Archive for January, 2010
A lot of people are sharing tips and advice about social media. I am one of them.
This is all good, apart from in one aspect.
We always focus on how to take from social media. What we can get.
Yes, we will say that you should focus on your audience, share good stuff, engage, interact. But it comes down to getting out of social media whatever benefits you are looking for.
When you realize that followers and friends are people, it makes me think that perhaps we are potentially creating pretty bad relationships.
Once in a while, just share something just because.
Every now and then, just give stuff away without thinking about getting anything back, reciprocity, or future responsiveness.
See followers as friends, not a contact list to throw links at.
When someone asks you a question, or asks for a favor, do not look up their profile or history, just do it.
Rather than accept that freebie, ask if you can offer it to your contacts instead.
You might be riding high right now but you know the saying …
“Be nice to folks on the way up, you might just need them on the way back down”
Social media is a lot of things to a lot of people.
Entrepreneurs look to social media for visibility, traffic and audience. Small business might see it as a source of customers and long term relationship building. Other businesses can use it for increasing sales through offers and coupons. For individuals who are taking a break it might be chatting with friends, procrastinating, finding a date or catching up on the news.
An area big brands are increasingly turning to social media for, is the “listening station”. Their scale means they are not as close to the customer sentiment as smaller businesses. Social media provides an opportunity to “listen out” for problems and plaudits, and react as necessary before issues fester.
Seth Godin’s recent article though reminds me how some social media users have twigged that this is happening and are using it to their advantage.
We have all at one time or another complained about a product or service. Normally the only people unfortunate enough to have to listen are those who are close by, family, co-workers or friends. Now we have an audience of thousands for our complaints who get instant, bl0w-by-blow accounts of your misery.
Sometimes a Twitter rant can get you noticed by the appropriate people and have a satisfactory or amazing outcome. I complained about my broadband continuously cutting out at the worst times, causing me productivity problems, and British Telecom got a technical guru on the phone with me and sent out a replacement router. Again with the same company, I complained about my 3g dongle and again a replacement was sent out to me. So complaining can work.
What we are seeing now though is that expectations have been raised. People hear about results like the above and decide they want some of that too.
This is fine if the company representative is
- Listening out for problems
- Sees the complaint as valid
- Can do something about it
These criteria are obviously not met as often as people would hope. What problems are these cases going to cause? When peole do not feel their grievances are being listened to or are not getting the results they were after they are going amplify their complaint, repeat it, and get others to share it. Then you go from customer service task to reputation management issue.
Going back to Seth’s article linked above, the customer and those listening go from remembering the good stuff about the company and product, to focusing on the problem, percieved or real, and that is what gets the publicity.
If you are not using social media to listen out for brand problems and customer service issues, you had better start. Go get yourself some listening.
GOSO has been taking off lately for BOALT. Last week’s release of GOSO’s Facebook application got a lot of great feedback. A lot of the feedback was in the form of news interviews. One of those interviews is going down as I type this.
Adam and Motor Week
BOALT and GOSO founder Adam Boalt is being interviewed for the TV program Motor Week. In February the segment will be broadcast on the Speed Channel and PBS stations across the country. The program will focus on the future of social media in the automotive industry. Included in the segment will be an interview with Brian Hydock of Ken Dixon Automotive, one of the many dealerships participating in GOSO’s beta testing.
So watch out for our segment on February 12th. It will be airing on both the Speed channel and 200 PBS channels around the country.
As you can imagine, the BOALT office is full of technology nerds. Everyone has their own little device or site that they follow, but consistently the thing that many of us overlap on is the Technology, Entertainment, Design or the TED Talks.Their slogan is simply: Ideas worth spreading. So I’m taking a cue from them and spreading this. They release a new TED talk almost weekly, sometimes we miss them but when we do see them, they definitely blow us away because each presentation is always groundbreaking and thought provoking.
The one that stood out in the office this week was from Pranav Mistry and his SixthSense technology. Essentially Mistry has created a combination camera and projector unit call the SixthSense device. The unit enhances the physical world with digital information.
The camera on the SixthSense device will determine what physical object you’re looking at or holding and then project digital information onto the object. You can then interact with the digital information through a series of hand gestures. Confusing?
Some exciting news is coming out of the GOSO office today. Everyone is pumped about the release of GOSO’s Dealer Inventory Facebook App. Essentially the app allows automotive dealers to showcase their inventory directory onto their Facebook page.
BMW of Minnetonka became the first dealership in the world to deploy GOSO’s new application, which was just added to their suite of web and social media products for auto dealers.
The Facebook App is only a small part of the suite of tools. But this is a big step for dealers looking to create a strong Facebook presence. Social media is not new to the automotive brands themselves.
Ford has had great success with both their Fiesta Movement and Fusion 41 social media campaigns but their hasn’t been a lot of big news for individual car dealers. The GOSO announcement today is a big step in including the dealer’s in the social media movement.
Now this isn’t the most exciting news of the day. Most people are pumped up for Google’s release of the Nexus One. Granted a new phone is always cool. I remember when I first touched my iPhone. It was an exciting moment.
However, nothing really gets the blood flowing like online advertising. I mean who doesn’t love the random ads on the top of your Gmail account when you’re at work. Like right now mine says something about ESPN.com. I don’t know why. I’m about as coordinated as an inebriated gazelle.
What’s my point? I’m sure I have one. The point is online advertising is sexier than a new phone. The reason for my excitement is because JPMorgan has come out with their forecasts for online advertising in 2010. And their forecast calls for mostly sunny and high percent chance it will rain money.
Online advertising is a large part of what we offer clients at BOALT. That includes display advertising, search advertising and mobile advertising. According to JPMorgan, 2009 saw a 5.2 percent decline in revenues bringing in only $7.5 billion. However, things are looking up for 2010. According to JPMorgan forecasts, 2010 should see a 10.5% bump to $8.3 billion. Which means great things for everyone.
The bump is being credited to a rising market and growing trust in the economy from both consumers and businesses. The most surprising forecast is in SMS advertising. JPMorgan expects it to grow from $2.3 billion in 2009 to $3.8 billion in 2010. That’s a large bump.
SMS advertising is often an opt-in service. Say you’re looking for sports scores and you sign up for a text back response service that will send the score to your phone. Once you receive the information there is usually a brief ad at the bottom with a phone number or link. Some people find it annoying, but turns out that people actually do click on those links.
JPMorgan is also forecasting a 13.2% growth in search advertising to $16.6 billion.
What does this mean for you? Well it means that it’s probably safe to go back in the water. So get your floaties.