If you haven’t started following Tom Fishburne, please start today! His latest post really got me thinking… How useless social media is if you don’t have strong fundamentals. Social media is just another latest new trick in a marketer’s bag. But, it’s not the only trick. And just because it’s new and shiny still doesn’t mean it’s the best trick.

His post all started with Mark Ritson’s column. In which, he asserts that “Most brands don’t have the newsworthiness, broad appeal or dynamism to have any chance of making Twitter work for them.” So, get the fundamentals right. Don’t expect your consumers to “fan” you because you have a facebook page. They will “fan” you if they have been a fan. They become a fan when you get every other piece of the marketing mix right (you know, those dang Ps, like having the right product, at the right price, at the right place, backed by the right promotion).

Photo credit: Intersection Consulting

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• Social media isn’t a magic wand (chelpixie.com)

Why hasn’t more companies adopted social media? Because social media is not social at all.

According to a recent study, only 20% of tweets are meant to share information. 80% of tweets are private thoughts that just happened to be shared with the world. However, that’s still a private transaction. That social media network is a small group of friends, and that tweet is the electronic version of a private conversation.

Consider my version of the real-life equivalent: An email conversation is completely private. That’s like a group of people in a closed door room having a conversation. A tweet, for these 80% of people, is a conversation that happens in a public place. Since it’s a public place, sometimes people overhear and chime in. “Sorry, I hear you’re talking about that new restaurant. I was thinking about going, you say it sucks?”

So, yes, private conversations can be extended to strangers. However, these are still strangers. At the end of the conversation, each party goes back to their separate ways.

Now, if this stranger happens to be Oprah, you may all of a sudden call Oprah a “friend”. “Oh yeah, Oprah and I the other day was talking about restaurants. She suggested that I should go try the one on ABC Street.” Now, of course, this doesn’t have to be Oprah. This could be a local celebrity, or a celebrity within a specific circle. Or, just someone, someplace, something that’s well known and well regarded within a specific audience.

Or, if you happen to run into this particular stranger everywhere, you may begin to be interested in getting to know this stranger. Obviously, you have like interests. (For example, I have made it a point to get to know someone after seeing that particular person at various art shows around town.)

My hypothesis is that social media works the same way.

If you are strangers, you will remain strangers. There are a few ways to overcome this. One of which is to form an offline relationship. Be the Oprah that they want to get to know better. The other way is to engage your audience in their natural habitat and keep “running into them”. That’s why musicians were successful with myspace. Recruiters are successful with LinkedIn.

This may also explain why Twitter is particularly challenging for marketers. There are no specific purposes for Twitter. Twitter is a public plaza. Many different conversations happening, but it’s virtually impossible for a marketer to form an engaging relationship with any one of them. It’s very similar to a marketer holding a product demonstration in a public plaza. People may just ignore them, or they stop, watch, and move on because they’re there to meet someone. They don’t have time for marketers.

That doesn’t mean that Twitter doesn’t have value to marketers. What’s a better way to disseminate news about a crisis than to use a speaker over a public plaza? No one putting up a flyer would ignore the public plaza, because at the end of the day, it’s a numbers game and there are a lot of eyeballs in a public plaza. Twitter works the same way.

In conclusion, social media has its value, but as always, it’s only a part of your marketing mix. Perhaps even only a small part.

Link: STUDY: 80% of Twitter Users Are All About Me

Photo credit: New York Public Library Outdoor Plaza, originally uploaded by celikins.

I was shopping the other day and noticed a product on-shelf that had the coolest packaging. Then, I read Brandweek, and noticed that an article in there was featuring this packaging, and the strategy behind it. I was just about to tweet that article… but I stopped myself.

As I was finishing up the article, I realized that the article went on and mentioned several products that my company was in direct competition with. This was where I stopped with tweeting process. I found myself asking the question: if I tweeted this, would I be somehow endorsing my competitor?

I was not asking this question because I would think that my company would somehow get involved. I was asking this question because I am loyal to the entity that pays my paycheck. Why would I want to promote my competitor, even if it’s only in the most indirect way… I wouldn’t want to do it offline or online.

Now, this made me reconsider who controls the information on the social networks?

First, let’s consider that much of the information on the social networks first get circulated by a few social media celebrities. These celebrities have large circle of influence on the various social networks. Their friends / fans / followers on these social networks redistributes the information. So, on and so forth, and the information spreads.

Many of these social media celebrities are self-employed consultants. However, many of them also have ties with big corporations. They could have projects with them. They could be employed by them during the day. They could be formerly employed by them. They could just have lots of friends in these big corporations. They could just love the products these corporations make. So, are the information they provide completely neutral and without bias?

I think we know that these individuals have enough influences in their own rights that they are quite free to speak their mind. However, to say that their real-life connections with these corporations have no bearing on their message seem just naive. Their messages are always influenced by their real-life experiences with the companies.

Social networks online are always ever-so-intricately intertwined with real-life experiences offline.

What does this mean?

I’ve heard too many comments that go along the lines of “how should my company leverage social networks?”

For many companies, the right question to ask should be “how should my company leverage my real-life networks online?”

Companies have long talked about their fear of participating on social networks, because they’d lose control. The truth is the only thing they ever controlled was how people would interacted with their brands. If they have 100% control of this, they have control of social media.

If you know that every interactions people have with your brand is positive, messages about your brand on social media would only be positive. Nothing has actually changed.

Photo credit: most talked about brands – 2008, originally uploaded by Will Lion.

I watch a lot of TV. Inevitably, I watch a lot of TV commercials.

And perhaps I’m growing old and have already started reminiscing about the good old times… when TV commercials actually featured company websites.

Within one show, I have seen multiple commercials that had a call-to-action to a social media site, such as facebook and youtube.

I posted about a month ago asking Whose Commercial Is It? when commercials place more attention to an iPhone app than having a good service / product.

At that time, I commented that Coldwell Banker’s execution was an interesting approach. They integrated the technology message with their superior service message. Technology, including apps, would just be another way for them to service you better. Today, they employed the same approach with www.youtube.com/coldwellbanker. It was just another way for them to deliver valuable information. However, I questioned if this was necessary. Couldn’t the video live on their own branded website? Well, at least youtube gave you the ability to brand a “channel” completely and entirely. So, I guess if you had to pick a social media site, youtube would be a good choice.

On the other hand, www.facebook.com/hgtv was, in my opinion, less successful. The commercial did not point you to HGTV.com for more design tips, etc. There wasn’t even a “be a friend with the designers” type message. The website was just there. What’s the point? Why? In addition, in case you didn’t know, there was no way to brand a facebook page.

So, yes, I ask, what has social media done to branding?

Though, Coca-Cola demonstrated that there is a way to be both social media savvy (is that a phrase?) and be mindful of your brand equity at the same time. They launched their own version of short URL with cokeurl.com, fully branded. This allowed them to be friendly with social media, while making sure that their brand got all the attention it deserved.

So, my conclusion is: Being savvy about social media is great. But being involved with social media is at the end of the day a tactic. Social media marketing is just part of the marketing mix of a given marketing campaign. But any good marketing campaign has to be good at the basic. And the brand will always be the foundation of any marketing campaign. You have worked hard to build your brand, and your brand, hopefully, will last forever. Marketing campaigns, and the associated marketing mix, will change. Never compromise your forever for the sake of now.

Photo credit: Wordle Cloud of the Internet Marketing Blog – 08/15/08, originally uploaded by DavidErickson.

Okay, as a marketer today, you can’t help but to see the potential coming from Twitter. I first learned about Twitter from a friend many years ago. But I generally avoid these social networking services because 1) I could end up wasting too much time on them 2) Not all services are created equal and not all services have longevity, so why bother?

However, Twitter has proved that it is here to stay for now…

So, as a marketer, I found myself wanting to learn more about Twitter, many months after when I probably should have. I set up a Twitter account. I haven’t Tweet yet, because I am not sure what I want to say… How do I want to brand myself on Twitter? Professional? Personal? Fun? Serious? Am I Jeannie as the Marketer? Jeannie as the Travel Lover? Some combination of all of the above?

But even in this early stage, I have learned a couple valuable lessons about Twitter and social media in general. Perhaps these are lessons you have learned yourself as well after some trial and error.

1. People will find you. I haven’t made a single Tweet. I haven’t announced my Twitter account anywhere. I have no links to my Twitter account. Yet, I have followers! Some of these followers are people I know. Some of these followers I don’t recognize. These followers perplex me more. They could just be complete strangers. Or they could have found me, through just Googling or whatever, and have some vested interest in learning more about me. Possibly a potential future business partner, or potential future boss? I don’t know. While I don’t think that is likely, the fact that I could not rule it out makes me think twice before just posting on Twitter anything that could be potentially damaging to my personal brand.

2. If you’re not ahead of the curve, you’re behind. I did not jump on the Twitter train when I first learned about it. By the time I finally decided to get a Twitter account set up, I was already too late. My most desired handle has been taken, just mere months ago! Instead of @jeanniechan (which is the most popular format), I had to settle for @jeannie_chan. So, what I have learned is that if the investment is low, go ahead and jump on the latest bandwagon! You could always get off it if you are not getting the pay off that you were expecting. But if you wait, you just may miss out!

Photo Credit: Jump on the social media bandwagon, originally uploaded by Matt Hamm.

Social Media ain’t about one-night stands, it’s about relationships

This is something that my organization has problems with as well. Every campaign, every effort needs to be part of a whole branding initiative. However, too often, we come across an awesome idea. Implement it. Move onto the next awesome idea. The end result: Not realizing the potential of any one campaign. Which is a shame…

This post on The Viral Garden gave a few example of companies who engaged the consumers via social media, but did not follow through. And the lesson was it’s better to ignore the consumers than to flirt with them THEN ignore them… Of course, the ideal is to not ignore them at all