Posts Tagged ‘social networking’
Excepting those living in caves and, perhaps, the cryogenically frozen, everyone knows the following Web 2.0 facts:
● Social networking is changing the face of the Internet.
● No site has done more to bring about this change than Facebook.
Smart banks are embracing Facebook as another channel not just for branding, but also in order to transform mere customers into rabid brand advocates.
A recent article in ABA Bank Marketing (“Showing Your Face on Facebook,” September 2009) magazine spelled out how any financial institution can put a best face forward on Facebook.
For banks, a “business page” is the most common way to make a social media debut. Every day more than 8 million Facebook users become business page fans. (A small beverage concern here in our hometown – Coca-Cola – has more than 3.3 million “fans.”)
As with all branding strategies, it’s important to have a strategy:
● Establish content/messaging issues before you start.
● Determine who page administrators will be, and from there commit to freshening your page often, if not daily. (Only Wonder Bread gets stale more quickly than Facebook fan page content.)
Here’s the best part. All of these “become-a-fan” decisions are transmitted across any user’s network. If a new fan is a recent college graduate with more than 1,000 friends – which can be common – your bank achieves some major digital word of mouth.
And CFOs have little to quibble about. After all, this is a low (no?)-cost way to reach a targeted (if not younger) demographic.
What are you waiting for? Create your business page! (And while you’re at it, become a Mindpower fan! We’ve always got something fun to say to our friends …)
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Posted by Jack Stenger on October 28, 2009 at 10:27 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wealth, Branding
Tags: bank marketing, Facebook, social networking
Coinciding with the rise of social media is the reorientation of marketing towards tribes. Unlike push marketing, tribe-based marketing strives to gather people around a particular idea or concept, fostering a sense of community. As Seth Godin points out, this approach is not so much about imposing an idea upon a group as forming connections among people who already have an interest in something. Using the tribe metaphor, Godin focuses on the ability of a single person (or business) to organize that tribe, creating a movement and changing the status quo. In essence, a good tribal leader identifies a point of connection among a group of people and then controls the distribution of that connection.
However, a lot of social media has created the opportunity for groups to coelesce without a figurehead in the form of a single leader. There may be an instigator (such as the person who initially creates a Facebook page), but as a group grows it’s tough for the initial creator to control the direction the tribe takes because when it comes down to it, tribes aren’t former around people, they’re formed around ideas. We can see this when spontaneous networks show up without a figurehead. Recent examples have included “citizen journalist” reporting of disasters such as September 11, the 2004 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the Mumabi terror attacks, and the spread of swine flu. No single entity organized individuals to start sharing their experiences, but the availability of the technology and the immediate, apparent need for expression caused the emergence of the networks.
What’s even more interesting about these networks is that they arose in spite of a figurehead-driven outlet delivering information on the same topic. News organizations were forced to put away their authoritative, “push” means of working and adopt the grassroots, tribal way of working. On the one hand, this would bolster the idea of the symbiotic relationship of tribe and leader. By encouraging the growth of the tribe reporting on the tsunami, for example, MSNBC was being a good tribal leader by not forcing a product (in this case its own reporting of the news) on its constituency and instead facilitating connections between people in the midst of the chaos and people wanting to gather information on the tragedy. On the other hand, however,this situation shows how little the importance of the leader is as a result of social media.
In this particular case – news media coverage – Twitter, Facebook, and other social media applications provide the actual distribution method for the product (news coverage). The actual news outlets only provide a venue that is, traditionally, the go-to point for news coverage. By repurposing the citizen journalist-created content, the news outlets may appear to be tribal leaders that can direct a movement, changing the status quo of how news is reported, but in actuality they are becoming another conduit in the stream that has no director. In fact, the worst thing that these outlets could do to the stream would be to try to be such a figurehead, damming up the stream of information and the resulting tribal connections.
While in the news world, it would seem that social distribution networks like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc. are quickly overtaking the traditional types of news story distribution and making tribal organization difficult, there are other possibilities for being a successful, sustainable tribal organizer. Most of these opportunities involve finding a tribe that cannot create an effective network with the general tools at their disposal. Obama’s presidential campaign is one of the most often-cited examples of this, and with good reason. In past elections, information has been push-based. A candidate would tell his position and feed information outward rather than try to bring people into an idea and engage them. Any sort of tribal organization would be done outside of the official campaign with no central leadership. The Obama campaign, however, provided that figurehead and moved the marginal tribal organization to the main stage. It created a social network that could not have emerged without a figurehead coordinating all of the different parts. The Obama-specific social network could not have been replicated through a Ning network and keeping official updates on the campaign circulating would have been difficult if not impossible without a central Twitter and Facebook account. Now that he’s been elected, change.gov is also an effective venue for organizing feedback and official updates that could not be duplicated through non-directed, general use of other mediums (general discussion boards and mass emails, for example).
What Obama did right and the news organizations did wrong is identifying an area that actually needed a tribal leader. Not every industry and not every product will lend itself to existing as a directed tribe. While it may be inspiring to believe that true change and movements occur by one person coming forward an organizing, social media has begun to change that dynamic. Some industries may be temporarily able to support a figurehead at the top of the tribe, but unless that figurehead is providing a medium of organization that is unavailable elsewhere, the tribal figurehead structure is not sustainable.
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Posted by Todd Woodlan on June 10, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Filed under: Ramblings
Tags: marketing, new media, Seth Godin, social networking
Recently, Alumni Futures published an article about a new Digg-style method for collecting ideas for alumni events and gauging interesting in them. The project is called AlumnIdea and is the being created for UC San Diego. Essentially, alumni can post new ideas for events and then vote them up or down, ostensibly giving the UCSD alumni officers a list of events they should start organizing.
This idea seems great at the outset. It’s engaging and it creates less work for the alumni office, since they don’t have to think of ideas for events. Though, as some of the comments in the Alumni Futures article pointed out, there’s the possibility that the alumni office wouldn’t have the staff or the funds to throw the events that got chosen. That’s a very good point and brings to the forefront the need to take the idea of participation all the way.
The idea of inclusive technologies like Digg and social networks are that they enable certain things to get done. In the case of Digg, a user can share a story and people can vote and comment on it. Engaged users can feel like they have a say in what media (because they do) and can feel like they have a venue for sharing news they find. Peripheral users can visit to find what the popular, democratic news of the moment is. Digg is an inclusive site that allows news-sharing. Likewise, social networks allow people to meet each other, often times in real life. The point of Facebook isn’t so much to get as many friends as possible, but to solidify already existing friendships and to make new connections that are more than just another tally in the friend count through groups, wall posts, messaging, etc. In each case (and most inclusive or social media cases), the technology acts as a facilitator.
In the case of AlumnIdea, the submission and voting system acts to facilitate getting ideas in the hands of the alumni officers, but it falls short of being a completely democratic tool to coordinate alumni events once it shuts the alumni out of the organizational process. Beyond just suggesting events, AlumnIdea could become an actual tool to engage the alumnae in the process of making an event happen. The alumnae are already using the site to suggest idea, and there’s no reason why that idea couldn’t be expanded to have alumnae organize fundraisers for the event, donate their time, or send out invitations to other alumni to promote the event.
If this concept is beginning to sound like Facebook groups, that’s because Facebook groups are one of the major grassroots organizational tools for alumni (unless Patrick Kelly from Plano Senior High School has stolen the group) and shouldn’t be ignored. Facebook groups work well because they collect a lot of energized people, but in this case the groups lack the direct tie to the alumni office and the office’s resources. Combining an energized base with institutional resources through technology can make events that were going to happen anyway (meetups organized through Facebook, for example) much more inclusive and can make events happen that otherwise would have not gotten off the ground (fundraisers or events that need an up-front investment, for example). The important part to remember is that it isn’t necessary to do it all yourself, often people just need a little push to do big things.
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Posted by Todd Woodlan on February 17, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wisdom
Tags: alumni, social networking, technology
Earlier this month, Bank of America joined the band of “twitterers.”
The institution’s Twitter feed is manned by Bank of America customer relations specialist David Knapp. B of A customers can tweet if they have problems with their accounts or simply ask David general questions: As long as they use 140 or fewer characters. (In case you’ve been out of the country for the past few months, Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send and read other users’ text-based updates.)
On Bank of America’s Future Banking Blog, Holly Hastings, National Customer Experience Executive says the new feed is for “listening and responding” to customers. “We are entering a new territory. A place that is not familiar to many in financial services – but a place with tremendous opportunity.”
Not so long ago, call centers and 800 number were the “new territory.” We all know what happened with that opportunity to listen and respond to customers. I certainly hope Twitter feeds and other social networking sites don’t become automated anytime soon. Suppose we’ll see. What’s your prediction?
As of this morning B of A has 800 + followers. (One of them? Wachovia. They began using Twitter last August and now have over 1,300 followers.)
To watch, participate and learn, you can follow Bank of America on Twitter.
(Just don’t share your account numbers!)
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Posted by Donna Bowling on January 27, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wealth
Tags: Bank of America, banking, social networking, twitter, Wachovia
Yup. Another social networking site is about to affect your world.
For years, we’re been trying to make college administrators realize (and embrace the fact) that you can’t edit or control what prospects and current students say, write, and perhaps now more important, show about your institution, so you’d better be “living your promise.”
Unigo is a new website where current college students can tell the world what their school is really like with user-posted reviews, photos, and videos. The site positions itself as a place where high school students can visit a college (without actually visiting, of course) to get the real scoop. Where most anything goes.
Unlike printed “insider” guides, Unigo is truly unedited – although the folks at Unigo say “it is possible to have a contribution rejected.” But, according to a recent New York Times article, The Tell-All Campus Tour by Jonathan Dee, “the extent to which Unigo abides by this anything-goes principle is bracing. A student at Quinnipiac in Connecticut, for instance, writes approvingly in his review that it is still ‘a white school.’”
The Unigo staff response: “If that’s the kind of people that are going there, people need to know that.” (Note: I’m hopeful the Unigo staffers who respond in the future will become better grammarians.)
What are the implications of students posting items from your printed materials? Using your copyrighted photography? Will you stop them? What would happen if you do actually ask them stop posting college-owned materials? Is it time to hire a social networking manager? (Or is that an oxymoron?)
Are you concerned? Should you be? I’d love to hear what you think.
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Posted by Donna Bowling on September 20, 2008 at 11:50 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wisdom
Tags: campus tour, college visit, New York Times, oxymoron, social networking, unigo
Once upon a time, Isaac Newton stole a phrase from Bertrand of Charles and said that he only achieved his success because he was “standing on the shoulders of giants.” A few hundred years later, we’re still progressing through the leverage of the shoulders of various giants that came before us. However, the task of identifying what shoulders to stand on is still an important task. There are lots of giants to choose from: those of philosophy, science, and marketing to name a few. In creating an authentic brand, narrowing that field is extremely important.
When developing a brand, there are a number of different routes to pursue, but the important thing to keep in mind is to choose the right giant as inspiration. We’ve written briefly about authenticity in marketing, but there’s more to the game. If you’re going to create an authentic brand, you’ve got to choose the right inspiration. There are many people “out there” proclaiming that you’ve got to follow a particular path to forming a brand, whether its integrating the latest technology or segmenting the specific audience that you speak to. When it all comes down to it, however, there’s no fast track to creating an authentic brand.
To develop an authentic brand, you’ve got to choose your own giants. The shoulders of giants, frankly, don’t support just anything. You’ve got to be able to build upon already developed principles in a particular area in order to contribute something unique and create a one-of-a-kind brand. This involves a rigorous process of questioning: “What do you stand for?”, “What are your long-term goals?”, “Are you pursuing the right methods to achieve these goals and develop these principles?”
While it’s easy to get caught up in the technological revolution, it’s also important to realize that only a segment of the population is really on the cutting-edge of technology. A lot of people blog and use RSS feeds and Facebook, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it fits your brand. A large part of creating your brand means admitting who you aren’t, however difficult that may be. I’ve seen a lot of institutions implement cutting-edge technology when their demographic isn’t ready for it or would rather see a more straight-forward approach.
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Posted by Todd Woodlan on September 1, 2008 at 9:24 am
Filed under: Brain Candy for Wisdom, Branding, Ramblings
Tags: authenticity, branding, marketing, social networking
Over the past few years, the social media phenomenon has taken off. There’s MySpace, Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Newsvine, Pownce, Twine, Livejournal, WordPress, Typepad, the new Netscape, del.icio.us, mag.nol.ia, YouTube, you get the idea. But, of all these social media websites and applications, one stands out to me as being the best example of what the web’s moving towards: Dodgeball. The site’s been around for a while and Google assimilated it a few years back, but it still hasn’t gotten mass attention.
The main deal with Dodgeball is that when you’re bored, you go out to a public place and send a text message to Dodgeball, which in turn sends a message to everyone in the area who will, hopefully, go join you wherever you are and hang out for a while. It’s a little complicated and almost bordering on the creepy invasion of privacy realm, but it’s got one important thing that most web application don’t explicitly have: the requirement of actual physical interaction. All the Facebooks and MySpaces and Craigslist Missed Connections are about being social and making friends, but they’re still a little antiquated in that the primary focus is on making digital friends and not real friends. Sure, Facebook has the event invitation feature, but the main point’s staying online and on Facebook. Dodgeball’s approach is the complete opposite: use Dodgeball to stay offline.
This is an idea that can be translated into marketing campaigns simply by looking at technology as a facilitator, not just an end in itself. Facebook groups or Twittering may be good because you’re “out there” where your audience is, but you can’t forget that they’re also”out there” walking around in the offline world, too. Unless you’re an online business, you really want to get people off the computer and into the “real” world using your product or service. When planning how to use technology, it’s best to look at all the new gadets, gizmos, and websites as a complement to your traditional marketing, not as a replacement.
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Posted by Todd Woodlan on August 1, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Filed under: Ramblings
Tags: Dodgeball, marketing, mindpower, social networking, twitter
