Most business leaders ask themselves: How do we deal with the world of social media? Many self-appointed gurus within this area claim that social media is the answer to everything. In my opinion, it’s not!
Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook are very hyped due to the enormous increase of users over the last year. Therefore we see several companies rushing into activities on Facebook and Twitter with more or less success.
In September I attended an executive education on Harvard Business School with the title “Taking Marketing Digital”. Some of the lessons were tought by Harvard Professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski who focuses a lot of his research on how to understand the users of social networks. His lessons about Social Networks were really inspiring and lead to the true or false statements about Facebook and Twitter below:
Twitter makes your customer-service more cost effective
FALSE: Dell integrated Twitter in their customer-service but only experienced an increase in the number of enquiries from customers, because the Twitter feeds they received did not replace the phone calls they got. Twitter only opened up yet another channel for people to get in touch with Dell and therefore increased the total number of customer enquiries.
Facebook is the place to push product promotions and increase sale
FALSE: Your fans on Facebook are willing to pay full price for your products because they already love your brand. Offering them products at a discount only reduce the revenue you already get from this group of fans. Instead you should push new products or limited editions to your Facebook fans.
Facebook and Twitter are cost effective channels for market research
TRUE: …but with a caution: On Twitter 90% of the content is created by 10% of the users. Therefore a market research on Twitter would not give you a representative picture of a target group. Instead you would get the opinion of the few that like to talk whenever they get the chance. On Facebook you can get a more representative picture of what you loyal customers think because the content here are created by a larger group of people. Keep in mind though – you won’t get the opinion of the people that do not support your brand today but potentially could in the future.
Facebook is perfect for targeted banner ads
FALSE: Yes, you can target you banner ads down to the smallest detail on Facebook, but the problem is that the click rate is far lower than on other sites. Imagine if you were at a dinner with your friends and a stranger enter the room and tries to sell you something! That would probably not work very well.
Facebook is a platform for peer to peer recommendations
TRUE: Turn your Facebook fans into brand ambassadors and give them something that they can share with their friends while they at the same time promote your brand and encourage their friends to become a fan of your brand as well. Learn from Starbucks that gave their fans coupons to a new ice cream that they could send to their friends.
People on Facebook want the same as they want in the real world. They want to better the relationsships with their friends, and they want to meet new friends. So if you – as a marketer – can offer the users of Facebook a product that help them become better friends you are on the right track!