A lot has been written about how social media is impacting
brands. Eventually that would mean that what gets written on social media
should start to impact the company’s financial performance. However I wonder if
there is a critical size that once companies achieve, they will have less to
worry about social media? For these brands, social media, or rather bad
publicity in social media is perhaps overrated. Now it doesn’t mean that they should
stop ignoring what’s written but it is unlikely to impact them significantly.
I came across these tweets by Vir Sanhvi. Now
Vir Sanhvi
is a renowned journalist, writer and reviewer. He has
771K followers on
Twitter. So he tweeting bad about a large telecom brand should mean something. Quite
a few people joined him in lambasting the brand.
So what impact will Vir’s tweets and other related tweets
really have on this brand’s performance? In my view, absolutely none!!!
Not just this, there have been numerous other brands that
have been bashed in the social media. They call these
social media disasters. And don’t forget the recent
Flipkart 1 Billion Day disaster. However, it doesn’t look like these disasters
had any significant impact on the companies’ performance.
I think social media is a great vehicle to get a brand
started. It’s great for a new and small enterprises. I feel social media can make
a brand, not necessarily break one, at least not a really big brand.
I think at the end of the day, we all know that everyone has
a bad day. Shit happens, as they say. Social media has just become an avenue
for us to bitch about something or the other, and perhaps it is overrated in its
power to alter businesses. The brands should focus on their products/services.
The social media will take care of itself.
Just came across two very interesting videos that show how Facebook makes money twice over, once for getting likes and once for people to actually see your posts. Very much in line with what I have been observing. And it's not just for Facebook Pages. I see posts only from a very limited set of "friends" on Facebook.
Continuing with the thread I started in my previous post
Do you trust corporate blogs, and picking up from posts on Trust by
Ken Allen and
Tony Karrer, I came across Chris Brogan’s post
Advertising and Trust. Chris wrote in response to
Jeremiah Owyang raising questions about Chris’s sponsored post for Kmart. Chris does a great job at analysing and responding. In this process I discovered many posts that talk about trust and integrity of bloggers. Two posts that caught my eye were Lucretia M. Pruitt:
What is Your Time Worth? What’s Worth Your Time? and Barbara Gibson:
What is your integrity worth? I don’t follow blogs of Jeremiah, Lucretia or Barbara, but I had no reason not to trust them. They have an opinion that they are sharing.
When I come across blog posts that talk about other products, I take them as opinions of those bloggers. I am a gullible guy
J. However I will not necessarily take business decisions (or even personal buying decisions) based only on one or two blog posts, and I don’t think that means I don’t trust blogs. It is definitely helpful when bloggers disclose posts to be sponsored posts. I follow
RWW and they talk about their sponsors all the time. They also talk about other products and I trust them to provide a balanced view in their product reviews.
An interesting thing to note in the Forrester report is that people trust emails from people they know but don’t trust as much the social networking profiles from people they know. Hmmm…
According to a recent Forrester Research report, people trust emails from who they know most and they trust corporate blogs the least. According to the report, only 16% people trust corporate blogs. I had written about CEO and corporate blogging sometime back and this report presents some interesting perspectives.
You can read posts that comment on this report at RWW and Rohit Bhargava’s blog.
What do you think? Do you trust corporate blogs? Which ones do you read regularly and why? It would interesting to get some views of corporate bloggers too.
Seth Godin
recently wrote Do you know enough?
If not, what are you doing about it?
If so, who do you think you're kidding?
[Interesting side alley: I was talking to a friend yesterday and encouraged her to speak at an upcoming conference. She said, "No way. I don't know enough." I explained that volunteering to speak was the best way to be sure that she'd end up knowing enough by the time she was through.]
When I recently got a chance to speak at our annual strategic input conference, I thought Why Not. I am no expert (yet J) and opportunities like these help me learn more about areas of my interest.
I spoke about the web and mobility. My presentation was divided broadly into four parts. I started with a recap of Web 2.0 and some changes from Web 1.0, and getting the audience to check their Web 2.0 Quotient. I followed this up with some trends that I have been observing and how companies can/should use the Web to connect with their customers. Finally I left the audience with what I believe are two critical tools to get started on the Web and some next steps for them to get started with Web 2.0.
My main message – You can’t ‘learn’ about Web 2.0 in classroom or in a conference. You have use it and experience it to leverage its power.
Here’s my presentation on SlideShare and some notes about what I spoke.
Trends:
- There are enough demographic studies to tell use that the workforce is getting younger. The younger workforce is more adept at using technology, and this is not limited to a particular socio-economic section. Depending on where the audience is from, they will be relatively more tech savvy. How are we going to connect with them, train them and also leverage their inherent tech savvy mindset is going to be the opportunity in coming few years.
- While Second Life is clunky, slow and can’t be accessed through most corporate networks, we should watch out for 3-D virtual worlds. While the current use in training and business is limited, their use will increase in times to come. I encouraged everyone to get a Second Life account and try out the 3-D worlds for themselves just to get an experience. It is a little hard to imagine what it is like without actually being in one.
- Telepresence will increase and will not be limited to just high quality video conference, even though that is what it seems in the first instance. The video of John Chambers and Marthin De Beer is a good example of what telepresence can do and give rise to new applications.
- Mobile phones have a far greater penetration than the Internet, at least in India. In India, while 3.7% population has access to the Internet, nearly 30% population has access to a mobile phone. With the increase in sales of the smart phone, the Internet will reach the people faster on a mobile phone than on a PC. It is going to be a great tool to reach out to the customers and applications using mobile technology will increase significantly.
- Web 3.0 will provide even more freedom to the users.
Connecting with the community
- When you see Baba Ramdev talking about Google Chrome in his billboard advertising, you know times are a changing. So how are you connecting with your customers? Your customers are everywhere on the Web. What’s your company’s web strategy in connecting with your customers?
- With the Web, there are a lot more channels for your customers’ voice. Your customers may not always communicate directly with you. With so many websites primarily aimed at carrying customer’s voice, it is imperative that companies listen to what their customers are saying in public forums.
Critical tools to get started
- The most common issue with managers is that they don’t have the time to do all what I have said above. While all this Web 2.0 mumbo-jumbo is fine and sounds great, where is the time to try all these things? Well, I suggest that all managers start with Feeds and Google Alerts. Feeds allow you to scan your selected sites quickly for updates. Alerts help you track what’s being talked about on the Web. Most managers have a smart phone with Web access. We need to start using the smart phones for more than just email.
- Most feed readers have a mobile version available allowing you easy access to updates without necessarily being on your laptop.
- Google Alerts provide you with daily email alerts about your search keyword. This is a great way to track what’s being said about your company or your area of interest.
Recently a proprietor of a small firm asked me how he can get more clients, including international clients. So with all my new found Web 2.0 and social media interest, I suggested that he start building contacts on social networking sites. I asked him to start building his contact list on LinkedIn. I also suggested that he starts participating in various groups on LinkedIn, basically increase web presence of himself and his company.
I met him a few weeks later and asked him how he was progressing on building his network. He sheepishly told me he hadn’t made much progress. On my asking why, he said that he feared that his competitors would get hold of all his contacts and approach his clients to takeaway his business. His fear completely flummoxed me. I could tell him that he could stop others from viewing his contacts but I have a feeling that it might still not be enough to get his started. So what do I tell him to get him started?
Seth Godin writes about how he selected candidates for marketing and web internship. He was overwhelmed by the quality of applications he got, so he created a Facebook group for candidates to meet and hang out online. As he explains:
It was absolutely fascinating. Within a day, the group had divided into four camps:
- The game-show contestants, quick on the trigger, who were searching for a quick yes or no. Most of them left.
- The lurkers. They were there, but we couldn't tell.
- The followers. They waited for someone to tell them what to do.
- The leaders. A few started conversations, directed initiatives and got to work.
Nifty experiment! Read full post
here.
