social, behavioural etc) and signals that Google can use (including *offline* ones) that it’s just not worth playing the game. Google has won.
Furthermore, not only is it commercially just too dangerous to try and game Google (excommunication from the index is commercial death) but it also just doesn’t work well enough to bother trying. You could invest all that time, effort and money in creating a better site, with better content, with better customer service, and an overall better proposition. Then everyone’s happy, including Google. Now that’s what I call SEO…
7. Google’s probably not out to cut out the “middlemen”, but it will anyway.
By “middlemen” I mean any site which sits between the searcher and the destination. So, usually, publishers, affiliates, (shopping) comparison sites etc. I doubt Google is specifically out to do these lot out of business for commercial reasons but they *are* out to a) optimise the searcher’s experience and b) “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”. So, if they can do a better job of “b)” than an intermediary can, and, let’s face it, they probably can, then I’m afraid these intermediaries are doomed in the long term. Just read up on Google’s recent ITA purchase in the travel sector – says it all really. I see no reason why this thinking won’t be applied to all sectors in time by the Big G.
Which is why, in my opinion, the likes of uSwitch.com and MoneySupermarket.com a) floated/sold out just in time and b) are now forced to try and create a ‘destination brand’ by, somewhat ironically, spending loads on TV advertising.
If you’re part of a customer journey which starts with Google and ends with someone else… I’d be a little worried.
8. The ‘Open vs. Closed’ debate?
I vote open. I hate the fact that I have a single ‘master’ version of iTunes that’s installed on a single physical device (computer at work). That’s just crazy. Android + Chrome… coming to every device (most obviously phones, but perhaps more interestingly your TV) very soon.
