Age no excuse for business to avoid social media
When I talk with small-business people, many who are skeptical of social media — particularly Baby Boomers — often talk about how social sites are just meant for the young. And some say they think spending a lot of time online is unhealthy and antisocial.
I try to show them that people of all ages are adopters of social media. Facebook alone has had dramatic growth this year at nearly all age levels, none more pronounced than women over 50.
Now there are new numbers available on social media users. The median age of a Facebook user has now risen to 33, seven years older than in May 2008. That’s not far behind LinkedIn, the business networking site whose 50 million-plus users have a median age of 39. The median age of a Twitter user has dropped to 31, which shows that Generation Y, which was not an early adopter, is now turning to the microblogging service. There had been numerous articles earlier in the year that Gen Y thought Twitter was pointless. Apparently, that’s changing.
Facebook getting older? Twitter getting younger? What does this mean? It means the old adage is no longer true that only the young are the early adopters of technology. And new social sites designed to attract the young away from Facebook and Twitter are reportedly not having an impact. The young are willing to use the same social media now used by their parents.
So much for age creating a digital divide in social media. (Yes, MySpace remains decidedly young — a median age of 26 — but its focus has shifted to mostly music and entertainment. And it’s certainly not the dominant influence it once was.)
While we’re debunking myths, let’s burst another bubble. Remember the study which found people were becoming more socially isolated because of technology, especially mobile phones and the Internet? Not so fast, according to a new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Pew found that these technologies do not have a harmful social impact upon people.
In fact, Pew found social networking sites provide an outlet for “discussion networks that are more likely to contain people from different backgrounds.” In other words, people have digital contact with a more diverse group of people.
Boomer business owners, isn’t that one of your company goals? Don’t you want to expand your reach to new people, new contacts outside your regular sphere?
Can’t wait for the next business owner to bring up age, or dismiss the merits of social networking. I’ve got some new research to share.
Facebook features boon for small businesses
We gave Facebook credit yesterday for planning some changes that show an apparent savvy business strategy. Let’s take a closer look today at how those changes affect small businesses and their marketing efforts.
First, let’s be clear. I wasn’t anywhere near Facebook HQ when they recently shared their six-month product roadmap. I’m depending on trusted, reliable social media strategists, such as Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang (formerly of Forrester Research), for details. Second, some of the major Facebook changes will really be more suited to bigger companies with large budgets for marketing and developers who can create customized apps for them.
So let’s get that news out of the way. Developers creating Facebook apps will be able to ask Facebook users for their email addresses. And so companies who create such apps will have a whole bunch of potential new data to work with. They’ll be able to socialize their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems with real contact information from social media and distinguish between existing customers and new prospects. So companies can further integrate their social media data into e-mail marketing.
But that’s the world of big-volume products and services. What do these changes mean for small businesses and professional service firms? And how should they be preparing for the changes?
As we wrote Wednesday, sites will be able to choose the types of Facebook functionality they want on their sites. For example, Facebook users can become “fans” of your Web site while visiting there. So that means their friends learn about your site from these new fans. A business can create a news stream visible on their site which would also appear on the Facebook pages of their fans — and also be visible to the fans’ friends.
If you have a small business that depends upon a Web site for business (and that’s a large percentage of them), you should:
• Be thinking about what Facebook features you’d like to have on your site.
• Be setting aside some money for your Webmaster to make sure you’re ready when it’s possible to integrate that functionality on your site
• Be thinking ahead on what types of creative ways you can interact with new users coming to your sites. Special deals? Coupons? What can you do to get users to come back to your site? And bring their friends with them?
• Be thinking about ways to harness the Facebook news stream. For example, if I want to promote this blog, I now use a Facebook page giving a short summary of what I’ve written and a link back to here. In 2010, I’ll be able to simply flag Facebook friends or site fans that my latest post is done. It’ll show up in their live feeds. Bloggers can expect increased comments because people are more likely to comment through Facebook functionality than traditional blog commenting. (I get far more comments about this blog through Facebook than I do here.)
So business sites with active updates and content will be in the best position to take advantage of the Facebook functionality. If you can share compelling content and helpful information with your site visitors, you can use the tools to drive more eyeballs and repeat visitors to your site.
Small businesses, this is a great opportunity. Facebook is bringing the social Web to you. Be prepared to take advantage of it.
Some Facebook changes make perfect (business) sense
Yes, I know, Facebook has been taking its lumps from users lately. Don’t know too many people happy with the Live Feed/ News Feed change. Another change really bothered me — the new Wall of Shame (my words) in the Suggestions area in the top right corner of the home page. If a friend hasn’t been active on their account, they get singled out for special attention. Facebook will tell me Betty Sue has been only 27% active, with a bar graph for emphasis. Or tell me she “only” has seven friends. Or suggest I reconnect with Betty Sue. Or, God forbid, “Poke” her. (Facebook’s term, not mine.)
The history of Facebook is filled with plenty of unpopular changes. Does anyone even remember the outcry on college campuses a few years ago when news feeds first began? The protests seem silly now in a social, hyper-connected, Twitter-fied world.
Facebook has amassed more than 300 million users, despite the occasional miscalculation, and is none the worse for wear. In fact, Facebook is making further changes, including one that especially will have a huge impact upon how businesses interact with consumers. And an early look at these changes finds that Facebook appears to have a solid grasp on a growth strategy.
(First, a quick note on a positive change coming for users: Developers soon won’t be able to use the Notification box to spam with solicitations to play games, download social apps, etc. Apps will move to the left sidebar, along with notifications from these apps. Apps-related messages will also appear in a channel inside the inbox. The idea is to make these messages less intrusive and to remove from news feeds and notifications. No more spam making me feel like a loser because I don’t care about Farmville.)
Now, the big change for business. Social media watchers everywhere are pondering the significance of Facebook’s Open Graph API, hinted at in a recent session at Facebook HQ. To vastly oversimplify, companies by early 2010 will be able to add the functionality of Facebook pages to their business sites, whether they have actual Fan pages or not.
Businesses will be able to update statuses or post content, with users leaving comments or liking items, etc., just as people do on Facebook. And that stream of activity also feeds back to Facebook where that activity reappears in the news stream of users.
Business gets a low-cost method to spur further interaction with users (and potential new customers) and increase time spent on their Web sites. Facebook gets a bonanza of data, expanded reach and new opportunities at growing revenue. Facebook also takes a giant step outside its closed garden and moves directly toward the center of the social Web. Much has been made of the war between Facebook and Google over who will control the social Web. Make no mistake: Facebook has fired a major shot.
There is another payoff for Facebook in these moves. With FB’s incredible past growth in the U.S., it’s obvious that at some point the company’s expansion domestically will flatten. What better way to expand reach, page views and length of visits on Facebook than to import your platform to other sites and still be able to monetize all that extra site activity generated.
I suspect that same thought was behind Facebook’s addition of the aforementioned Wall of Shame. The last thing Facebook wants is an inactive user. While I hate to see a user held up for unwanted attention, the move does make sense from a business standpoint. Inactive users are not good for the bottom line.
We’ve focused mostly on Facebook in this post. We’ll go deeper tomorrow on some of the potential changes for business and marketing over the next six months.
When social media misfires
Today, we’ll focus on just two of the more recent misfires by social media practicioners and the lessons they teach.
The first one is pretty darned obvious. According to Mashable, the Danish government’s tourism agency, VisitDenmark, produced a video hoax in which a woman claimed to be looking for a tourist who was the father of her child, conceived in a drunken one-night stand. Danish media learned the “mother” was actually an actress. The video, which reportedly had more than 800,000 page views on YouTube, has since been pulled. However, at this writing it can still be seen here.
Apparently, someone associated with VisitDenmark took rapper Kanye West’s approach to marketing, thinking bad publicity is better than no publicity at all. And, just as Kanye is taking some serious lumps for his outrageous behavior Sunday night at the MTV Video Music Awards, the Danish agency has stirred up a firestorm of outrage.
What were they thinking? We’ll leave Kanye to music fans. For VisitDenmark, a simple question: You’ve got a beautiful country. How does a stunt like this boost tourism?
Second, Honda is getting pounded on its Facebook page for the new Crosstour vehicle’s design. It was bad enough that users were critical. Then, a well-meaning Honda product planning manager took it upon himself to comment he liked the design and would buy the vehicle in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, he never said where he worked, according to Autoblog. Facebook users figured out where he worked, and carnage ensued. Honda, to its credit, let the barrage continue, but it reportedly deleted the employee’s comment, saying he did not speak for the company.
The lessons for Honda include: 1) Make sure your employees understand the company’s social media policies. 2) If it’s clear that you’ve got a PR problem on your hands, jump in early and engage with your critics and learn from them. Perhaps Fans of the Crosstour page have some valid ideas that Honda can use to make the next vehicle a better product.
If you’re a company using social media, set standards for your employees or marketing firm. And, for crying out loud, don’t let anyone misrepresent your company.
Despite moves, Facebook, Twitter can co-exist
OK, social media watchers, what in tarnation is going on here?
Thursday, we had all kinds of news about Facebook. It’s adding @mention functionality to Status Updates, meaning those updates can target a specific user by putting the @ in front of a user name. The update then willl appear on @thatname’s Wall. And they officially rolled out Facebook Lite in the U.S.and India. In both cases, the blogosphere had a field day describing the moves as steps to become more Twitter-like. Barry Wise at Social Media Today likened Facebook’s moves to a “hostile takeover” of Twitter.
Today, Biz Stone, Twitter’s co-founder, e-mailed users about changes in the microblogging site’s Terms of Service. The Twitter blog reports, to no one’s surprise, that “we leave the door open for advertising. We’d like to keep our options open as we said before.”
So, Facebook wants to steal Twitter’s thunder. And Twitter wants to start making money, like Facebook is starting to do. So this means a Facebook-Twitter war, right? Wrong.
Facebook is adapting some of Twitter’s features, recognizing people want more real-time communication in social media. There are reports that Facebook will make hashtags possible, another Twitter feature, so that a post could be searchable. In other words, if a bunch of friends attended, say, a U2 concert, someone could search for all the comments with the hashtag #U2concert.
But, remember, the @mention and hashtag concepts were not created by Twitter. Both practices came from users trying to get the most out of a site with limited usability. Facebook simply recognized users like these practices and will adapt them. Twitter, in turn, will carefully try to make money without alienating users, following in the footsteps of … Facebook.
Facebook and Twitter are competitors, but only in the very narrowest of senses. They really are quite different. (Facebook friends who automate their tweets to Facebook, please note. Marketers who want to use Facebook for business, also please note.)
I’ll spare you all the differences today. Business Week offers this quick summary:
“Facebook is the private party. Twitter is the public square. This line has been drawn and there’s no reasonable change either site can make to step across it.”
Words to remember next time you’re reading dispatches from the social media industry battleground. I expect Facebook and Twitter both to flourish without stepping on each other’s toes.
