MackCollier.com

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Social Media is Destroying Our Ability to Create Impactful Content and Meaningful Connections

Go scan your timeline on Twitter or your news feed on Facebook.  Look at the articles being shared, and more importantly, look at the headlines.

After a while, you’ll begin to notice something. The headlines are written in a way to attract people that are already on Twitter and Facebook.  This is important, because the content is created in a way to attract people from social media sites, instead of creating content that appeals to your blog’s current readers and subscribers.

Social media has trained us to chase bigger numbers.  We want to go ‘viral’, we want more social shares, we want that flood of visitors from Twitter that gives our analytics a nice hockey stick.

But there’s a trade-off in this approach, and it’s one that a lot of us haven’t really thought about. If you chase new readers, what impact does that have on your current ones?  Because when you chase new readers, you change the way you create content.  You create content that will be more likely to ‘go viral’ on Twitter and Facebook.  When in reality, you should continue to create content that your CURRENT readers love.

We rail on companies for trying to acquire new customers and ignoring their current, loyal customers.  But it could be said that we do the same thing with our own content.  We chase more shares, more visitors, when we should be delighting the people that are ALREADY reading and enjoying our content.

A few months ago I was listening to Rush Limbaugh, and he said that social media has nothing to do with the success of his radio show.  He said he built it before social media, and even now, he’s not on Twitter at all.  He does repost show updates on Facebook, but that’s all designed to drive people off Facebook and back to his website.  He said if social media went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t affect his show in the least. And he has the most popular radio show in the country.

Seth Godin really doesn’t use social media either. He blogs every day, and every one of his pithy posts gets thousands of social shares. For years he wasn’t even on social media. He now does have a Twitter account for his blog, but all it does is repost his daily blog posts.

Rush and Seth are both great marketers and both highly successful.  And neither really uses social media in any meaningful way.  Certainly, neither is creating content that’s tailored to sharing on social media. Now you can easily say that both of them built their following BEFORE Twitter and Facebook, and therefore don’t need either of them. And you’d be right. But the point is, neither is altering their content to leverage social media.

I think there’s a lesson in that for the rest of us. I was looking back at my early blogging from 2006 and 2007, before I joined Twitter or Facebook. I blogged in a completely different style, it was almost like every day I was writing a letter to friends. As a result, I had a devoted community of readers, many of which commented on every post I wrote, and we had wonderful discussions in the comments section. Then, I would go and read their blogs and leave comments as well.

When social media sites came along, the conversations for many of us moved from our blogs to those social media sites. We lament how commenting fell off a cliff on our blogs, as it was ‘just easier’ on everyone to comment on Facebook and Twitter.

But along the way, we also changed the way we created content, and that change in the way we create content had an even bigger impact on dampening the number of comments on our blogs. We stopped writing in a way to elicit conversations. We trust people that we understand, and we understand people we can connect with. Those connections start by creating content that helps us be vulnerable and accessible to our readers. Ironically, this is the very type of content that the ‘experts’ have told us not to create.  Don’t inject too much ‘personality’ into your posts, you don’t want to offend potential customers or clients. Focus solely on business, don’t blog about your passions, that’s being ‘off-topic’.

The reality is, the only true value you get from your blogging is in the connections that you make. It doesn’t matter if you are a personal blogger or if you blog for business. I can tie about 80% of the business I’ve gotten over the last 10 years of consulting to about 10 people. Those are all people that I made connections with over time, via my blog. Maybe once every 6-12 months do I get someone that I don’t know who comes to my blog from a search engine, and we end up doing business. Almost all of my customers know ME first, then trust me, then decide to do business with me.

What if there were no social media sites? What if you could only create content on your blog, and that was the only way you could connect with potential customers and potential friends?

Would that change the way you created content? Would you go from focusing on increasing social shares, to increasing subscribers and readers?

I bet you would. I know I am.

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It’s Time For Your Company to Move on From Facebook and Twitter

This has been a frustratingly difficult post for me to write on multiple levels. For years, I have advised my clients to ‘plant in the gardens that they own’ when it comes to social media. Focus on your blog and newsletter, or the delivery channels that you control versus putting all your eggs in a social media basket. If you’re thinking of your digital strategy as a house, your website and blog should be the foundation, not social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

But now I am advising clients and companies like yours to put even less emphasis on Facebook and Twitter. The reason why is simple; Because if both companies continue on their current paths, neither will be around in five years.

Let’s Start With Facebook 

Facebook has been in the news recently over complaints about how freely user data is shared on the site. Recently, reports came out about how a firm, Cambridge Analytica, had collected Facebook user data from users who had participated in a third party app/quiz, and that user data was then reported made available to the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. This actually isn’t a new practice, the Obama campaign also mined Facebook user data collected from third party apps during the 2012 election. Both instances have raised some very valid points about how Facebook needs to be more transparent with how it uses our data, and also about how Facebook users need to be more responsible with what apps they give access to their accounts. Mark Zuckerberg will be testifying before Congress this week and will no doubt be asked early and often about the site’s plans to better protect and care for user data moving forward.

Companies have also struggled for years to make sense of Facebook’s constantly changing algorithms when it comes to determining organic reach for its content. Increasingly, content for brands has seen its organic reach decrease as Facebook has encouraged companies to move to a paid strategy to maintain or increase reach with its audiences. These moves have especially hit small businesses hard, many of who have basically leveraged a brand page on Facebook as their de facto website. Additionally, it creates frustration for social media managers everywhere because just as they seem to adjust to Facebook’s latest ‘algorithm’ change, a new one is sprung on them that throws their engagement efforts into a new tailspin. The end result for companies from every change by Facebook seems to have one commonality: Less organic reach for your content.

And Then There’s Twitter 

I joined Twitter in March of 2007, and ever since then, I have had a love/hate relationship with the site. I love the site and how it gives me the ability to so easily connect and talk directly with so many interesting people. But I hate how Twitter’s founders (Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Ev Williams) have always wanted the site to be a broadcast platform and not a social one. Replies were never intended to be a part of Twitter. Think about that…Twitter was founded without any thought given to incorporating the functionality for users to talk to each other. The feature was later adopted due to pressure from the Twitter community, and as you can tell from Ev’s update in 2008 on how Replies work on Twitter, he’s obviously not a fan of them.

In fact, one of the earliest changes Twitter made to replies signaled how the founders didn’t value users being able to connect with each other organically. Up until around 2008 or so, you saw every reply that anyone you followed made. For instance, if I’m following Jake, and Jake replied to Mary, I saw Jake’s reply. Why was this a big deal? Let’s say I’m not following Mary, I have no idea who she is. But she’s a friend of Jake’s, and she happens to have the same taste in movies that I do. Before Twitter changed how replies work, when Jake and Mary started discussing the movie Memento, I could see Jake’s replies to Mary, and then I would know that Mary loves the movie Memento as much I do! Suddenly, I’ve found a new friend to follow who shares my taste in movies, thanks to seeing her conversation with Jake. But Twitter decided early on that if Jake (who I follow) was talking to Mary (who I don’t follow), then I can’t see their conversation. Which means I may never meet Mary or have any idea who she is or that she loves Memento as much as I do. This move to limit how you see replies seems inconsequential now especially to anyone that joined Twitter after 2008 and has no idea what I am talking about, but trust me, this was a wonderful way to organically meet new and interesting people. And the fact that Twitter didn’t see or appreciate this, was very telling.

And then there’s this recent tweet from Jack Dorsey:

This is Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sharing a tweet from fellow Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, about a radical political article that appeared on Medium. The article on Medium, in short, calls for an end to attempts at bipartisan agreements in politics, and the elimination of one major political party so that the other party can ‘rule’ the country. Putting aside how scary it is for the CEO of a major social media site to so openly promote such incendiary political commentary, such ideas fly in the face of everything that is supposed to make social media so incredible. The great promise of social media was always this: Everyone gets a voice. For the first time in recorded history, the majority of the planet now had the ability to create content and reach the majority of the planet. We can talk to each other, we can learn from each other. And perhaps most importantly, we can talk to people with different viewpoints than our own.

Jack’s enthusiastic sharing of this article suggests to me that we have a very different view of what makes social media so great. And yes, I’ve been doing a slow burn about this tweet for a few days now.

I started blogging in 2005. Back in those days, many of us used a tool called Technorati to check our incoming links. I did as well, and since I was at the time writing for an advertising blog, the links I got were typically from other advertising blogs.

Then one day I saw an incoming link from a blog I’d never heard of. It contained what appeared to be Japanese or Chinese symbols.  I clicked on the link, and discovered it was the personal blog of a 13 year-old girl in China. Suddenly, it hit me what had just happened. I had written a post in Alabama, that I teenager in China had read and enjoyed so much that she had linked to it on her personal blog. A year prior, it would have been all but impossible for me to reach anyone in China, much less a teenager. Now, thanks to social media, I had tool called a ‘blog’ and I could reach her, and she could reach me.

The power of social media has always been about more connections and more conversations, not fewer. Facebook and Twitter are arguably the two most powerful social media sites in the world, but I fear that the founders of both sites have lost sight of what makes social media so incredible.

What Does the Future Hold For Facebook and Twitter. And Should Your Company Be a Part of It?

There is growing distrust among Facebook and Twitter’s users toward both sites. Both sites need to be more open and willing to listen to their users. This has always been a problem for both sites, I remember having conversations as early on as 2009 with other Twitter power users about how the site needed a Community Manager, someone that could be a liaison between the users and the company. Too often, it seemed like users of both sites would advocate for changes, then without warning, the sites would announce changes that seemed to be completely disconnected from the changes that users actually wanted.

In short, if both Facebook and Twitter continue on their current paths, neither site will be around in 5 years, at least not in any form resembling how it looks today. In social media as it is in life, nothing lasts forever. Just ask MySpace.

Having said all this, there is still potential value for your company on both Facebook and Twitter. If you’re already active on either or both sites and seeing results that meet your goals, then stick with it for now. But moving forward, make sure that you depend more on the channels you control, such as your blog, and less on the ones that you don’t, such as social media sites. In fact, if you want to try something new with your digital strategy, launch a newsletter before you get on Instagram or Snapchat. In other words, be more dependent on channels you own, and less dependent on the ones you don’t.

Long-term, you should ask yourself “If Facebook and Twitter went away tomorrow, how would we reach our customers?” Increasingly, your customers are either considering a move away from these sites, or they are actually leaving.  In the last fiscal quarter of 2017, Facebook actually reported a marginal decrease in US users. Twitter also struggled to hold onto users in 2017.

My advice to clients remains the same as it has always been: When it comes to digital content creation, plant in the gardens that you own.

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How Facebook Just Changed Influencer Marketing and What Needs to Happen Next

Last week without much fanfare, Facebook made a pretty big change to how brands work with influencers on its site.  Previously, a brand would have to share an influencer’s post before they could boost it. Now, brands can boost any influencer’s post as long as the influencer is authorized to tag the brand in their updates. The influencer tags the brand in their update, then the brand can boost the influencer’s update.

Why is Facebook making this change? The suspicion is that Facebook will begin suppressing influencer posts that are tagged for brands to boost in an effort to get brands to spend more on boosting those posts to achieve the reach they need to hit their campaign marks. Facebook has been doing this for years with brand content, and this would simply be an extension of that strategy.  If Facebook does start suppressing brand-related updates from influencers, that could also lead to influencers and brands not disclosing their working relationship in an effort to keep their organic reach. This would be an FTC violation, but with expensive influencers, some brands might risk the fines. Which would further erode consumer trust in such content.

And, of course, any moves Facebook makes in regards to dictating how brands can work with influencers will likely be mirrored on Instagram, since FB now owns IG. So these changes will have a big impact for any brands that leverage paid social in their influencer marketing plans.

What Will Happen Next

For agencies that are committed to influencer marketing, these moves will make their lives a bit easier as influencers can now do some of the back-work for them as agencies no longer have to add influencers and approve them for boosting, which will simplify their workflow. If Facebook does start suppressing the organic reach of influencer posts (in an effort to drive more paid support), then it will likely mean that budgets for paid support will have to increase. It could also mean that Facebook will crack down on influencers using fake followers and bots so advertisers will have a truer sense of the real size of an influencer’s network and reach.

That’s on the agency side. For companies that are working with influencers in-house, especially mid-size and smaller companies, these moves could dictate a re-assessment of its influencer marketing strategy, especially if most of that strategy is currently running through Facebook and Instagram.

From the company side, here’s two changes I would hope to see when it comes to influencer marketing:

1 – Companies need to start treating influencers as business partners. Kerry is spot-on here. Too many companies have the mentality that they want to ‘rent’ an influencer’s audience for the duration of a campaign. By working and even investing in influencers long-term, this allows the influencer to more effectively connect with their audience on the brand’s behalf, and the content they create for the brand will be more credible with the influencer’s audience. Plus, this commitment to working and growing together makes it easier for the influencer to become an actual advocate or fan of the brand, which further helps the authenticity of the influencer’s content that promotes that brand.

2 – Companies need to focus more on working with influencers who are also existing advocates and fans for their brand. Doesn’t it make sense to work with influencers who are already signing your brand’s praises? Of course it does. One of the problems that brands face when sponsoring content from influencers is that it often comes across as an obvious paid endorsement from the influencer. “They are just saying they like that product because the brand is paying them”, is often the knee-jerk response to such content. But your brand’s fans are already promoting your content for free, so why not invest in deepening that relationship?  And yes, many brands will read that and say “Well if they are already promoting us for free, why pay them?”.  Because these fans of your brand are also directly engaging every day with your customers. Not only are they selling for your brand, they are also collecting incredibly valuable product feedback from other customers.  Feedback that can be acted on and incorporated back into the business and marketing processes to further increase sales.  Whether I am working with a client on influencer marketing or brand advocacy/ambassador efforts, I always stress to them that it’s not just about the direct sales. Focus also on the indirect activities that the influencers or ambassadors can engage in on the brand’s behalf that will also lead to sales.

 

If your brand or agency uses Facebook for its current influencer marketing efforts, how will these changes impact you?

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Social Media Doesn’t Have a ‘Fake News’ Problem, it Has a Transparency Problem

Social Media, Fake NewsEarlier this year, a troubling report came out where former Facebook contractors claimed that they were given orders to manipulate the trending topics and articles that Facebook presents to its users. More specifically, these contractors claimed that Facebook wanted them to not only remove some political articles from conservative sources, but additionally they were told to inject some articles into the trending section even though these articles hadn’t generated enough interest to trend organically.

The idea that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter might be ‘curating’ their Trending Topics instead of letting them trend organically isn’t new. Personally, I’ve noticed that many topics and links seem to trend on Twitter without seemingly having the engagement levels they would need to trend organically.  This seemed to intensify as we neared the election in November, I noticed multiple political articles from The New York Times trending almost daily, while no other news source could get even one political article to trend regularly.  Other topics would be trending with only a dozen or so tweets, which seems impossible.

All of this helps create the suspicion that maybe the ‘trending’ topics we are getting on social media sites are actually being curated for us by not the users, but the people running those sites.  Add to this issue the latest flack over ‘fake news’.  Whenever you see the term ‘fake news’ it typically refers to websites that run stories making claims that either cannot be substantiated, or are ‘sourced’ by websites or organizations that don’t actually exist. Sometimes the claims are outright lies, all are designed to get clicks. Even this phenomenon can have grey areas.  If a supposedly political website makes a bizarre claim about Trump that they source via a fictional newspaper, that’s pretty clearly fake news.  But if CNN takes a Trump quote from a rally out of context to present a point of view that they know Trump didn’t intend, is that fake news?  It can get murky sometimes to know what ‘news’ is news, and what is ‘fake’.

Recently, Facebook announced that it was going to start leaning on outside sources to help it decide what is and is not ‘fake news’. Facebook wants to first make it much easier for its users to flag and report news that it feels is ‘fake’. If an article gets enough flags, it will then be sent to an editorial board for review.  Facebook has recently said that representatives from groups such as Snopes, the Associated Press, Politifact, and ABC News would then review the articles and decide if they should be banned or not from Facebook.

This potentially creates a new problem: “Who checks the fact-checkers?”  Many conservatives would argue that all of the above listed sources tend to lean toward the left in their political biases.  Basically, seeing that the AP, ABC News or Snopes will be helping Facebook decide what is and is not ‘fake news’ raises the same concerns for conservatives that it likely would for liberals if Fox News was doing the vetting.

All of this, whether it is ‘fake news’ or questions over trending topics, has created a bit of a trust problem for social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.  It’s difficult, if not impossible to tell how topics do or do not trend. A lack of understanding leads to a lack of trust, and right now, most of us have no idea how or why Twitter and Facebook decides what topics do or do not trend. Most of us assume that the topics that the most people are talking about will be the topics that trend.  Facebook and Twitter both attempt to tailor trends by taking into account what the people in your network are talking about.  All of this is fine, in theory.

But if major social media sites like Twitter and Facebook want its users to trust the trending topics it shows us, they need to do a better job of being transparent about how they arrived at that list. Now, more than ever, people are more suspicious of ‘the media’ and are more likely to assume that information is being altered to further a particular slant, versus simply reporting the news and letting us decide. At this point I’m more worried about the validity of the ‘trending topics’ process, than I am the validity of the sources of information that are trending.

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Facebook Study Reveals How Brands Can Drive Engagement With Users

Facebook did a study in 2012 to determine what type of content drives engagement on its brand pages.  From the study:

“We examined four weeks of Page posts, across 23 brands and six industries and divided the posts into three types of content:

Messages about the product or service

  • Travel brand example: Our new resort just opened! Book your trip today.

Messages related to the brand

  • Travel brand example: I decided to go on my first cruise because______.

Messages unrelated to the brand

  • Travel brand example: Hang in there everybody. Monday will be over before we know it!

Posts on topics related to the brand, but not specifically about the product or service, were the sole universally significant predictor of all types of engagement.”

The study also clarified that brand content related to the brand but not ABOUT the brand was the top driver of Shares, Likes and Comments for these brands.

Does this surprise you?  It shouldn’t, people will engage with content that taps into the Bigger Idea behind a product or service.  Nike figured this out 30 years ago with the iconic slogan Just Do It.  It’s not about the shoes, it’s about what you do while WEARING the shoes.  If you want to create more engaging content and marketing, think less about promoting yourself, and more about promoting the themes/beliefs/lifestyle that ties into your brand.  Think about why people buy your product and how they use it.  Create content that’s customer-centric instead of product-centric.

For example, check out this commercial from Nike.  Nike’s content and marketing taps into the Bigger Idea about its products.  The product itself is secondary to who its customers are, and why they buy its product.  This COMMERCIAL has been viewed over 4 Million times.

What is Nike selling with this commercial?

https://youtu.be/KSPJkauND68

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Your Brand’s Guide to Dealing With That Customer That Just Called You An Asshole on Facebook

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson

Let’s say you get this comment on your Facebook page about your all-purpose cleaner: “This product sucks.  It works on vinyl ok but did nothing to the stains in my carpet, I sprayed it on and then vacuumed up and it didn’t faze the stain,  Total waste of money.”

Your product clearly states in the instructions that you are to let it soak for at least 30 minutes on carpet stains, but it appears the angry customer did not do this.  So you politely try to help him.

“Hi Don! Sorry you had some difficulty removing the stain on your carpet.  As it states in the instructions, if you are trying to remove a stain from your carpet, please let the cleaner soak into the carpet for a minimum of 30 minutes before vacuuming up.  If you try this I think you will see improved results, please let us know!”

Undeterred, Don replies again: “I’m not an idiot, I know how to read the instructions! I left the product on for a few minutes, that should be plenty of time if it’s any good!”

Actually, it appears that Don may indeed be an idiot, since he cannot follow simple instructions.  Even if he’s not, he’s definitely acting like an ass in this interaction and is abusing a company that’s clearly trying to help him with his issue.

But as a company, you still have to deal with the fact that every online conversation has 3 sides; Yours, mine, and everyone else that’s watching our interaction.  Calling Don an abusive idiot might make you feel better, and the people that have been following your interactions with Don might even agree with you, but to everyone else that reads your post later, they will view you as the clueless company that just called a customer an abusive idiot.

So the question at this point becomes “How do we respond to Don?”  Since Don didn’t listen to your suggestion on how to properly clean his carpet, it’s valid to assume that if you try to help him again that he not only won’t listen (again) but he might attack you (again).

Then it makes sense to either ignore Don, or if you feel like leaving another attempt at helping him. I would suggest doing so in a way that is helpful, but that playfully points out that he’s acting like an ass.  Something like…

“Hi again Don! Sorry to hear that you continue to have difficulty removing the stain on your carpet, but at least you are successfully ignoring our clear instructions for solving your problem! Just to humor us, could you try liberally applying the cleaner to the stained area of your carpet, and then vacuum it no sooner than 30 minutes later? This should either completely remove your stain or at least make us feel better about your efforts to do so.  Keep in mind that if you need more help we are here for you, or you can call or visit our website!  Good luck!”

It’s entirely possible that Don might blow up again, or that another customer would.  Unfortunately, there will always be people that lack basic social skills, that feel determined to use social media anyway.  The point is that just as your brand shouldn’t be abusive to its customers via social media (duh), your brand also doesn’t have to accept when its customers are being abusive to you via social media.  Give your customers credit: They can see if your brand is acting inappropriately, and they can also tell if other customers are as well.

Typically, discretion is the better part of valor and it’s best to walk away from a customer that’s being abusive.  On the other hand, if you can tactfully ‘put him in his place’, slapping down an abusive customer can win you accolades from other customers, and send a message to other potentially abusive customers that you intend to call them out on their bad behavior.

Engage With Your Fans, They Are Your ‘Guard Dogs’

While trolls and assholes might avoid your Facebook page if you call them out on their behavior, they will run for the hills if your fans will as well.  I’ve talked about this before, but think of your fans as being a guard dog in your yard.  The dog will alert you if a stranger is sniffing around, and he’ll scare them off.  Your fans do the same thing.  Engage with your fans and they will stick around and help defend you online and let you know if someone is causing you grief.  They’ll also help out customers that legitimately need help, and they will bring these people to your attention as well.

The bottom line is be helpful, friendly, respectful and compassionate, and you’ll be fine, even if the jerks come knocking (and they always do).

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Surprise! Facebook Has Changed the Rules Again For Brands

Facebook has once again tweaked its News Feed algorithm and the change will alter how often content from brands appears in News Feeds from people that have Liked that brand’s page.  This post seems to write itself 2-3 times a year, doesn’t it?

The newest changes, which rolled out last month and were announced last November, flip the script on brands.  Previously, brands were told that they needed to add photos to their updates to increase engagement and visibility in Facebook’s News Feed.

Now?  It’s the opposite, content with photos has the lowest reach.

Yeah.  This is a big reason why I am always telling you to first plant seeds in the gardens you own.  Invest in your website and blog first, not social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.  Because those sites can change the rules on you whenever they want, and Facebook is the worst offender here.  What irks me most about this latest change is that it flies in the face of the advice that companies are hearing about social media.  Companies have been taught for years that pictures drive engagement.  That adding a relevant image to your content will enhance its value and the engagement around it.  Now, Facebook is saying that pictures are penalized, if anything.  This becomes a big problem for the companies that focus most of their social media efforts on Facebook because they will be learning what Facebook wants them to know about improving engagement on Facebook versus about what actually drives the engagement of social media content.

Facebook can be a wonderful complement to your existing online marketing efforts.  Unfortunately, many companies use its Facebook page as a replacement for having a blog or even a website.  And if they later decide to launch a blog or website, they can take the bad lessons learned on Facebook, and apply it to their blog.  Like writing posts without images.  Or only publishing ‘cute’ videos of kids falling in the snow and wondering why that’s not driving engagement on the company blog for an industrial lubricant supplier.

In a perfect world, Facebook’s goals would be aligned with your company’s goals.  Facebook would want to show and teach you how to create content that is more engaging and valuable to your customers.  But Facebook is now a publicly-traded company.  Facebook’s goals are increasing revenue and profits.  That’s likely a big reason why it’s moving toward putting more value on videos.  Because watching videos means you stay on Facebook even longer.  And as time spent on site goes up, Facebook can report that to shareholders as a sign of growth and to advertisers as leverage to raise ad rates.

Facebook’s goals are to make Facebook better for Facebook, not for your company.  Your company is on its own, so plan accordingly.

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Facebook is Screwing Your Brand, and You Should Thank Them For It

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For brands that rely on using Facebook to reach customers, the hand-wringing just went up a notch.  Time and other sources have recently reported that Facebook’s plan is to restrict a brand’s ability to organically reach followers down to 1 or 2%.  That means that eventually, only 1 or 2 percent of your followers will see the average update your brand posts.

Unless…your brand agrees to pay Facebook for more exposure.  Apparently social media is free…until your company goes public and has stockholders to answer to.  It’s not a coincidence that Facebook is looking for new revenue streams now that it’s a publicly-traded company.

Newsflash: Twitter is now a publicly-traded company as well.  Don’t be surprised if the San Francisco company doesn’t also try to generate new revenue at the expense of brand activities that had previously been free.

While I have never been a huge fan of Facebook, I also recognize its right to monetize as it sees fit.  Let’s be honest: Facebook has been letting your brand effectively advertise for free for a while now.  You could argue that they have been letting you get ‘hooked’ on using its service for free and then they charge you, but its still your brand’s choice to use Facebook.  This is why I have been cautioning clients and companies for years now to not plant all their seeds in digital gardens that they do not own.  Facebook in particular has a history of changing the rules and making things more difficult for brands.  Now it is algorithm changes that affect organic reach, before that it was constantly changing rules on running contests on brand pages.

The bottom line is that you never want your brand to be in a position where all its content eggs are put in a basket that someone else owns.  If your social media efforts depend on Facebook to reach your customers, then effectively you have ceded control of said social media efforts to Facebook.

The reality is that Facebook is screwing with your ability to reach customers for free.  And that’s a good thing.  This move is going to force companies to do one of two things:

1 – Start paying for exposure on Facebook

2 – Start creating content via tools that the company controls

Many companies will go the first route.  Budgets devoted to SEO and other digital marketing channels will likely be diverted in a quest for paid Likes.

The smart companies will be the ones that invest in learning how to create and distribute content via channels that the company owns.  Guess what?  The corporate website is about to become relevant again.  The same corporate website that was bemoaned as being an archaic waste a few years ago has been seeing its own Renaissance recently.

Let’s be clear: Your website should be the central home or base of your social media efforts.  All your efforts should feed back here versus going through Facebook or Twitter.  Because while you don’t control Facebook, you do have control over your website.

I am a fan of this move because it is going to force brands to become better content creators.  It’s also going to require that brands get serious about social media: Either by paying for exposure, or by investing in learning how to create content that’s valuable enough to customers that they will seek that content out via channels that the brand owns.

For brands like Red Bull and Patagonia that have been nailing content marketing for a while now, this move won’t have a huge impact, because customers will actively seek out content from these brands.  If no one is reading your content on Facebook now, that’s not on Facebook, it’s on you.

Now’s your chance to get serious about social media and content marketing, and start seeing serious results.  Want to learn how to create effective content that gets seen by your customers? Make sure you follow this one simple rule.

Pic via Flickr user BobLinsdell

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The Simple Change Facebook Made That’s Screwing Up Brand Pages Everywhere

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A couple of weeks ago, Facebook altered the algorithm that determines what content you see in your News Feed (and no, you’re not seeing everything from your friends or the pages you Like).  Previously, content from friends/Pages that you had Liked or interacted with previously were more likely to show up in your News Feed in the future.

But earlier this month, Facebook again tweaked what content is shown in your News Feed.  When it did, the company said that ‘high quality articles’ would be given credence moving forward, and ‘the latest meme’ would get buried.

Instead, it appears that content from many company Brand Pages took a big hit.  Ignite Social Media, a social media marketing agency, analyzed almost 700 posts on 21 brand pages and had some pretty interesting/disturbing findings.  The biggest takeaway was that both organic reach and organic reach percentage fell by an average of 44% since the first week in December.  Five of the brands studied saw a decrease of over 60% and only one brand page in the study actually increased reach and reach percentage.  Since these results were revealed last week brand page managers everywhere have been lamenting similar findings on the pages they manage.

So what should your brand do now?

There are two things that I have consistently advised brands to do when it comes to social media:

1 – Plant seeds in the garden you own

2 – Focus on the people using the tools, not the tools themselves

Plant Seeds in the Garden You Own

The allure of Facebook for brands is obvious, there’s over a billion reasons why brands want to set up shop on Facebook.  Set up a brand page and suddenly you’ve got a free advertising tool on the biggest social networking site on the planet!  Why would anyone NOT want to do this?

Facebook knows that too.  Facebook is also now a publicly-traded company, and as such, revenue streams are of primary importance.  Which means if you want to keep having access to those users, increasingly Facebook will make it so you have to pay for that access.  Google does the same thing with its search engine, yes it says it is constantly tweaking its search ranking algorithm to give you better and more relevant results, but part of that is because Google wants you to pay for exposure.  It wants you to buy ads versus organically having your content rank highly.

Setting up shop on sites like Facebook and Twitter comes at a price for brands.  Yes, you have potential access to millions of potential customers, but ultimately, the sites control how and even if you get that access.  Facebook in particular is constantly changing the rules for how brands can use the site and distribute content.  Now that Twitter is  publicly-traded company, don’t be surprised if they don’t look for similar ways to monetize the efforts of brands.

This is why its better to put your eggs in baskets that you own.  Whereas you are at the whims of Facebook and Twitter when it comes to your content and engagement strategies, you have far more control over channels you own, such as your website, blog or email list.  Channels that your brand does not own can be used to compliment your social media efforts, but it should never be at the heart of what you do.  You want the heart of your social media strategy to be centered on channels you own, not ones that Mark Zuckerberg does.

Tools

Forget the Tools, Focus on the People

Who moved my ROI?  As Business Insider noted, this change could have a devastating impact for ‘social media marketers’ that are focused on helping brands get exposure for their content on Facebook.  Which is exactly the problem.  Too many brands and the agencies that service them are focused on gaming the system/tool versus trying to actually understand their customers.

What’s more important:

1 – Understanding how EdgeRank works to show your brand’s content higher in the News Feed of people that Liked your page

2 – Understanding why your audience is on Facebook

Understanding the people will always trump understanding the tools.  Your goal isn’t to understand how to game EdgeRank so that the picture you just posted will show up high on Sarah’s News Feed, your goal is to understand why Sarah is on Facebook.  What activities is she engaging in, and why?  What experience does she expect on Facebook, and why does she spend 3 hours a day on Facebook and has spent a grand total of 3 hours on Twitter this year?

Facebook is going to keep changing the rules.  You can either keep chasing the changes and wondering why you’re not seeing the social media riches your agency promised you, or you can stop chasing unicorns peeing rainbows and get to work creating something of value for your customers.

You cannot create that value for your customers until you understand them.  If you understand your customers and create value for them, then you win.  And nothing Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest does will change that.

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Think You Know Social Media? These Stats Will Blow Your Mind

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I was doing some research for a client and found a few of these stats, so I started doing some digging and pulled together the rest, and had a good friend (thanks Kerry!) send me some links as well.  Enjoy!

Social Media User Behavior

Facebook is still the most popular social networking site with Teens, right?  Actually no, now it’s Twitter according to research by Piper Jaffray.  Although Instagram is quickly catching up and is now tied with Facebook for 2nd.  Another reason why Facebook decided to acquire IG?

The fastest growing age bracket on Twitter is 55-65 year olds, while it’s 45 to 54 year olds on Facebook.  So basically it’s grandparents on Twitter and parents on Facebook.

74% of consumers rely on social networks to guide their purchases HT Kerry.

Tuesday is the day when the most marketing emails are sent, but Friday is the day when more people open them.

97.7% of all internet users 18-24 years old in South Korea own a smart phone.

4.2 billion people use a mobile device to access social media sites.

27% of our online time is spent on social media sites.

 

 Facebook

Less than 0.5% of the people that Like a brand page on Facebook actually interact with that brand during a given week.

23% of Facebook’s users check their account more than 5 times a day.

Approximately one fifth of Facebook’s users only access the site with a mobile device.

Facebook users share 2.5 Billion pieces of content every day.

Twitter

Twitter has almost one Billion registered users.  But only 250M of them are active.

In what country is Twitter experiencing the fastest growth in the world? Indonesia.

21% of the global internet population uses Twitter on a monthly basis.

Over 400 Million tweets are sent every day.

 

Instagram

Every second 8,000 pieces of content are Liked on Instagram.

Instagram is on pace to have more users than Facebook.

Blogs

Over 13 Billion pages were viewed last month just on WordPress blogs with the JetPack plugin enabled.

77% of internet users read blogs.

Pinterest

Pinterest’s growth rate of 88% in 2012 makes it the fastest growing social networking site in the world.

 

Reddit

Reddit had 37 Billion pageviews in 2012.

There are currently over 4.6 Billion pages on the site.

YouTube

Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube, and that’s up over 50% in the last year.

YouTube has over 1 billion monthly unique users visits.

Mobile makes up more than 25% of YouTube’s global watch time, more than one billion views a day.

More people in the United States now watch YouTube regularly than do broadcast television.

 

Pic via Flickr user Boboroshi