Social for Brands is Being Talked About not Talking To

Last Monday there was an epic Beancast Podcast hosted by Bob Knorpp. I suggest you subscribe on ITunes. It is one of the best Marketing Podcasts out there and he always has 4 incredible thought leaders each week to discuss the topics of the week.

One thing that was discussed was the role of Brands in Social Media. Jonathan Salem Baskin said 'I don't wake up wanting to talk to my toothpaste'. I wrote about this 21 months ago. I know the world is always slow to catch up to me. We can not talk with customers on any scale. This blog has many posts discussing this. Yet the 'Big Social Media' people rant on and on about talking with your customers and fans and engaging with them. Yes do this, but your reach and scale are so small it will never move product or drive your revenues.

I have told people to spend a day counting every brand in their life that day. The hundreds of them. Each has a twitter account and a facebook page now. They all demand you talk with them right now. How many will you talk with? How many do you want to? 1? 3? 5 at most? The rest never will get to talk with you.

But as discussed in the Beancast Social Media isn't about talking with customers and fans but to have them talk about you. Especially big Brands with millions of customers. You can't talk to all of your customers and potential customers if you tried. Even if you hijacked the US Army and had every person manning Twitter and Facebook a global brand can not talk with 100 million, 500 million or 1 billion people.

But they can talk about you. And isn't that what is important? Word of mouth? People discussing your brand? In private and public?

So what does this mean for Brands?

1] Set up listening programs to gather data and insights.

2] Do have Twitter and Facebook presences and do talk with the fans you are capable of engaging with

3] Integrate Social Media with your overall Marketing Plan and Campaigns and enable the conversation about you where you can. 

• Make content easily sharable.
• Focus on a great experience for your customer. They will talk about this.
• Claim your location with Google Places, Yelp, FourSquare
• Use Publicity/PR to advance your message and Brand

The Case For and Against GeoFences and Push Advertising on Mobile

I saw this new product being offered by Urban Airship in Portland.  I think why would I want brands to contact me when I am nearby? Do I want this? What does this mean for the brand? If I did want it what would be the way I would want to have this? 

The first issue is alerts. I don't want my phone buzzing. I downloaded the ShopKick App because if I focus on Mobile I should check these things out. I went to the mall and out of the blue my phone started buzzing like it was going to explode. I immediately uninstalled the app. I don't want that!

But if I have to manually look for specials doesn't that defeat the 'alert' system? Doesn't that mean it is no different than getting an email offer or going manually to their website?

What about the brand? Does these offers improve their image or just erode their margins because I view you as a discounting brand?

Will this benefit me? How often am I cruising in my car or biking and open to buying something on impulse? For me very rarely.

What about clutter? Even if I sign up only for the brands I like, doesn't over time this do the same as for email where it all becomes white noise?

How will a brand make these alerts relevant? If 99% are ones I won't go for why should I sign up for what is then a valueless service?

These are questions you must ask yourself. How will you stand out? If every business can contact me with push marketing as I drive by you are just one in the crowd. 

I see way to many negatives vs positives here. And just because a technology like check-ins, which are already dead,  is neat or different doesn't mean we want it, need it, or will use it.  Why would you even need this if you built a solid loyal relationship with me. One where you already knew when I made a future purchase you would at least have an opportunity to win my business.

Yahoo knows more about you than Facebook

Did you know that both Yahoo and Facebook are really just Giant Paid Advertising Websites? Doesn't matter that you do different things on each site. They both make their money selling advertising. Funny little thing though. Ads placed on websites besides Facebook are twice as effective as those placed on Facebook.  Why is this?

We all think that Facebook knows so much about us based on our sharing and liking and posting. But why don't you sit back and think of what percent of your daily activity is shared on Facebook. I would guarantee less than 0.01% . Think of all the actions today you will do. People you will talk with, things you will eat, websites you will visit, things you will look at and do.. How much will go on Facebook? Maybe 2 or 3 out of 1000 actions. There you go. 

Yahoo has been around longer. I bet you all have Yahoo accounts and at one time used or still use their email. You read news and sports on Yahoo but not on Facebook. You might of used their once powerful yellow pages or other services like checking out TV and Movie listings. If you go to the OMG! section and see the People magazine style articles you will find hundreds and thousands of comments on each article. More search happens on Yahoo than does on Facebook.

So Yahoo knows more about what you like, what you do, where you live and your life in general than Facebook. Thus Yahoo knows you. And that is why Facebook now tracks you off site because they realized...they really know nothing about you but if they admit that....there goes their $100billion IPO.

And if Yahoo knows more about you than Facebook, Google knows even more about you because of Google Maps, Shopping, GPS, News, Android, Email, Search, Goggles, Documents, G+, they even know what countries you check out the most on Google Earth.

There is a silver lining. Facebook has been improving their Click Through Rate. But from such a low base rate and the fact they supposedly know so much about you this shows poor execution or bad business model. In fact Forbes has a concern a large chunk of ad clicks come from social gaming which could be a red flag.

So when you read of brands or agencies increasing ad spending on Facebook the question I ask is this because 'everyone is doing it' or will we see actual results. Because personally brands should spend where they get the best results. And so far Facebook is lagging.