Social contract vs. investment
A brand’s ability to reach consumers on an emotional level is obviously critical. However, as consumers continue to empower themselves through education and increased participation within various technological platforms, down goes the attention span and patience for 20th century marketing tactics. The downside of this trend suggests that the threshold required to first grab attention and then hold it seems to have evolved into that of the ridiculous spectacle.
When I speak to a client and use the word “bravery” in part I’m referring to this trend as a barrier of entry into the consumer’s psyche. Emotional engagement can only happen if both parties are willing and accepting participants, some feel that to get there a spectacle is required and there is definitely truth to that.
Social contract or social investment?
Some refer to this engagement between brand and consumer as the beginning of a “social contract,” I’d like to make the case for the use of the word “investment.” I recently expressed my opinion on well-known Forrester researcher Jeremiah Owyang’s blog and referred to a portion of our recent work with MacEwan School of Business as the example.
Owyang’s post was a higher level discussion about how consumers information was given out via various social network platforms and the ability of an agency such as ours to scrape that data, turning it into meaningful intelligence as the basis for the “contract.”
My point of view is that reaching an emotional level of discussion with prospective clients, consumers or partners is a key event in the relationship and can only happen with certain conditions present. Many efforts within the social web and across many industries do not accomplish this at all, at any level. Others do reach that level but unfortunately the emotion is anger on behalf of the consumer.
So which brands are more likely to embrace the concept of emotional centric “social investment?” I believe those who’s cultures are built on a foundation of mutual respect, giving and caring. More specifically, I think brands with women involved in key leadership positions are more likely to take these sensitivity and psychological issues into consideration when building out their marketing campaigns. This habit should serve them well when engaging the rest of us within the social web.
My personal social media journey started in 2004 and I’ve been studying these types of aspects ever since as well as participating. Certainly, I’ve made mistakes in the past; sometimes I can be a bit forward and offer an opinion when silence should have been my course of action. Having said that, I think that my grasp of the social web, and more importantly people, is stronger for these interactions, good and bad. This I feel, translates into a stronger customer experience here at fusedlogic.
Out of curiosity, a quick tally of all projects past has the number of ones with women as the key stakeholder in the lead. Further, fusedlogic’s best client experience ever (from our perspective at least and I hope theirs too) on all accounts is MacEwan and it was led by Jana Clarke, Marketing Manager for the School of Business.
We’ve been fortunate to have many great clients and this project was a ton of fun, very productive and went off with little to no issues. The organization was phenomenal to work with, as was her team, the majority of them women. Please don’t read anything into this discussion that isn’t there, I’m simply stating statistics. fusedlogic doesn’t specifically target women entrepreneurs or executives; it just seems to have progressed that way. For example, we have recently been asked to supply 3 proposals and 2 of the three are to organizations led by women.
Am I being stereotypical throughout this discussion? Probably. The more important question should be whether I’m off base with what I’m saying. Is my assumption that men are more likely to gravitate towards the term “social contract” vs. “social investment” in terms of general approach correct?
What about the flip side and my belief that in the above context women are more likely to approach business as an emotional “investment,” which I believe then provides them with an advantage over men regarding their social media marketing efforts? Do you think men are more likely to laugh at this E-Trade commercial and even go around calling their friends “shank-a-potumus” afterwards? I know I have, I think it’s hilarious, if you have research to the contrary I’d love to see it.
Ultimately, my experience has shown that the social web is an “investment.” If I forget that fact I’m promptly given my hat and shown the door. What about you?
Written by Walter Schwabe, have a wonderful Easter long-weekend everyone.
March Social Web Meetup
Monday’s Social Web Meetup had a lot going on and we had more than 30 people out. We started out with Victor Rubba of CrazedCoders talking about the application they’re developing for the iPhone. They’re taking an established social networking app and adapting it to the iPhone as well as creating a standalone program you can run on your desktop.
It’s not ready for public consumption yet, and the iPhone app will be available through iTunes.
The program seems to be an internal social media tool and with project management elements. It will be interesting to see the final product. I think it’s something that could be quite useful for most companies.
Edmonton social media community expanding
We started out our discussion about social media in Edmonton by watching a CTV story about Twitter, with several Edmontonians featuring prominently in the story.
Media interest in Twitter has grown substantially in Alberta, particularly in Edmonton lately. Many media organizations have jumped on board and are now experimenting with the medium.
With this media interest there has been curiosity among its viewers and consumers, and according to Mack Male, the number of Twitter users in Edmonton has grown by 50 per cent over the last month. Nice!
Social media community changing?
Edmonton has a vibrant social media community and we’re quite friendly. There was a question whether this will change as time goes on and the community grows. One thought was that instead of meeting as one large group as often happens, people will begin to gather in smaller groups.
There were some comments about people joining Twitter and billing themselves as social media experts or social media gurus. Typical hype. Kind of hard to bill yourself as a social media expert when you’ve been on Twitter for a week, nobody’s following you and you’ve Tweeted a couple dozen times.
One person who could legitimately bill himself as a social media expert in Alberta is Walter Schwabe (@fusedlogic). There aren’t many in Alberta, but the number is growing across Canada. Mack Male’s another one here in Edmonton.
Mainstream media and social media
My favourite part of the discussion was also one of the more contentious ones. Recently mainstream media organizations have been going through a lot of difficulty due to the recession. There seems to be some glee in social media circles about their difficulties.
Mainstream media in Alberta is beginning to join the social media community, and Edmonton’s media especially. It’s obvious they’re quite new to the medium and are having a few growing pains. Who hasn’t though? I’m willing to give anyone new to Twitter the benefit of the doubt, except for spammers or the instant social media experts.
My only observation is that Alberta media organizations seem to have jumped into the game without much of a social media strategy. I could be wrong. I they think they could use an effective social media strategy to cut their learning curve and increase their social media impact.
Continuing the discussion about social media
We again made our way to Brewster’s Pub in Oliver Square for drinks and discussion. I had reserved for 15 people but we had many more people than that. Not bad for a Monday night!
We were lucky to have Alberta MLA Doug Griffiths join us at Brewster’s. He’s also on Twitter as @GriffMLA. The Alberta government has made a strong push to get involved with social media. It was good to hear Doug’s perspective on it. He said he’s had lots of good feedback on the Alberta government’s social media efforts. On a side note, I thought it was interesting that he was on the CBC show The Week the Women Went.
Social media experts
You can’t fault companies for being a little leery when it seems like everyone is calling themselves a “social media expert.” According to CNET, social media has a bubble of experts right now.
No doubt this recession will cause a shakeout of so-called social media experts and we’ll be left with a core group of people who are skilled in the field and committed to it for the long term. That’s always the problem when you have a field with low barriers to entry: a computer, internet connection and a business card.
Some people have said to “fake it ‘til you make it” but we’re not fond of that advice. If we are going to give someone advice on social media strategy, it’s because we know it’s the right advice for them at that time. Our team works hard to stay on top of social media trends and we do extensive research, for our clients and for our company. This runs counter to the “fake it” crowd.
What to look for in a social media strategist
In one year there will likely be many fewer social media experts if the recession has anything to do with it, so how do you sort out the wheat from the chaff, or to put it another way, those who are making it from those who are faking it?
Track record – how much experience do they have with social media? Are they actually using social media effectively? Are they walking the walk?
Who are their clients – and how long have those clients been with them? It’s probably a good sign if they’ve got several longer term clients, but they may do a lot of project work too.
What have their successes been – it’s not always possible to boil successes down into hard numbers. It’s nice when you can, but sometimes success is nebulous. Successfully getting a company into the social media space and using it regularly might be a spectacular success though there are no numbers associated with it. It’s even better when you can show hard numbers. Ultimately it’s about successfully engaging their audience or community.
Social media campaigns, like regular marketing campaigns, do fail. But why do they fail? A good part of it is because many companies don’t understand web 2.0 and social media. They want to use old-style push marketing in social media and it just doesn’t resonate with the web community.
Companies fail to see that they really are part of a community and the most important aspect of the community is conversation and listening. They just see the web as another marketing vehicle with more customers.
It requires a cultural and attitudinal shift to really succeed in web 2.0. That doesn’t mean that you can’t succeed at all without it, but if you want to be the best, you have to change cultures and attitudes.
As the recession shakes out the makers from the fakers, one thing is clear, fusedlogic will still be making it in social media one year from now and for years to come.
