Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category
Last week I posted that I thought Facebook was heading toward being the new telephone. Social media is now the ‘party line’ platform where people are congregating both personally and professionally. In the last few weeks I have received many LinkedIn invitations which makes me think that the business side of social networking is becoming a mainstream channel and is still maturing.
What I am finding is that in both my personal and business life the telephone is being used less frequently than ever. I don’t know about you, but contacting people by telephone (in business) has become increasingly difficult. In fact I know a number of people that intentionally leave their voice mailbox full so they don’t get any additional messages. This is particularly true if these people have any buying responsibility as they are often assaulted with constant phone calls by salespeople.
On some occasions I send a business contact an SMS message on their mobile to try to get their attention. This is because sending them emails appears to get lost in a sea of hundreds of emails they (and I) receive daily. Sending SMS messages is not always possible as I don’t always have a mobile phone number for a business contact. And I am noticing that response to SMS messages is declining rapidly as well.
I am also LinkedIn with a large number of my business contacts. But I find sending a LinkedIn message can be no more effective in generating a reply than sending an email. And while I am not connected on Facebook to any substantial number of my business contacts, (I had the idea of trying to keep business and personal contacts separate but it’s a losing battle), when I send people messages on Facebook I am surprised at the rapidity in receiving a reply.
So what I have learned is, if I cannot get you to reply to a phone call, email, or SMS message because you are too busy, I can send you a Facebook message and it appears I have the best chance of receiving a timely reply. What does this mean? To me it means that accepted entry into one’s Facebook circle warrants a reply over just about any other channel. The trust factor compels people to respond.
I wonder how long that will last.
Groupon http://www.groupon.com and Living Social http://www.livingsocial.com are red hot as the two of the most successful online social couponing sites with IPO’s in the offing for both companies. I’ve been getting the daily emails from both sites for quite some time now and upon occasion have purchased coupons for something I use all the time, or to try something I might not have without the incentive of the discount.
Accordingly I think these sites serve consumer needs since the consumer gets a good deal, and it serves (or should serve) the retailers in the form of sales promotion and even increasing a brand’s overall awareness. But now is the time to make your best deal with either of these two fast growing companies, (Facebook is set to unleash its own social couponing platform any moment now) since the game will likely change very soon.
Here’s how it works: Right now both Groupon and Living Social take a percentage (likely half) of the buy-in on the part of the consumer. For example if you were to be offered a deal at a hair salon for 50% off hair coloring that normally costs $ 100, you would ‘buy’ a coupon worth $ 100 for $ 50. Then the salon pays $ 25 to either Living Social or Groupon (at 50% of coupon value). So the salon collected $ 25 on a $ 100 value. Doesn’t sound so great does it? Keep in mind that not everyone will actually redeem their coupon (at times more than 30% can go unredeemed entirely) and some people will not use the entire coupon value if they purchase something else with their coupon as the entire amount has to be spend in one trip. And the retailer gets the cash up front before the consumer comes in to actually buy the product or use the service.
So it suffices to say that by using this discount strategy, retailers and companies alike are hoping to gain new customers that will come back again and again. This is a fairly simple business model. And it’s not going to last.
Ultimately these sites will become advertising vehicles like television and radio stations, magazines, OOH and other general advertising mediums that aid in building overall consumer awareness and hopefully stoke sales at the same time So the future of social couponing may look like this: Retailers or marketers pay a flat fee to access the Groupon or Living Social audience and then they will take a smaller percentage (than say 50%) of the value of the actual transaction. A marketer might pay $ 1,000, $ 5,000 or more to reach a certain size audience and then also pay that smaller percentage of the coupon redemptions.
I think the present model is a better one for marketers but I cannot see it lasting since it is completely dependent on consumer redemptions. Groupon and Living Social will be much more valuable once they can develop a more predictable revenue stream. That does not happen in the present model but it would in my future model.
Get ‘em while they’re hot folks. The bottom line is that Groupon, Living Social and (when it goes live – Facebook) will all be just another media buy and I fear that the small companies that are helping build their platforms now will be forced to seek out second tier (and arguably less impactful) couponing sites.
I’d be interested in your take.
With a dizzying total of more than 2,200,000Twitter followers in a little over a week Charlie (aka Tiger Blood) Sheen has reset the bar for attracting attention and gaining social media status. Now terming himself “Born small…Winning…Now Huge…Bring It!…unemployed winner…”, the apparent slow moving train wreck that was Charlie Sheen appears to have been a rocket ship in disguise.
Since nearly all of us know the story I’m not going to explore how Mr. Sheen got to this point other than to say that prior to last week he was more in the running for ‘celebrity moron of the year’ than he was ‘marketer of the year.” BTW – In my book Mel Gibson still has a good chance of retaining his title as celebrity moron of the year. But Mr. Sheen has been able to parlay a bizarre anti-hero status into an endorsement business and is now a paid promotion’ engineer’.
Mr. Sheen would have you believe that he – much like Jessica Rabbit ‘isn’t bad – I’m just drawn that way’. An article in Tuesday’s NY Times http://nyti.ms/hFYt3G highlighted the idea that Mr. Sheen has been ‘coached’ and directed. So what? If Mr. Sheen is smart enough to have professional marketing people help him leverage his newfound super-fame I suggest he is far from crazy. Now that he has been fired from ‘Two and a Half Men’ (does this mean Jon Cryer is now starring in ‘One and a Half Men’?), he is free to make movies or whatever he wants to do on Twitter or anywhere else. And the $ 10 million owed to him for the balance of his CBS contract for ‘Two and a Half Men’ will probably have to be settled since his agent claims he is ready, willing and able to work. And for what it is worth he has always shown up for work despite whatever trials and tribulations he has suffered. So he is likely to get paid a substantial sum for NOT doing the show unless CBS has a change of heart. Talk about the catbird’s seat.
I don’t admire Charlie Sheen. He’s obviously got some issues going on but the notion that he is out of his mind is out of bounds. But I am intrigued with this case study on how to maximize your reach in the shortest amount of time. He has leveraged recent events about as much as could be possible and I am betting more opportunities will come his way. Will he be able to answer the bell? Nobody knows for sure least of all Mr. Sheen. But in terms of increasing awareness and becoming his own brand sensation (might he be the anti-brand?) Mr. Sheen appears to be thumbing his nose at just about everyone while having a very good time doing it.
Is Charlie Sheen a marketing genius? What do you think? Mr. Sheen has had way more than his fifteen minutes. My question is what will he do for an encore?
Since I am of a certain age (I was born when Ike was President of the U.S.), I have friends that refuse to engage on Facebook. While that is of course their right I cannot understand or even accept their reasoning behind not engaging in something that more than 600 million people find relevant. There are obvious benefits to being ‘connected’ on Facebook. And yes there are privacy issues and permission problems that are ongoing. But for me, and for most people I presume, the benefits far outweigh the detriments.
I suspect this situation is not all that different than when the telephone first came into popular use. Limited use of the telephone occurred starting with its invention by Alexander Graham Bell (or at least attributed to him) in the 1870s. Usage increased rapidly in the 1880s and 1890s as phone technology developed and central exchanges were built. It’s not difficult to imagine that there were many people that said and felt ‘why would I need to talk to anyone over a wire?’ And there were probably those that felt telephones would prove to be intrusive, (as anyone that has ever taken a telemarketing call during dinner can appreciate) and at times a general nuisance. But because the benefits far outweighed the detriments the telephone not only survived, it flourished. And today people carry telephones around with them wherever they go and they are nearly always ‘on’.
Is Facebook the new telephone? I am here to argue that in fact that’s exactly what it is. Telephone conversations are necessary at times but time consuming and cumbersome. It’s mostly a one-to-one dialog as opposed to the more open platform of Facebook. Don’t go thinking that I have drunk the Marc Zuckerberg Kool-Aid (I haven’t) or that Facebook has paid me to write this post (like that would ever happen).
Our children use Facebook the way party lines were used over fifty years ago. They post photos, music, share articles, suggest friends, have conversations and interact in a way that allows for faster and more than Mr. Graham Bell could have ever imagined. Ask any teenager if they’d rather speak with someone or text them over their mobile device. I think we all know the answer to that one.
So for my friends who feel that they are making some sort of statement by not engaging in Facebook’s communication platform the only statement they are making to me is that they prefer to remain unconnected to the world and in so doing are Luddites. Since the fastest growing Facebook segment is people over 40 these Facebook holdouts are truly in the minority. My prediction is that eventually they will
succumb and then wonder why they didn’t join in sooner.
It’s over folks – Facebook has won the game of connecting the world. You are either with the program or on the outside looking in.
If you’ve been paying rapt attention to the social media space, then perhaps you are aware of www.Klout.com and/or www.Twitalyzer.com (I was aware of the former but not the latter). The sites offer you a measure of your social ‘influence’. That is to say that based on a person’s publicly posted data on sites like Twitter, your measure of social influence is derived and scored.
Other social influence measuring sites exist like www.Peerindex.com and www.Topvoice.com as well. (Full disclosure – I have met the CEO of Top Voice and the Chairwoman is a business associate and friend).
In an article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal http://on.wsj.com/hZoFDb a 25 year old woman was given access to a ‘swanky holiday party’ on the basis of her tweets being ‘influential’. The woman was surprised. That would not have been my reaction but I’m far from being 25 years old.
I became aware of Klout several months ago and signed up for an account (my Klout score is a lowly 32 – even Hosni Mubarak has me beat at a 43). 70 is considered a pretty good Klout score and Justin Bieber has a Klout score of 100 (Bill Gates has a score of 76 BTW – I myself don’t find Bill Gates to be less influential than Justin Bieber but hey that’s me).
So the next question is (at least for this marketer) – “Where’s the revenue model?” While the WSJ article does not outline the revenue model , theoretically by using Klout consumer brands could reach out to top influencers by having them talk about the brand – positive or (dare it be), negative. Maybe it could work and I am probably missing something so help me out if you have a better idea.
Top Voice is also a new entry and they are working through the challenges of being a start up with regard to interface and site usability. I understand the Top Voice revenue model much better than that of Klout. People Tweet or post about their favorite brands and are rewarded with points which can then lead to them receiving merchandise for becoming a Top Voice influencer. So both the brands and the individual can benefit.
Social media influence is here to stay whether people want to accept that is important or not. Even if you personally feel it is a waste of time (as I often do) we marketers should be very aware and watchful of trends and developments. The authenticity of conversations from consumers will continue to gain traction.
So have you checked out your Klout? Will you?