5 Reasons Your Business Should Not Be Using Social Media.
May 4, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
It’s fashionable to write these – ‘5 tips that will replace years of business experience and distal everything you need to know into less than 500 words’ – type blogs. They are often ‘retweeted’ by people who never read them, but like the headline because it somehow fits with something they think they should be saying.
It seems to be a formula that people consume easily though, so here are my 5 reasons why your business should not be using social media.
1. Because it’s new and cool.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there making social media pitches based purely on fashion. There’s a buzz out there. It’s new and improved. If you don’t have it, you are missing out. Every couple of years, something comes along that changes the way people behave. Just because something is covered by the media, does not mean that real people are using it as part of their everyday lives.
2. Because it’s massive. .
I guarantee you that if you have sat through a social media pitch, that you have been bombarded with figures like ‘If Facebook was a country, it would the 4th largest in the world’. The country with the 4th biggest population is Indonesia, yet my bet is that your business has no presence there. What’s more, you probably don’t have any plans to be in Indonesia any time soon. That’s because pure market size is not the only thing that matters to real businesses.
Last week there was a story about how Pepsico were going to use location service FourSquare for marketing purposes. The article reported that FourSquare has a million users. Let’s put that another way – there are about 308 Million people who don’t use FourSquare in the US alone.
3. Because your customers are interacting with each other on social media.
In 2008 there were an estimated 6.5 billion texts sent every month in the UK, but the vast majority were between individuals. There are very few companies (other than mobile networks) that have successfully used SMS text messaging for business.
Just because your customers and potential customers are talking to each other on social media is no guarantee that they want to interact with your business.
4. Because it’s cheap.
Anyone can set up a YouTube account. It doesn’t cost anything to create a Twitter feed or a Facebook page. Creating a LinkedIn Group takes minutes and you can blog away for free on all many of platforms.
Once it’s been set up, you can get an intern or an expert social media consultant to represent your brand assets the best way they see fit, despite in many cases not having any marketing or business credentials.
You’ve probably spent a lot of time and money to create your brand, why risk devaluing one of your most important business assets by cutting corners.
5. Because your competitors are doing it.
I’ve always had a dislike for consultants who think that their technology based model can be applied across industries and businesses without any need for modification. Look out for a social media pitch that tells you that you need to be on social media because there are others in your industry that are doing it. There are probably competitors of yours that do trade-shows or sponsorship or other outdoor advertising that you might not do. Me-too is never a reason to do anything.
1 Reason Your Business Should be Using Social Media.
There are many reasons why your business may benefit from using social media including; better customer service, increased brand awareness, targeted product positioning and understanding your customer’s requirements, but the number one, and only reason that your business should be using social media is…
Because it will deliver you revenue.
Social Media is just another weapon in your sales and marketing arsenal. It has a cost and it has a return. The only reason you should consider using social media for your business is if it is going to have a positive impact on the bottom line.
Value social media the same way you would value any other sales and marketing spend. What are your objectives? How do you know if you have succeeded?
If you are being told that engaging in the conversation is enough and hopefully over time it may lead to sales, then ask yourself how much of your marketing budget you are willing to invest in that hope.
If on the other hand, you are being told how social media can have an impact on key metrics within your business like; transaction frequency, basket value, margin, customer satisfaction and loyalty, market share, recall rate, cost per lead and return on investment, then evaluate those numbers against your current marketing options and make a business decision.
Social Media and Sport – Threats and Opportunities. Part 1.
May 3, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
The Sportbusiness New Media conference was held in Manchester on Wednesday. I was invited to speak on a panel entitled “Opportunities and Threats of Social Media.” The questions asked of the panel were slightly different from the brief, so the delegates present heard different answers to the ones below, but here are some of my considered thoughts on the issues raised.
Topic One – The positives and negatives of an organisation (brand, governing body or rights-holder) getting deeply involved in social media
The use of the phrase ‘Social Media’ means a lot of different things to different people. For many, it is a catch-all for a few well known sites like Facebook, Youtube, Flickr and Twitter. For others, the definition is broader and includes web 2.0 enabled blogs and some gaming applications.
While there is no doubt that these platforms have a huge number of users, they are hyped a little by the media and those who work in the digital industry. Many sports organisations have reason to ask questions about the relative merit of different platforms, but I think that the time has come where the opportunities do outweigh the benefits.
To put this question into some historical perspective, rephrase the question to “what are the positives and negatives of getting a fax machine or a post box or publishing your switchboard number on your website.
According to figures presented by Comscore at the conference, Facebook is the largest site on mobile – bigger even than Google. This is no real surprise – mobile is a person to person communication media and Facebook is a person to person platform.
So to answer the question (something I was accused on Twitter of not doing on the panel)
Positives.
Social Media is another channel. Another touchpoint. Another mechanism to listen to and communicate with partners, customers and fans. At the very least, these mechanisms make it more convenient for your fans to receive your news and content.
The listening part is important. While some may focus on the negatives of being open to criticism (See Negatives) others see that the feedback channel is a great way to improve the product, to understand what works and what doesn’t and to adapt to that feedback. This is another way of saying that the voices are a diverse set of opinions that are perhaps more useful than the groupthink of old white males that usually make the decisions.
Social media provides an immediacy that other media cannot. This is not just what fans are saying, it is what they are saying now, and in many cases their location can also be determined. The insights from social profiles and monitoring of sentiment in conversations provide a level of demographic information that traditional registration forms can’t match.
Finally, there are demonstrable benefits of using Social Media for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Obviously the more times your team, club, organisation or sponsor is mentioned on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc with a link back to your site, the more highly it will score with Google, Bing and the like. This will become even more important as Google moves to include real-time results in it’s search mechanism.
Negatives.
Many of the negatives associated with Social Media are actually not problems with the technology. A lot of the negative perceptions of social media come from a misunderstanding about the true nature of who is using it and how it is used.
It is true that anything negative will be amplified and accelerated by Social Media. A larger group of people will be exposed to comments and if the correct procedures are not in place then this can get out of control quickly.
Many of the negatives associated with Social Media can be fixed with good business practises and policies, so here are some of the issues to consider.
The use of social media when done properly will require resources that may not exist in the organisation. There is no point in doing it for the sake of doing it, if you are going to engage in a conversation with your most important stakeholders via this mechanism, then you need to show them that you are committed and you take it seriously.
I disagree with the sentiment that you can “throw a rock out the window, hit a teenager and get them to run your social media programme.” Better to invest in training the people who understand your business, its products and culture to represent you and your brands online.
Social Media is two way. This scares a lot of businesses who are worried about criticism. Many sports organisations, particularly governing bodies have a tendency to be faceless bureaucrats, sitting behind gatekeepers and policy. But here’s the thing – people will use social media to criticise you and your policies whether you are there or not. You can’t stop it. You can’t control it. You can’t spin it. The best that you can hope for is that you can influence key people via participating to see your point of view.
Read Part 2 – Monetisation of Social Media for Sport
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