Dear Facebook: Break down these silos

Dear Facebook:

You have an amazing platform; one that has barely scratched the surface of what is possible for consumer engagement. Thank you for that. However, I do have a request.

Brands on Facebook are not silos. Yes, we love the fact that we can send updates to our fans, interact with them on our wall, and provide valuable content on our tabs. But, we have affinities too. We want the ability to connect and engage with these affinity organizations. If we sell toothpaste, we want to be able to engage and be a part of the OperationSmile efforts or the new research provided by the ADA on their Facebook properties, as we hope they would want to be a part of ours. I ask you, please break down these silos and let our brand roam for the better. Let us engage our affinities and build a more holistic, more engaged community.

Sincerely,

Your Brands

Bearcats Rejoice on Social Media

Bearcats Win!

Over the weekend, my alma mater, Northwest Missouri State University, played for the Division II National Championship football game against Grand Valley State. For the 5th year in a row, the Bearcats took the field for the Championship game, having faltered the 4 years prior. But all of us Bearcats knew this year was the year. With my Facebook feed flooded with “Go Bearcats” and “This is our year!” updates before kickoff, I knew this year was going to be different. But how different?

As with many alumns in the area, I crowded into the local bar and cheered on the Bearcats to a hopeful victory. Throughout the game, the chatter on Facebook continued about big plays, bogus calls, and the dreaded 4th quarter.Then finally, after 4 long years, the Bearcats were National Champions again. Once again, the Facebook feed was bombarded with updates congratulating the team for the win and congratulating each other for all being a part of this excellent dynasty.

Now…let’s put on the Social Media Junkie glasses and see what really happened. Throughout the game, the conversations and chatter did something more than at first glance. It literally broke down geographic boundaries. While sitting at a bar in Kansas City, I was not only experiencing the game with those around me, but friends in Chicago, Denver, and even those who made the trip to Florence, Alabama to get a first hand take on what was happening.

With this breaking down of the geographic walls, we are all free to celebrate… with each exciting play our experience was enhanced with these Facebook updates. The camaraderie and excitement that came out of it all, made the victory that much sweeter, that much intimate with all the fellow Bearcats across the nation.

Once again, social media enhanced a moment in my, and other Bearcats, lives. How can you use Social Media to enhance the life of your followers?

Facebook’s New Privacy Policy and You

I normally don’t pay too much attention to the changes in privacy policies on Facebook, simply because they happen all to often. But yesterday’s is a little different.

Now when you make a post you can choose who can see it. So if you have lists set up with your different groups (ie college friends, coworkers, familiy, etc) you can pick and choose who sees this information.

I’ve written some posts in the past about how social media is making us one person; breaking down our social group silos and merging groups that have never been merged before. A scary thing if your Mom knows nothing about your past college debauchery. But this little change for Facebook is a step in the right direction to keep these group boundries up. We can keep up our different personas for our different social groups in our life.

Thank you Facebook for allowing me to keep my lives separate.

What are your thoughts?

Social Media: 2009 a Year in Review

Last January, I predicted some social media trends that we needed to keep our eyes on over 2009. I wanted to look back and see how my predictions actually held up.

1.    Consolidation – The rise and fall of websites is inevitable. The rush to market for social networking sites has shown tremendous opportunity for success but even more opportunity for failure. Over the next year, we will see only the strong survive. Instead of having 5-10 social sites, users will focus narrowly on 1-3 sites saving time and narrowing opportunities for conversations.

Over the past year, we have seen some drastic decreases in corporate website traffic and an influx of participation on the social sphere. However, this social traffic has been primarily focused on the big players in the realm (ie Twitter and Facebook). A driving force behind the growth of these platforms is the ease of connecting with the multiple groups in our lives.

We are also seeing a few things emerging to further these consolidations. The use of communication portals like Google Wave, Seesmic, etc. where consumers can log into one place and manage multiple platforms. The influx of mobile technologies are making it so users don’t even have to be near a computer to “socialize.”

2.    More Interactivity – Building off consolidation, the strong sites that survive will provide the interactivity the user wants and needs. These interactive features will give brands and companies the opportunities to fully engage in fulfilling relationships.

The interactivity given through these social sites have enhanced personal relationships, enhanced events, and built solid relationships between consumers and brands.

The growth of social gaming and mobile gaming is showing the trend leaning towards the interactivity with not only the platforms, but the stakeholders in which we are connected on these platforms.

3.    Saturated Market – The growth of social media in 2008, is opening a lot of doors for many companies and brands to utilize these social strategies to engage customers. The more brands, the more saturated, the less effective social media will become as a marketing function. Now is the time to get in and engage in the relationship for future interactivity.

Every where you look you see a company’s Twitter and Facebook fan page. It’s becoming more of a marketing need to be on these social platforms rather than their own corporate site. With this trend extending into 2010, we will see an increase in the saturation in multiple markets.

4.    Less Permission – With the saturated market will bring less permission from the user. Less and less consumers will be raising their hand wanting to engage in a relationship. The social media users will become leery of brands “selling” to them in these highly personal spaces.

The few spoil it for the majority. With some companies moving their “selling” tactics from the traditional marketing world into the social world, we are seeing some backlash in consumer perceptions with brands on social media. The “selling” companies aren’t gaining the required trust and permission in the social world to be successful, dampening the power these relationships could be for the rest of us trying to enhance our consumer’s lives.

5.    Big Failures / Big Successes – As we’ve seen over the past few years, brands will continue to be made through social media and fail miserably the same way. Act quickly, measure, and react. Commitment and dedication will be the only way to survive throughout the next year in the social media realm.

We all remember the Motrin fiasco… Many companies have had their own failures on social media, but some have been extraordinarily bad. The Motrin scandal, Skittles, etc. Failure is all about trying and missing some major points. But at least they tried, right?

Now, we have also seen social media work tremendously… Dell just released their Numbers from social media $6.5 million. Amazing… Others include, Ford’s The Ford Story and Best Buy’s Twelpforce. Great examples of great successes.

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There you have it 5 for 5. 2009 was a great year to look back on and reflect. We learned a lot, but nothing more than learning to get involved and engage. Social Media is not going anywhere.

Check back next week for my 2010 predictions. There’s a lot floating around out there, but let’s see if I can get a perfect score in 2010 too!

Let’s move beyond the tools in Social Media

Courtesy of Flickr - Zoom Zoom

I read a lot of blogs and microblogs every day. A lot. One thing that I see that I’m very disappointed in is the amount of people still talking about the “tools” in social media. Now, I’m not saying it’s not important to know how to use these new tools, but I think we’re missing the bigger picture here.

Social media has created a conversational structure that allows us to cut down the silos in our companies and our own lives. Yet, we still discuss this fascinating trend in the silo-centric mindset. We talk of Twitter or Facebook or MySpace and how to create good pages and build mounds of followers. But we fail to discuss the holistic approach of the actual conversations and the engagement that we should be experiencing with our closest customers and fans.

When we move past this silo-centric mindset, we will be able to dream of new conversational avenues and have the ability to adapt when the playing field changes again. I don’t want you to find yourself focusing and putting all your effort on a platform like Twitter, only to see that platform fail and leave you hanging.

Here’s my challenge…Let’s move beyond the tools.