Perhaps Facebook Advertising isn’t right for your business….
Posted: May 21, 2012 Filed under: Advertising, Facebook, Facebook Ads, marketing, social media strategy, Social Media Trends, social networking | Tags: Advertising, business, Facebook, Facebook Ads, General Motors, Google+ Leave a comment »
facebook engancha (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yes, Facebook is ubiquitous.
It seems like everyone here on this green earth has a Facebook page, including every single business.
It’s almost as if Facebook is poised to knock Google over when it comes to your business presence and your business advertising.
Well, after reading the results of a recent study by the advertising firm Greenlight (as reported on Digital Trends) you may want to re-think the importance of Facebook ads to your advertising program. Greelight surveyed a wide sector of Facebook users, from a variety of ages and occupations, and found that a whopping 44 percent said that they would “never” click on a Facebook ad.
A mere 3 percent said they regularly clicked on the ads, while 10 percent said they often “fall for” the ads. (I’d guess that those who fall for the ads do so because of the crazy picture and not the relevance of the ad. The study does not seem to have considered that option.)
It is also important to note that over 30 percent of Facebook users say they ” strongly distrust” Facebook with their personal data. Facebook has said that all the information collected helps them to target ads better and thus make them less intrusive yet more relevant.
Apparently, lots of people don’t quite see it that way. Maybe some of this was behind General Motors decision to cancel $10 million in Facebook advertising. This also might be indicative of another trend: that people don’t want advertising on Facebook, even if it’s from brands they happen to like.
And maybe not all social media marketing is about finding another place to slap up some cheap ads to shove in potential customers’ faces.
Think about it.
Related articles
- Research: 44% of Facebook users will ‘never’ click sponsored ads (venturebeat.com)
- Sources: Failed pitch led to GM dropping Facebook ads (electronista.com)
- Marketing to Women: To Be Fair to Facebook (jamiedunham.wordpress.com)
Why Women Prefer Pinterest (or how to gain popularity by pinning what women want)
Posted: May 8, 2012 Filed under: arts marketing, marketing, social media, social media strategy, Social Media Trends, social networking | Tags: business, Channing Tatum, Content marketing, Etsy, Fab.com, Foursquare, marketing, Pinterest, social media, social media marketing, social media strategy, social networking Leave a comment »At a recent gathering of social media colleagues, when I mentioned up-and-coming social media platform Pinterest, a male colleage said “Pinterest!? I can never find anything on it. Just a fad!” Some of that might have to do with the fact that he’s, well, a guy: according to a recent report on National Public Radio, anywhere between 58 percent and 97 percent of Pinterest users are women. And if that’s the case, well, they’re probably not pinning pictures of people, places, and things that he’d be most interested in finding.
Which might also have lead my friend Geoff Livingston to one day mention on Facebook that he didn’t quite get the appeal of Pinterest….
What could it be that brings women–many from the Mid-West–to Pinterest, and keep them pinning and sharing everything from wedding venue photos to pictures of the latest Hollywood hunks? Could it be that women are quicker than men to adopt new social networking platforms, or that women are more social online than men? Well, that’s partly true. If we consider Foursquare, women were, after a time, less entralled with the geo-location platform than men. Two factors accounted for the drop in women’s particiaption on Foursquare: women’s reluctance to give away their geo-locations, and the platform’s gaming aspect–get a badge that says you’re “Mayor” afte a certain number of check-ins–did not have broad appeal to specifically to women.
And why does that kind of gaming aspect appeal to men? It’s simple: the old “hunter” mentality. To bag a Foursquare Mayor badge was to some guys like conquering a village.
So, yes, women are, overall, more social than men in social networking environments, but that doesn’t fully account for Pinterest. Once I started to “pin,” it became evident to me that by gathering, pinning, sharing, and gathering up other people’s pins, and sharing those, that I was participating in good old “gatherer” behavior. I was working in a group of others, gathering up what was interesting to me ( its value to the group unknown to me at the time) and then sharing that bounty with the group.
It was basic, simple, and a heck of a lot of fun to see other women re-pin what I found worth pinning…
Which leads me to shirtless Channing Tatum.
It seems that, if one spends a particular amont of time and attention cultivating a kind of pinning expertise, or “eye” for what others want, one can become quite popular on Pinterest. Given some of my interests, I noticed that I quickly gathered likes and repins on three boards: Oscar Best-Worst 2012, Shoe Fetishist, and CrazySexyCute Guys. At first I thought it was my cheeky little comments that interested pinners, but it was after I posted this pic, that I realized my growing popularity on Pinterest had nothing to do with what I was saying, and everything to do with what I was gathering and sharing……
So far, this pic has 124 likes, 13 comments, and 490 repins. I posted it around the time when Tatum’s recent pic, 21 Jump Street, hit the theaters. Little did I know that pinning shirtless hunks would become a great way not only to relieve stress before big writing projects, but also a great way to build a fun little community for myself. I love seeing how other women gather up the pics I post of Hollywood hunks, professional athletes, male models, and others who are, to me, just beautiful to look at. As I pinned this stuff, as well as great looking shoes, funny pictures of babies, and cute kitty pics, I ventured into the Popular section and found that one of the most re-pinned pics had to do with wedding decorating. Other popular pins were of wedding dresses, tasty-looking edibles, gorgeous non-couture dresses, and anything a girl could think of.
Yes, a girl. Pinterest has the odd effect of bringing out the girly girl in me, and Ibet that it does for a lot of women.
Maybe that’s a reason, too, that we like it: Pinterest is a diversion from the workaday adult world into a world of fantasy and inspiration. Depictions of the possible and the impossible that fuel our daydreams and night dreams too. Pictures of stuff that we want to remember, for whatever reasons. It isn’t about winning, or losing, or gathering important information for our professional enrichment (maybe that’s why infographics don’t get repinned as much as shirtless hunks.)
It’s just plan fun.
Which leads to the question: does Pinterest have any value as a social media marketing tool?
Answer: YES! Depending on the business. Does your business appeal to women? Does it have a strong visual component? Yes to both, or either, could indicate that Pinterest will work. My personal favorite use of Pinterst is on Fab.com. Sometimes it’s tough to find things on Fab, but by browsing their Live Feed–an active Pinterest board–I can browse what others have found interesting and want to remember, such as this octopus pendant. Fab has other ways for me to share what I find on other social networks, but for me that’s a little superfluous. I like their pinboard just fine.
Glancee + Facebook = Orwell’s Big Brother in Spades…..
Posted: May 8, 2012 Filed under: social media | Tags: social media, Facebook, business, Facebook Apps, Foursquare, Glancee, Initial public offering, Global Positioning System, ReadWriteWeb 1 Comment »
On Monday, ReadWriteWeb reported that Facebook had purchased “ambient location” tracker Glancee. And then I got worried….
For those of you that aren’t familiar with the term “ambient location” tracking, think about your smartphone or even your regular old-fashioned cell phone. Each of those devices has what some carriers called a “personal GPS”–and we’ve seen on TV cop procedural shows how these passive tracking devices can help locate a crime victim (yes, let’s prey on people’s paranoia.) Well, “ambient location” is like that. Glancee, and other “ambient location” trackers such as Highlight, basically track you through an app that runs in the background of your device all the time.
But they don’t tell you what they’re doing with tracking your every single move. That’s what creeps me out.
Glancee’s co-founder Andrea Vaccari described the product as a “social discovery” facilitator–it can tell you who’s around you at any time. YOW! WOW! That sets off a whole lot of bells and whistles for me. As I maintained back when the biggest threat to female safety was Foursquare, I don’t always want my social network to know where I am all the time. Maybe that’s because I didn’t grow up with helicopter parents, and I rather enjoy my privacy (and safety.)
Combine “ambient location” tracking with Facebook (which is set to release its IPO on May 18,) something akin to Big Brother happens: Facebook, the world’s greatest gatherer of our personal information now becomes the place where all of our geo-location information is gathered, perhaps without us even being aware that it’s being gathered, let alone shared with Facebook’s “partners.”
As it is now, Facebook gathers information on our news consuming habits through a number of “social sharing” apps, and gathers a bunch of other information through what appear to be silly, harmless polls and questions. Not to mention SocialCam, the latest app to gather up information from you, through an app, and into Facebook.
Combine SocialCam with Facebook (and its interest in facial recognition software) and Glancee and well, guess what Mr. and Ms. Consumer: you’re being tracked by your favorite brands!
And then, how far are we from Rollerball and corporations replacing the government–because we *love* them so very much??
Just a (frightening, creepy) thought….
Related articles
- What Facebook May Do With Glancee (socialnetworkingwatch.com)
- Post-Instagram, Facebook acqui(hires) Glancee (digitaltrends.com)
- Why the Glancee acquisition means more for Facebook than Instagram (digitaltrends.com)
- Facebook Acquires Location-Based Service Glancee (mashable.com)
Would you put your kids in charge of your company’s social media program?
Posted: April 13, 2012 Filed under: Changes, social media, social media strategy, social networking | Tags: business, Digital native, digital pioneer, innovation, innovator, marketing, Pinterest, social media, social media marketing, social media strategy, social networking, technology Leave a comment »“I heard about that from my kids!”
“You know who told me about that? My kids”
“My kids were talking about that the other day….”
Over the past six years I’ve given numerous talks to all size business groups, and at almost every talk, someone mentions something about their kids and social media. I can’t help but wonder how I’m supposed to respond to these sorts of comments.
Take, for instance, the meeting I had with a graphic designer and one of his clients. Their idea for ‘social media’ was to solicit blogs to write about the client’s product. Yes, I understood this as “blogger outreach” and that the first step to this would be to research various tech blogs to find out if they would be interested in receiving the product for review.
“Oh, I could get my 8-year-old son to do that. Why should I hire you?” said the graphic designer.
Really now? Did he think I was going to mount an argument as to why I was better at providing this service than his 8-year-old son? If he needed to hear that kind of pitch–Why An Adult Who Specialized In Social Media Is Better Than Your 8 Year Old–then he and his client were quite welcome to have the 8-year-old do the searching and to then draft their own blogger outreach letters and do the follow-up and all the other tasks that go along with blogger outreach.
Can you imagine someone saying that to a plumber? or a mechanic? Or what if someone said to him “Oh, I can have my 8-year-old and a box of crayons do my graphic design work.”
While this might seem like an extreme (and downright demeaning) example, more often than not, someone in a group that I’m presenting to will interject how their kids know this-or-that, or their kids introduced them to this-or-that application, or that their kids are just amazing on their smartphones….
This attitude has led to some very serious problems. Not only does it leave young people with no rules for governing their use of or conduct on social media (and we wonder where they picked up cyberbullying??) to employers falling wholesale for the “digital natives” myth.
Let’s take a look at the concept of the “digital native.” The term was coined by Mark Prensky, a writer, speaker and educator whose interest is in changing K-12 pedagogy for the 21st century by involving students in the education process.
With all due respect, and from my opinion, Prensky, for all his experience and education, sounds a heck of a lot like the parent who is amazed how the child seems to just “figure things out” on those darned old computers and electronic gadgets the get for birthdays and holidays. Some of the generalizations that Prensky makes about his “digital natives” include:
- they prefer images over text
- they prefer games over “serious” learning
- they can’t pay attention
- they’ve perfected their skills with digital technologies
Really? Is that why so many young people have actually been reading books like the Harry Potter series and The Hunger Games? And doesn’t the last statement–that they’ve perfected their skills–presuppose that they will figure out whatever new technology is out there before it’s even out there?
Really?
From my perspective as a digital pioneer and innovator, I was able to figure out the latest digital social toy, Pinterest in a matter of minutes; figure out the demographic it appeals to (women) and why it appeals to them in a few days; and what kind of content is most appealing to them in a matter of a couple of weeks of use and analysis of pinning patterns.
Can your teenager do this?
In his extensively researched paper on the ten-year anniversary of the concept of the “digital native,” Apostolos Koutropoulos, Online Program Coordinator (Applied Linguistics) at UMass Boston, critically considers Prensky’s and others’ over-simplification and application of the term and that it actually might be short-changing young people both in the educational arena and in their personal lives.
If you are one of those business owners or C-level execs who believes his young employees will simply know what to do with social media, will be able to conduct themselves with no supervision, and will be able to guide you through the process of a social media campaign, I’d urge you to read Kourtopoulous’ paper and to consider an experienced social media professional over the young intern.
And if it’s really a question of money for social media–with a desire to simply experiment with social media on the cheap by tasking it to an intern–perhaps you should not approach social media until you have the time and funds to launch a solid campaign. Remember, what is on the Internet, stays on the Internet, and a half-hearted attempt to reach potential and new clients in the social space will more than likely remain there, floundering, well beyond the tenure of your intern.
