Social Media is a behaviour not a technology. Individuals are simultaneously consumers and publishers of social information (location, mood, likes, dislikes, events, photos, videos, reviews, opinions, news). Furthermore, your social network is your personal editor-in-chief and indexer of the internet.
Social Media was born on the day in 2006 that Facebook launched their News Feed - the perfect merger of Social Networking and Online Media.
Think of Facebook as the world’s largest portal business, with an unpaid editorial staff of 500 million (and counting). Facebook + Twitter adds 200 million (or so) unpaid reporters in every corner of the globe.
Brands wanting to engage using Social Media should not be asking ‘How do I make friends?’ They should be asking ‘What do I have to offer that’s newsworthy?’
By 2005 individuals had the ability to create and distribute media at no (or low) cost, with the same presentation quality and reach as governments and media corporations. There was probably no precedent for this phenomenon (certainly not since the days of the early 20th century revolutionary pamphleteer – just before radio arrived).
There were millions of blogs that looked at least as good as one of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper sites, and were accessible instantly, everywhere, on really cool devices. There were millions of YouTube videos with higher production values and merit than an episode of Big Brother or Funniest Home Videos.
But the problem was one of discovery – it cost time and effort to seek out the content that was truly interesting to you. Google couldn’t help you because its algorithms don’t index based on characteristics of subjectivity or sentiment (interesting, cool, funny, relevant etc.).
The big media companies had mastheads – brands you recognised and trusted. They had editorial staff to aggregate and package content nicely for you. So you the first website you visited in the morning, or whenever you had some time to kill, was probably a news website or media portal.
Then, in 2006, Social Networking and the new online media landscape merged to become Social Media. Facebook launched its News Feed feature, and the average amount of time spent on the site quickly tripled. Increasingly, the first website you visited whenever you had time to kill was Facebook. And the online media you consumed was increasingly via links shared on Facebook.
What Facebook had done was enabled ‘social search’ (or what I’ve called elsewhere ‘collaborative indexing’). Your social network seeks out and shares news, videos, blog posts etc. that are interesting and relevant to them, therefore (in many cases), interesting and relevant to you – because these people are your friends, and you share the same interests. Of course, you return the favour. The larger and more diverse your social network, the more interesting, frequent, eclectic, and broadly topical your news feed becomes. The odd quirky item may come as a pleasant surprise. Even if it strikes a bum note, you don’t blame the mechanism. When a search engine throws up a useless link, you think ‘this search engine is broken’, but when social search turns up a dud you think ‘I have some weird (or boring) friends’. And if you wish, you can call them out by posting a comment.
The News Feed becomes compelling and super-convenient. In one place you can catch up on what’s happening in the Middle East, why your team’s coach is an idiot, a great music video, and who your friend Kylie is dating this week – all probably of equal interest to you. In the same place you can fulfil all your needs as a social being. Extroverts are busy posting chirpy comments and passing on links; introverts and curmudgeons enjoying the fact they can lurk, passively consume, and achieve technical compliance with their social obligations by pressing the ‘Like’ button a few times and sending brief birthday greetings when prompted.
Social Media (Facebook and its adjuncts) consumes a lot of spare time for a lot of people. And it’s not just eating into ‘other media consumption’ – the time people used to spend watching TV, reading magazines, listening to radio, using internet portals. It’s also replacing ‘social interaction’ – the time people used to spend talking on the phone, chatting over the back fence, hanging around the water cooler. For daily users of Social Media it is ‘The Media’ – the place they get all their information about the world around them, and form their world view. Unlike ‘The Media’ in the traditional sense, there is no central, controlled editorial point-of-view. The ‘spin’ is provided by individuals’ social networks. This is why governments around the world are scared of the internet and want filters, kill-switches, or simply to turn it off.
Is there a place in here for brand marketing? Yes, of course. You may have come across the acronym SMO (Social Media Optimisation). Once you understand that ‘social search’ relates to your ‘brand’ content (which is about subjectivity, sentiment and brand engagement), in the same way that Google search relates to your ‘product’ content (which is about features, price, offers, and making a sale), you’ll realise you need to pay a lot of attention to SMO.
The challenge for a brand is to be more than just present and active on Social Media. If a brand wants to become an influential member of an individual’s social network, it has to be useful. It has to contribute something newsworthy.
Brands need to push content which is relevant, personal, timely, bite-sized, convenient. It can be mundane – 90% of Social Media is completely mundane – along as it’s about the customer. For example: “your pay is in your account”, “you have reached your savings goal”, “you have earned 100 loyalty points” “you sent 3,000 text messages last month”. ‘About the customer’ is always better than ‘about the brand’. I like it when my cable TV provider tweets about handy shortcuts on the remote. I don’t like it so much when they re-tweet gormless generic praise like “company X has awesome service”.
An aside - in my opinion, one of the best ways for a fearless brand to use Facebook or Twitter is for publicly visible customer service enquiries and resolution.
Anyway, the lesson for brand marketers is this: when you’re thinking about Social Media, don’t overlook the ‘Media’ aspect. Be useful. Be newsworthy. I’m certainly not saying to ignore the ‘Social’ aspect. Yes, develop a persona, develop a tone of voice, and strive for authenticity. But remember in Social Media, as in life, a good friend is not just there to hang out; he’s there to help out.
